overtenemy
Augur
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2007
- Messages
- 293
Hello internet friends.
Index:
Part 1: Boat Picture Taking Simulator
Part 2: I learnded Sumthing!
Part 3: Exit the Dragon
Part 4: Putin Strikes Back
Part 5: Putin versus Red October 2.0
Part 6: China Cannot Into Submarines
Part 7: FFG Is For Fucking Failure, Goddamnit
Part 8: More like Kim DONG Il
Part 9: GET TO THE CHOPPA (bet no one saw that coming)
Part 10: The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner...
Dangerous Waters is fucking amazing. It's described by Sonalysts, the developers, as a Tactical Antisubmarine Warfare Simulator. That's a pretty easy sell to me, since I enjoy all four of those words. It features the extremely detailed and high fidelity simulation of many stations and aspects of not ONLY various submarines, but also a frigate, helicopter and airplane. Now, I don't believe it doubles as a proper flight sim, and I'm fairly certain you don't control the aircraft with a joystick but instead sort of tell it where to go. The focus is more on the technical aspects of the detection and destruction of enemy submarines. And probably surface vessels as well. Still, you've got to admit, that's pretty damn impressive.
Still, none of that is the reason I was motivated to go out and buy the game, nor the reason I'm bothering to create this LP. I've known about it for some time. Sonalysts are the same dudes that made Jane's 688, so they've been around for a while. I was only motivated to buy and LP it a few days ago when I stumbled across a review.
http://www.subsim.com/ssr/dangerous_waters/dangwater_review_page1.htm
I realize most of you won't bother reading that, so allow me to quote the most relevant passage.
CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES, BITCH. Just wait now. Some proponent of Dwellerist ideology will be along to tell us that Dangerous Waters is the best RPG to hit the Codex in years.
But seriously, I'm usually a WW2 kind of guy, but having read that review, suddenly the prospect of commanding a Cold War nuke sub during some high tension political situations was completely irresistible and I bought it immediately. Featuring continuity and allowing player choice and performance to affect that continuity makes it ideal, in my opinion, for a LP. So here we are. But there's one problem...
Remember that hardcore simulationism I was talking about? Yeah, well, the manual is 558 pages long and I've just bought the game. Learning all there is to learn is going to take a long ass time, and it's not feasible for me to do so in a timely fashion, and I want to get the LP underway now. Furthermore, even if I was completely proficient in all of the ins and outs of the game, documenting my every use of the sonar for instance would be the height of tedium. While it would be interesting to show just how detailed the game is, it would take a great deal of screenshots and explanation for every single action, which would more than likely bore the average reader and would CERTAINLY take an unbelievable amount of time. These factors, when combined with the fact that the main reason for this LP is to prove that sub sims are in fact role-playing games, have lead me to use Autocrew for most functions. This simply means that AI will perform the menial tasks, such as sonar. To be honest, in the case of sonar, I may leave that autocrewed even after I learn the game. In any event, this will allow me to function more like the Captain, increasing IMMERSION by at least 200%. However, I do hope to have learned Target Motion Analysis by the time we have to shoot something, so I can at least be responsible for the killing of people.
Dangerous Waters also features the ability to switch between the various factions mission to mission. One does not simply start a Russian loyalist campaign, for instance. Every mission you choose what part you play in it. Sometimes this can even mean selecting different vehicles. During the same operation, you may be commanding a sub, or an aircraft, depending on what you did initially. I'll probably keep this LP confined to submarines, since I have enough to learn as it is and don't wish to burden myself further. Anyway, since you can change sides at will, if this gets anything resembling a following I'll probably allow votes to determine what side to play.
But to get things rolling, I went ahead and did an update. Last LP I made was done so as Communist scum. So we're going to be from God's favorite country. No, not Israel you fucking Zionist conspirators.
