SHIII players' views on SH5?

[thebigJ_A]

Hey guys.

So, I played a fair amount of SHIII a year or two ago, to the point where I taught myself to do all the calculations and navigation manually. My friends thought I was crazy, but I loved it. I eventually put it down, though, meaning to come back.

Since then, I've built myself a shiny new PC. Now I'm eyeing the newest Silent Hunter game, since my old junkbox would never have run it.

Before I dive in too deep, though, I want to find out what the consensus is on SH5 among players of III. Is it a dud the way 4 was? Is it broken without mods? Is it fun, a good simulation, an improvement over 4, or even III? etc. etc.

Any thoughts would be appreciated greatly! :salute:

Edit: Oh man, I swear I didn't mean any of those submarine puns!!

[Sailor Steve]

This question crops up every once-in-awhile, and it's an invitation to a fight. First off, if there was a concensus among SH3 players that SH5 was better, none of us would still be playing SH3.

Is it broken without mods? SH3 is broken without mods.

Is it a dud like SH4? SH4 is not a dud. SH4 is actually a better platform than SH3. SH4 suffers from coming out too soon, so SH3 modders aren't interested. SH4 has the potential to be the best of all of them.

SH5 has some great improvements. The problem is that none of them are implemented properly or fully. As it stands now, thanks to a couple of modders, SH5 is very playable and a great many people think it's a lot of fun. That said, there are a couple of things still undone that would keep me from dumping everything else even if I had a computer that would run it. On the other hand they are things that annoy me only because I'm weird.

1) No Type II or Type IX. I'm not really into the IX, but what's good for one is true of the other.

2) The whole RPG thing. I don't mind talking to the crew, but they are only capable of two or three sentences, so what's the point.

3) The bunkers. In SH3 there is a u-boat pen in Kiel right from the beginning of the war. It wasn't actually finished until 1944. In SH5 this is repeated, and there is one in Wilhelmshaven, which in real life never had one at all. This is minor, but it annoys me no end. On the other hand the harbors themselves are much closer to their real-life layouts.

4) The ships. After two years the best modders have still not been able to fully import new merchants into SH5. SH3, meanwhile, benefits from Iambecomelife's Merchant Fleet Mod, which adds more than 60 new merchant types. These could be imported into SH4, but no one has yet done so.

5) The ships. SH3 has SH3 Commander, which gives names to ships you sink, and greatly multiplies the crew names, among a host of other things. It seems I may be able to add historic ship names to SH5, but I currently can't even experiment with it. I really wish there was a version of Commander for SH4.

SH4 is better than SH3, and SH5 is better than SH4, but SH3 is still the most fully rounded and complete subsim yet. If you can live with those negatives the you and SH5 should get along quite well. When I can finally afford a new computer I will play SH5 (it kinda sorta ran on my PC for awhile, so I know what it's like, and I like it), but until all the issues I mentioned are addressed I'll also keep playing SH3 and SH4.

[thebigJ_A]

I'm sorry, I had no idea it was a sensitive subject. I wasn't really asking whether there was consensus on it being better than SHIII, just on what consensus there was about the game in general, if any.

I'd count a sequel that merely has (still) unfulfilled potential as a dud, but that's opinion, of course. "Better" is a fuzzy word, obviously, but when talking about sub sim games, the one that's "more rounded and complete" sounds "better" to me. I was hoping maybe 5 had received an amount of modding attention approaching that of SHIII (with concessions made for the length of time since release, of course.)



I guess what I'm trying to find out is, is it a good sandbox simulation, the way (modded) III is. It seems like the answer is "no", or at least "not yet". I guess I'll get busy on reinstalling III and downloading the mods I liked. Much obliged!

[Sailor Steve]

I didn't mean to overreact. Two years ago there was a huge war with much baiting and fighting on both sides, and to this day we still get a thread every month or so titled "Is SH5 fixed/playable/worth my time yet?"

SH5 still has the potential to be the best of all of them, but it's resisting the modders in some departments. SH4 combines the best of both worlds, especially with the U-boat Add-on, but as I said it's just never recieved the attention it deserves, which leaves SH3 as the one with the best mods and the best overall gaming experience, especially with a good supermod and SH3 Commander. The bad news for me is that the computer I bought seven years ago just for SH3 is not capable of running all the mods I want now. :dead:

On the other hand SH5 is so cheap now (I got mine on Amazon for $5) that it's no real pain to try it out and see what you think.

[BossMark]

The only gripe I have\had with SH5 is that there is no Type IX the IXD2 is my favourite U-Boat, (unless this as been modded I haven't checked for quite sometime) that is the main reason I stopped playing SH5 and went back to my favourite SH3 with GWX.

And I recently upgraded my PC so now I run the game with the likes M.E.P v3 and the merchant fleet mod.

