Coming Back to Silent Hunter IV and V

[Yamato_Omega]

Greetings Skippers,


I have been tempted for the last few months to dust off my copies of SH4 Gold and SH5. I have been "rigged for silent running" on these forums for ages and thus haven't kept up to date or abreast at what has been going on.

But first, a little briefing on what I have done myself over these past years:
Since the time I fell silent, I have been responsible for a Historical Mod Project for an Age of Sail Game called Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales. As Lead Developer under the alias Modder01, using C source code, I helped make as much of the game historical as it would allow and with the help of a modder from another forum I updated that game's engine to a newer version and made it a standalone game from the original. This change now supports higher resolutions and other quality of life improvements to this game. On the Armored Vehicles side of the house, under the alias Panzercross, I started and I am still maintaining a Historical Mod Project for the Online WWII Tank Arcade Game World of Tanks which promises to add historical visuals to the game and the descriptions and designations of vehicles updated to give them some much needed history.

Anyway, I finally coerced myself to reinstall SH4 and try TMO 2.5 which was my go-to mod back in the day, only to find a lot of annoyances with the Deck Guns and AA guns only firing at will when I had manual control of one of them. It seems my shooting accuracy has decreased since I last played this game in the long term since I seemed to not hit any planes with the AA guns nor was very accurate shooting the deck gun. The non-realistic sound implementation of TMO really bugged me and the graphics seemed a lot more polygonal at maximum settings than I remembered back then.

Since I had reached my download quota last night, I thought about giving up, but the feeling I felt when I torpedoed a Takao class cruiser with my Porpoise boat was thrilling despite the annoyances with TMO so I came back here to get some suggestions about what mods would contribute to the immersion factor in Silent Hunter 4 such as visuals, sounds, music, realistic sinking/special effects and game-play fixes in order for me to still play with a 55% faux realism, while being immersed in the game-play of a WWII submarine captain on German, Japanese and American Sides. In addition, I would like suggestions from the Silent Hunter 5 Modding portion of this community for mods that would contribute to the immersion factor of Silent Hunter 5 and if there are any Alternate Campaigns for the British or Americans during the Atlantic War. I would also be open to Playable Surface Ship mods on both games as I did use them extensively when I played back in the day.


I am open to any suggestions you have for me. Please let me know if you have any questions.

[Aktungbby]

Yamato_Omega!

[Geoff then]

For me, in terms of realism overall, TMO 2.5 is still the way to go. I added the Increased Ship Physics 2.4 mod (just remove the scene.dat from the mod, this one will be troublesome otherwise) for TMO 2.5 and most of the time ran with this setup. This does nothing to sound and graphics, but it gets close to beeing realistic with acceleration, deceleration and manveuvering overall + sinking (mind you, often ships still sink very fast, but sometimes they hold on very long. Had a carrier beeing afloat after a hit for over 2 hours before going down.)
If you like the RSRD campaign for TMO 2.5 you should try Ralles Modpack, which includes better graphics and sound, physics, and some gameplay fixes for optics, only drawback is that it moves the conning tower slightly back in order to fix range finding and stuff (look for the OTC mod for TMO, it is better explained there)
Which also does work very well for me is Operation Monsun+OMEGU+Uboat dynamics mod 1.1 (this one again takes care of the physics of the submarine and ships)
Also the sinking mechanics in this setup seem to be very good, ships can hold on very long before sinking. Drawback here are the slightly outdated graphics due to SH3 ported models, and no changes to the sound of any sort (except german speech on the sub ) And it can be a little buggy from time to time. Environment looks pretty decent though.
FOTRSU is a modpack that is beeing worked on relentlessly, but as I recall its main focus is still on AI, so nothing is beeing done for the realism factors such as physics or sinking yet, but I guess that will be dealt with in the future.
Correct me if I said something incorrect or inaccurate.
Good huntin`

[Yamato_Omega]

With TMO Installed, when I sounded general quarters and put the AA and Deck Gun on Firing at Will, they wouldn't shoot unless I was physically on the Deck gun or at one of the AA Gun Stations. Is there a way to fix that?

[THEBERBSTER]

A Warm Welcome To The Subsim Community > Yamato_Omega
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SH3 – 4 - 5 Tutorials > Downloads > Other Useful Information > See Links in My Signature Below

[Yamato_Omega]

I think my next downloads will be the the Beta of FOTRSU and Ralles Modpack as they seem from the descriptions like one stop solutions and maybe they will fix the "Firing at Will" bug that TMO 2.5 seems to introduce as no crew are visible manning the deck or flak guns, nor are the guns engaging the target I set at point blank range. I will report back based on the "sub school experience".



My usual testing method is to do the Gunnery, Torpedo and Convoy Attack Training Missions before I decide that the mod is good enough to enter the campaign.



Campaign wise, I prefer missions in the campaign where I am going after warships with destroyer escort instead of convoys. Although convoys are fun at times, especially when playing a U-Boat I prefer the satisfaction of sinking capital ships from underneath the waves under silent running.

[Geoff then]

Originally Posted by Yamato_Omega

With TMO Installed, when I sounded general quarters and put the AA and Deck Gun on Firing at Will, they wouldn't shoot unless I was physically on the Deck gun or at one of the AA Gun Stations. Is there a way to fix that?

Strange, I never had that issue.


Did this occur only in the training or on patrol as well?
Usually the gun-crew (in TMO now 7 guys, I think) is visible on deck. If this occurs on patrol as well, it might be an installation issue.

[Yamato_Omega]

I had to manually move crew over to the Deck Gun and AA gun in order for them to be manned and fire at will. Despite my order to man the deck gun and AA Gun.

[propbeanie]

In TMO, you should "Target" the enemy with your binoculars, by looking at the target in the binocs, and then pressing the spacebar. I would often lock either the TBT or the scope on the intended target also. Kind of "lead the way"...

[Geoff then]

Originally Posted by Yamato_Omega

I had to manually move crew over to the Deck Gun and AA gun in order for them to be manned and fire at will. Despite my order to man the deck gun and AA Gun.

Aye, forgot about that.
This is due to the bug that gun-crewmen sometimes die rather quickly during depth charge attacks, as the game sees them still "on deck". This bug seems hard-coded and this is one of the work-arounds
So now you should use the guys from "crew berthing".
There are no better options here, I think. I just got used to it. Ubisoft did quite a good job messing things up. Mind you, SH4 Stock is still a ton of gold compared to SH5.

[Yamato_Omega]

I tried both and I can't get as immersed in TMO as I can with FORTSU.



I also found a bug with the Twin AA gun mounts of the Purpoise class. Only one barrel is firing per mount, but the smoke effect is coming from both alternating. Also because only one barrel out of two is firing, the sound effect only registers one barrel. Is the end goal of FORTSU along with improving the US Fleet Boat Campaign to work with the U-Boat Missions Pack As well? If so then I am hooked.

[propbeanie]

With FotRSU, we've tried to keep the German side compatible, and also that you would see some of the new traffic in its campaign also, but no, we have not re-worked it in to another aspect of the FotRSU mod.