Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Rconch
This guy is just a troll and no use wasting time on him.  |
I disagree, because the question of what we see versus what he has played is a valid one, to my mind anyway.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ERPP8
But what I'm seeing it that all people are doing is commenting on my opinion.
Nobody is giving a straight answer.
|
I'll do my best, without going into SH5 which I haven't played. Not a comparison, but a straight answer on the pros and cons of SH3 (and SH4).
Five years ago SH3's now-dated graphics were state-of-the-art and quite amazing to those of us who had Aces Of The Deep and SH1 to compare it to. It had a 3D interior and a crew who did things and talked to us.
That said, SH5's graphics blow it out of the water with their almost photo-realism. But comparative claims have been made about SH5's poor state at release. I said I wouldn't compare, but this is to illustrate the dev's new work and the modders art. A year or two from now SH5 may make SH3 seem like a bad dream, but now for a lot of folks SH5 itself is a nightmare. And I will have to do a little comparing, for good and for bad, just to show what SH3 is.
SH3 on release got a lot of complaints about bugs and instability. Most of the bugs were fixed by patches, but a couple still remain. But, to the SH3 experience.
When I load up SH3 I do so through SH3 Commander. The first thing I see is the name of my captain. I can choose this myself or I can let it select the name for me. I choose to start a campaign. I am asked what month of what year I would like to start the campaign in - anywhere from September 1939 to March 1940. If I choose the start of the war I am then asked which of three flotillas I would like to start in - 1st, 2nd or 7th. If I choose 1st I am based out of Kiel in a Type II 'dugout canoe' u-boat. If 2nd I'm at Wilhelmshaven in a Type VII, and if I choose 7th I'm in Kiel with a Type VII. If I wait until December I can start in the 2nd with a Type IX.
So I choose a u-boat and I look at the crew list. All of my crew members have names, and they are chosen from a list that presents a combined total of more than 1.7 billion possible names. I can run as many careers as I want and will almost certainly never see the same name twice.
Setting out on patrol I have a harbor that is not as accurate as the ones in SH5. The locations of the buildings and harbor parts are not much like the reality. SH5 is better there, but they still made some amazing gaffes, so it doesn't worry me too much. But I see all sorts of ships in my harbors, believable ships docked, coming and going. I can sail not only through the Kiel Canal, but the locks are there - at both ends. I lay out waypoints to my assigned KM grid (SH5 doesn't have any). Oh, the map in SH4 has both latitude and longitude and the KriegsMarine grids.
Anyway, If I approach an enemy convoy on the surface the escorts will certainly see me and attack. I notice that sometimes they tag-team me. One will stop dead still and listen while the other makes a depth-charge run. If I stay at silent running I stand a good chance of being nailed. If I wait until I'm under his sonar cone and go to flank speed, the other one will hear me and start his run - and he knows exactly where I am. On the other hand one of the mods in SH3 makes the depth-charge blast radii realistically small, so I can be bombed all day long and still have some chance of surviving.
A convoy can contain over 70 different types of merchants, with more being added all the time.
If I'm patrolling later in the war I might be attacked by a hunter/killer group, complete with aircraft and hedgehogs. If I'm off the American coast I might even see a K-ship - a blimp. Much to my regret, of course.
After my patrol is over and I return to base, I recieve a patrol report that tells me not only what type of ships I've sunk, but the name of each ship, what kind of cargo it was carrying, how many crew were aboard and how many of them were lost.
If I'm lucky enough to survive the war I can play all the way until May 1945, and I might even get to finish up in a type XXI u-boat.
Now a lot of this is due to mods, and in time SH5 may have those same or even better mods. SH4 is a better platform than SH3, and with more potential, and my big regret is that SH4 didn't get the same overall attention that its predecessor did.
SH5 shows more potential than either of them, and I'm looking forward to the day when the bugs are fixed (could be any day now) and the day when it is modded to the point SH3 is. But currently, with SH3 already mostly bug-free and modded nearly to perfection (and more being made every day), and SH5 still crippled with shortened war, lack of u-boat types, bugs and (yes, it has to be mentioned) DRM, which keeps some of us from playing at all, SH3 is the best all-around experience for those of us don't want to play a u-boat game but want to vicariously experience the actual Battle Of The Atlantic.