Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[Tango589]

Thanks, I knew it had to be something simple!

[TheGeoff]

Version 0.18 released!
Link: http://goo.gl/3bcZ4K

Changelog:

• Added ability for hostile warships to fire at the player's submarine. If the submarine is visible from the surface hostile warships will engage with 5" cannons and / or guided anti-ship missiles (depending on the type of ship). Some of these weapons can engage you from beyond visual range so keep an eye on the radar and don't surface in hostile waters unless absolutely necessary!
• Added the foundations of the noise and stealth modelling system. From the Maneuver control panel it is now possible to check how much of the submarine is visible above the surface and how much noise the submarine is making.
• Significantly improved AI in situations where there is fire nearby or a lack of oxygen. The crew won't stand around with their pants on fire and wait for orders any more, they'll move to safety. If the entire compartment they are assigned to is ablaze or low on oxygen they will retreat to a safe location and wait for further orders. If they are ordered to complete a specific task, however, they will bravely do so regardless of the risks.
• Electrolysis of water to produce oxygen and hydrogen is now simulated. This allows you to slowly replenish the ship's oxygen supply while submerged - the system is controlled from the Misc Systems Control Panel. It uses a significant amount of electrical power to operate, so it might be wise to switch it off when not required.
• Fixed the ventilation system so it's a whole lot more effective now. A side effect of this is that radiation spreads more quickly is the system gets contaminated.
• Added a system damage summary to the Misc Systems Control Panel. It shows you at a glance which systems are damaged and if immediate repairs are necessary or not. Items shown in white are non-critical (eg. broken screen on a control panel, dented case on diesel generator) and red items are critical (radioactive coolant leak, fuel leak with risk of fire etc).
• Added nine new cities / ports (Marseille, La Rochelle, Devonport, Glasgow, Kiel, Rostock, Barcelona, Gdansk, Warsaw) and one new nation (Poland). This means it is possible to play as a submarine from France, United Kingdom, West Germany, East Germany, Spain or Poland now, in addition to the existing options (listed earlier on this page)
• Numerous other bug fixes.

Enjoy
(and keep those suggestions coming if you think of anything cool to add!)

[Tango589]

Keep them coming, I'm loving it so far because you're no longer shooting fish in a barrel, the fish can now shoot back! In addition to the possible inclusion of a fire suppression system and bilge pump system to pump out flood water whilst submerged, would it be possible to pull into a friendly port and have torpedoes replaced and existing damage (especially to the outer hull) repaired, so you are once again good to go? This would make for an interesting limp back to a friendly base after sustaining heavy damage, whilst avoiding detection by enemy vessels and aricraft. Also, sonar/hydrophone functionality is essential for shipping detection, albeit limited, when completely submerged.

This could be useful for sound effects http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=206077

edit: re the fire suppression system, i reckon it really would need to prevent a fire for 30 mins - 1hr, as I've just had a killer time with a fire in the torp room whilst submerged to 14 metres. The fire destroyed one of the fuel bins as well as breaching the pressure hull letting in water and putting the fire out. I surfaced the boat draining the water out and sent someone in to repair the fuel bin. A large fuel fire broke out, killing my repairman. I had dive to 1 metre, flooding the room and extinguishing the fire, then resurfacing to drain it again, then send in another repairman. Repeat steps with repairman, fire, death, flood, drain, repair, fire etc until I'm running out of sailors!

Oh, what to do?

I can't wait for version 0.19!!!

further edit: Given your list in post #1, here is my list of importance.

- User interface realistic subsystem panels would increase the realism, rather than a screen of plain text

- Realistic modelling of submarine systems we've already discussed a couple of good ideas

- Graphics a bit less blocky and a bit more realistic is always welcome

- Realistic modelling of environment (water physics etc)undersea currents/thermal layers could be a possibility

- Lots of missions escort or surveillance missions would mix things up nicely

- Setting (WWII / cold war / modern) personally I like the current modern setting

- Historical accuracy
- Lots of different playable submarines

these last 2 are 'as and when' for me.

Rock on!

[TheGeoff]

Good suggestions Tango! I'll definitely be adding the ability to have your sub repaired and rearmed at a friendly port (and any injured or sick crew treated at a hospital). That will hopefully add more of a sense of persistence - eventually this could grow into a full campaign-type mode, with a persistent boat and crew which you lead through an entire war... that's definitely a long term goal though.
And sonar is of course going to be added soon, it's probably the most important sensor in submarine warfare so that's definitely a priority. Environmental effects like thermal layers will be added at the same time as the sonar. I haven't found a lot of information about what sonar displays actually look like though... I've read a lot about 'waterfall' displays etc but can't find many reference images or videos. I'm not sure how realistic the displays in Dangerous Waters are but I'll probably end making something similar looking unless I can find better info elsewhere.

