Back at the game - need tips

[ubootmate]

Howdy fellow board Kaleuns.

After a longer hiatus I'm finally back at SH3, but...
It's a CAPITAL "BUT".
I quit the game because I deemed it unrealistic at a certain point.
I play again at 60+ level of realism and after 5 patrols have already close to 200K of sunk tonnage and the oak leafs with swords pinned to my chest.
It's not even 1940 and I am more successful and more decorated then some commanders were after 1945.
This is boring - borderline annoying.


So I think of getting one of the larger supermods installed, but I am not sure which one. There are certain criteria that are neccessities as well as some things which are bringing the most fun for me playing SH3.

So these things have to be considered and will ultimately decide which mods are desireable and which ones aren't.
I count on you guys to help me out on this one.
If one supermod can't do the tricks, I would even consider installing single mods if there is no other way.

Neccesities:
It has to run under WIN 7 64 bit.
I don't want to argue or explain, it's just a fact.
Whatever mods I am ending up with, they have to make me able to play the game under WIN 7 64 bit.

Features:
For me playing the game with fun is really coming down to some features that are lacking and/or non existing in the vanilla version ( I play the "green pepper" version of SH3 which is the final patched 1.4 version without Starforce and use SH3 commander.).

1.)
I enjoy managing the crew very much, promoting them and make the crew better as the war goes on. If there is a mod which even enhances or improves the level of crew nursing besides SH3 commander - I am all for it.

2.)
More realistic tonnage outputs.
I mean if a Kaleun had 3-5 ships sunk with a tonnage of lets say 25.000 tons it would have been a very solid patrol back then. You just don't get 100.000 tons of sunk shipment including 2 battleships and 8 destroyers to go with 2 aircraft shot down on your average patrol.
You just don't.

3.) Promotions and medals/batches being more realisticly awarded to the Commander.
You need forever to getting promoted to Oberleutnant but get thrown around the Knights Cross with Oak Leafs and Swords after 4 patrols? Hardly realistic.

4.) Way more realistic mission design.

Getting ordered to patrol a certain patrol grid for 24 hours is hardly a challenging or very enticing mission outlay.
I hope some supermod can break this boring dilemma.

5.) More realistic and more frequent radio communication.
Meaning that there should be more radio traffic overall and more involment in some of the wars campaigns and theaters like Weserübung etc. Getting radio messages when other boats have spotted a convoy or when you spot one to help bring other boats to the area before attacking and so on.
Just bringing radio traffic to level of play that makes the game more unpredictable and enjoying. Also knowing why you have to patrol a certain area and/or knowing which own boats are near you or patrolling the neighbor grids would be fun.

6.) Graphics and eye candy.
While this is certainly a nice to have asset I'd rather prefer the above mentioned features first because they are way more important to me than shiny graphics. But if there are better graphics as well, I take it!



Any suggestions (prefered with explanations)are very much welcome...


I appreciate your support!


Greetings from


Ubootmate

[Aktungbby]

ubootmate!

[Hooston]

Wind the realism up! The game is only worth playing with manual targeting, around 100%.
As to realism, the game has its limitations and only some of these can be tackled by the modders. The most serious ones are associated with the AI, so don't use the external views to look too closely at what the escorts are doing! In terms of "feel" the game is really good - the whole point is to have lousy situational awareness so it is difficult to work out what is going on. You may as well leave the external views enabled for entertainment but resist the temptation to use them to cheat. I can dodge depth charges really easily using the external views, but it's a lot harder with just the hydrophone and the mk 1 earhole..

At "full realism" the game gets much harder from 1943 and the allies will get you before 1945. Tonnage totals are still higher than real life, it's the price you pay for more exciting gameplay when there's no "skip to next action" key..



For supermods try:
Onealex version of GWX

Easy install. A vast improvement on the vanilla game. Escorts have the annoying GWX "laser guided" super hydrophone detection capability.


