New to SH series today - Any Suggestions?

GWB · 03-14-24, 01:04 PM

Hi all, great to be a part of your community. Here's an overview of what I'm looking for.

I have played UBOAT for at least 2-3 years, and while it's obviously a newer game in this genre, I've found it far too easy once I got the basics down, to the point I would go on mission doing reckless things to try and make it a challenge - hardly realistic. The only setting I didn't have on full realistic was the "cinematic camera" so that I wasn't "stuck inside 1st person" - this was as much for screenshots and video, as it was my sanity!

Despite having these set hard, there were still things that frustrated me that gave unrealistic advantages. Yes late war, hedgehogs & aircraft firing rockets added a new challenge, but this too is a case of avoiding entirely - being caught on the surface by these aircraft has little to do with skill, and everything to do with luck as to how it ends - in other words, knowing to avoid them is the solution that equals a frustratingly easy game. Big update in the pipe, but until then...

I've also played Wolfpack game for a similar time, and while I prefer the realism side of it, the 3D aspect / controls etc, the gameplay itself is obviously extremely limited. Single set piece engagements, no career or time compression - although the Multiplayer aspect is a nice touch to have.

So continuing to hunt for realistic subsim type games, I found a very promising idea 2-3 years ago from steam store, going for super high fidelity model. Sadly after many regular updates, the author mentioned something about having to switch over the graphics engine of the game, and then the whole project died of death, I guess the task overwhelmed him, although who really knows. Glad I didn't invest £50 into that early access.

So by now, you can probably tell I'm a bit of a simulation junkie, flight sims & military sims, top down management sims, anything like that. I have ALWAYS prefered realism over graphics, so if this were a flight simulator forum and the debate were "xplane vs msfs2020" you can guess which side my chips are down on. With all that said...

I keep hearing about the Silent Hunter series, ver 3 4 or 5. The thing that always put me off, was endless comments on what worked, mine didn't, error logs, dev team long gone, and a cryptic exchange between those in the know of what mods & packs (often in shorthand) to get, which left me feeling a bit confuddled, so I just withdrew back to what I already knew, stale as it was.

Today I took the plunge and got myself a copy of SH3 and watched a YouTube tutorial on how to set it up with a modpack, OneAlex, and I must say, despite the game itself being dated to something like 2005 or some such, the community modders have done a good job. That said, I wondered if Version 4 or Version 5 might also be worth looking at?

From what I can gather, version 5 seems to be somewhat buggy and people generally lean towards version 3 and 4. Can you confirm this?

I have a very keen interest in ww2, not least because my family faught on both sides of the conflict, and I used to enjoy listening to their war stories as a kid. I think this is what got me into the whole thing originally.

I would find it very interesting to play as USA in the Pacific vs Japan. I've seen various SH videos on youtube, but the content varies wildly and many constantly "cheat" or at least have difficulty settings easy, which is fine, but not something I would want to do. So if the option to cheat is available, or a difficulty setting behaves like a cheat, this is a bit of a show stopper for me, unless we can turn it off somehow, or providing it's not thrust in my screen by default (see Uboat and enemy ship locations while submerged under a convoy for an example of what I think is a "cheat mode").

Any graphics better than SH3 would obviously be a huge bonus, but not at the expense of realism. Bearing in mind, I am new to the entire SH series, so it would be helpful to include things that are easy(ish) to install and also brief descriptions of what things do. I saw posts similar to this in the past, but they are 4-5 years old at this point.

Any advice really much appreciated, especially as I spent a long time going over what I do and don't like, so thanks in advance!

03-14-24, 01:04 PM	#1
GWB Swabbie Join Date: Mar 2024 Posts: 6 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	New to SH series today - Any Suggestions? Hi all, great to be a part of your community. Here's an overview of what I'm looking for. I have played UBOAT for at least 2-3 years, and while it's obviously a newer game in this genre, I've found it far too easy once I got the basics down, to the point I would go on mission doing reckless things to try and make it a challenge - hardly realistic. The only setting I didn't have on full realistic was the "cinematic camera" so that I wasn't "stuck inside 1st person" - this was as much for screenshots and video, as it was my sanity! Despite having these set hard, there were still things that frustrated me that gave unrealistic advantages. Yes late war, hedgehogs & aircraft firing rockets added a new challenge, but this too is a case of avoiding entirely - being caught on the surface by these aircraft has little to do with skill, and everything to do with luck as to how it ends - in other words, knowing to avoid them is the solution that equals a frustratingly easy game. Big update in the pipe, but until then... I've also played Wolfpack game for a similar time, and while I prefer the realism side of it, the 3D aspect / controls etc, the gameplay itself is obviously extremely limited. Single set piece engagements, no career or time compression - although the Multiplayer aspect is a nice touch to have. So continuing to hunt for realistic subsim type games, I found a very promising idea 2-3 years ago from steam store, going for super high fidelity model. Sadly after many regular updates, the author mentioned something about having to switch over the graphics engine of the game, and then the whole project died of death, I guess the task overwhelmed him, although who really knows. Glad I didn't invest £50 into that early access. So by now, you can probably tell I'm a bit of a simulation junkie, flight sims & military sims, top down management sims, anything like that. I have ALWAYS prefered realism over graphics, so if this were a flight simulator forum and the debate were "xplane vs msfs2020" you can guess which side my chips are down on. With all that said... I keep hearing about the Silent Hunter series, ver 3 4 or 5. The thing that always put me off, was endless comments on what worked, mine didn't, error logs, dev team long gone, and a cryptic exchange between those in the know of what mods & packs (often in shorthand) to get, which left me feeling a bit confuddled, so I just withdrew back to what I already knew, stale as it was. Today I took the plunge and got myself a copy of SH3 and watched a YouTube tutorial on how to set it up with a modpack, OneAlex, and I must say, despite the game itself being dated to something like 2005 or some such, the community modders have done a good job. That said, I wondered if Version 4 or Version 5 might also be worth looking at? From what I can gather, version 5 seems to be somewhat buggy and people generally lean towards version 3 and 4. Can you confirm this? I have a very keen interest in ww2, not least because my family faught on both sides of the conflict, and I used to enjoy listening to their war stories as a kid. I think this is what got me into the whole thing originally. I would find it very interesting to play as USA in the Pacific vs Japan. I've seen various SH videos on youtube, but the content varies wildly and many constantly "cheat" or at least have difficulty settings easy, which is fine, but not something I would want to do. So if the option to cheat is available, or a difficulty setting behaves like a cheat, this is a bit of a show stopper for me, unless we can turn it off somehow, or providing it's not thrust in my screen by default (see Uboat and enemy ship locations while submerged under a convoy for an example of what I think is a "cheat mode"). Any graphics better than SH3 would obviously be a huge bonus, but not at the expense of realism. Bearing in mind, I am new to the entire SH series, so it would be helpful to include things that are easy(ish) to install and also brief descriptions of what things do. I saw posts similar to this in the past, but they are 4-5 years old at this point. Any advice really much appreciated, especially as I spent a long time going over what I do and don't like, so thanks in advance!