Submarines can receive data at deepest depth

[quertice]

I seem all units are in contact with each other, not regarding EMCON (not sure of this. I'm still a noob) or deep limits to communications for Submarines.

I can get sailing subs on ENCON at a deep depth, then raise to launch torpedos at the right position and time by mean god player's data knowing from all other units, so there's a big unrealistic advantage for submarines, will be fixed in a future patch?

[Rory Noonan]

Yup. All units are assumed to have Comms. It's a sacrifice in realism for gameplay purposes. If it bothers you enough you can set up different sides for your subs and use postures to simulate Comms.

If you're not using the editor and it still bothers you, you can just use restraint.

While we all want uber realism, sometimes an accessible and marketable game experience is more important.

[quertice]

ORIGINAL: apache85

Yup. All units are assumed to have Comms. It's a sacrifice in realism for gameplay purposes. If it bothers you enough you can set up different sides for your subs and use postures to simulate Comms.

If you're not using the editor and it still bothers you, you can just use restraint.

While we all want uber realism, sometimes an accessible and marketable game experience is more important.

"restraint" is trying to command a sub only on knowing of enemy units it could have in real life? yes, I'll do so, I'm not expert enough until now to use editor, but I can set up a "home rule" of self-restraint on sub command, thank you for explanation

I know in harpoon 3 was a "full realism game mod" where player can't command subs at a lower periscope depth, would be amazing to have the same in c:mano with a future patch as option for hardcore gamers like me [&o][&o][&o]

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: qwetry
I know in harpoon 3 was a "full realism game mod" where player can't command subs at a lower periscope depth, would be amazing to have the same in c:mano with a future patch as option for hardcore gamers like me [&o][&o][&o]

Sure, let's set up a Kickstarter page with that and see how many people want this feature enough to pay for it.

[AlGrant]

Only my opinion .....all opinions are subject to change [;)]

I've seen the question of sub comms raised on a few occasions and at first glance it is a valid one ...... at first I was all for a more realistic comms model.

However reading some of the earlier threads and the for & against arguments I can see a number of problems.
The Harpoon sub comms often gets mentioned, I remember they would could easily go off task and get themselves sunk (far too regularly as I recall!). I guess it's a case of 'be careful what you wish for'.
If I remember correctly that restricted comms model was optional and I think most people played with it switched off most of the time.
Or at very least they switched it off when they needed to mirco-manage the situation ...... and that's probably the main issue!

One of CMANO's strengths is that you can play the game at a variety of command levels.
In one scenario you could be controlling a single sub, whilst in the next one you could be controlling a Task Group or full Theatre Commander.

In the original post you say

"I can get sailing subs on ENCON at a deep depth, then raise to launch torpedos at the right position and time"

That level of micromanagement would be lost with restricted comms and no doubt some would complain that they can't get the sub to do what they want when they want.

Whilst I'm all for a more realistic or at least improved/flexible sub comms model if it could be done, having one that satisfied the needs of the micro-manager as well the hands off player is going to be pretty hard to implement.
Not only is there the issue of contact reporting to/from the sub but anything that puts the sub out direct control of the player, even temporarily, means it comes under AI control.
Even when subs are left to their own devices in a user created mission area there are many times I want to override the AI

Others threads have suggested temporary workarounds, either with Lua or using different sides/postures etc to try better simulate sub comms/reporting, but I've not tried them and they would have to be a part of the scenario design rather than an option open to the player.

So my view is that a different approach to sub comms/reporting would be great, there may be work arounds that could be used in scenario design, but from a scenario player perspective I'm not sure how you could do one that can easily adjust to different scenario sizes and still address the 'Sub Captain' or 'Area Commander' question.

Al

[mikmykWS]

This has been discussed a lot. Please search in the future to keep us from going over the same thing over and over.

Of course we know the Comms limitation but for game play reasons we allow players to control their subs. This comes from observing how Harpon players and Command players actually use them.

If a consensus builds that we should change this we will. In the future there may be a better way to do this in game anyways. Stay tuned!

