Tides of War

As we are all waiting patiently for the patch to be released, it could be nice to get some more info on what it does / does not change.

The questions are not representative for anybody but my main gripes with the game, and all things which have been requested in the forums.

- do airplanes and escorts still always know the position of a sub ? ( don't wonna sound like a troll but this was the main reason why I stopped playing ERT )

- is there now the promised new 'easy' difficulty ? up to now I would rank ERT as 'incredibly hard' ;-)

- has the starting distance between me and enemy forced been increased, so that there is some time to plan the attack ?

- are there new random patrols which include different composition of enemy forces .. for instance probabilities for different kinds of enemies (prob escort xx % , prob merchant yy %, prob capital ship zz % )

The only one of those I can definitively answer is that yes, there is a new "Easy" setting. Can't say I've tried it mind, maybe I should...

The campaigns are being reworked so that the "impossible" missions are normalised. Hopefully that at least partially answers the question on distance to enemy at start.

The random patrols have been developed a bit more too. You don't get to choose probabilities of enemy ship types, but you do get control of weather, sea condition, time of day plus extra ship choices and the ability to call for rescue or resupply.

Hope that helps.

/bux

[For reference, Tides has a small team of volunteers testing the patch. If you have a burning desire to be on the bleeding edge, are a regular contributor to these boards, have a broadband connection, aren't scared by the prospect your PC crashing once in awhile and are prepared to replay missions that might begin to bore you, contact me. No guarantees though!]

Thanks for the quick reply Buxton.

Campaign should be more playable if I understand you right and an easy option is available (not the broken one we had in the first release).

It really bothers me however, if that sub stealth issue hasn't been adressed, because (for me) it takes away all the enjoyment of playing in a sub.

Although historically a submariner, I've almost exclusively been testing surface ships with the patch so can't give much feedback on sub changes. From my point of view, ASW was nigh on impossible before and is now rather satisfying - I hope the same will apply for submariners. Maybe Jesper (when he wakes up after Friday's beer session) can add some input...

I should point out the new "easy" setting is only on patrol missions. I don't know the difference it makes to be honest, I will ask East next time I speak with him.

/bux

What can I say, well first of all I wasnt drinking yesterday, but I didnt get to bed till noon today, spent all night wringting scripts and watching good old movies, like ALiEN and DasBoot.

In Enigma, the sub detection by the AI is 100% the same as for the player.

They dont know:

A: who you are (friend or foe) till they are close enough to identify you.

B: where you are unless youre caught on their sonar thing (which I cant remember the name for right now)

C: what your depth is, they base their depth charge dropping on tactics, there is no AI cheating, like they knows your depth.

D: what your heading is unless you play on EASY mode and they are within 500m cause then your red dot turns to a red triangle on their tactical display like they turn to triangles on yours.

A few sub tricks:

A: never submerge below 20m (unless forced to by a vessels sailing ontop of you)

B: Hold your fire till the very last moment.

C: if you must dive, then change depth and course often

D: the deeper you are and the closer to you they are slow your speed.

E: when they drop charges, then speed up and when the last explosion is over speed down.

F: at periscope depth they can hardly find you, so use max speed.

East told me once that if you can hide for 10 real life minutes without being blown away, the AI will assume youre dead.

100% stealth is not very fair to the AI cause they would never find you, and if you turn it around, its unfair to the player if the AI can hide themself 100% from you

A few notes on the patch.

Easy vs Diffecult, is still the same, you play on easy, so does the AI, you play on diffecult so does the AI.

The missions in the campaigns are very player friendly now.

Starting point in game, is a bit changed.

In the random patrols as Bux said, you can control mother nature, but not what you want to face in combat, however you can select a random corvette patrol and choose to steer out in a destoyer (or a battleship if you have completed atleast 1 full campaign).

Hope that helped

Thanks for the replies.

I've tried again after many months but sorry .. still the same. In a random patrol mission I was able to sink three or four destroyers but as I was up against the whole British fleet my batteries and air couldn't nearly last long enough ..

And yes, I used that 20m and F5 cheats.

As stealth is not an option, and destroyers always know where I am, I see no chance to survive.

Maybe it's my playstyle but afaik there is something wrong with the difficulty in this game.

Why are there no options to select the enemies strength? Why do I always fight against 20+ ships and dozens of aircraft? I'd rather think there should be different types of battles, convoy, warship encounters, single ship encounters, etc. I understand there is an algorithm implemented to generate the random patrol missions, but what is so difficult about including an option how many ships to generate?

Will there be the promised mission editor so I can set up my own missions with less ships and some variation?

You can hide successfully from surface ships. It takes some patience on your part. In random patrols no ship or aircraft has any idea where you are until you show them or let them hear you. Once you've been spotted they make concerted efforts to search for you with ASDIC.

You can hide successfully from surface ships. It takes some patience on your part. In random patrols no ship or aircraft has any idea where you are until you show them or let them hear you. Once you've been spotted they make concerted efforts to search for you with ASDIC.

You mean pre or post patch?

post definitely. Pre, many missions work this way, but in the beginning we didn't have search patterns so we often gave the AI you last known position so they would go into hunt mode - now tha we have sharpened up the AI options we don't tell them you were in the area.

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now tha we have sharpened up the AI options we don't tell them you were in the area.
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Outstanding enigma!: