Learning Curve and Mod Recommendations

[Camber]

Hi everyone, enjoying SH3 a lot so far even though I got in on the game late (played SH2 on Gametap and decided I wanted to give SH3 a try).

I have a few questions, I'm getting the hang of the game on the easier realism levels and want to work on trying to get to more advanced simming.

Can anyone recommend a good progression of things to add in as time goes by? I'm playing with the fuel/oxygen/battery limitations on, but haven't played with manual targeting or anything along those lines.

What's a good general progression of things to learn to get to where you can play on 100% realism?

Also, in regards to mods; I tried to download a series of mods to play with, including Wolfies Tweek Pack, Milk, MooseMeasure, Nomograph, Sound Trainer, MVP, contrast mod, course resolver, and bearings mods.

Unfortunately, one or more of these mods also made some UNdocumented changes to my settings; one of them turned off radio contact updates (yes, I verified that this was set properly in my realism settings) and a variety of other things that, as a newbie, I'm still dependent on.

Not to mention, when I tried to disable them through the mod manager that I downloaded from this site, they removed essential non-modded tools from the navigation map. I ended up having to reinstall SH3.

Can someone give me a few mods to try that add flavor and useful tools to the game, but WILL NOT disable features that I'm still dependent on while learning?

[Kalach]

Welcome aboard Lt. Camber :)

I use - and recommend - RuB and SH3 Commander.
RuB contains many great mods like the navigation tools and such.
It will take away the 'tails' on map contacts which will mean you can't just draw a line through the contact and find them, but still isn't too hard to work out.

SH3 Commander doesn't affect gameplay (i don't think) but will give the ships random skins to make them look different each patrol :) . And will also give you a nice log of your patrols, time at sea, total tonnage, etc.

[Camber]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm already using SH3Commander but am having a few problems with it (it seems to have eliminated the audible and text box alerts about new contacts).

How much difficulty does RuB add to the game? I want to take baby steps.

I'm thinking about attempting manual targeting when I play some patrols tonight. I expect to fail miserably :)

[oRGy]

The new version of IuB should be out very shortly... It includes RuB though with some tweaks for playability, for example the map contacts are more like the original game.

[gouldjg]

Orgy

Can you give me a run down on what is going to be included and what difficulty levels you are achieving i.e. sensors, Damage DD ai.


Thanks

[Camber]

Hey, no hijacking my thread! :)

What's the difference between RuB and IuB?

[gouldjg]

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Camber]

Another newbie question:

I see people talk about stopping and submerging to listen for contacts on the hydrophone. I get the basic concept of this, but have some questions.

How often should you do this?

What speed, if any, should you be at when you do this?

What's the best way to get the heading and speed of the contact once you have it on the hydrophone?

[Col7777]

One tip I will give, make sure you back up anything you change first, there are a lot of mods out there that you may or may not like and also a few that conflict with each other.
There is a program that lets you install mods and un-install if you don't like them 'JGSME ' I think it's called, though if I'm wrong someone will rectify that, I haven't used it yet to be honest as I've not added that many mods so I can't comment too much on that.