U boat yea it's a simulation, and we still don't know if it's better than modded 12+ year old Silent Hunter 3.

[Raghar]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/494840/UBOAT/

So, how do you like it?
Browser actually ate previous post where I spend 3 pages explaining why is it game that suffered by bad design decisions and about the mismanaged project.

On surface it could be nice game but.

- It doesn't have dynamic war. Old games actually altered war result depending on what player did.
- It has crazy bugs likely caused by bad design of the program and like shitty programming.
Frankly you would think that crew would try to close hatches and stop water flooding into submarine when submarine was submerging. Pumping out water lying on depth of 130-150 m on seabed while for some reason only lower hatch of tower was closed. Looks like order close bulkheads when there are no bulkheads has problems.

Yea there was a submarine which sank in harbor this way but it was only one case.

Basically considering how long it was in early access it's still horrible mess.

 

[Beastro]

Silent Hunter 3 is almost 20 years old now.

 

[Raghar]

Yea, SH3 copyright should expire already.

 

[Hace El Oso]

and we still don't know if it's better than modded 12+ year old Silent Hunter 3​

I've heard that it's very arcadey, and because of the generational gap you have an outsized emphasis on 'crew management', which is more like a crafting substitute than it is being in command of a boat and crew.

At least there's GHPC for tank commanding.

 

[Raghar]

Well, it has its moments.

 

[Raghar]

Norwegian campaign with Type IID is brutal. I missed 4 torpedoes and the what hit was a dud. Then I killed a corvette with a 20 mm machinegun. I found that distracting enemy into throwing depth charges at you and not bothering with convoy was fairly efficient.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

This game used to be The Sims on a Boat, but they really ramped up the simulation aspect in the months before release. Fully integrated manual targeting, a highly detailed simulation of the TDC which you can operate yourself if you want, there's a lot to like here.

 

[thesecret1]

I've heard that it's very arcadey

It depends entirely on what settings you play on. You can turn it into an arcade if you want (and be bored to tears) or you can ramp up the realism settings and have some genuinely tense moments.

 

[Raghar]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

Well, I have technical talent, thus I notice this stuff. But, if you have high school title, you should be able to notice these things too. (And people who have Engineering titles should definitely notice.)

Also I'm just watching a streamer who is playing at high difficulty, thus he don't have info about sub visibility, thus I can't check other stuff. But...

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

What? You *do* realize Schnorchels in U-Boats were used exactly for that purpose?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

Well, I have technical talent, thus I notice this stuff. But, if you have high school title, you should be able to notice these things too. (And people who have Engineering titles should definitely notice.)

Also I'm just watching a streamer who is playing at high difficulty, thus he don't have info about sub visibility, thus I can't check other stuff. But...

As snorkels were designed to draw in and vent gases, a submarine's diesel exhaust could be seen on the surface up to a distance of about 4.5 km (2.8 mi).

Damn you stupid.

 

[Raghar]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

What? You *do* realize Schnorchels in U-Boats were used exactly for that purpose?

Snorkels were using to get AIR in (also seawater), and they had rare RADAR warning receiver installed on top of them. Germans didn't have automatic production of these and thus RWR was rare.
You can't send exhaust gas back out to air through separate pipe on the same Snorkel. It would heat up intake air, and that would screw up with crew. It's easy to connect diesel to some kind of pump considering sub is close to surface and water pressure is less than 3 atmospheres and pour it directly into the water.
Or considering German engineers didn't want to make complicated things and they wanted to use diesel only with snorkel close to surface or surfaced, they could accept certain loses of diesel engine power and pour exhaust gas directly into the water.

There is some problem with sea corrosion and few other stuff, but it's a submarine not a Yamato.

Basically snorkel suck air and seawater from the air, stuff gets separated in the submarine, air is send to diesel, seawater is pumped out. Engineers have hard time to make the contraption to work reliably, and crew is thinking it was BAD idea to use snorkel in a sea state 5.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Holy shit, Raghar is in schizo fantasy land again.
Anyways, you are completely wrong.

https://www.uboataces.com/snorkel.shtml

The snorkel was a device which allowed U-boats to run on diesel engines even when underwater. This was simply a pipe with a valve on one end, which extended above sea level while the boat was submerged. The tube consisted of an intake and exhaust pipe, where outside air was drawn into the U-boat, and exhaust gases expelled from the exhaust pipe. The shutoff valve prevented sea water from entering the intake if the mouth of the tube dipped below the surface.

