Ifernat
02-08-15, 09:30 PM
Okay, a bit of background. I had an excellent experience with SH3 and the GWX megamod. However after a motherboard failure and a career that became riddled with CTDs I put it down for a long while.
Saw SH5 in a steam sale and figured, why not? Later learned why that was a bad idea, jumped through the hoops to fix it and started a campaign. Aside from the graphics have been rather underwhelmed. Started a campaign and finally went through the teething pains of learning how to use manual TDC because the auto TDC mechanics were a huge turnoff.
In the first campaign mission against the coastal shipping and found it very pedestrian. In GWX I especially liked the progressive flooding and the uncertainty. Scenarios like "Torpedo crippled the merchant but it is still making 3 knots and the list appears to have stabilized, how many shells do I need to put into the waterline 5, 10?... Do I have time to put in 5 and wait"...etc...etc.
So far every ship I've sunk in vanilla SH5 (1.2 patched) has settled on a perfectly even keel and shown minimal to no effects of flooding. Virtually every ship has sunk only when the magical hp bar has been reduced to 0 or near 0, the only critical damage I've seen so out of 14 successful sinkings was one freighter I underestimated on the speed and hit in the nose blowing its bow off.
The kicker though was when I intercepted a coastal convoy comprised almost entirely of victory ships in Oct 1939 with 4 destroyer escorts. Getting a bit jaded I decided to engage it anyone and sank two of the outer merchants. My positioning was poor as I hadn't allowed enough lead time to work my way past the flanking destroyer (coming from GWX not used to 12 knot convoys that early in the war). Even so with 4 destroyers in 40 m of water I pretty much thought I was acting suicidal. To my surprise the destroyer which would have normally driven right over me turned and sailed in the opposite direction through the convoy. The other destroyers likewise sailed off in the wrong direction. A bit annoyed I reloaded and proceeded to cripple 3 ships while the destroyers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Then getting really annoyed I proceeded to SURFACE and finish the ships off with the deck gun. Each time I popped up took out a ship and then popped back to periscope depth and the escorts acted like I'd engaged a cloaking field by going to periscope depth and dropping to slow speed.
After the 2nd kill they even got stuck running in circles. After the third ship finished off with gunfire one of the destroyers actually managed to drive over me. "Finally" I thought. Getting pinged at 20 m down surely this would be it. The depth charges weren't even in the same post code. "Oh well, the SH3 AI missed often enough in the early war, I thought" but then the destroyer apparently decided that after dropping a single round of charges that I was clearly dead did a half hearted circle and drove off. "Good enough for government work" apparently.
So here's my question. I know mods can tweak alot, but do the various mod collections make the AI at least an approximation of the competent SH3 AI (provided land isn't involved) before I start working on installing a huge mod compilation?
Saw SH5 in a steam sale and figured, why not? Later learned why that was a bad idea, jumped through the hoops to fix it and started a campaign. Aside from the graphics have been rather underwhelmed. Started a campaign and finally went through the teething pains of learning how to use manual TDC because the auto TDC mechanics were a huge turnoff.
In the first campaign mission against the coastal shipping and found it very pedestrian. In GWX I especially liked the progressive flooding and the uncertainty. Scenarios like "Torpedo crippled the merchant but it is still making 3 knots and the list appears to have stabilized, how many shells do I need to put into the waterline 5, 10?... Do I have time to put in 5 and wait"...etc...etc.
So far every ship I've sunk in vanilla SH5 (1.2 patched) has settled on a perfectly even keel and shown minimal to no effects of flooding. Virtually every ship has sunk only when the magical hp bar has been reduced to 0 or near 0, the only critical damage I've seen so out of 14 successful sinkings was one freighter I underestimated on the speed and hit in the nose blowing its bow off.
The kicker though was when I intercepted a coastal convoy comprised almost entirely of victory ships in Oct 1939 with 4 destroyer escorts. Getting a bit jaded I decided to engage it anyone and sank two of the outer merchants. My positioning was poor as I hadn't allowed enough lead time to work my way past the flanking destroyer (coming from GWX not used to 12 knot convoys that early in the war). Even so with 4 destroyers in 40 m of water I pretty much thought I was acting suicidal. To my surprise the destroyer which would have normally driven right over me turned and sailed in the opposite direction through the convoy. The other destroyers likewise sailed off in the wrong direction. A bit annoyed I reloaded and proceeded to cripple 3 ships while the destroyers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Then getting really annoyed I proceeded to SURFACE and finish the ships off with the deck gun. Each time I popped up took out a ship and then popped back to periscope depth and the escorts acted like I'd engaged a cloaking field by going to periscope depth and dropping to slow speed.
After the 2nd kill they even got stuck running in circles. After the third ship finished off with gunfire one of the destroyers actually managed to drive over me. "Finally" I thought. Getting pinged at 20 m down surely this would be it. The depth charges weren't even in the same post code. "Oh well, the SH3 AI missed often enough in the early war, I thought" but then the destroyer apparently decided that after dropping a single round of charges that I was clearly dead did a half hearted circle and drove off. "Good enough for government work" apparently.
So here's my question. I know mods can tweak alot, but do the various mod collections make the AI at least an approximation of the competent SH3 AI (provided land isn't involved) before I start working on installing a huge mod compilation?