Thanks for the sound effect link, I'll see what I can find. Like most features, the sound system will probably be rolled out slowly over a few updates - I'll almost definitely start introducing them in the next update. It will definitely always be possible to play the game without sound though - I want to make sure you won't be missing any important information if you play with the sound off. It's purely for immersion.

Fires in the torpedo room are incredibly dangerous at the moment because the torpedoes tend to explode and kill your firemen before you get a chance to extinguish them. Hopefully the fire suppression system will help balance this a bit. At the moment my recommendation is to make sure the best firefighter on the ship is assigned to the torpedo room with a fire extinguisher and gloves, and set the oxygen level for the ship to lower than normal to slow down the rate the fire spreads. Normal air has 21% oxygen, but on real submarines they use around 18% oxygen for exactly this reason. I'm not sure why the fuel bin kept catching fire in your case though, it should only happen once - sounds like a bug to me.

It's funny you mention using realistic panels, that's something I've been thinking about adding for a while. Maybe I'll introduce them as an optional feature soon too. I'm not sure how easy it will be to accurately convey information but who knows, maybe it'll be better than the current system. It certainly would look a lot better!

And as for other mission types, adding a surveillance type mission wouldn't be hard. Most other types will have to wait until later, when the behaviour of AI ships is significantly improved. I also plan to add missile submarines later, which will of course be assigned different missions to the attack submarines.

Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions!

[Tango589]

Glad to be of assistance, I actually added to the post about 5 times over the weekend as I thought of more things!

Could you clarify the use of the deisel generators to recharge the batteries? In the name of experimentation, I shut down the turbines and scrammed the reactors, then tried running on battery power after turning off all non-essential systems. Despite having both generators thudding away at 80% throttle the battery drained faster than i could imagine, I had even deliberately slowed to 2 knots to minimise load. The battery only started recharging once I had got the nukes back online. On the first test, I made the mistake of running this test submerged, and it tickled me to see the air supply diminish and the last 4 crew members running round the boat looking for some air. They ended up hiding in the reactor antechamber, which was all well and good until I opened the reactor chamber door and hit them with a blast of radiation (~70sV/hr) from the damaged No.1 reactor! Mmwaaahaaahaaahaahaaa!

edit

It's funny you mention using realistic panels, that's something I've been thinking about adding for a while. Maybe I'll introduce them as an optional feature soon too.

Optional schmoptional, if you implement them, I'm having them!

[Andayle]

This is fantastic

I only stumbled across this game yesterday, downloaded it at around 7pm. What I thought was around an hour later turned out to be a little more at 11pm :P

I'm a huge fan of the Dwarf Fortress format, combining this with a subsim is perfect gaming for me. One thing I did notice was that my sub would be very unreliable with its equipment. I had a major damage to both generators and also my torpedo room caught on fire and killed all the crew in it. This was before I even reached the mission area

I shall let a few of my friends know of this as they have very similar taste in games. Keep up the great work, this could well turn into something spectacular for us Dwarf Fortress type gamers

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by Andayle

I had a major damage to both generators and also my torpedo room caught on fire and killed all the crew in it. This was before I even reached the mission area.

A good way to combat this is, at the start of the mission, get your best torp room firefighter equipped with extinguisher and gloves, using the oxygen generator reduce the oxygen level to 17/18% instead of the usual 21%. This will stop the fire flaring up so fast, as is the standard procedure in real life. Lastly, be lucky! Hopefully an upcoming release will have a fire supression system modelled, so this should save on scorched sailors.

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by Andayle

This is fantastic

I only stumbled across this game yesterday, downloaded it at around 7pm. What I thought was around an hour later turned out to be a little more at 11pm :P

I'm a huge fan of the Dwarf Fortress format, combining this with a subsim is perfect gaming for me. One thing I did notice was that my sub would be very unreliable with its equipment. I had a major damage to both generators and also my torpedo room caught on fire and killed all the crew in it. This was before I even reached the mission area

I shall let a few of my friends know of this as they have very similar taste in games. Keep up the great work, this could well turn into something spectacular for us Dwarf Fortress type gamers

Glad you like it! Sounds like we have similar tastes in games

If you want to change how often accidents/failures occur, open the "gameoptions.ini" file in the game folder and change the value for sub_reliability. If you make it much higher, say 1000, accidents will rarely occur. For a real challenge, make it zero and see how long you last!

I can confirm that the next version will include a fire suppression system, based on the LOKh ("Submarine Volumetric Chemical") system used on Russian and Indian submarines (and similar to those used on many other nations' subs). This is very useful, especially when torpedo room fires start getting out of control.

Also Tango thanks for pointing out the bug in battery usage - turns out the oxygen generator was using way too much power (even when switched off) and draining the battery in seconds. This will also be fixed in the next update.