Completely new to Silent Hunter

[Riekopo]

Hey guys I just bought Silent Hunter 5 on Uplay and installed it. I made sure it was patched to 1.2. I installed the Wolves of Steel megamod. I'm pretty sure I installed it correctly. Anyways, this is my first Silent Hunter game and I'm really overwhelmed. I'm not sure how to do anything really. I read the official game manual.

I was going to try and play vanilla, but I read that vanilla was horrible. I'm not currently running Real Navigation because that sounds even more complex. What difficulty should I be playing my first campaign on? Is there a way to make torpedo attacking more automated and less confusing? How do I select a mission when in the bunker at the beginning? Are there certain abilities that I should avoid because they're broken?

Also, the Wolves of Steel mod thread says something about having to start a campaign, skip the tutorial, and when in the bunker save and reload. What is that about?

[BigBANGtheory]

Hi there my advice to you would be to watch some of the "Lets Play SH5" type videos on YouTube because you can effectively copy what they are doing for a few hours to get the fundementals nailed down. If you mess it up just restart and chalk it down to experience.

I think you need to decide what type of player you want to be or work towards either :

1. Casual player that wants to enjoy a lite form of simulation
2. Realism and max simulation so that aids, navigation and targeting is done by you.

Most mods are imho dedicated to full realism because the modders themselves tend to be experienced players that appreciate that type of gameplay but you can enable/disable many features also to enjoy the enhanced experience without added complexity.

There are a number of interactive tutorial mods/lessons that work with Dark Wraiths UI mod you should try these before starting a campaign and will probably give you an idea on whether manual TDC is for you.

[maillemaker]

Welcome aboard. I played SH3 for years, and just recently started SH5 a few months ago. I also am using the Wolves of Steel modpack.

You do not have to enable the Real Navigation. I don't use it. I understand that some people enjoy the micromanagement of the navigation of the submarine, and the uncertainty it gives in not knowing your true position at all times, but I do not have the time to spend driving the submarine. I fly at high time compression until targets are sighted. So all I want to do is plot the course, and then cruise along until the action happens. What I am primarily interested in is the attack and escape and evasion, and racking up tonnage, and surviving the war (or as far as you can go in SH5 anyway).

The WoS modpack has taken a lot of the work out of getting a ton of good mods to work together. But it is not perfect. There are a lot of glitches you have to know about.

For example, you're supposed to save and exit the game once you get about 200km out of port, and again when you are about 200km from returning. Otherwise you are likely to get a Crash to Desktop (CTD).

You also can't return to port until the next campaign is available or something like that. Otherwise when you are in the bunker and try to select a mission there will be no mission to select. I'm in that boat now as I just return to base when I'm out of torpedoes or fuel or damaged, so now I can't pick a new mission. I don't really care though I just start the patrol without one. I just don't get a patrol grid assigned so I just pick whatever I like.

What difficulty should I be playing my first campaign on?

To learn, I'd leave the ability to have external camera views on. I also have map contacts on. This way you will start to learn the sense of "scale" and being able to eyeball distances and speeds and such.

Is there a way to make torpedo attacking more automated and less confusing?

You can probably turn on auto-TDC, but I'm not sure. I always use manual. To me setting up the shots is a big part of the sim. I use 90 degree attacks always. With map contacts on, you just draw a point on the nose of any ship at 3 minute 15 second intervals, and draw a line between them. The length gives you the speed in knots. Now you approach the target at 90 degrees to its course, dial in the speed, set the Angle on Bow to either 90 degrees port or starboard, depending on whether your boat is 90 degrees to the port or starboard of the target's nose, and then turn the periscope left or right until the gyroangle reads 0. If the target is approaching from the right, you should have to turn your scope to the right, and if from the left, to the left. If this is backwards you have your AoB set backwards.

Then, when the target passes under the vertical reticule, fire the torpedoes. Make sure the torpedo doors are open before firing or there will be a delay until they open, and you will miss your shot.