Fifi's enhanced hardcore version of NYGM

More difficult to install. I prefer the NYGM escort behaviour, although it's a matter of preference.


For downloads see the threads on the mods workshop forum.

[ubootmate]

Hooston

Originally Posted by Hooston

Wind the realism up! The game is only worth playing with manual targeting, around 100%.

Never done that, but might give it a try.

Originally Posted by Hooston

As to realism, the game has its limitations and only some of these can be tackled by the modders.

Sad to hear that...
So more active radio traffic and more varied mission goals are a pipe dream you say?

Originally Posted by Hooston

The most serious ones are associated with the AI, so don't use the external views to look too closely at what the escorts are doing! In terms of "feel" the game is really good - the whole point is to have lousy situational awareness so it is difficult to work out what is going on. You may as well leave the external views enabled for entertainment but resist the temptation to use them to cheat. I can dodge depth charges really easily using the external views, but it's a lot harder with just the hydrophone and the mk 1 earhole..

I don't have external view enabled.
The only boxes I have not checked are:


Maunal targeting
No contact actualisation on map
Dud torpedoes
No help by weapons officer

63% reality

Originally Posted by Hooston

At "full realism" the game gets much harder from 1943 and the allies will get you before 1945. Tonnage totals are still higher than real life, it's the price you pay for more exciting gameplay when there's no "skip to next action" key..

Okay but still there might not be any available promotions/medals left to gain by mid 1941, right?


Greetings from Ubootmate

[Hooston]

With auto targeting it's simply a matter of sinking all the escorts using point and shoot, then wiping out the merchants. Manual targeting makes hitting an active escort extremely difficult as it takes too long to establish angle on bow and speed. A different game!
Contacts on the map allows you to establish target course and speed with the "3 minutes 15 seconds" trick. In real life measuring range accurately was very difficult so that approach did not usually work. I also find that the tactical overview is too helpful, even when operating on the surface.

Mission goals is not really a SH3 campaign thing. You can try the single missions for that, and GWX has a lot of extra ones. You can go raid a port if you like but that is generally far too easy as there are too few nets and mines, your navigation is perfect and there are no tides.

Dud torpedoes are a huge factor with the HSie/Steibler hard coded fixes in most megamods. It really forces you to tailor what you do depending on the weather.

Crew management is pretty basic in SH3. "Uboat" is the game if you want that, but after spending a huge amount of effort modelling the boat that game seems very "gamey". i think maybe the money ran out or the marketing people got at it.

The weapons officer help is not a big deal. You can always choose to not ask him. Until recently I sometimes used him to identify targets to save clicking through the ID manual.

[ubootmate]

Okay...let's see.

Originally Posted by Hooston

With auto targeting it's simply a matter of sinking all the escorts using point and shoot, then wiping out the merchants. Manual targeting makes hitting an active escort extremely difficult as it takes too long to establish angle on bow and speed. A different game!

Sounds indeed challenging.
So how does one do it then?
Hitting fast approaching destroyers if you don't have any time and tools to correctly determine course and speed?
Can you still log on a target via attack periscope or Uzo?
And does it still tell you the targets speed and direction it is coming from?

Originally Posted by Hooston

Contacts on the map allows you to establish target course and speed with the "3 minutes 15 seconds" trick. In real life measuring range accurately was very difficult so that approach did not usually work. I also find that the tactical overview is too helpful, even when operating on the surface.

When using it the first contact says: ship detected and then shows general course (i.e. south south west), slow, medium or fast target and the red or black show you whether its a war or merchant vessel...
What sort of message do you receive when this option is deactivated?
Is the map then simply not accessible or does it show you nothing at all?

Originally Posted by Hooston

Mission goals is not really a SH3 campaign thing. You can try the single missions for that, and GWX has a lot of extra ones. You can go raid a port if you like but that is generally far too easy as there are too few nets and mines, your navigation is perfect and there are no tides.

