Silent Service: Tang & final rating

The USS Tang, a Balao-class sub put to service in January 1944, was one of the most successful and most decorated submarines in the war despite her short career, having sunk 33 ships in only five patrols before being struck by her own torpedo. Her captain, Richard O'Kane, was one of the few survivors, and his 1977 memoir Clear the Bridge! became Sid Meier's main inspiration and historical reference for Silent Service.

I will, once again, be using my iron man house rules to play Silent Service's Tang scenario, in which Japan is demoralized and quickly losing their grip on the pacific, and the IJN is largely relegated to defending the shipping lanes that sustain their civilian population. Individually, Japanese destroyers remain formidable enemies, with more experience, more effective anti-submarine equipment and techniques, and greater numbers assigned per convoy. US submarines have also improved, with superior hull construction and more reliable, less detectable torpedoes.

 

In June 1944, Japan is on the ropes, and there will be little shipping activity far from the main islands. I sail due west to the Sea of Japan and very soon spot ships in the Yellow Sea off China. 

 

Day 11, 1600 hours

 

They're sailing west, putting me right in their wake, which isn't ideal - I'll need to do an end-around maneuver to have a chance of interception. Unfortunately, after an hour-long chase, I don't seem to be making any sort of gains on the perimeter of their vision range, and the "convoy search" mode doesn't make tracking them any easier. So I abandon this chase and keep patrolling.

Our positions over time

Day 12, 900 hours

 

I'm alerted to ships, but there's nothing on the map, so I sweep the horizon with binoculars.

 

I wait for movement and reckon their bearing - they're going more or less north, so I'll need another end-around to catch up. This one is more successful.

I submerge, wait, and observe. It's two cargo ships and a single Kaibokan encircling them.

I move a bit closer and wait until both are in range, and fire. One sinks, one does not, but the Kaibokan - thankfully on the far side of the convoy - is definitely on alert, so I slip away before it can pinpoint me.

 

Day 17, 1200 hours

 

A large convoy of at least 6 ships, but it's fast-moving. I lose the trail.

 

Day 19, 1600 hours

Two ships, initially out of my line of sight, but spotted northward. My instincts tell me they're too fast to pursue, but I'm impatient and try.

That was a mistake.

 

The Kaibokan spots me approaching - I dive, and it encircles my diving spot, but by the time it reaches I have plenty of time to vanish at 360 feet beneath the waves.

Day 21, 1900 hours

Dusk. The perfect time for an attack. A convoy of six is sighted at 300 degrees, heading south. Poor visibility means I have to close in 6000 yards before I can identify, but they don't spot me.

Unfortunately, I lose my twilight hour in the time it takes to close in to firing range. And when I do, the game crashes.

 

To be honest, I'm kind of okay with it. This was a boring patrol.

 

GAB rating: Above average. 

I am impressed by the balance of plausible realism and accessibility achieved here; despite my initial apprehension, I did not have any trouble coming to terms with Silent Services' controls and systems, and at the best of times, I felt like a skipper in command of a silent underwater terror, calculating the risks and rewards, not to mention angles and vectors, trying to guess where the enemy will go and figure out how to anticipate and attack without being seen. There's an element of randomness, but it raises uncertainty without making your successes and failures feel arbitrary as it did in GATO. Sometimes victory just isn't possible, and that's okay - part of the game is knowing when to fold!

I do wish that the map view provided a bit more information - so much of your approach depends on knowing the enemy's distance and heading, and if your crew can plot their precise locations on the map and update them every two seconds, then they should be able to tell you this with some precision. Gridlines would have helped a lot here!

But the biggest flaw with Silent Service is a lack of content. I had most of the fun with the five instant action scenarios, but these are just practice modes for the war patrols. Unfortunately, the war patrols do very little to distinguish themselves from each other, and serve as a paper-thin sheet of fabric to stitch a sequence of random encounters. There's not much to do when you're not in sight of your enemies, and the encounters can get awful repetitive. And the crash did sour my impressions a bit, not going to lie. 

So, I don't necessarily recommend Silent Service, but I do recognize it as a quality simulation that largely accomplishes what it sets out to do - give players the experience of commanding a WWII submarine in the constraints of 64KB.