[STEED]

I rather had the style of SH3 upgraded to SH5 in the terms of not walking around the U-Boat, yes I know it sounds more realistic but it was not my cup of tea. A long time after they released it I found out you can not have a IX Boat, that for me even if I had the chance to borrow the game I would not play it. No IX, no thanks.

It comes down to you and your taste, I like a big mug of instant mocha coffee on Sunday mornings some here would agree while others would not. :)

[Tinman764]

Yep, walking around my boat stopped as soon as I left harbour the 1st time. Walked it a few times, stood on the bow for most of Keil Canal and then spent the rest of it in TC and teleported between the stations.

It also erks me that SH5 isn't open ended like SH3, in that without mods your war ends in (I think) 1943.

[bigboywooly]

Out the box SH5 was worse than SH3 was - game ends in 43, no mines/subnets/land units/less playable subs and buggy as hell

But there are plenty of mods that address all of those issues now, even a megamod or 2
Enviromentally is streets ahead and the way the game loads campaigns etc also reduces load time - as did SH4
For me though something is lacking , cant pinpoint it but doesnt have the same immersive feel.

Am sure in time I will give SH5 another good go and see if can finally ditch SH3 just cant see it happening in the near future.

:salute:

[misha1967]

Different strokes :DL

Well, as another "Old SH3'er" who loves both, I can say that it depends on what you're looking for. At this point, SH5 is at the point where I can enjoy it a lot but, then again, it took quite a bit before SH3 reached that point too. It wasn't always the nearly flawless wonder that it is now, and we can thank the modders for the fact that it ever got there. The same is the case with SH5. It has potential and, having gone through the process before, I'm quite confident that it will realize that potential eventually.

Right now, it's good enough for me to put down SH3 for, although it will be a very cold day in hell before I'll ever delete my first love, SH3, from my hard drive :DL

What I truly love about SH5 is the immersion and the looks. For looks, this is not an actual photo, this is what it actually looks like on my currently rather modest rig. I'll start really adding eye candy when my new GPU arrives:

http://i40.tinypic.com/1ea07n.jpg

This is only to illustrate my point about the looks. I'm very much in agreement with the sentiment that "looks aren't everything". If that hadn't been the case, I would have been totally infatuated with SH5 for much longer. And it's not like SH3 doesn't look good. It still looks amazingly good to this very day, which in itself is very impressive.

On immersion, I really like the ability to be able to walk around my sub in a full 3D environment with fully functional (thanks to modders) dials, animated crew going about their business and all manner of other ambient stuff. But, even so, I'll be the first to admit that I find myself using the (again, thanks modders) teleport function when things get hectic or I just want to get on with things. The "dialogs with crew members?" They need work still, but it's a nice touch and, again, that can be modded too.

But, again, I'm a sucker for immersion. I spent hours memorizing the names of my SH3 crew, thinking up background stories for them, keeping track of their promotions etc., I guess I'm just into that sort of thing.

Now... Is it worth investing in at this point? At $5, what do you stand to lose?

The main drawbacks, to me, are that you have to be willing to invest a bit of time, OK more than just a bit, to get the modding done right at this time. But if you're a "veteran" of the SH3 days, that's no stranger to you. It's back to the "restart your campaigns over and over because somebody just came up with something that you just HAVE to have :DL" phase.

Or not, but you will need some time to get at least the basics installed.

Also, just as was the case when SH3 came out, SH5 isn't exactly friendly to low to mid-spec machines. It's a resource hog. But, as I mentioned, when SH3 came out I considered myself blessed to get 17 FPS leaving Kiel. Now I can churn out 35 with my modest Phenom II X4 and GTX260, but that's with the graphics turned down quite a bit. A machine that runs everything else quite well indeed. Still, referring back to the pic above, it's quite pretty with "low" graphics.

The lack of the TypII, IX and XXI? I miss the cute little Einbaum, but I never loved the IX all that much. Handled like a cow to me compared to the VII, but I'll be the first to agree that it should have been included at the very least. Hey, I liked it in SH3 just fine when I was off to Paukenschlag since I didn't have to rely on Milk Cows to get back again. Whether you personally want it or not, it's a matter of "don't limit the player's options" to me. It should be there. I'm sure the modders will find a way to add it.

As to the campaign in SH5 ending in '43? That was the case. There's a mod for that complete with missions and everything already. Personally, I never did make it past '43 in SH3 but, then again, I liked the fact that I had something to strive for. Arbitrarily ending your career "just because" is another case of "don't limit the player's options" and I'm glad it has been taken care of, even though I'm sure I still won't ever make it to '44.

Bottom line? They're both good, depending on what you want. I'm not going to say that either is "better", but I would definitely say that SH5 is worth giving a spin at this point.

