Any challenge in SH4?

[Supagoat]

I played, and loved SHIII. I'm not very familiar with the pacific sub theater, though. I have a friend who's quite the war buff who claims that SH4 has to be too easy (if it's realistic) because the US subs basically had no opposition. He claims most of them were lost to aircraft because they were caught surfaced shelling cargo ships. He also claims the Japanese didn't have convoys like you find in SH3.

I haven't played SHIII for a while and I must confess, I do have a hankering for it... But since SHIV lacks starforce, it tempts me to buy it over installing SHIII... But is my friend right?

[NefariousKoel]

I LOL'd at your friend.

"No opposition" haha.:roll:

[Barkhorn1x]

My opinion - your friend needs to do some more reading on the subject before he spouts off.

But you my friend are in luck - as you are amoungst the most knowledgable group of sub simmers anywhere! :up: Go back about 4 pages and start reading - you will gain some real knowledge about the period.

[Subnuts]

Tell your friend to sign up on Subsim, and that he can make comments like that "without opposition!" :arrgh!:

[mookiemookie]

Substandard torpedoes for a large portion of the war, treacherous shallow waters, being forced to patrol into the heavily patrolled and mined home waters of Imperial Japan (to put that in SH3 terms, imagine you've just been ordered to patrol the English Channel) and a fanatical enemy with the most powerful navy in the world at the time.

Sure, sounds like a cakewalk. :lol: I wouldn't worry too much about the challenge aspect. Remember that SH1 was a PTO based sub sim and is considered by many to be the best of all time.

[Payoff]

Out of approximately 325 subs, 52 were lost. Thats roughly 1 out of 5 submariners still on eternal patrol. U.S. subs made up less than 2% of the U.S. Navy's total force in WWII, yet accounted for more than 55% of all Japanese shipping sent to the bottom. If you take into accont dud torpedos and shallow waters, I dont think it will be a cakewalk.

[Supagoat]

Good to know! Especially because the first thing I planned to do if I did reinstall SHIII was to go play around in the english channel. Not thrilled about dud torpedoes, but if that's what it takes...!

Thanks.

[AVGWarhawk]

On the convoy issue. There were some like you would find in the Atlantic. From what I have read, a few would just hug the coastline to the destination. So if this is the case in SH4, we will be taken into shallow waters. Subs and shallow waters do not mix:nope:

[MikeJW]

Shallow waters because merchants hugged the coast, heavy minefields,coastal based AC patrols, long daylight, heavy fog near land, weak unreliable torpedoes. Yep, regular cakewalk.