Part 1: Boat Picture Taking Simulator
The situation to date and our orders. These Russian rebels may have nukes and death gas. But they've yet to make any announcements regarding their political intentions. Worrying. Anyway, our mission seems fairly tame. Just need to go to a harbor, identify enemy warships and possibly any merchant shipping, and leave without being detected. We'll be using a 688.
This is the map screen. The one we'll be looking at most of the time. The upper right shows whatever object you have clicked on in the map screen. Currently, it's us. The line on the map leads to a yellow mark, indicating a sonar contact. Note that the sonar contact is placed on land. That's just my sonarman being fucking retarded. See, on initial detection, we have no idea what it's range is, so the contact is just put on the map seemingly at a random range. The boat isn't actually on land. Also note that unfortunately there isn't a huge ass map to sail around on. I probably would have preferred the Silent Hunter approach, that allows you to set sail from your home, do what you need to do, and return. Admittedly, this is not strictly necessary for the sort of game Dangerous Waters is, but it'd have been nice.
Sonar guy gets another contact, and a female voice tells me there's an objective completed. Scratching my head, I look at the Mission Status screen. Apparently, those two contacts are subs, and they're considered to be "detected" even though they're not actually identified, so objective complete. Shit's practically playing itself. It's like I'm really playing Brink!!!
Many more contacts detected. I've come up to Periscope depth to start getting some visual contacts so we can begin identifying them and completing the mission. I have no idea what in the fuck those purple lines are. Also, there's no waypoint setting as in Silent Hunter. To look where I'm headed, look at the course number in the lower right. 0 is north, 180 is south. Also note that detected ships also use this bearing system, rather than relative bearings. If we were, for instance, on a course of 90 degrees, and we saw a guy 90 degrees left of us, he wouldn't be considered to be bearing 90 degrees port. It'll list him as bearing 0 degrees. That confused me at first, and while I'm new and shouldn't be so presumptuous, I don't understand why it's done this way. Even the periscope is the same. To look ahead, you put it on the bearing of your course. I liked the relative system better, but maybe thinking like this helps in a calculation somewhere down the line.
That's odd. The contact I have clicked has been identified as a 688. This could mean one of three things: 1. The Russians have a 688! (so unlikely it's not worth considering) 2. There's another sub operating here that we weren't told about in the briefing, or 3. My crew has simply misidentified the target and it's really a Typhoon or Akula or something. 3 strikes me as the most likely, and to be honest it's frightening to know that I can't really rely on the AI to do its job right.
Alright, periscope time. After looking around for a bit, I find a ship not too far away. I hit both the photo and mark button, being somewhat unsure of what it is I need to do precisely to identify these ships and complete the mission. To be safe, I make use of the photo to use this game's completely fucking awesome stadimeter.
After you take a photo, it's sent to the stadimeter. You may then use it to determine it's angle on bow and range. The main advantage here is that, because it's a picture, there's no waves splashing into you, the boat isn't rocking up and down, messing up the lines and confusing you. Anyone that's played a Silent Hunter game will attest to how irritating that can be. Life is so much easier now. In any event, I determine that this ship is a Slava class. So that should be taken care of...I hope.
Oi, what's all this then? Back on the map the crew has identified another sub as a Harushio class. Initially I thought it was Chinese and became suspicious, but then it occurred to me that if it was Chinese it'd probably be named Om Xing Xao Xong or some shit. Harushio sounds more like anime faggotry. A quick google search confirms this. So I've got, supposedly, two friendly subs here that I wasn't told about. What the hell?
I vaguely recall, from the manual or a tutorial, that if you have your radio raised you'll receive any tactical information regarding the whereabouts and identifications of vessels from buddies if you have your radio extended. So I go about doing that. I don't receive any information about the ships, but I DO receive a bunch of messages all at once from HQ. Let's have a look.
The plot thickens....
I seem to recall Imperialist being a common thing for Soviet swine to call the only real country in the world. But since this is a Rebel intercept, it could be referring to the Russian government. The plot thickens some more...
