The future of Submarine simulations

[JU_88]

War thunder is set to add ships and naval warfare soon, its not yet clear if they will add subs or not.

Imo WT is actually a huge plus for WW2 simulation, that game is free and undeniably a massive hit and while its arcade mode is just that (arcadey) you still have the core fundementals of a WW2 flight / Tank sim in there - and it also has historic and Realistic modes with big rewards to attact players to part in them once they have got to grips with arcade.
In that sense its good tool for generating new intreast in WW2 simulation and great for 'easing' people in rather than just chucking them in the deep end. It has potential to encourge people to see what else is out there in a similar vein and pick up something more hardcore.
Admittedly games have gotten dumber in general, but that is just a trend, trends can always change when people get fed up with them I suppose.

[Nexus7]

according to the voice on wikipedia submarines will not be present in world of warships, without leaving room for doubts... so to say

[commandosolo2009]

If any of you play DCS world, I think at some point Naval units was said to be on a planned list of developments, or maybe delegated to 3rd party developers. Take it as 0% confirmed but if it does, boy we're gonna have things to sink. Not sure how this impacts this convo, but a shot in the dark often saved sailors...

[JU_88]

Originally Posted by Nexus7

according to the voice on wikipedia submarines will not be present in world of warships, without leaving room for doubts... so to say

Subs in war thunder could be a lot of fun (and hunting them too), but from a practical perspective, I'm not sure how well they would tie in to the game play due to the slow pace of most WW2 subs. Your average WT Arcade match is about 10-20 minutes. Realistic can be longer due to no Auto reloads, or shorter because it has no respawns either Anyway that kind of match time could be a bit too short for Sub players to inflict much damage.

Subs would probably have to play a role like bombers do in the air matches, their would need to be AI merchants for them to primarily sink,
Some reckon subs would be OP because they are sneaky and hidden.
I believe they opposite is true, I think they would be abit of lame duck and a rather easy kill because:

1) Every player controlled surface ship is bound to outpace and out gun them on the surface.

2) Most WW2 subs were so slow submerged it would take forever for them to get anywhere in real time

3) On a limited sized map, locating submerged Subs wouldn't be too hard for Escort players, especially as they will know where their spawn/re-spawn point is, an roughly where they will be heading..

4) As per reality, in a mixed Air and Naval match, taking a sub in to battle will probably be suicide.

[HerbertMcCheese-Wang]

BTW have you seen iambecomelife's WW1 overhaul for SH4? He's redoing everything! Right down to the explosions and uniforms. Go check it out http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=156161

I know it's not a new game, but, for the meantime, it'll suffice - when it's released of course *sigh*.

[Rickenbacker]

I agree about War Thunder. I don't play it, but it is getting new people into the sim-ier side of gaming, which is a good thing in my book. Maybe we'll even get a decent online sim one of these years .

[greensleves]

Ahoy!
To me the golden era of gaming has come to a halt, big company's have ruined it. The gaming industry is dominated by company's like EA and Ubisoft who add new sequals to their games year after year to get even more money. Games like the Silent-Hunter series should be sold to small indie company's that actually do a pretty good job of resisting this trend. Beeing 17 years old I got engaged to subsims pretty early with playing Silent Hunter 4 the release of SH5 was a great moment for me and i still like to play this game a lot after all these years. I think that if we ( the gamers) could get the small companys to create amd realease quality content in the sim branch we could get more young people to play sub sims. With SHO being the future of the SH series SH has turned into another one of these "we want to make even more money" series which you often see from companys like EA and Ubisoft.
Yours
greensleves

[JU_88]

I'm totally fine with Silent Hunter going over to an F2P model, if that means it gets the fixes and add-ons that are always needed. I don't mind paying for that, My problem with SHO is that its bleeding browser game that's taken 10 steps backward in terms of features from the original Silent Hunter experience. If Ubi decide to do SHO properly by building a proper game with SHVs engine and asset from SH 4 & 5, then I'm up for it and don't mind giving them some more $$ for some upgrades and stuff, but until then Ill just dust off SH3/4/5 and add some mod soup for a better experience - if need to scratch that itch.

[greensleves]

Thats the thing. SHO has taken SH 100 steps backwards.

[Grind_and_Click]

How about making it part of a bigger world as many are saying, with the likes of DCS World and War Thunder.

I posted this on Gamedev the other day-

"Here to exorcise this from my mind, have read the warning posts on MMO's etc, so it really is just theoretical, but will pose a single question in the direction of making it possibly feasible towards the end.