With this method of attack, range does not matter. Though shots within 1000 meters have a greater chance of hitting, especially the more guesstimate your estimates of course and (mostly) speed are.

How do I select a mission when in the bunker at the beginning?

You go talk to the officer dude and select "Choose mission". But like I said above, if you enter the port at the wrong time this functionality breaks.

Are there certain abilities that I should avoid because they're broken?

I thought I read this, but then someone said it doesn't matter because the "kiddie factors" are turned off in the optionsviewereditor. I've given every award I can give and all my crew are "fully charged" now.

Steve

[Riekopo]

Thanks for the replies guys. I can tell it's going to take me quite some time to come to grips with this game. It seems like it was released unfinished and broken and was abandoned after a couple patches. That's a real shame. I know what that's like though because I play Total War. This community seems really great though. Is a modded Silent Hunter 5 considered to be the best Silent Hunter or is an older game considered better?

There seems to be two total overhaul mods. Wolves of Steel which is what I installed and sobers mega mod. Which mod should I use as a beginner? Should I even be using any? It seems like mods are necessary because of all the bugs. I joined the Subsim Steam Group though I bought this game on Uplay because I read about not being able to use mods with the Steam version. If anyone would like to be my Silent Hunter tutor I would appreciate it. My Steam and Uplay name are both Riekopo so you can add me.

One problem I'm having is controlling everything. The UI and controls just seem plain bad. Like how you have to right click to move and stop moving. That is really strange to me.

From reading the Wolves of Steel FAQ it seems like the bottom three abilities of the Torpedo man are broken so I shouldn't use them. It also suggests that other abilities are broken, but doesn't say which ones specifically. Does anyone know which ones I should avoid?

Is there a better encyclopedia for ship identification? The vanilla one seems really poor. I'd like to know more about the ships I'm attacking. Like if there is a best place to hit them.

Does your submarine take visual damage on the exterior and interior and like break up and explode? From my brief experience it seems like when you die the screen just fades to black.

Are there any other mods I should be using with Wolves of Steel? Is there a control guide for Wolves of Steel?

I read that planes won't actually attack you. Is this still true?

The Sub System screen is in German. Is there a way to make that English?

I was playing the last Historical Mission and my Flak gunner shot down like 5 biplanes. Is that normal? He wasn't able to shoot down any monoplanes and they shot me up. I dove and then started sinking and then died from falling too deep. How are you supposed to recover in that situation?

[FTGC/SS]

First of all don't worry about real navigation as it is neither real or does it add anything to the game. Woe betide the navigator both then and now that didn't at all times have his best estimated position of the ship plotted. The standard was and still is to have the last position hand DR'd out at least 4 hours.

As the basic fire control problem is all relative to own ship you need the ships position constantly updated on the plot, that is unless you plan to do all your solutions with ownship at zero speed which really defeats the purpose of trying to play the game realistically. Submarines are all but impossible to have maintain ordered depth with zero speed and that would be in a dead calm sea, add any sea state at all and the task becomes impossible.

A torpedo attack is simple. Just match the torpedo's speed across the line of sight with that of the target ship's speed across the line of sight and fire. You'll hit every time.

All that being said, it's a game, play it the way you most enjoy it and have fun.

Scott

[Riekopo]

What does the "toggle activate damage control team" button do? I thought that repairs are done automatically? I'm trying to play the last historical mission where an Italian fleet and I attack a British fleet near Sicily. Planes keep coming in and attacking me. I tried staying underwater, but my batteries were draining a lot. So I tried staying on the surface, but kept getting strafed. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Crash dive every time a plane gets near?

The planes seem way OP. It seems like a couple planes can fly in and destroy the Italian ships really easily. I don't really understand the repair system. Is it completely automated? When you click one of the modules the little hammer moves to it. Does that actually change what's being repaired? Is there a best way to repair? Do crew members heal themselves? Some of them turned red.

