Finally joined the club!

[onelifecrisis]

I bought SH4 on the Steam weekend deal. And the U-boat expansion pack, just in case.

I'm looking for PTO mods so give me some suggestions please! Big or small. I prefer high-realism stuff and will take quality over quantity any day (e.g. I'd rather have one new ship, done properly, than a dozen buggy or half-baked ones). I'm not particularly interested in new ports or more ships in port, I'm just looking for an authentic experience at sea. Thanks for any advice!

Cheers
:ping:

[WarlordATF]

Welcome to SH4!

I would suggest starting by downloading TMO and RFB first and trying them both before deciding which your prefer. Those are the two big supermods for the pacific theatre and both are very good mods. They will give you a pretty good idea of what has/can be done and should keep you busy for awhile.

[sergei]

Seconded. Those are your 2 serious options.
I ended up running both for a few patrols to get a proper feel for them before making my final decision.
Welcome to the PTO OLC. :DL

[onelifecrisis]

Thanks guys! I found the TMO thread and I'm currently reading the excellent PDF that Ducimus wrote, which explains what the mod is about. I also found the RFB thread. I suppose if I ask how the two mods compare then everyone will go all politically correct on me to avoid upsetting the modders or starting a flame war... so...

How do the two compare?

(Thanks to anyone who can be bothered to PM me an answer! :ping:)

[McHibbins]

What....wait....OLC is here ? Oh god...if this guy is going to release his mods for SH4 now, we´re going to loose the rest of our RL-time :DL

Welcome here matey:sunny:

[onelifecrisis]

lol thanks McHibbins :oops:
But I'm not here to mod, I'm just here to play. :up:

[McHibbins]

With TMO and RFB together with RSRDC for Fleetboats and OM+OMEGU for the Addon + an english and an japanese Campaign in WIP (english is released I think), you´re getting to busy to mod anything in the next few months I think :haha:

[sergei]

A big plus in favour of TMO at the moment is that the latest version has vickers03's interior overhauls included.

See this thread for pics of vickers03's outstanding work.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=158706

The Japanese destroyers in TMO are quite a challenge.
You really have to plan your attack and work at your evasion.
I found it a bit too easy to evade when I tried RFB.
Then again, maybe I was just lucky, and ran into novice crews.

The IJAF planes in TMO are absolutely frikkin deadly!
Makes you real glad you have air search radar. And even then I've had some real close calls.
(And nearly sunk on one occasion running a career in the Narwahl. That sucker takes about 3 days to crash dive. :DL)

The environment in TMO is, in my opinion, the most beautiful out of the large mods. (Note: other opinions are available).
I know you like to play with externals off OLC, but this is still real important for immersion IMHO. Bear in mind you're gonna be spending a lot of time on the bridge, or peering through the TBT or Scope.

I can't really do a proper comparison OLC, as I have spent so much more time in TMO.

Maybe some RFB guys will drop in later and tell you about the Mod they play.

[onelifecrisis]

Thanks for the info sergei. I am liking the sound of TMO from the PDF I'm reading. And I agree WRT the environment! Just because I play without external camera doesn't mean I don't like improved environment visuals (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=997). ;)

[onelifecrisis]

Holy frickin heckfire...

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/5793/gatoussdrumingamebi8.jpg

Nice!

[sergei]

Just because I play without external camera doesn't mean I don't like improved environment visuals (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=997). ;)
DOH!
I feel real silly now!
Sorry mate. When I think of OLC I think of all the GUI work you did.
Forgot all about the environment. :oops:

Holy frickin heckfire...
Yep, he's done a superb job alright.

[onelifecrisis]

lol, no worries sergei!

[Fish40]

Welcome to the Pacific OLC! Glad to see you aboard. Plain and simple, RFB (what I play) has traditionaly been geared towards a more realistic experience. To be fair, I never tried TMO but heard it was great as well. For me personaly, the closer I could get to the real thing the better. But that's just me. Once again, welcome to SH4:yeah:

[Sailor Steve]

Welcome to the dark side! One other option is Multi-SH4, which makes it easy to run multiple installs and do your own side-by-side comparison.

I've only played RFB, mainly because the talk about the evil DDs and planes in TMO scared me. I won't be playing either for awhile because I have this obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive need to play in a linear fashion, and I have three u-boat careers going in 1939 at the moment, and 1942 is a long way off.

I'm glad you don't feel the need for the harbor traffic stuff. I consider it a hangup for me, not a good thing. That said, the harbors I've seen playing RFB look pretty good compared to stock, and they may actually be due to RSRDC, which means they'll show up in both supermods. I don't know about that for sure, but I do know SH4 is much better than a lot of people give it credit for, especially with the work that's been done so far. :sunny:

[Admiral8Q]

I'd definitively recommend one of the "super" mods. TMO or RFB. I tried RFB first, but I've been playing these sub-sims since the 90's so I went with TMO because it's more challenging. But I would say that RFB is probably more realistic. It's all on personal taste, but stay away from the stock game! :timeout::D

[danurve]

Hope you enjoy PTO!

