Being biased as I am, I'd vote for
Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate as the best overall. It is in "production" (a fancy word for "tinkering"), and we are about set to unleash the next version upon the SubSim community, hopefully within the next couple of weeks. It is based upon TMO v1.7, originally from the AOTD_MadMax team, and it has all of the ships planes and shore installations of Max's mods, but also quite a few assets of several other mods as well... Some aspects of the mod are too tough, other aspects are too easy, so we are working on a base "balance" at this time, which is the one part of TMO that is "set" - but that is also because it is not being tweaked on by its author. But, there is also a version of TMO / RSRDC that Bleiente did, called
Ralles RealModPack..., in which he includes some nice changes from TMO with RSRDC. Bubblehead1980 was also working on his version, but we haven't seen his just yet.
If you are looking for UBoat action, in my opinion, you have to do
Operation Monsun from Lurker_hlb3 (of RSRDC fame), in spite of some "upgrade" issues. There are several add-on mods for it also. Not to be neglected is Ducimus' (of TMO fame) [rul=http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=1426506#post1426506]Nine Delta Two[/url] mod. If you go to the last few pages of that, Bleiente is also working on his "interpretation" of the mod. Notice that it is a WIP (Work In Progress), and most likely will never be completed by Ducimus, but if Bleiente continues on with his edits (and he is a diligent type), it should be pretty cool also...
Whichever way you go, Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific is excellent stuff, and other than a few things from SH5 (ie: python scripts, graphics), is a much better game - my opinion again, of course...
- and it doesn't crash as often...
Just go and have fun experimenting, good sir, and "Happy Hunting!"