[maillemaker]

Bear in mind I am a new SH5/WOS player, and I may not understand everything correctly yet. Mostly I like the game, the UI works very well under WOS, but I still have many CTDs and that is frustrating. My advice: save early and often.

OK onto your questions:

One problem I'm having is controlling everything. The UI and controls just seem plain bad. Like how you have to right click to move and stop moving. That is really strange to me.

You can control where your player is looking around either through LMB and drag or RMB which permanently lets you "mouse look" until you RMB out of it to get your cursor back.

I find that RMB is "sticky" in that about 30 percent of the time it does not recocnize that I clicked RMB to get out of or into mouse look mode. I find if I press ESC twice (once to bring up save dialog and once to get out of it) then RMB works again.

From reading the Wolves of Steel FAQ it seems like the bottom three abilities of the Torpedo man are broken so I shouldn't use them. It also suggests that other abilities are broken, but doesn't say which ones specifically. Does anyone know which ones I should avoid?

I couldn't remember either so I just maxed out every ability I could. Some players have abilities that if you try to upgrade it says "You don't have enough points...etc) no mater how many promotions points you seem to have. So I've upgraded every crewman with every ability that was selectable. I don't know if this broke anything or not.

However, I almost never go ask a crewmember to do anything with their special abilities, except the bosun and cook. They will increase your crew's morale and you need your chief with morale or he won't repair things, or at least not very well. SH3 crew micromanagement was a dream compared to this idea that if your chief is feeling sad he won't help get the flooding under control.

Is there a better encyclopedia for ship identification? The vanilla one seems really poor. I'd like to know more about the ships I'm attacking. Like if there is a best place to hit them.

If you press the E key the ship recognition manual will come up. But there are also charts you can select (and when you hover over the list of charts with check boxes use your scroll mouse wheel because it is not obvious that there are more charts in that tiny box to choose from!)

There are additional ship recognition guides and other useful "charts" like minefield maps, mathematic charts, shipping lanes, and more.

Does your submarine take visual damage on the exterior and interior and like break up and explode? From my brief experience it seems like when you die the screen just fades to black.

I have not seen any external damage graphics on uboats. Internally you'll see sparks, flooding, and smoke, and lights going out.

Are there any other mods I should be using with Wolves of Steel? Is there a control guide for Wolves of Steel?

I use the fix Nvidia lights mod and the Criticial Hits v1.2 mod, because I think WoS nerfed the deck gun (or it was nerfed in stock SH5) I expect to be able to sink a merchant ship with 20 HE shells with half of them below the waterline. Yes, there are records of ships taking 80 or more rounds to sink but if I have to expend the entire store of ammo on a single ship it defeats the point of having a deck gun.

I read that planes won't actually attack you. Is this still true?

Absolutely untrue. They will strafe you for sure. I've never seen them actually drop bombs or torpedoes though.

I was playing the last Historical Mission and my Flak gunner shot down like 5 biplanes. Is that normal? He wasn't able to shoot down any monoplanes and they shot me up. I dove and then started sinking and then died from falling too deep. How are you supposed to recover in that situation?

I think shooting aircraft in SH5 is much, much easier than shooting them in SH3+GWX. In SH3+GWX I never engaged aircraft because it was never a sure thing you could shoot it down but it was guaranteed you'd take hull damage that would limit your depth capability.

In SH5 you can kill Swordfish Biplanes with ease. A pair of fighters, though, will tear you up before you can kill one of them - if you are lucky.

Wolves of Steel makes for a very delicate uboat. If you get flooding and you are in deep water you are pretty much toast. It has been said that the Hull Integrity display is basically meaningless. What I find is important is the Pressure Hull subsystem in each compartment. If that reaches 0 and you have flooding you are screwed.

Also Wolves of Steel gives you much finer granularity of systems to take damage, which is cool. Though it is disorienting to me in a crisis that they are labeled in German. You can see the English translation in the bottom pane but that is frustrating at first.