The plot is now thick like clam chowder...
I've got another boat to identify, so I take this opportunity to alt+tab and consult the manual regarding the stadimeter. Apparently, you find range by taking the half of the picture that contains the target ship's highest mast, then dragging it down til the highest mast touches the waterline of the second half of the picture. That is so amazingly easy and handy. I hope to make use of this in the future, situation permitting. I don't think subs stay at periscope depth an awful lot these days.
I also notice a ship very, very close to us. I know we're not detected however, since getting detected means you lose the mission. Finding that out made me sad, because it means you can't COMPLETELY fuck up a mission and continue with the campaign, dealing with the consequences of your complete failure, like in say Hammer and Sickle. That game was hilarious like that. Someone ought to LP it and cause World War 3.
The green things are ships that have been identified. Green means that I've decided it's neutral. The blue thing in the southwest is that supposed 688. I set that to "assumed friendly," but I'm not sure what to believe.
Main objective is still incomplete. It's unclear whether or not I'm supposed to penetrate closer and view the submarine base. I suppose I'll give it a shot.
I as I get ever closer, I notice that I've taken some damage. What? How..oh lord. I wasn't paying attention, and I ran the fucking sub into the ground. It's not deep enough to go through completely submerged. And since I've hit the ground, I'm stuck. I order us up a few feet and give the order to turn around.
...which causes the bridge to poke above the water...
and for me to slam into the ground again, get flooded, and get detected. GAME OVER! Fortunately, I have a save not too long ago.
I'm back here. I decide that, in light of how incredibly shallow it is, it's not intended that I go to view the sub base. I begin to head south, in case I missed a ship or something, when I notice a new contact. I click on it and...it's a fucking torpedo. What? I have no idea who fired it or why. I'm assuming it's not aimed at us. Or maybe my sonarman is a COMPLETE fucktard and it's just another misidentification. I watch the torpedo in completely transfixed, with time acceleration blaring, waiting for it to hit something, when we get detected again. Turns out, I wasn't paying attention and we got waaay too close to a ship. Probably just detected us by looking in the damn water.
So I reload and head the same way, but see no torpedo this time. I do see a friendly aircraft however. I don't even know what he's doing honestly, since we're supposed to be remaining covert. It's pretty fucking obvious there's a US aircraft flying around up there. Anyway, in the beginning, there was an option to play as the aircraft instead of the 688. I'll have to go back and do that sometime.
Anyway, I waste some time trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do to get the mission to end. Eventually, I begin looking at things that are already identified with the periscope and clicking photo and mark. Turns out, mark is the trick. To make the mission end, I simply had to "mark" all of the ships with the periscope, even if my crew had previously identified them.
Since I just wasted so much of my time trying to get the main objective to complete, I wasn't about to bother going after something as ambiguous as Recon - Rebel Surface. Since it's non-critical, I'm able to end the mission. I'll be curious to see if failing to complete that bites me in the ass somehow.
Well, that was a fairly lame and uneventful intro, except for the torpedo that due to me getting detected like a fool, will have to remain a mystery FOR ALL TIME!
http://www.sonalystscombatsims.com/dangerous_waters/campaign.html
That's a more detailed analysis of the situation, and descriptions of the first mission from all points of view. Turns out, the Russian version is roughly 5 billion times more interesting than what we just did. You have to insert a special ops team, identify the ships, and if any of them try to leave the harbor, sink them.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and I took the fucking stupid one.
Hope the next mission involves more explosions so I can analyze important things, like how well the bloom from the fire lights up the water.
Index:
Part 1: Boat Picture Taking Simulator
Part 2: I learnded Sumthing!
Part 3: Exit the Dragon
Part 4: Putin Strikes Back
Part 5: Putin versus Red October 2.0
Part 6: China Cannot Into Submarines
Part 7: FFG Is For Fucking Failure, Goddamnit
Part 8: More like Kim DONG Il
Part 9: GET TO THE CHOPPA (bet no one saw that coming)
Part 10: The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner...
