Need a little advice please

[treblesum81]

Hi all,

I've recently come back to SH4 after a couple of months away due primarily to a heavy school and work schedule. Things have calmed down now, but I still find that I can only devote about 1-2 hours in a sitting to my computer where 3-4 used to be the minimum. As a result, I find that I'm having trouble playing SH4, since it usually takes me somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes from program start just to find something to shoot at. This is where my request for some advice comes in:

How can I play SH4 in shorter time blocks without spending so much time looking? Are there techniques, mods, or settings which will increase the odds of finding something and/or decrease the amount of looking required to find something?

What I have in mind here is something along the lines of the SH3 vampire crew (100% visibility in all conditions) or SH3 contact reports mod, or even just places and ways to search that are highly likely to produce quick results. Now, I know SH4 is a game of patience, waiting, and ambush, but I also know that I can't really justify using 1/2 of my available computer time just watching a little sub icon running around the map at some level of time compression. Even when I stop the TC every hour or two to dive and listen, I still rarely produce anything worthwhile before I have to log off, so, while that provides more interaction than just looking at the map, it doesn't improve my gaming experience much.

Of course, there may not be a way around this problem here, as I remember asking about SH3 map contacts for SH4 and learning that there was just nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to alter some 17,000 entries to get my contacts back. In this case, sadly, SH4 might not be for me, as I've got to ensure that I actually do something worthwhile with the time I've got, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

Anyway, please share your thoughts.

Thanks,
Greg

[Armistead]

Instead of a career, why not just play custom missions. Some of them are instense.

[rosentorf]

Hi treblesum81,

I know what you are talking about. I usually get to play SH4 only for an hour a day during the week. There is more time on the weekends to play. However I have to get up earlier than my wife. Luckily she loves to sleep in on the weekends and early mornings is my favorite time to play silent hunter...ya know sippin' some hot coffee and sending some unlucky ships that cross my path to briny depths. But I digress...

Here's what I do:

There is two parts to the game: 1. find ships 2. sink em! :arrgh!: As you said for the first part is kinda boring if you need to get to the action fast, but if you're anything like me you don't want to play single missions all the time...you want to find those ships in a career...feels more real, right? Whenever I do something that does not include using my computer I just start it up and continue my current patrol until I find something. For me it's those times when I cook or do things that have to be done like laundry and stuff. My crew does the searching (after giving them a path to follow) and will they will let me know if there is anything worth to engage or avoid. After all I am the captain and my skills are most needed for the stalking, sneaking and attacking!! :yep:
Then I save. And the next time I have more time I play out the encounter in an hour or two. This way I get to play a career but also don't spend valuable action time for searching the oceans.

[I'm goin' down]

go the mod forum. At the top of the forum is the SH4 Mission Designers' Forum referred to in the first reply to your post. The are around 40 - 50 single patrols waiting for you. cdusbron7's new patrol will keep you hopping. You download them, unzip them, move the mission file into the single patrol file, and viola - single patrols.

[treblesum81]

Thanks, I'll have a look. How realistic are most of them though? I do run RFB because I want that realism factor involved.

Also, I was wondering, at what TC do the watchmen stop picking up enemies? I know that in SH3 if you went much above ~256, you stood only about a 50% chance to pick something up even on a perfectly sunny day.

[I'm goin' down]

The mission link may be at the top of the SH4 forum instead of the mods forum. Check both forums.

The missions are realistic. Historically accurate is a different question. You would have to ask each mission's develepor.

There are a bunch of Dick O'Kane missions.

If you play the Palau Gauntlet, read the instructions because your game may CTD as it was not designed for 1.5.

There is one mission where you are supposed to play as a japanese battleship, not a US sub, instructions which I failed to figure out. If you play as a US sub, the game starts with you in the middle of the enemy task force, and you will probably be sunk before you submerge, and if you submerge before you are sunk, the task force will sail off leaving you with no targets. If you activate a playable Japanes Battleship, you can fire all of its guns, which is fun. They make a hell of a sound.

I played a different sub mission last night, and the task force switched course on me about 3 miles from my intercept point. When I surfaced to give chase, a destroyer pounced and took me out.

You usually see the enemy early on in these missions. If it is aways off on the Nav Map, use time compression to speed up the game.