 

[Beastro]

The Chinese lost a Romeo once when the faulty snorkel killed the entire crew. It pumped all the air out of the sub and suffocated them.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Modern submarines still have issues with snorkels to this day pretty much fucking with the submarine atmosphere pressure. The only fix we got from back in the day is sensors to shut down the engine when pressure drop is noted and compressed air to pop the little valve on the tube open again after being closed from hitting sea water. Oxygen itself for the crew comes from electrolysis of water and backup cannisters (O2 Candles being the backup of backup or auxiliary).

 

[Raghar]

There you have small explanation from history expert. He kinda brownnoses USNI, so take him with grain of salt, but he shown decent presentation about WWII subs.

You can also look at declassified info from GAPPY programs. They were kinda disaster, but that's normal for US programs. They kinda moved from diesels to nuclear subs for a reason. Russians, and Chinese kinda do both because there is no environmental disaster when someone shoots diesel. I'm kinda pissed Japanese TV didn't did more videos from inside of Japanese subs in 2010+, you could learn about internals even when they kept Japanese TV out of any classified parts. It's easy to extrapolate when you have some hints.

Spoiler

In case youtube would become crazy and forces monthly subscription for view. He talks about how subs used pipe to eject cooled diesel exhaust under water to decrease chance for detection. He talks about diffuser and stuff. But most importantly he shows real sub images that shows technical details.

It's actually interesting that the above video shows that German submarines were modified to add on Snorkel as an upgrade instead of being designed from the beginning to use snorkel safely and prevent catastrophic scenarios.

Basically snorkel on Type VIIB is like a lipstick on a pig.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

 

[Raghar]

After watching few people who can actually hit ships reliably on 100 percent difficulty. I found few other issues, and I'm not sure if I should talk about programming, I know self-educated peple with talent that were better developers than Uboat team, or Warhorse. (And I don't talk about Warhorse after it was bought by Austrian company, that's another dose of corporatism.)

So yea I'd probably skip rightful examples of bad design and programming, and rather move to area where even fanboys who would make their own game would do a lot better.

Fanboys would totally tried to simulate real world ship traffic at least on the map. And we would have typical scenes of ships hanging in ports. They would probably need to add switch "low polygon models near ports and in high traffic".

Port ships are about going in, go out, instead of massive PITA of dealing with neutral ship traffic.

Then we have weird stuff like:
Imagine a dark with little moon night and aircrafts attack submarine. When it dives they attack it again. How can they see it? When it moves they follow. It nearly looks like aircraft have the same sonars like destroyers and use it from air.

Then we have stuff like "submarine reported a smoke from a ship 80 nm away from your position". Well... Now imagine it's moonless night with a fog. Visibility about 800 m or less. Perhaps 80 nm away isn't a fog, but it's STILL A MOONLESS NIGHT.

I'm feeling like a beta tester. I'm kinda glad I just got it loaned for free, and I paid for 20 Geisha chocolates.

It costs about 24 Geisha chocolates when Lidl or Penny have sale.

 

[Modron]

We do have a thread for this already: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/uboat-ww2-submarine-simulator.108727/

Probably in General Gaming as part of Infin's scouring of the ghetto that was Space, Strategy and Simulation because he didn't believe flight, racing and other more actiony sims should intermix with spreadsheet sims.

 

[Raghar]

We do have a thread for this already: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/uboat-ww2-submarine-simulator.108727/

Probably in General Gaming as part of Infin's scouring of the ghetto that was Space, Strategy and Simulation because he didn't believe flight, racing and other more actiony sims should intermix with spreadsheet sims.

That was thread about early access. This is the REAL THREAD about official release.

 

[Raghar]

That's how you do patrol near UK coast. Also this list is missing that destroyer killed by 20 mm HMG.

 

[Raghar]

And there is another example of amazing programing that people who spend years on making this game did.

As we clearly see the player did a mistake, didn't surface after using all torpedoes, didn't shot destroyers and corvettes by cannon, and didn't finish remaining ship called Frank Lever by 20 mm AA machine gun. Thus he failed "kill prototype of sonar # 210" mission.

 

[Raghar]

And that's how you do the mission. When you don't see ships in front of Alexandria, you blow up the port of Alexandria.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

What? You *do* realize Schnorchels in U-Boats were used exactly for that purpose?

