Not to mention, our boats are rearmed and refueled instantly, instead of taking a couple of hours, as was the historical reality.

^Good point; forgot to mention that.

On a happier note, though, I can scratch one item off my "list" - Majuro appeared after all (May 1944).

The MW sub base is easy to fix.

Gunnel made it all the way home at 5 knots on auxiliary (also providing high pressure air and battery/AC) on one patrol when all four engines chewed through their reduction gears. An aux engine to simulate all four engines running on extremely reduced output would provide the type of redundancy we expect to see in these boats in the sim. I would think this type of fix would be easy. 2 or more engines damaged = 4 engine power 10%. I suspect then there would be a complaint there was no aux engine graphics or repair priority item detail, etc. ad-infinitem. Leave it as it is and you don't open a can of worms requiring additional support for the next 6 months.

From the game designer side, I can see some reasoning behind not spending work on additional engine redundancy code. A strong incentive to keep the player from throwing all caution to the wind with no repercussion to taking extreme risk is the chance you'll have to restart from a save when you lose all propulsion power or damage excedes boyancy. This is what we all want right? A sub that cannot be damaged beyond the ability to repair and super-human crew that cannot be killed and can see through walls.
-Pv-

LOL:rotfl:

I do think, though, that the out-of-the-box damage model is a bit off. Seems like there's an unrealistic gap between how easy it is to suffer extreme damage and the crew's ability to repair it. Every depth charge hit seems to cause critical flooding. You get four compartments flooding and each one says something like "time to flood 3 minutes/time to repair 35 minutes." Simultaneously, the efficiency and health ratings for the damage repair team gets cut in half. I mean, come on. Of course there should be some chance that the player's sub will get killed by a direct hit from DC - but VERY few DC should be a direct hit. As it is, it seems like it's a little too easy to evade the destroyers, but a little too easy for them to kill you if they do find you. I'm basing this on accounts from surviving subs and from patrol reports of subs that did not survive the war.

There were 52 U.S. subs lost in the war. There were a lot more than 52 depth-chargings....

2c.

I know I'm kinda late here, but i really wouldn't mind a few things:

1. I really liked the "return to base" option in SHIII;
2. A surrender option would be good for those hopeless moments;
3. If my rudder get blown off as it has, it would be nice to have another option other than to end game;
4. "Rudder, Rudder";
5. Really wouldn't mind the assistance of the WO in figuring solutions in part or in whole without being in the auto target mode, and
6. A major future development would have the torp rooms modeled.

I'm not really into technical issues, besides they have surfaced before. However, thanks to the continued efforts of the developers and the fantastic modding community, the enjoyment I receive from this sim on a daily basis far exceeds the monetary outlay I extended to acquire it...and I bought two! :up:

Edit: Can I have another avitar? That Soundman looks a little je ne sais quoi!

On the navigation map, you see a large amount of land east of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. These are polders. The norteastern part was water until 1957, and the southern part until 1968.
It would make SH4 -and SH3 as well- more accurate if that got fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee

Actual bug bugs?
 

I installed SH 3 and lost the ability to play DVD movies on my computer. So when I went to get SH 4 I bought the Direct2Drive version, figuring I wouldn't have to deal with that anti piracy hassle. Nope. With the D2D version of SH 4 installed, I get sound but no video from any DVD movie I try to play.
Uninstall SH 4 and the video works, reinstall SH 4 got a black screen with any movie.

Item 2 - ET phone home, what in the world do you want?! Every time I start SH 4, my firewall pops up and tells me it's trying to access the internet. I deliberately did not activate the multiplayer option because I only play single player, why would SH 4 need to access the internet for a single player game? I activated it online because manual activation didn't work, kept telling me my keycode was invalid. Isn't a problem with the keycode itself, cuz the online activation happily accepts it. Once it's activated why would it need to access the internet after that?

Item 3, why does loading and unloading take so long? Nearly 3 minutes even after hitting escape twice to blow past the intro stuff, and exiting takes 5 minutes worth of whirring hard disk before I have my system back. Actually faster to just push the button to shut down to cold iron and restart, what could exiting the program possibly need to read or write to disk that takes five minutes on a Maxtor 6L160M0?

