nah I'm a bit inland these days so the winds are a bit less intense. so missed out.
trying to get a solar+battery setup though so I'm at least partially immune to those intentional blackouts
State of the Game
- Thread starter Fuglydog53
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trying to get a solar+battery setup though so I'm at least partially immune to those intentional blackouts
Naval - another interesting Microprose game is "taskforce 1942" - runs on an MS-DOS simulator - it is about naval action in the south pacific. It is a little buggy, but interesting to play, because you are in command of a whole naval group of ships and can hop from ship to ship and as well change stations on a ship and do-it-yourself, or let the AI crew do the job. You can play a whole campaign - the game came as well with a quite big booklet explaining the game and the historical events in that region in the year 1942.
So it is a mixture between a strategic and action-packed game - you aren't forced to go to a certain station on a ship and fight there, you can as well just be in command and direct your group and watch it playing out either from the map or by observing it from one of those ships. I found it interesting, because one has to think a little different with naval action, because things happen slowly and it is very important to maneuver your taskforce in a way, which allows you to use all board weaponry whilst just be in the reach of part of the enemies weaponry. Making the wrong decision is often final, there is no time to correct it, ships move by far too slowly to make mistakes like this.
Well, and of course submarine simulations - later on this was the silent hunter series - ah, now I remember, "silent service" was it from around that time, we have silent service II, as well from Microprose afaik, well the package, the game itself is no longer working - but it played a lot like the silent hunter series.
I have silent hunter III still on my gaming pc - it is about german submarines mostly in the atlantic - the fan-made grey wolves expansion is still available for it - sh3 is the best in the series - the latter versions are extremely buggy - ubisoft should be ashamed of those. But sh3 is interesting to play and I really love it - the grey wolf expansion has as well sound tracks from "Das Boot" movie - and german speaking crew, it is weird in the latter game to have just english on german submarines - what the heck have they thought there - german u-boots need german speaking crew of course.
GWX3 Gold - freeware expansion pack for Ubisoft's Silent Hunter 3 (SH3)
Official website for The Grey Wolves Silent Hunter Expansion
www.thegreywolves.com
If you like to play it - it is on steam - get the greywolves expansion with it, it has as well a huge pdf booklet, fan-made and really worth reading.
the game starts pretty relaxed and the first years of the war are quite easy - but once there was radar and sonar, the german submarines were f-ed, not to talk about the time, when the enigma was cracked by Alan Turing and his crew - btw if you haven't seen "the imitation game", do it, it is about Turing cracking the enigma code. Well, and the shameful way in which they dealt with Turing because of his sexual orientation - but it is as well mentioned, that the queen gave him finally post-hum pardon - still, very shameful. Keira Knightley plays the role of Joan Clarke, a female mathematician, who helped Turing in the process.
To me the german u-boot type VIIc is still the most iconic of them all - I really like it's appearance over the later much bigger subs, which could reach the american coastline.
Type VII submarine - Wikipedia
just a hint, when playing sh3 - there is crew management and when you play the game on less than 32-times speeded up, your crew will get tired and has to be moved around, that they can recover again. So avoid playing on less than 32-times speed factor for as long as possible, and just do the action packed parts in real time or slightly speeded up. Managing your crew is extremely important, especially with those on the look out, tired crew doesn't discover enemy ships easily - but well, it is anyway better to dive to 25m and use passive sonar to figure out what is around you - sonar has a far longer reach than your crew could achieve with their binoculars. I tend to not see enemy ships until they appear at the final interception location - to hunt them down and figuring out the best interception location is a matter of sonar, not your look out crew.
And if playing with the GWX expansion, by all means, do not sink neutral ships, pay attention to what flags they have before deciding to sink them. There are options in the expansion, which allow for realism in a huge way - even not marking your position on the map - you might have to use the stars in the sky to figure out, where you are, which is quite impossible in heavy sea. Well, and when being in the northern sea - that is mostly flooded doggerland east of the english coastline, don't forget that, it is often not deep enough for a crash dive.
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You should watch Das Boot if you have not already which was an excellent series about German WW2 submarines.Naval - another interesting Microprose game is "taskforce 1942" - runs on an MS-DOS simulator - it is about naval action in the south pacific. It is a little buggy, but interesting to play, because you are in command of a whole naval group of ships and can hop from ship to ship and as well change stations on a ship and do-it-yourself, or let the AI crew do the job. You can play a whole campaign - the game came as well with a quite big booklet explaining the game and the historical events in that region in the year 1942.
So it is a mixture between a strategic and action-packed game - you aren't forced to go to a certain station on a ship and fight there, you can as well just be in command and direct your group and watch it playing out either from the map or by observing it from one of those ships. I found it interesting, because one has to think a little different with naval action, because things happen slowly and it is very important to maneuver your taskforce in a way, which allows you to use all board weaponry whilst just be in the reach of part of the enemies weaponry. Making the wrong decision is often final, there is no time to correct it, ships move by far too slowly to make mistakes like this.
Well, and of course submarine simulations - later on this was the silent hunter series - ah, now I remember, "silent service" was it from around that time, we have silent service II, as well from Microprose afaik, well the package, the game itself is no longer working - but it played a lot like the silent hunter series.
I have silent hunter III still on my gaming pc - it is about german submarines mostly in the atlantic - the fan-made grey wolves expansion is still available for it - sh3 is the best in the series - the latter versions are extremely buggy - ubisoft should be ashamed of those. But sh3 is interesting to play and I really love it - the grey wolf expansion has as well sound tracks from "Das Boot" movie - and german speaking crew, it is weird in the latter game to have just english on german submarines - what the heck have they thought there - german u-boots need german speaking crew of course.