Dangerous Waters is fucking amazing. It's described by Sonalysts, the developers, as a Tactical Antisubmarine Warfare Simulator. That's a pretty easy sell to me, since I enjoy all four of those words. It features the extremely detailed and high fidelity simulation of many stations and aspects of not ONLY various submarines, but also a frigate, helicopter and airplane. Now, I don't believe it doubles as a proper flight sim, and I'm fairly certain you don't control the aircraft with a joystick but instead sort of tell it where to go. The focus is more on the technical aspects of the detection and destruction of enemy submarines. And probably surface vessels as well. Still, you've got to admit, that's pretty damn impressive.
Still, none of that is the reason I was motivated to go out and buy the game, nor the reason I'm bothering to create this LP. I've known about it for some time. Sonalysts are the same dudes that made Jane's 688, so they've been around for a while. I was only motivated to buy and LP it a few days ago when I stumbled across a review.
http://www.subsim.com/ssr/dangerous_waters/dangwater_review_page1.htm
I realize most of you won't bother reading that, so allow me to quote the most relevant passage.
Whoever Wrote the Review said:The campaign also features “shifting alliances,” meaning that the intentions of a faction may change as a result of your actions. When playing the game, I loved the dynamic alliances aspect, as it gave the campaign a strong sense of story. It felt more than just a hypothetical political scenario, since I knew that my decisions would affect my personal stakes later in the game. By the middle of the campaign, all of your previous decisions come full circle as the U.S. and two Russian factions bring their forces together for battle. The question of who sides with whom is decided by the player’s previous actions.
Previous games about modern warfare typically involved a concocted hypothetical scenario to give an excuse for the U.S. and Russia to go to war. Units declared as enemies were nothing more than hostile AI for me to destroy. This simplicity is gone with Dangerous Waters…player decisions now have political consequences! There were times I did not return fire against a hostile target because it was a political decision I was not ready to make. How's that for a realistic simulation.
CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES, BITCH. Just wait now. Some proponent of Dwellerist ideology will be along to tell us that Dangerous Waters is the best RPG to hit the Codex in years.
But seriously, I'm usually a WW2 kind of guy, but having read that review, suddenly the prospect of commanding a Cold War nuke sub during some high tension political situations was completely irresistible and I bought it immediately. Featuring continuity and allowing player choice and performance to affect that continuity makes it ideal, in my opinion, for a LP. So here we are. But there's one problem...
Remember that hardcore simulationism I was talking about? Yeah, well, the manual is 558 pages long and I've just bought the game. Learning all there is to learn is going to take a long ass time, and it's not feasible for me to do so in a timely fashion, and I want to get the LP underway now. Furthermore, even if I was completely proficient in all of the ins and outs of the game, documenting my every use of the sonar for instance would be the height of tedium. While it would be interesting to show just how detailed the game is, it would take a great deal of screenshots and explanation for every single action, which would more than likely bore the average reader and would CERTAINLY take an unbelievable amount of time. These factors, when combined with the fact that the main reason for this LP is to prove that sub sims are in fact role-playing games, have lead me to use Autocrew for most functions. This simply means that AI will perform the menial tasks, such as sonar. To be honest, in the case of sonar, I may leave that autocrewed even after I learn the game. In any event, this will allow me to function more like the Captain, increasing IMMERSION by at least 200%. However, I do hope to have learned Target Motion Analysis by the time we have to shoot something, so I can at least be responsible for the killing of people.
Dangerous Waters also features the ability to switch between the various factions mission to mission. One does not simply start a Russian loyalist campaign, for instance. Every mission you choose what part you play in it. Sometimes this can even mean selecting different vehicles. During the same operation, you may be commanding a sub, or an aircraft, depending on what you did initially. I'll probably keep this LP confined to submarines, since I have enough to learn as it is and don't wish to burden myself further. Anyway, since you can change sides at will, if this gets anything resembling a following I'll probably allow votes to determine what side to play.
