New to SH4

[Darthlucky]

Having cut my teeth on Silent Service for my NES, and on SH1, I've spent the past few years rampaging as kaelun on SH2-3, I just recently purchased the gold editon of SH4 from Amazon. Just wondering what good mods are our there, and if there are any like the amazing GWX mod for SH3. I'm mainly interestd in mods that add new and different varieties of ships.

Thanks ya'll.

[tomoose]

Welcome aboard Darthlucky;
As you've noticed by now there are a few mods for SH4. I'll suggest what other more experienced SH4 players have said;

1. Play SH4 stock for awhile just to become familiar with it (e.g. keyboard commands are different compared to SH3).
2. Once you've done that and have exprienced some of the quirks, bugs and annoyances of Stock then consider one of the 'mega' mods.
3. If you have enough drive space I would recommend a couple of installs so you can try the different mods.
4. Generally speaking the two main 'big' mods are TMO (Trigger Maru Overhauled) and RFB (Real Fleet Boat). These mods tweak actual game parameters and graphics. Add 'extra' crew for manning the deck gun etc.
5. A complementary mod is RSRD (Run Silent Run Deep) which changes the campaign "layer" of the game and makes things more historically accurate, historically accurate shipping "lanes" etc.

For example, I have TMO and RSRD as my mods and am quite happy with them. There are those that prefer TMO and there are those that prefer RFB. I'd say one is not "better" than the other but rather that they each appeal to a certain way of playing. The final decision is of course yours.

Scour the Mods threads and study up on each mod. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

One caveat: There are some issues with the game that no mods have been able to address (yet) so don't be surprised if you find that an irritating part of the game still shows up in a modded version.
Two examples that pop into mind are:

1. Subs "riding the rails" in heavy seas - the mods did a good job of addressing this but in really heavy seas you may still see certain aspects of that phenomenon.
2. Multiple duplicate faces on your crew - You may see on the Bridge or Con that a couple of your crew have the exact same face graphic. None of the current mods change that.

Anyway, as stated, the ultimate decision is yours. Do some reading of the mods threads go from there.
Hope this info helps.


Note: RSRD wi

[Hambone307]

Trigger Maru Overhauled (TMO) is definitely one of my favorite mega mods coupled with Run Silent Run Deep (RSRD). TMO increases the difficulty quite a bit. Japanese destroyers are more likely to detect you if you make a mistake in positioning, forgetting silent running (I've done that), shooting too early, etc. It also overhauls the damage that you receive from depth chargings, bombs, etc. I had limited experience with Real Fleet Boats (RFB). One thing RFB does is that you don't have any map contacts, for example, a spotted ship will not show up on the map. I didn't like not having the option for those so TMO is my preferred choice. Other than that, someone here who runs RFB will be able to provide more information on it.

My personal recommendation is to run TMO, RSRD, and Improved Ship Physics (ISP) after you get used to stock.

Welcome to the Pacific!

[fireftr18]

Welcome aboard to a great game and great forum!
A couple other things to add.
If you want to use mods, then sh4 can't be in the "x86" folder. I don't know why, but if sh4 is in the folder, the mods don't take. Most either use a seperate "games" folder, or put sh4 in it's own folder.
CO2 bug. If you "alt-tab" out of the game, then get back into it, the game won't refresh the boat's air supply after surfacing. If that happens, the fix is simply to save the game, get out completely, then reload.
Saves. The save file is rather complicated. As you overwrite saves, files tend to get corrupted. Save in a new file each time.

Now quit fooling around and scrape the bilge brew off the deck.