Too bad, I think the lack of proper radio traffic and varied mission goals renders this powerful tool (radio was an asset especially back then) ueless in this game and takes all the realistic feel away from an otherwise entertaining game.

Originally Posted by Hooston

Dud torpedoes are a huge factor with the HSie/Steibler hard coded fixes in most megamods. It really forces you to tailor what you do depending on the weather.

I might still keep this one unchecked though.
I know malfunctioning/sabotaged torpedoes were a real thing - especially later in war when most torpedoes were produced by slave laborers because most german men were in military service but I often run out of torpedoes with all of them exploding. When you have 2-4 (or even more) dud torpedoes per patrol I just can't imagine how bad this would have to be...

Originally Posted by Hooston

Crew management is pretty basic in SH3. "Uboat" is the game if you want that, but after spending a huge amount of effort modelling the boat that game seems very "gamey". i think maybe the money ran out or the marketing people got at it.

Well I would love to do it in this game not playing another game just to increase the crew nursing factor.

Originally Posted by Hooston

The weapons officer help is not a big deal. You can always choose to not ask him. Until recently I sometimes used him to identify targets to save clicking through the ID manual.

What does he actually do besides identifying the exact ship type?
I mean when you have disabled auto targeting and map overview, what exactly does the WO do to help you out on the tasks that all of a sudden you have do do for yourself?

I really am thinking about it.
I get you when you say it's a different game without most of the help.
But then again, what does a commander have his crew for if he has to do everything by himself? Why developing a crew when you have to do it all alone from guessing and predicting the course, navigating in position and manually targeting and firing the torpedoes to crash diving to escape the escorts?


Are there any tutorials that center on manual targeting and plotting enemy course without help of overview map?


Greetings from
Ubootmate

[Hooston]

Go watch this guy





or if you are not quite so "hardcore realism" try this guy

[ubootmate]

Well, first of all thank you.

When I do things, I want to do them right.
So recommending Tonic87 to me is certainly very much appreciated.
I watched large parts of 3 episodes now and while I have to admit that the gameplay is vastly different from what I did so far, its also tough to get a real handle on how to reach that next level.

While this is awesome to watch he doesn't really explain things in detail, at least not constantly, so you have to pick up things only in parts.
I think it would be better to really look at basic tutorials how to operate without the overview map and target computing available.

I think I will look for something like that first before watching this guy play.
He already is on a level I might never even reach at all. While his narrations are entertaining when you just watch these episodes for pure entratainment they are not very helpful if you are looking for detailed, step by step explanations on how to play at ultimate level - so it simply doesn't really get you there fast enough...

I will get back to this guy once I have the required basics down from somewhere else....

Greetings from Ubootmate

[Hangman]

If I may ... and I may be wrong here but bear with me.

I think the best mod you can use is the mod of forgetfulness.

Realize we have knowledge from the history books on what the sailors of these boats went through. They got to experience life on a boat & report & eventually learn for example that the fish did not detonate properly.

They had to go through multiple hard learned lessons by experience where we only had to read about them. We read, we improvise. Hence, the best mod is the mod of forgetfulness.

I too have not played for quite some time & realize as I came back just a couple weeks ago that I remember to shoot the fish perpendicular to the targeted ship as close to 90 degrees as possible & to shoot shallow for a proper detonation using impact as I remember reading that magnetic never really worked in the early days. So yeah, I'm going to rack up tonnage really quickly. The original sailors didn't learn this for quite some time in their patrols.

I remember reading of some patrols where they left port with 10+ fish & fired all of them with only a single detonation.
Now perhaps the mods are designed to replicate this but I've read that a year or two later the sailors learned to hit more directly & shallow so I include this practice in my early tours. So I'm cheating in relation to history as I've read the history.

We also get the comfort of sitting in our lazy-boy's & eating pretzels. We are not experiencing the smells, the manual labor, the exhaustion & cramped quarters, the mundane endless water, the drills & stresses of living on a boat for days on end.