But to get things rolling, I went ahead and did an update. Last LP I made was done so as Communist scum. So we're going to be from God's favorite country. No, not Israel you fucking Zionist conspirators.
Part 1: Boat Picture Taking Simulator
The situation to date and our orders. These Russian rebels may have nukes and death gas. But they've yet to make any announcements regarding their political intentions. Worrying. Anyway, our mission seems fairly tame. Just need to go to a harbor, identify enemy warships and possibly any merchant shipping, and leave without being detected. We'll be using a 688.
This is the map screen. The one we'll be looking at most of the time. The upper right shows whatever object you have clicked on in the map screen. Currently, it's us. The line on the map leads to a yellow mark, indicating a sonar contact. Note that the sonar contact is placed on land. That's just my sonarman being fucking retarded. See, on initial detection, we have no idea what it's range is, so the contact is just put on the map seemingly at a random range. The boat isn't actually on land. Also note that unfortunately there isn't a huge ass map to sail around on. I probably would have preferred the Silent Hunter approach, that allows you to set sail from your home, do what you need to do, and return. Admittedly, this is not strictly necessary for the sort of game Dangerous Waters is, but it'd have been nice.
Sonar guy gets another contact, and a female voice tells me there's an objective completed. Scratching my head, I look at the Mission Status screen. Apparently, those two contacts are subs, and they're considered to be "detected" even though they're not actually identified, so objective complete. Shit's practically playing itself. It's like I'm really playing Brink!!!
Many more contacts detected. I've come up to Periscope depth to start getting some visual contacts so we can begin identifying them and completing the mission. I have no idea what in the fuck those purple lines are. Also, there's no waypoint setting as in Silent Hunter. To look where I'm headed, look at the course number in the lower right. 0 is north, 180 is south. Also note that detected ships also use this bearing system, rather than relative bearings. If we were, for instance, on a course of 90 degrees, and we saw a guy 90 degrees left of us, he wouldn't be considered to be bearing 90 degrees port. It'll list him as bearing 0 degrees. That confused me at first, and while I'm new and shouldn't be so presumptuous, I don't understand why it's done this way. Even the periscope is the same. To look ahead, you put it on the bearing of your course. I liked the relative system better, but maybe thinking like this helps in a calculation somewhere down the line.
That's odd. The contact I have clicked has been identified as a 688. This could mean one of three things: 1. The Russians have a 688! (so unlikely it's not worth considering) 2. There's another sub operating here that we weren't told about in the briefing, or 3. My crew has simply misidentified the target and it's really a Typhoon or Akula or something. 3 strikes me as the most likely, and to be honest it's frightening to know that I can't really rely on the AI to do its job right.
Alright, periscope time. After looking around for a bit, I find a ship not too far away. I hit both the photo and mark button, being somewhat unsure of what it is I need to do precisely to identify these ships and complete the mission. To be safe, I make use of the photo to use this game's completely fucking awesome stadimeter.
After you take a photo, it's sent to the stadimeter. You may then use it to determine it's angle on bow and range. The main advantage here is that, because it's a picture, there's no waves splashing into you, the boat isn't rocking up and down, messing up the lines and confusing you. Anyone that's played a Silent Hunter game will attest to how irritating that can be. Life is so much easier now. In any event, I determine that this ship is a Slava class. So that should be taken care of...I hope.
Oi, what's all this then? Back on the map the crew has identified another sub as a Harushio class. Initially I thought it was Chinese and became suspicious, but then it occurred to me that if it was Chinese it'd probably be named Om Xing Xao Xong or some shit. Harushio sounds more like anime faggotry. A quick google search confirms this. So I've got, supposedly, two friendly subs here that I wasn't told about. What the hell?