For what it's worth. YMMV :salute:

EDIT: And I should add that I agree wholeheartedly with Sailor Steve that SH4 has been sadly neglected. I don't know why, as it was clearly a leap forward from SH3. One thing that particularly appealed to me in SH4 compared to her predecessor was the concept of actual missions, as opposed to the old "patrol grid XXxx, get bored finding nothing, then go off to patrol your favorite hunting grounds, it's not like we care anyway". No, it's not like I hated SH3 because of that, it's just that I felt that my patrol orders were nothing more than "go there first, then do what you were planning to do anyway." Yes, I know, in sim terms "go to this location, press this button, then request new orders" isn't all that different, it's just that having an actual mission that you can actually fail (it's hard to fail plotting a navigation point on a map) works better for me. I wish that SH4 had caught on fire like SH3 and SH5 have.

[Sailor Steve]

The only gripe I have\had with SH5 is that there is no Type IX the IXD2 is my favourite U-Boat, (unless this as been modded I haven't checked for quite sometime) that is the main reason I stopped playing SH5 and went back to my favourite SH3 with GWX.

Nope, not yet. I read pretty much the whole forum every day, just to keep up with what's going on. Having the other boat types will mean somebody building the entire model, inside and out.

I rather had the style of SH3 upgraded to SH5 in the terms of not walking around the U-Boat, yes I know it sounds more realistic but it was not my cup of tea.
The problem is that they had a great idea but the execution is lacking. My personal preference would be to hit the key for a specific compartment and have the game walk me there, rather than teleport. This would be especially good when you hit the Dive or Crash Dive keys. A simple animation of the crew going down the ladder and then it takes you down to the Conning Tower. None of this being told you can't crash dive because you're still on the Bridge, and then dying because you didn't hit the hole precisely and couldn't get below. :nope:

[jaxa]

This question crops up every once-in-awhile, and it's an invitation to a fight. First off, if there was a concensus among SH3 players that SH5 was better, none of us would still be playing SH3.

Is it broken without mods? SH3 is broken without mods.

Is it a dud like SH4? SH4 is not a dud. SH4 is actually a better platform than SH3. SH4 suffers from coming out too soon, so SH3 modders aren't interested. SH4 has the potential to be the best of all of them.

SH5 has some great improvements. The problem is that none of them are implemented properly or fully. As it stands now, thanks to a couple of modders, SH5 is very playable and a great many people think it's a lot of fun. That said, there are a couple of things still undone that would keep me from dumping everything else even if I had a computer that would run it. On the other hand they are things that annoy me only because I'm weird.

1) No Type II or Type IX. I'm not really into the IX, but what's good for one is true of the other.

2) The whole RPG thing. I don't mind talking to the crew, but they are only capable of two or three sentences, so what's the point.

3) The bunkers. In SH3 there is a u-boat pen in Kiel right from the beginning of the war. It wasn't actually finished until 1944. In SH5 this is repeated, and there is one in Wilhelmshaven, which in real life never had one at all. This is minor, but it annoys me no end. On the other hand the harbors themselves are much closer to their real-life layouts.

4) The ships. After two years the best modders have still not been able to fully import new merchants into SH5. SH3, meanwhile, benefits from Iambecomelife's Merchant Fleet Mod, which adds more than 60 new merchant types. These could be imported into SH4, but no one has yet done so.

5) The ships. SH3 has SH3 Commander, which gives names to ships you sink, and greatly multiplies the crew names, among a host of other things. It seems I may be able to add historic ship names to SH5, but I currently can't even experiment with it. I really wish there was a version of Commander for SH4.

SH4 is better than SH3, and SH5 is better than SH4, but SH3 is still the most fully rounded and complete subsim yet. If you can live with those negatives the you and SH5 should get along quite well. When I can finally afford a new computer I will play SH5 (it kinda sorta ran on my PC for awhile, so I know what it's like, and I like it), but until all the issues I mentioned are addressed I'll also keep playing SH3 and SH4.

I'm totally agree with Sailor Steve.
SH3 with megamods is near complete sub sim without eyecandy view these days, SH5 looks amazing, but is far away from SH3 atmosphere, so the best option should be SH4 U-boot addon (especially with OM+OMEGU). It's a good compromise between them. Unfortunately, Sailor Steve has right saying that it was released too soon after SH3, when SH3 was still very attractive for modders.

[Jimbuna]

My stock response to the OP is...all three SH games are now extremely low in price so buy em all (via the SubSim link preferably) and keep pace with all future modding developments.

@Steve

If your about I'm on Skype.

[Sailor Steve]

4) The ships. After two years the best modders have still not been able to fully import new merchants into SH5. SH3, meanwhile, benefits from Iambecomelife's Merchant Fleet Mod, which adds more than 60 new merchant types. These could be imported into SH4, but no one has yet done so.
I have to backtrack and modify that statement. It seems that Lurker put a few of IABL's ships into OM. Still, the complete MFM would be nice, since SH4 seems to handle these things a lot better.