So keep this in mind when driving your boat & don't try so hard to get tonnage in the early days of the war. Enjoy the boat as much as you can while sitting in the comfort of your favorite chair munching on Oreo's & Dorito's.

[Shadowblade]

Originally Posted by ubootmate

But then again, what does a commander have his crew for if he has to do everything by himself? Why developing a crew when you have to do it all alone from guessing and predicting the course, navigating in position and manually targeting and firing the torpedoes to crash diving to escape the escorts?

yeah, I had similar questions regarding stuff like crew fatigue managent and other settings or duties on uboat. Some can be fun (like effectively using deck gun & flak to sink the ships), some are not fun (I had to disable crew fatigue managent because babysitting my crew should be done by officers).

[Shadowblade]

Originally Posted by Hangman

I think the best mod you can use is the mod of forgetfulness.

using it already - always active after longer SH3 breaks. I should do better notes regarding various ranges especially to prevent corrupted savegames. This annoys me the most because corrupted savegame = lost progress.

[ubootmate]

Originally Posted by Hangman

If I may ... and I may be wrong here but bear with me.

I think the best mod you can use is the mod of forgetfulness.

Realize we have knowledge from the history books on what the sailors of these boats went through. They got to experience life on a boat & report & eventually learn for example that the fish did not detonate properly.

They had to go through multiple hard learned lessons by experience where we only had to read about them. We read, we improvise. Hence, the best mod is the mod of forgetfulness.

I too have not played for quite some time & realize as I came back just a couple weeks ago that I remember to shoot the fish perpendicular to the targeted ship as close to 90 degrees as possible & to shoot shallow for a proper detonation using impact as I remember reading that magnetic never really worked in the early days. So yeah, I'm going to rack up tonnage really quickly. The original sailors didn't learn this for quite some time in their patrols.

I remember reading of some patrols where they left port with 10+ fish & fired all of them with only a single detonation.
Now perhaps the mods are designed to replicate this but I've read that a year or two later the sailors learned to hit more directly & shallow so I include this practice in my early tours. So I'm cheating in relation to history as I've read the history.

We also get the comfort of sitting in our lazy-boy's & eating pretzels. We are not experiencing the smells, the manual labor, the exhaustion & cramped quarters, the mundane endless water, the drills & stresses of living on a boat for days on end.

So keep this in mind when driving your boat & don't try so hard to get tonnage in the early days of the war. Enjoy the boat as much as you can while sitting in the comfort of your favorite chair munching on Oreo's & Dorito's.

Well if you put it that way, we shouldn't be playing the game at all.
Of course we have knowledge (not only about u boat warfare but almost 100 years of scientific and cultural development since those events took place) the real people who lived and fought on those boats/ships didn't have but it is still a game after all... and a pretty darn good one.

[ubootmate]

...to realize what Hooston meant with

Originally Posted by Hooston

A different game!

I intensively watched almost all available tut videos from a guy named
SH3 Bstanko6 on youtube.
For example this one:




And I am only starting to grasp that I might have missed out on almost all the true challenges of this game so far.

Problem is : a lot of the tools and discs he is frequently using are not part of the vanilla game. I wanted to implement the Living Silent Hunter mod (2015 version for WIN 7 64 bit) but no german forum seems to be actively running and can provide any help with it. I registered in two of em and haven't even been contacted back at all. So there might not be any really active german SH3 community as I type this.

Until sombody can help me out on this one I try to learn more about AOB, Hunting by sonar, manual torpedo attack, manual ranging, using Nomograph and similar stuff.
The guy is great although the videos are quite old - but so is this game.


Greetings from Ubootmate

[bstanko6]

My videos are good for SH3 and 5! There is so much more to this game at 100% realism! Good luck!

[stork100]

Just to say if you're happy to play the stock version for now and get into manual targeting, give the Silent Hunter 3 manual a read. It'll explain how to use the tools that come with the game. I think there should be both English and German versions in the game's documentation folder.