As near as I can tell and have heard, clicking the "hammer" on the chief's icons on the bottom of the screen does nothing. Likewise, clicking on any damaged system and making the little "hammer" start working on it seems to do nothing. It seems all systems get worked on at some unknown rate of repair. I can't even tell if silent running stops repairs or not.

I don't think any Das Boot damage rescue scenes are possible in SH5, but I could be wrong. I typically operate only in deep waters so there is never any bottom for me to rest on.

Death scenes in SH5 are an improvement over SH3 in that instead of just a black ending screen with stats you get a fade to black inside the uboat followed by an external view of your boat sinking into the abyss (or sitting on the bottom). Of course with stock WoS water visibility you won't be seeing much of that cinematic ending unless you mod the water back. :)

As an aside, I notice I get radar contacs for aircraft even if the radar is off.

If you are a veteran SH3 player, the UI will be your biggest hurdle. I still have to stop myself from using the F keys to jump around the boat. But the UI with the bottom officer screens and the other border menus work very well. I seldom use the keyboard for any input except time compression - I use the mouse for all other input.

SH5 has grown on me and you just can't compare the improved graphics of SH5 to SH3. It's awesome to hit a ship in SH5 and watch fountains of fire gout from the ventilator stacks. I think the mushroom clouds of the firery explosion animations are a bit fast compared to "the movies" but still the digitized fire and billowing smoke effects are very realistic looking.

Likewise the blast effects from gunfire and torpedoes on ship hulls is very cool - there is now real internal 3D structure revealed instead of just the 2D skin damage moded into SH3. Likewise when ships break in half you can see actual internal structure.

So right now I'm playing with map contacts on so I can get my eye used to the scale and speeds of ships. And of course I play with all external cameras enabled because the graphics are so fun to watch. Half the fun for me now is making photorealistic screenshots! :) In another six months or so I will probably go back to my old 100% realism, dead-is-dead gameplay technique.

Steve

[Riekopo]

Can you explain the fix Nvidia lights mod and the Criticial Hits v1.2 mod more and link to them? Are they compatible with Wolves of Steel?

I tried manually firing the Flak gun, but I don't know how I would ever be able to hit anything with it. It basically seems impossible to use in manual mode. The Sub Systems being in German really annoys me. I have to get that changed. The game is hard enough for me already. I don't need it to be in a language I don't speak as well.

When I was sinking I tried to blow ballast, but I think one of the crew said negative because it was damaged or something. I was actually able to surface though by doing a full reverse power and staying at high speed on the surface. I was playing one of the historical missions where the German fleet gets attacked in that bay in Norway. For some reason it seemed like my torpedoes were passing right through a British destroyer like it wasn't even there. I changed the torpedo depth to the shallowest possible, but it still wouldn't hit. The destroyer wasn't even moving. It was a 90 degree angle too.

I really don't like how dark the water is with this mod. How can I fix that?

Edit: Some weird things happening as I play the first mission. Why doesn't the navigation map let me go faster than 64x? Every time I try to go higher it resets back to 1x. I went to a Polish port and there was a fishing boat there. Easy prey I thought, but my Deck Gun crew wouldn't fire on it. When I tried to fire on it manually my shells were barely doing any damage. When I tried to shoot it with a torpedo it went right through it. It seems like the Deck Gun barely does any damage even to a little fishing boat. What are the two bars above ships when you attack them? How do I complete the first mission?

[THEBERBSTER]

Regarding real navigation.

The settings can be tweaked in the OFEV

Here is an example where the navigator will give you almost instant dead reckoning any time or the number of times you want it just by pressing the icon.
http://i62.tinypic.com/dxxq44.jpg

This goes for all the real navigation settings can be customized to suit your own game play.

Peter

[THEBERBSTER]

You can customize your own Time Compression settings to suit your game play.

In the TWOS instructions it shows you how to set up the TC

The setting > FriendDetected=1

This could be changed for example to > FriendDetected=4,32

Using the Travel Mode Icon will now allow you to go to 32 times.

Peter