I vaguely recall, from the manual or a tutorial, that if you have your radio raised you'll receive any tactical information regarding the whereabouts and identifications of vessels from buddies if you have your radio extended. So I go about doing that. I don't receive any information about the ships, but I DO receive a bunch of messages all at once from HQ. Let's have a look.
The plot thickens....
I seem to recall Imperialist being a common thing for Soviet swine to call the only real country in the world. But since this is a Rebel intercept, it could be referring to the Russian government. The plot thickens some more...
The plot is now thick like clam chowder...
I've got another boat to identify, so I take this opportunity to alt+tab and consult the manual regarding the stadimeter. Apparently, you find range by taking the half of the picture that contains the target ship's highest mast, then dragging it down til the highest mast touches the waterline of the second half of the picture. That is so amazingly easy and handy. I hope to make use of this in the future, situation permitting. I don't think subs stay at periscope depth an awful lot these days.
I also notice a ship very, very close to us. I know we're not detected however, since getting detected means you lose the mission. Finding that out made me sad, because it means you can't COMPLETELY fuck up a mission and continue with the campaign, dealing with the consequences of your complete failure, like in say Hammer and Sickle. That game was hilarious like that. Someone ought to LP it and cause World War 3.
The green things are ships that have been identified. Green means that I've decided it's neutral. The blue thing in the southwest is that supposed 688. I set that to "assumed friendly," but I'm not sure what to believe.
Main objective is still incomplete. It's unclear whether or not I'm supposed to penetrate closer and view the submarine base. I suppose I'll give it a shot.
I as I get ever closer, I notice that I've taken some damage. What? How..oh lord. I wasn't paying attention, and I ran the fucking sub into the ground. It's not deep enough to go through completely submerged. And since I've hit the ground, I'm stuck. I order us up a few feet and give the order to turn around.
...which causes the bridge to poke above the water...
and for me to slam into the ground again, get flooded, and get detected. GAME OVER! Fortunately, I have a save not too long ago.
I'm back here. I decide that, in light of how incredibly shallow it is, it's not intended that I go to view the sub base. I begin to head south, in case I missed a ship or something, when I notice a new contact. I click on it and...it's a fucking torpedo. What? I have no idea who fired it or why. I'm assuming it's not aimed at us. Or maybe my sonarman is a COMPLETE fucktard and it's just another misidentification. I watch the torpedo in completely transfixed, with time acceleration blaring, waiting for it to hit something, when we get detected again. Turns out, I wasn't paying attention and we got waaay too close to a ship. Probably just detected us by looking in the damn water.
So I reload and head the same way, but see no torpedo this time. I do see a friendly aircraft however. I don't even know what he's doing honestly, since we're supposed to be remaining covert. It's pretty fucking obvious there's a US aircraft flying around up there. Anyway, in the beginning, there was an option to play as the aircraft instead of the 688. I'll have to go back and do that sometime.
Anyway, I waste some time trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do to get the mission to end. Eventually, I begin looking at things that are already identified with the periscope and clicking photo and mark. Turns out, mark is the trick. To make the mission end, I simply had to "mark" all of the ships with the periscope, even if my crew had previously identified them.
Since I just wasted so much of my time trying to get the main objective to complete, I wasn't about to bother going after something as ambiguous as Recon - Rebel Surface. Since it's non-critical, I'm able to end the mission. I'll be curious to see if failing to complete that bites me in the ass somehow.
Well, that was a fairly lame and uneventful intro, except for the torpedo that due to me getting detected like a fool, will have to remain a mystery FOR ALL TIME!
http://www.sonalystscombatsims.com/dangerous_waters/campaign.html
That's a more detailed analysis of the situation, and descriptions of the first mission from all points of view. Turns out, the Russian version is roughly 5 billion times more interesting than what we just did. You have to insert a special ops team, identify the ships, and if any of them try to leave the harbor, sink them.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and I took the fucking stupid one.
Hope the next mission involves more explosions so I can analyze important things, like how well the bloom from the fire lights up the water.