Silent Hunter 5 anyone?

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Yep - great stuff - yeah - did the CMANO thing - any of the database entries with US Forces where there is a "SCO" in the description I put together for them - built hundreds of description/photo for the group and shared same... My only real gripe is they handled Submarine Warfare pretty poorly with constant communications... Truly a step up from the old Harpoon though...

I stayed with SH4 as I preferred the Pacific campaigns...

Regards,
Scott


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Mustang]

The release of SH5 resulted in me taking a few days off work to play it (the first and only time I ever did so do for a game). What a big disappointment that was! Very buggy at first (how it was ever released in such a state I will never know), and quite buggy even after the paltry official patches.

Loved SH3, especially with GWX. Time-consuming to play, I think I completed 9 patrols over a few months. I used to keep a paper logbook for noting events and observations - helped greatly when plotting ship's routes and calculating speeds accurately over a long period of time, but each encounter could take some hours to play out, even with some degree of time compression. I enjoyed the 'happy times' but never got into the meat & bones of the war at sea.

SH5, having been greatly enhanced by mods, is still on my 'to play' list for future. It just demands quite a lot of time to do it justice so may have to wait a bit longer... but it's a great experience to run a campaign with some degree of realism.

A work colleague bought me SH4 from the supermarket bargain bin for 99p a couple of years ago. I've only had a token glance at it.

I also backed UBOOT on Kickstarter long ago so I'm looking forward to that one next year!

Martyn

[aonyn]

I have SH3, and love it, but have not played in in quite a long time now.

Thanks for reminding me of a great sim. Perhaps I will check out SH5 and see how far it has come.
Time, though... eeeh. Sub Simming eats large quantities of it.

Regards,
Dave

[AKar]

Yep - great stuff - yeah - did the CMANO thing - any of the database entries with US Forces where there is a "SCO" in the description I put together for them - built hundreds of description/photo for the group and shared same... My only real gripe is they handled Submarine Warfare pretty poorly with constant communications... Truly a step up from the old Harpoon though...

This is in my mind a very interesting point when discussing of various strategy games and even some simulators. That is, how to model (or when to choose not to model) the command propagation.

In CMANO, the issue is that it is ambitiously wide in scalability: in one scenario, one micromanages a single sub, whereas in another one the player is driving a WWIII essentially. The thing is necessarily balanced. In some tactical level strategy games (such as the good old Close Combat series), it actually takes some time by the units to start executing your orders, then picking up their stuff and start moving. When appropriately pinned in a fight, they may fail to register your orders almost altogether. It is interesting that a strategy game that has potentially huge scale of operations, such as CMANO, actually doesn't really simulate the effects of C&C breakdown, lost comms and so on, except by some scripting by the scenery author. But then, I understand its approach is a bit different, particularly allowing for the real-time micromanaging.

Other than that, I find the sub warfare to be okay in CMANO, although simplified in many aspects in comparison to actual sub sims. I take it as work-in-progress.


More of an issue to me is, IMO, the missile simulation. The entire concept is rather wrong way around in CMANO, where the missiles accelerate to fly at constant speed, and climb to "a cruise altitude" and so on. This can be correct for certain kinds of cruise missiles, but very inappropriate to the SAMs and AAMs for example. This would be clear to anyone who's ever had to study any missile in any depth, basically.

CMANO uses range and speed as the describing parameters for these missiles, whereas more proper ones should be the burn time, thrust and drag (or at least, burn time and delta-v!).

As we are flight simmers, let us take an AIM-120C-5 as an example. In CMANO, when you fire one, it accelerates to a fixed speed that only depends on its altitude band (1620...2500 kts). Then it flies at that speed, until running out of energy, and self-destructing.

In real life, an AIM-120C-5 shoots off the rail (or is kicked off and then fired, depending on the launcher from which it is shot off), thereafter accelerating for..., let us just say, around 15 seconds of burn time, building up some speed for up to, say again, 4 Machs of speed gain. The missile's forward speed when the rocket burns out is highly dependent on both the launch platform's and the target's altitudes, launch platform's forward speed, and so on. Also any off-boresight launch drains the rocket's delta-v for maneuvering.

After the rocket burns out, the missile should go inertial, bleeding off its speed as a function of maneuvering, and some other things, such as air density. Its final range should be strongly dependent on the target's maneuvering, and of the quality of in-flight guidance provided by the launch platform.

The same discussion could be brought up with the SAMs.

I feel it is here where the CMANO is most behind the curve, in the missile simulation.

(Sorry about somewhat off-topic!!)

-Esa

[Taka taka]

heh
I am still playing sh4 - I do own both sh3 and sh5.

They changed too much in 5 for me. Not the graphics or ability to walk about but the UI is just a chore compared to sh4.

[gonzman]

I played 3 and 4 quite a bit, when 5 was released I tried to stick with it, but after the first 6 months with a seriously broken/buggy game that clearly wasn't getting fixed I left it alone, haven't done any subsim stuff ever since.

[G-BJPS]

All you guys above that have played it in the past or are still interested, you should really try it with The Wolves of Steel megamod: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//showth ... p?t=210703

All the info you will ever need is in that above link Ive been playing it now for 3 months and it's totally stable, no bugs, glitches, no broken tonnage bar, or CTD's. It's turned the game into what it should have been all along, and more. The community is top notch like here, and TWOS mod is constantly updated.

You can have full 100% realism if you want with full manual TDC and real navigation even with a working Sextant. It's completely up to the user as to how realistic you want it.

It's best to buy the stand alone Gold version from Amazon, as the Steam Version is troublesome (but has lengthy workarounds)

I Highly recommend it.

John.

[Mustang]

Thanks John! One reason I haven't gone back to SH5 yet is because I knew I'd need to spend some time figuring out which mod(s) or mod package to apply to the base game to get a decent platform to play on. There was/is no GWX-equivalent mod for SH5 and many of the packages I'd seen included all kinds of extras I wasn't really interested in. These days I can't be building my own customised set of individual mods as it takes too long; I'd rather be in the game, not Windows Explorer!

Your recommendation makes life a lot easier with a definitive starting point. The Subsim threads tend to be long and wordy with their wealth of important info which is a little off-putting, but understandably necessary when so many game workarounds have to be implemented. I've no issues with handling technical complexities to get things going, but given the time constraints I'd rather have a simple installer do it all for me now.

I do keep getting a subsim itch lately so may dive (pun possibly intended) into it again soon.

Martyn

[mattgn]

Not long after SH5 came out (and I had been a staunch supporter of the SH3-4 games) I actually did a real time patrol.
The mrs was away, obviously, doing a walk around the coastal path in Cornwall, so I had to amuse myself somehow.
I think it was about 3 weeks long, or thereabouts.
It was fun, if you're into that kind of thing.

[P*Funk]

I was heavy into GWX in SH3 way back. Even did beta testing for it, think my handle might be in the manual somewheres. I always come back to it. Most recently this year I made myself a printed whiz wheel off the subsim forum and started using that for most things and my oh my is that immersive and effective. Getting AOB is such a breeze with that, or course. My first time out in years I stalked a juicy 1940 convoy in my fully loaded Type IXB and much to my surprise after firing 4 torpedoes at 3 separate targets I hit all three! No thrill do I get from any sim other than say multiplayer in DCS World. Truly excellent.

I also discovered this year Dangerous Waters, a now classic modern-ish sub/surface/air warfare sim though the subs really are the treat. Your first few hours will involve being confused but also being driven to make Red October jokes.