Thanks

Mike

[quertice]

ORIGINAL: Sunburn

ORIGINAL: qwetry
I know in harpoon 3 was a "full realism game mod" where player can't command subs at a lower periscope depth, would be amazing to have the same in c:mano with a future patch as option for hardcore gamers like me [&o][&o][&o]

Sure, let's set up a Kickstarter page with that and see how many people want this feature enough to pay for it.

Don't need to be sarcastic, what I writed was just a my opinion to improve your awesome wargame

AlGrant, your post is really interesting

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

This has been discussed a lot. Please search in the future to keep us from going over the same thing over and over.

Of course we know the Comms limitation but for game play reasons we allow players to control their subs. This comes from observing how Harpon players and Command players actually use them.

If a consensus builds that we should change this we will. In the future there may be a better way to do this in game anyways. Stay tuned!

Thanks

Mike

Sorry for haven't used search function, just now I've found threads similar to this mine

Thanks for answer, OK, I'll keep tuned hoping for sub comms limitations option [:)]

[Rory Noonan]

you could also emulate the old H3 style by setting your subs on a mission then not changing their orders.... No editor, no Lua.. Subjective entertainment value [;)]

[JPFisher55]

The problem with the old Harpoon 2-3 realism settings for subs is that then the AI controls the subs. By necessity, the AI is not very smart so the subs generally use a lot of their usefulness when controlled by the AI. This might be fair because your AI opponent has the same issue, but lacks entertainment value of playing sub commander too in Command.

[FlyingBear]

A big problem with sub comms modeling along the lines of "no comms at deep depth and let the AI control it with missions" is that it reduces the submarine to an intelligent mine field. You cannot use it for surveillance and intelligence gathering anymore since it won't tell you if it detects something. That is not just a playability issue but a realism issue as well. Sure you could fix that with things like "sub to periscope depth to report contacts?" mission editor check boxes but the whole thing becomes overly complex.

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: Sunburn
Sure, let's set up a Kickstarter page with that and see how many people want this feature enough to pay for it.

Don't need to be sarcastic, what I writed was just a my opinion to improve your awesome wargame

Thank you, and I was not being sarcastic.

We do get a lot of suggestions/ideas whose implementation warrants a significant chunk of development resources, and for a small dev team being able to reliably tell apart a feature that the silent majority earnestly yearns for from one that is the wish of maybe a half-dozen users is of critical importance. Polls help, sometimes, but they can be unreliable because only a small subset of the users vote and also the "no stake" nature of polls means users vote on a whim. Voting with one's wallet, OTOH, is much more reliable and allows the dev team to prioritize features.

This is in fact done in some form or another by quite a few outfits. Look at GMT's P500 system for an example.

[SeaQueen]

While a lot has been said about how much more realistic it would be to deny submarines communications, I think it's important to say that submarines have come a long way from the days where all they got was an encrypted radio message relayed by Morse code. Submarines are a lot more connected than they once were. While there are restrictions on their ability to communicate, they're far from "blacked out."

Submarines periodically return to communications depth and speed to receive a wide variety of data in many forms. Computation power has increased bandwidth and improved encryption. Different sorts of antennas and data compression algorithms have been developed to enable higher data rates and voice comms. Communications buoys have been in use for years. Satellite communications is a regular feature with submarines. They may not be perfect, but they are light years ahead of what people seem to think is reality.

http://www.public.navy.mil/subfor/under ... 0/art.html
http://www.public.navy.mil/subfor/under ... eaweb.html
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... ivity.html
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articl ... arine.html
http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/TD/td2003/thompson.pdf

All in all, I don't think that the existing model is all that bad. Even before communications at depth and speed, submarines popped up periodically to expose antennas, tow buoys or floating antennas. That ensured they had a decent sense of the operational picture. The "Harpoon" model, where you'd set a submarine off on a mission and never hear from it again until the mission is over, is completely unrealistic.

[Dysta]

That reminds me the 80s style pre-written message boxes with morse code encryption. Rely on VLF and/or ULF to receive 5 letters and numbers in painfully slow speed, and then decrypt it with sub-installed decipher, and unlock the box with it.

[StellarRat]

Until the programmers can write an AI intelligent enough to replace a competent sub Captain I'm not sure that this would be an idea that the majority of players would be in favor of. Of course, if they could do that the Navy might want to hire them!