Btw; I recomend a transfer to Brisbane :ping:

[Steelkilt]

Hi OLC...Welcome aboard!...I shipped out here just a few months ago. After fiddling with a number of MOD salads I finally decided on RFB2 with April patch, EasyPlot V1 and Small Nav Tools for RFB2. I found the combination solid and very playable...Good hunting!...most of all have fun!!!...The guys around here are very helpfull and are quick to reply with ANY question you have...and their knowledgeable-periscope to keel...SK

[kiwi_2005]

I'd definitively recommend one of the "super" mods. TMO or RFB. I tried RFB first, but I've been playing these sub-sims since the 90's so I went with TMO because it's more challenging. But I would say that RFB is probably more realistic. It's all on personal taste, but stay away from the stock game! :timeout::D

Yea TMO or RFB i found RFB more challenging, I mean one night i came across a small convoy 4 ships and two escorts i was stack in the middle of japanese waters as i had to go to Tokyo - At periscope death it was night calm seas easy targets i thought fire torps at the lead mechant as soon as i let them loose the two escort went crazy and zipzag straight for me, I was in shallow waters well about 60ft below keel so i was good as dead. I dived to about an inch from the bottom and went to silent speed, the next thing that impressed me was the depth charge sounds whether it was my speakers or what but they so impressed me that i kinda held on to my desk while they were going off :har:. Holy sh*t hold on boys were in for a rough ride! :DLOh yea i made it out of there very slowly creeping away and manage to lose the escorts, boat was hanging on by a thread so to speak. Took hrs as i wasn't going to up the time compression This was my first patrol in RFB. Haven't been back since:o were still on leave.

But either way TM2 or RFB im sure your be impressed by them both

[I'm goin' down]

don't overlook the supermod Fall of the Rising Sun. Not as hard as TMO, but it has great graphics when I played some time ago.

[sergei]

Yep, good point IGD.
FOTRS tends to get overlooked.
But I gotta say, when I did try it I was pretty impressed.

[onelifecrisis]

Thanks all. Now, I have a problem. I fired up vanilla just to check everything is working. It seems okay except that I see weird wobbly water when I pan the camera around. Stand on bridge, camera still, everything is fine... but as soon as the camera starts to move the water goes all funky, like jelly or something... and then when I stop panning it stops wobbling. I assume I'm not the first person to have this issue. Any known fixes?

[Fish40]

I only remember the "jelly water" issue when comeing out of TC.

[onelifecrisis]

For me it's there straight away, before I've gone into TC (or done anything else for that matter). And it doesn't seem to want to go away. :(

[sergei]

Oh that's not good.
Again, only seems to happen to me after I've been at high levels of TC for a while.

Are you patched up OLC?

[onelifecrisis]

Oh that's not good.
Again, only seems to happen to me after I've been at high levels of TC for a while.

Are you patched up OLC?

Yup. v1.5. I bought it on Steam so it's basically auto-patched.

The relevant specs:

nVidia GTX 260 (with official 197.45 WHQL drivers)
Intel Core i5-750
4GB RAM
Vista Home Basic 64bit

This is a clean install of everything (recently repartitioned and reformatted my HDD). All drivers (aside from the nVidia drivers) are up to date. nHancer has not been installed. No tweaks or registry hacks, just a clean windows installation. The other games I have installed are running fine (Crysis, Mass Effect, Portal, Company of Heroes, DEFCON).

You say it happens after TC? For how long? What makes it go away?

[sergei]

I tend to transit from Pearl to just outside Empire waters at 3 or 4 thousand.
If I get dropped out (say for a radio message), then it's really bad, and it takes my computer 5 or 6 seconds to settle down.

I'll patrol at 1024, or 512 in areas of high air cover.
If I've been at this level of TC for, oh I dunno, 5-10 minutes, when I drop out it takes 2-3 seconds to settle down.

I never have to do anything specific to clear it, it works itself out.

Sorry OLC, I know that doesn't really help.

Have you tried the old SH3 trick?
Do a quick 360 of the horizon so the game has to load all of the environment.
Or was that only for when you were in a harbour? I can't remember now.

[ancient46]

What you can do is try using the Real Environment Mod it improves the look and mechanics of the game without affecting game play. You will find that things that annoy you about the game and when they do search for a MOD that "fixes" it. Someone has to have done something about it already. I was annoyed with the mission map markers hiding islands when I traveled to it and ran aground. So I made made the markers transparent.

[sergei]

Yeah, good point ancient46.

I've just read a few old threads about this issue.

It looks like the jelly water was never properly fixed in the stock game.

A few of the big environment mods severely reduced it's tendency to turn up though.

However, TMO comes with it's own tweaked version of Real Environment.
I know that you are probably going to be using TMO OLC.
Try enabling it. You may find that the environment TMO uses is enough to stop the jelly on your machine.

Then you'll know if this is really going to be an issue for you.

[sergei]

Also just found a few good tips in an old thread.

"I think the workaround is to not jump straight out of high TC on the navmap to a screen with the sea in it. You should slow down to 1TC first."

"If you are dropped down to 1TC, go to the command room first, before going to an external view"

[onelifecrisis]

Okay, thanks very much for the info! :ping:

[Ducimus]

Thanks all. Now, I have a problem. I fired up vanilla....

Don't play vanilla. I don't care what mod your using, just don't play vanilla, you'll traumatise yourself. The "jelly water" issue was resolved awhile ago via mods.