GWX3 Gold - freeware expansion pack for Ubisoft's Silent Hunter 3 (SH3)
Official website for The Grey Wolves Silent Hunter Expansion
If you like to play it - it is on steam - get the greywolves expansion with it, it has as well a huge pdf booklet, fan-made and really worth reading.
the game starts pretty relaxed and the first years of the war are quite easy - but once there was radar and sonar, the german submarines were f-ed, not to talk about the time, when the enigma was cracked by Alan Turing and his crew - btw if you haven't seen "the imitation game", do it, it is about Turing cracking the enigma code. Well, and the shameful way in which they dealt with Turing because of his sexual orientation - but it is as well mentioned, that the queen gave him finally post-hum pardon - still, very shameful. Keira Knightley plays the role of Joan Clarke, a female mathematician, who helped Turing in the process.
To me the german u-boot type VIIc is still the most iconic of them all - I really like it's appearance over the later much bigger subs, which could reach the american coastline.
Type VII submarine - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
just a hint, when playing sh3 - there is crew management and when you play the game on less than 32-times speeded up, your crew will get tired and has to be moved around, that they can recover again. So avoid playing on less than 32-times speed factor for as long as possible, and just do the action packed parts in real time or slightly speeded up. Managing your crew is extremely important, especially with those on the look out, tired crew doesn't discover enemy ships easily - but well, it is anyway better to dive to 25m and use passive sonar to figure out what is around you - sonar has a far longer reach than your crew could achieve with their binoculars. I tend to not see enemy ships until they appear at the final interception location - to hunt them down and figuring out the best interception location is a matter of sonar, not your look out crew.
And if playing with the GWX expansion, by all means, do not sink neutral ships, pay attention to what flags they have before deciding to sink them. There are options in the expansion, which allow for realism in a huge way - even not marking your position on the map - you might have to use the stars in the sky to figure out, where you are, which is quite impossible in heavy sea. Well, and when being in the northern sea - that is mostly flooded doggerland east of the english coastline, don't forget that, it is often not deep enough for a crash dive.
What about the Gold for Monday Mascot?
I guess I have watched it dozens of times meanwhile - the longer TV series and both movie versions - normal and directors cut. I have read the book as well, in german and in english - I wanted to find out, if those german jokes are somewhat good translated to english - decently enough, the english version is actually not bad at all. It is based on true history, but some aspects have been changed by dramatic reasons.
Btw there is a "new" TV series called "das Boot" as well, which is more about the resistance in La Rochelle than actual U-boat action - some of the scenes are harsh and gross though, not for the fainthearted. I find that important, because the contribution of the resistance in France is not often presented in a movie or TV series.
is that Jeff Goldblum - the guy in the movie "the fly"?
Personally I've only watched the original TV series, I hate when series are 'adapted' for film.
I actually think the tv series is the better one, because it shows as well the lengthy episodes of boredom and tediousness on a war patrol. Especially in those years, where the movie takes place. The "golden years" of U-boats are over, U-boat coverage is thinned out and hunting convoys in wolf packs is no longer a thing. People start as well to figure, that there is a huge discrepancy between what the government is telling them and what the actual state of the war is like. Most on the boat are just normal people, not Nazis, they do their duty, because they have to, but aren't conform with the dogma of the regime. The 1WO is a special character though, he didn't have to do that, he lived on a farm in Mexico and returned because he is intrigued by -dogma, but otherwise, there are no Nazis on the boat - just normal people who do their job because they had to.
and these strange phrases sometimes like - "sach mal, hast du Haare in der Nase? Weil ich hab Haar am Arsch, die können wir ja zusammenknoten" - "tell me, do you have nose hairs? Because I have hairs at my , we could knot them together" - totally silly and abstruse - made out of boredom.
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Its why its narrative (for me) works better than the 2018 series which flicks between on and off the boat. In the original you have the last night bravado, then the mission, and then coming home- and that you only really see the surface when the crew pops the hatch.
well, they have travelled most of the time on surface - the VIIc is much slower submerged and it would drain the batteries unnecessarily. U-boat commanders put as well a great deal on saving Diesel to stay for longer on a patrol - so they run the diesel just at half speed to make enough distance over ground while conserving the Diesel. When I'm playing in the later years, I tend to run submerged during the day at very slow speed in the patrol area - to conserve Diesel, but as well to be able to use passive sonar to detect a convoy or single runner - it protects as well somewhat from being air raided.
Once I have detected a target I surface to get quickly to 2 other locations to triangulate the position of the target - submerging again to do that by sonar, because that ship is normally far away - figure out it's possible course and speed and then plan where a good location is to intercept it - then I surface and run AK to the interception location and wait there submerged - checking the target's course and if I did my job right, the target will appear soon on the horizon and I can start to make the final calculation of it's course and speed, and when it is near enough, figure out what kind of vessel that is, then make exact measures of distance to target, bearing to target, it's speed - then setting up the torpedos - open the tubes - and wait until I can see it's flag - never sink a neutral ship - and once all is ok, I wait for the right moment that my torpedos can run in a straight line to the target - once I've fired my torpedos I just hope for the best, that they don't fail - material quality was not the best - and that I'll hit it in a critical spot to sink it quickly.
This kind of hunting down a target was not presented in the movie - but it is the preferred method - it is rare that one just gets a target location to go to - one has to figure out targets and where to intercept them by oneself most of the time - I like this hunting without to actually see the target for most of the time - and it is a good feeling when it finally appears on the horizon, running directly into the trap.
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I know, its just a better use of the situation in the series because you feel the same emotions the crew do when on the surface compared to the claustrophobia submerged.
Is he in JWE2?
While the criminal instigators are still in jail, shouldn't we change this thread to nothing but Twilight characters, spiders, and American bacon?
Very briefly I think, but its been a long time with the films.