Snorkels were using to get AIR in (also seawater), and they had rare RADAR warning receiver installed on top of them. Germans didn't have automatic production of these and thus RWR was rare.
You can't send exhaust gas back out to air through separate pipe on the same Snorkel. It would heat up intake air, and that would screw up with crew. It's easy to connect diesel to some kind of pump considering sub is close to surface and water pressure is less than 3 atmospheres and pour it directly into the water.
Or considering German engineers didn't want to make complicated things and they wanted to use diesel only with snorkel close to surface or surfaced, they could accept certain loses of diesel engine power and pour exhaust gas directly into the water.

There is some problem with sea corrosion and few other stuff, but it's a submarine not a Yamato.

Basically snorkel suck air and seawater from the air, stuff gets separated in the submarine, air is send to diesel, seawater is pumped out. Engineers have hard time to make the contraption to work reliably, and crew is thinking it was BAD idea to use snorkel in a sea state 5.

Typical German snorkel consisted of two tubes not in common cowling, meaning they were separated by seawater - which solved the problem with cooling of exhaust gases.

The air intake was on top, sucking from above while exhaust was ~1m below and angled backwards

More modern snorkels do pipe exhaust under the water, but obviously way after WWII

If the game has exhaust piping from the top it is indeed a blooper, but otherwise not really

 

[Raghar]

I found a bug.
Developers in what universe is a German submarine which is using Schnorchel pouring diesel exhaust out of Schnorchel?

What? You *do* realize Schnorchels in U-Boats were used exactly for that purpose?

Snorkels were using to get AIR in (also seawater), and they had rare RADAR warning receiver installed on top of them. Germans didn't have automatic production of these and thus RWR was rare.
You can't send exhaust gas back out to air through separate pipe on the same Snorkel. It would heat up intake air, and that would screw up with crew. It's easy to connect diesel to some kind of pump considering sub is close to surface and water pressure is less than 3 atmospheres and pour it directly into the water.
Or considering German engineers didn't want to make complicated things and they wanted to use diesel only with snorkel close to surface or surfaced, they could accept certain loses of diesel engine power and pour exhaust gas directly into the water.

There is some problem with sea corrosion and few other stuff, but it's a submarine not a Yamato.

Basically snorkel suck air and seawater from the air, stuff gets separated in the submarine, air is send to diesel, seawater is pumped out. Engineers have hard time to make the contraption to work reliably, and crew is thinking it was BAD idea to use snorkel in a sea state 5.

Typical German snorkel consisted of two tubes not in common cowling, meaning they were separated by seawater - which solved the problem with cooling of exhaust gases.

The air intake was on top, sucking from above while exhaust was ~1m below and angled backwards

More modern snorkels do pipe exhaust under the water, but obviously way after WWII

If the game has exhaust piping from the top it is indeed a blooper, but otherwise not really

Nice find. It's kinda both. It puts an animation of black smoke on kinda top of the pipe, and don't bother to show the exhaust gas going into the back direction. If it's just cosmetic effect and ships don't see you more than historically, then it's just a cosmetics. But, a lot of this game's features are just cosmetics.

Kinda wonder why they went with water cooled exhaust gas (which doesn't rise as fast) and single big tube, instead of one (or two) intake tubes, and two pipes that could rise in 30 degree angle left and right of vertical stabilizer and a buffer to ensure nearly constant exhaust gas pressure. (Or they could integrate exhaust pipe into the front of tail vertical stabilizer, and that might be quite efficient, especially if they fill stabilizer with durable, heat resistant, lightweight anti-echoic filler.)

-
I just recently had NASTY experience of surprisingly repairing damage in time and just needed a lot of air to stop falling to depths, the problem was when I managed to level I wanted to stop emergency blow out and either pump out water and dodge depth charges, or somehow hide from destroyers and get silent mode, the sub was shot so bad, it would normally be a wreck at bottom of the sea, thus they could write down one sub down and be done with depth charging. I ran out of torpedoes anyway, thus they didn't need to worry about cargo ships.

But, stopping emergency blow out is basically turning the valve, and implementing actual depth controls for uncommon situations, that would be too hard for them.
This game DOES have a lot of interface problems that wouldn't happen in a game made by submarine fanboys in 90s. C'mon, can we have this game with at least features of SH3 + one mod?