Is there a possibility for an ArmA/take-your-pick-full-sim-game, MMO where like in "Star Citizen" you buy into one ship, in this case "faction of a military's vehicle", yet inserted on a global scale terrain wise, using perhaps the "Outerra" engine. www.outerra.com

Want to be a tank? Buy the tank you want, get a crew. Aircraft? The plane and co-pilot(s) and so on and so on. All made for the game at sim/close to sim level by an independent (vetted) mini development team and put in to the game world, a bit like how Star Citizen held a competition with small development teams to build starships for their game that people would buy individually, at a full game price, yet only the ship (vehicle here) they chose would be available. Here it would basically be like a modding team getting to make a creation an actual part of the game world, and rewarded financially by its downloaded purchases. Perhaps soldiers and players are free, and only very high level weaponry they use would cost anything.

The scale problem? Mining.

Have varying resources, minerals, that can buy fuel etc, that can be hunted with special vehicles, and appear only in certain parts of the world. A person would build a base much like they do in ArmA and begin mining. The game world in Outerra is 1:1 that of Earth, IE actual scale, so in order to allow people to interact and battle- perhaps depending on the base's scale, it will make a "radio signiature noise" that allows it to be honed in on, perhaps by patrolling AWACS.

Going back a little, I used to see people building Simpits on youtube, and others that ran flight sims just for the fun of flying a plane realistically from one point to another, nevermind combat. I understand this is a niche area in gaming, but wondered if it was one that could be developed?

I had this idea before DayZ, but you know the feeling you get when you play, like you're immersed in the world, and scavenging with what you have and making fluid decisions. This is similar, but on a more persistent level, and each vehicle meticulously modelled. You can buy the sim you want, but put it into a world with consequences. Not an inert AI filled poorly detailed space that will disappear when done.

All aspect. Smaller vehicles like trucks, APC's can be bought cheaply as a pack, perhaps AI can be assigned, but there's your micro transaction in these smaller but vastly important vehicles, you'd be encouraged to be a team, part of a "corporation" like in EVE Online, to allow armies to be coordinated. Perhaps in a 1950's - 1960's time frame, so weaponry isn't too overpowered.

Here's one other dangerous and soon-to-be demolished thought- low end gambling eventually, in certain areas of the game, once exploitation is addressed? A financial risk to the success of an endeavour/flight/patrol/attack/exploration, or destruction of your own vehicle/base, but balanced. So if staking a higher risk, thus is gained a higher reward but a balance between what the destroyed enemy's stake is reached. Never above a certain amount, depending on what type of vehicle/base/whatever is destroyed so as to only create a real risk to the experience, not a detrimental habbit.

Lastly in regards to a direction of this somehow becoming fact, is Kickstarter a feasible tool that could make an idea like this a reality? If I made a video featuring gameplay in differing sim games and their aspects, trying to conjour a picture of what the end result would be, be a way to offer a vote to the mere possibility, for then a team to be created from it?

I've posed this idea from a typically uninitiated standpoint, another individual with no history, but hoping to find inspiration from others, in no way would I be the lead, this is a batton to be passed, if it was every anything."


Anyone familiar with the Outerra engine? People I believe would play as a sub, but unsure how the scale would work for them in particular, can't do time compression in PvP fairly on an world sized scale.

Perhaps ships are something you spot with aircraft then choose a place in which to spawn your sub, but it has to be outwith a certain range of the enemy player?

[Bilge_Rat]

The problem with simulations is that they have become a niche market. Big developpers are not interested because the market is too small. That leaves only small developers with an interest in sims. However, they also have to earn a living, which means concentrating on subjects with a potential, basically WW2 and modern flght and land warfare sims.

For those sims there is a lot of offer, i.e. Battlefront with their Combat Mission line, DCS, 777 with Rise of Flight and the new il-2:Battle of Stalingrad. But if you take a close look, you will see all those Devs run a tight ship and use a careful building block approach so enough revenue is always coming in to produce a decent profit.

Naval sims are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as an unprofitable market. The potential market is too small and development costs are too high.

[Ice Forge]

As for Warthunder, not sure on how they will fair on the naval part BUT they do have a persistant map global "World War" mode brewing; with nothing said around it but i have a gut feeling it will look something simular towards WWIIONLINE / Heroes and generals map wise. And in WWIIONLINE i have spent 3-5 hours driving around as a destroyer / cargo ship to transport tanks in operations so thats always possible.

Biggest problems with those games are that they do not need subs as they fill no purpose since there is not a supply convoy system making them obsolete as they have no game :/

[zachanscom]

sims have always been a niche market, it's just that now the market is bigger, and the contrast is greater. the amount of people who play sims is actually larger now than before.

get dr sid, some of the pro and amateur developers here together, throw a kickstarter, use a modern engine, and make a prototype. make sure to accentuate the visual fidelity, as that is the important first impression. and see the money roll in. simple as that.

a spiritual successor to dangerous waters with silent hunter sensibilities, in a new era and setting, with the cryengine or a similar modern era engine that is capable of multicore and good gpu usage, and it's a sure bet.

[CybrSlydr]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-kittens/posts

Exploding Kittens has raised over $3 million in 3 days.

[Pigboatcook]

The problem with simulations is that they have become a niche market.

Very sad. It seems humans have rejected all but FPS.