[Trout]

I'm not making predictions about Sh4, I'm simply saying that in SH3, the events that typically happen after you have made your attack do not play out with the same level of excitement or challenge as in other sub sims.

Evasion, damage control and survival should be the climax of a sub battle. In SH3 I simply dive, go to silent running, and escape. No near misses, no flickering lights, no minor damage, and certainly no being held underwater for hours at a time.

Most accounts I have read about boats being depth charged were completely unlike what I've experienced in the game. As Beery said, most sub commanders survived, (but most, I would add, could tell hair raising stories about being depth charged)

I cannot, and I've been playing a few hours a week for over a year now, on the highest difficulty level.

I submit that the damage system in SH4 could use far more attention than it got in SH3. We need many more kinds of minor damage that can create challenges for the commander, and we also need longer DC attacks.

Trout

[Trout]

"Don't expect DD AI in SHIV to ALWAYS be more aggressive or lethal than SHIII. That would not be historically accurate"

PV,

I forgot to respond to these points:

If aggressive means tenatious, then yes, it would be more historically accurate to have longer ASW battles. Accounts I've read from both theatres indicate that destroyers and other sub hunters simply don't bugger off that quickly.

As to lethality, I agree with Beery that we don't need attacks to be more lethal. I simply feel they should last longer and do more damage.

Trout

[Sailor Steve]

As to the amount of time destroyers spend hunting you in SHIII, part of it seems to be the routine that governs time spent away from the convoy. A lone destroyer or hunter/killer group should stay with you until they are sure you're dead or have lost contact for at least an hour. The ones tied to escort duty don't have that luxury. In real life spending too long hunting for one submarine could allow others in the area to attack too easily. The escorts have a time limit between when they lose contact with you and when they return to their escor duties. After all, keeping the enemy away from the convoy is as good as killing him, if he's too far behind to resume his attack.

One of the problems with SHI was that the destroyers could be too tenacious.

[Godalmighty83]

[Beery]

[Beery]

[FAdmiral]

[/quote] Reality is a lot more mundane.[/quote]

And that is exactly why most of us play games
BUT we still want them to be REAL SIMULATIONS !!!


JIM

[Beery]

My point was that if someone's facing death every day, then facing it only once a week would be more mundane, but I'm sure whatever he's doing when he's facing that more mundane threat would still make a good simulation. There would be no need to make it into an arcade game to make it more exciting, as I think a realistic simulation of facing death once a week would be exciting enough.

[Torplexed]

I have to agree...drives home the old maxim that war is usually 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror.

[Safe-Keeper]

Thanks a huge deal for your reply, Beery, that was really educational :know: .

[Trout]

Beery,

I've played through a number of campaigns in 1.5 years and I've lost count of how many DC attacks there have been. I've read a fair number of decent books and some "hollywood" garbage too. I have an MA in history and am probably qualified enough to know the difference most of the time.

I'll conceed that it was not a rare thing to escape an attack quickly and without damage. But attacks that did last hours and create damage were not uncommon either. In the game they hardly ever happen. It is significant that we never have to worry about battery charge or co2 and air supply.

So I've experinecd probaby hundreds of DC attacks and NEVER worried about my air supply?!

Even playing into mid-1944 this is one of the least challenging sim's I've experience. To challenge yourself you need to focus on racking up huge tonnage scores and/or taking silly risks. Somthing is not right and I'm simply suggesting that a more detailed and complex damage model would create more realistic encounters.

Trout

[DeepSix]

No offense to anybody, but IMO if SH3 - even played at just 50% reality - is "easy" for a player after late 1943, that experience is the exception rather than the rule. For me the AI destroyers are tough enough - although I would agree that there's a need for better strategic AI (just as with weather).

In fact, my problem is that with SH3 by the end of '44 or '45 I can almost count on getting killed - from my point of view the AI is actually too hard; the lethality of ASW goes up too much, while the general skill of the AI does not. Same with planes. In SH3, if you see 1 and shoot it down (late war), the AI will respond by sending 2 or 3. Shoot those down, it sends 5 or 6. The more you shoot down, the more it throws at you, until you there are too many and you have to dive. Lethal, yes. Realistic, no.

So for me the problem with SH3 is, IMO, that the ability to survive falls into a linear progression from "so easy it's ridiculous" in the early war to "virtually impossible" by the end. That's just my two cents - but I rarely play the game on 100% real so my perspective may be skewed as a result.

[Beery]

[Beery]

[DeepSix]