Neutral ships once campaign is released

[roachbeef]

Not sure if this was mentioned before, but once the campaign is released, I wonder if neutral ships will be part of the game. There's a Cold-War-era submarine simulation game called Cold Waters and I have often sinked "neutral" ships as an American submarine captain, thinking they were troop transports and their escorts when it turns out I sunk an ASW patrol and some passing Swedish merchants.

If the developers find it too difficult to add merchant shipping other than the existing convoys, then maybe they can include an abstract version of boarding and searching enemy vessels. Players could just get a dialogue box with a bunch of options like "approach with ship HMAS Sydney style" or "send a floatplane to fly above and identify" or "try shooting and hope it's not neutral"

Edited January 23, 2020 by roachbeef

[arkhangelsk]

Or they could start not showing the ship like they do now. Instead, you have to put the targeting cursor on the outline, and guess using that combined with the speed and displacement estimator (roughly, a ship with no size modifier is about 15000 tons, and I think the point when you don't get Fast nor Slow speed modifier is about 15 knots).

[TotalRampage]

By neutral shipping do you mean from other major powers? I think that would be a good idea say for instance you have unrestricted raiding weather subs or surface ships then that major might join the war against you. It would be a factor to consider when designating war targets and the like.  

[roachbeef]

5 hours ago, TotalRampage said:

By neutral shipping do you mean from other major powers? I think that would be a good idea say for instance you have unrestricted raiding weather subs or surface ships then that major might join the war against you. It would be a factor to consider when designating war targets and the like.  

Ideally smaller nations e.g. Sweden would also be included. Some sort of ship/flag recognition manual would be useful. You would radio and ask about cargo, destination, etc. and board or sink if suspicious. The only problem with implementing it is that we (the player) know for sure if our ship gets sunk that there's a merchant raider out there and can direct ships to investigate. In real life ships would disappear for a long time and there would be a long delay in realizing that they're overdue-sometimes they turned out to be OK

 

11 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

Or they could start not showing the ship like they do now. Instead, you have to put the targeting cursor on the outline, and guess using that combined with the speed and displacement estimator (roughly, a ship with no size modifier is about 15000 tons, and I think the point when you don't get Fast nor Slow speed modifier is about 15 knots).

Maybe they could put a blur filter if the ship is too far out or the weather is too bad to simulate not being able to ID the ship unless you're pretty close. The current system of identification does get the job done. However, the ID process can take a long time, and having the option to speed up the auto-ID process might be nice. For example, you could have a recognition manual with a list of known ships and be able to filter out negative matches by looking at size of shell splashes, number of funnels, location and number of masts, rough speed, radar and sonar profile, etc. The list of known ships will fill out as your forces send in contact reports and your spies send you intelligence, and you should also be able to filter for certain categories (DD vs CA vs BB vs merchant) to make your job easier.

 

In the current academy and custom missions we know what we're up against, but once the campaign is out, a manual recognition system will allow players to be more engaged in the early parts of the battle when it might turn out they're not supposed to fight. The only problem I forsee is that it might become tedious in areas with high amounts of neutral shipping, so there should be an option to leave it to the ship's captain/TF commander or advise them via radio (e.g. "Don't park your ship next to a merchant raider that might have torpedoes").

[Cptbarney]

I think we could have neutral ships from countries that didn't choose either side but could build navies (maybe a limit to what and where they can build) and also maybe pirates (im not sure how common or mental they were unless pirates were generall gone by then).

Maybe neutral ships from countries your not at war with (yet) but if anything happens to them consequences could be pretty bad for the opposing side (guess it depends who it is lol). I like the idea doe.

[Illya von Einzbern]

I would board them to find contraband that would support hostile country's war effort or spies.

You don't really need to sink them. Rather just do a boarding check up

Edited January 31, 2020 by Illya von Einzbern

[Theresnobiscuits]

What will the status of ABC Nations be in the game (Argentina, Brazil and Chile)...they all bought dreadnought battleships (when launched the Brazilian ships were as powerful as any in the world)...and had a mini arms race pre-ww1, and if the wall street crash hadn't happened would probably have done so again in the 30's...a possible scenario in mission if not playable in campaign ?