1. The game includes a checkbox in the installer related to Windows Media Codecs needed to run the intro movies and the history telling movies. There should be no connection with the DVD software. As a fix, try and install Windows Media Player 11 after installing SH4.

2. The game includes a 3rd party component that communicates to a server to determine how long people play the game. As far as I know, no other information is being send (so no personal data of any kind).

3. that's because you have very little RAM memory installed. possibly just 512 mb... The minimum requirement is 1 Gb and the recommended quantity is 2 Gb. The data being read from the harddrive when exiting is information that Windows retreives from the swap file and brings back into the RAM.

I have issues with video and SH4 as well. I tried installing WMP 11, no dice.

When I restart my machine, WMP will play video, and it plays the opening videos on SH4—the first time I play SH4 after restarting. After I close SH4, I can only hear the audio part of a video, I get no picture. Oddly, even though the 2 intro movies won't show on SH4, the briefing movies DO show.

Restarting the machine cures the videos, and they will continue to work as long as I don't start SH4. BTW, it's not just WMP, I went and got a few other players after this problem started and they have the exact same issue.

One possible thing, I updated my nvidea driver, though the breaking video is 100% linked to running SH4. Perhaps some incompatibility there...

tater

"1. The game includes a checkbox in the installer related to Windows Media Codecs needed to run the intro movies and the history telling movies. There should be no connection with the DVD software. As a fix, try and install Windows Media Player 11 after installing SH4."

Got that, since my DX9c was from 2005, I let it go ahead and install the DX and Media codec updates.

"2. The game includes a 3rd party component that communicates to a server to determine how long people play the game. As far as I know, no other information is being send (so no personal data of any kind)."

Spyware is spyware, personally I don't care if everyone on the planet knows my mother's kindergarten teacher's hat size (6 7/8), problem is hackers can use spyware and adware as a pipeline. After that remote procedure call trojan a few years back, I whipped out the credit card and spent $35 bucks to call MS tech support, they didn't have a clue. A week later they weren't answering the phones, and issued a massive security patch to plug the hole in XP service pack 1. Since then I have automatic updates disabled, because that's what downloaded the trojan. They want to know how long the game is being played they should take a survey, much safer. Sneaky approach even for a subsim game, they couldn't ask if you want to participate in a marketing survey or disable the "feature"?

"3. that's because you have very little RAM memory installed. possibly just 512 mb... The minimum requirement is 1 Gb and the recommended quantity is 2 Gb. The data being read from the harddrive when exiting is information that Windows retreives from the swap file and brings back into the RAM."

That's possible:

http://forums.flightsim.com/ts/user_files/124942.jpg

At or near recommended specs for most things, but 1 gig of RAM I'm right at the minimum. About time to upgrade, hey? :yep:

As for rebooting, tried that - since I started from cold iron this morning and haven't run SH 4 yet, I put in a couple DVD movies, black or gray screen (depending on realplayer, powerDVD, or windows media player) with sound, no video. I'll take a shot at reinstalling (more sure-fire to uninstall and install the latest, all too often the updates are buggy) the codecs.

__________

The intro movies are in WMV format and played using the installed codecs, briefings are in BINK format and played with a specific dll installed with the game.

the resetting of the message box every time you start the game. it gets repetitive and annoying when you have to fiddle with it every time you start the game. roger on the "return to base option"

You can adjust that in the menu 1024_768 file. Do a search in the mods forum or just ask over there on how to to it. I'd tell you how, but I'm not on my home computer right now.

I should probably mention here, don't have the same symptoms as Tater - I have the D2D version so it don't access the DVD drive when SH 4 starts, the intro movies in SH 4 play perfectly every time. Running DVD movies with SH 4 installed I get a blank screen, uninstall SH 4 the DVD movies play fine. Totally lost as to what the connection might be, the D2D version don't even require a DVD AFAIK.