What does difficulty effect?

[gord96]

In SH3 the AI was the same and you adjusted the realism to your play style. What about in SH4? DO the different difficulty levels effect AI as well?

[gord96]

nobody knows? :nope:

[Strikor]

As far as I know it's the same as it was in SH3.

[Linavitch]

As far as I can tell it doesn't affect the AI, only the realism pre-sets. (which you can alter anyway)

Someone may have a more definitive answer but I have tried easy for a training patrol and done four on hard and not noticed any difference.

[Chrall]

I don't know about AI but acording to the manual it affects renown. At 100% realism you recieve full renown for every ship, at 0% realism you get 25% renown for every ship and so on.

[valpospe]

Any definitive word on this yet?

My first career I selected "normal." I realized that this had auto targeting etc enabled so I scraped that career. Then I heard about the books with the realism options.

Started new career and I believe that I just left the difficulty setting on it's default "easy" because I knew I would ramp up the realism in the ready room. So I flavored the realism to my taste (74%) and was on my way. I've encounted some really sorry escorts and I fear that the "easy" setting is having some effect aside from realism (maybe I'm just parinoid :o)

So the question remains: is the difficulty setting at the start of a career just a lazy way of selecting realism options, or does it have additional effects (frequency of contacts, AI etc.) ?

Thoughts?

[AVGWarhawk]

I do not believe it affects the AI warships. It just seems to be a preset what you can do with the sub....unlimited fuel, outside view, etc.