[GlowwormGuy]

Wow! That just looks amazing. You know how much I love the Great War period warships - just seeing that really made my day.

Did you get to read Robert Massie's Castles of Steel? The U-boat fleet really played a very important part in the Great War but at the start no one could predict it would be such a deadly and feared weapon. Old Forkbeard Tirpitz believed in it but many others thought that they were little more than toys. Of course - as you rightly are trying to simulate - the whole issue revolved around the use of standard Cruiser Rules for sinking merchant ships. And they didn't really know too much what would happen in U-boat vs warship combat until Weddigen sunk the three Cressys.

There's a lot of behind the scenes politicking going on during the war as Tirpitz and the fleet commanders want to push the limits of their weapon as it is the best - and often times the only (because the Hochseeflotte is 'shackled' to port by the Alle Hoch) way to strike back against the Allies. Like there would be times that the ships can undertake more unrestricted submarine warfare tactics and other times they'd be limited (the negotiations with Pres.Wilson would determine that subs could attack only such and such ships or that passenger vessels would absolutely not be attacked) or even withdrawn from the anti-merchant campaign altogether and employed offensively against the Grand Fleet. Indeed the standard Hochseeflotte strategy, harking back to their Jeune Ecole roots, was to try and weaken the Royal Navy strength as it sortied through mine barrages, ambushes of their light forces or catching their scouting heavy ships (ie. Beatty's Battlecruisers and any supporting battle squadron) in a trap with the German battlecruisers as bait and the battleships of the Hochseeflotte as the steel teeth, and of course with submarines which, happily for the Imperial Navy, were more potent than many traditionalists had imagined.

Hopefully as it grows and goes there will be expansions into the Mediterranean perhaps or the possibility to command light warships like small TBs?

Is there a mission editor guide for SH4? I'd like to check that out and perhaps in future I can come aboard as well!

All the best of luck with this project! It looks awesome =)