Originally Posted by Rykaird

So I've been doing very bad things to American shipping for the last few days in my IX. The only mod I'm currently using is the German sound mod.

I've had no serious bugs or issues, and not a single CTD. I ran into a corrupted save where I stopped getting credit for sinkings but it seems to be the old "don't save while underwater" rule. Once I started saving only when surfaced and at 1x TC it has not repeated.

The TDC and the rest of the sub functions almost identically to SHIII, so the learning curve is basically non-existent, which was a very nice surprise. I expected a re-training period but I was able to hop in and sink stuff. Only the radar was new to me.

The most notable difference between SHIV 1.5 and SHIII GWX, besides the graphics, is the difficulty. Ships in 1.5 are more plentiful, and sink easier. Destroyer escorts seem less effective, and I can actually engage air targets in gun duels and win. Heck, I made repeated raids on Midway over three successive nights that rivaled Pearl Harbor for damage. I'm racking up 100K+ tons per mission easy, with the only non-realism setting being map contact updates set to on.

I really miss SH3 Commander, in particular the adjustable TC settings, because I can't sit in my bunk at 256 TC and listen to the grammophone, which forces me to spend way more time than I would like on the nav map. I also miss some of the basic reports my navigator would give, and being able to manually operate the depth sounder, and some basic charting tools. As you can tell, these "losses" are all pretty minor.

The "hero" character functions seem a bit overpowered. Even the basic Captain ability to call in an airplane to give you a multi-hundred mile overview of targets, while greatly simplyifying game play, is hard to believe as being accurate. I'll give Trigger Maru a try, that may put the difficulty level back in.

I haven't tried the stadimeter for distance calculation yet. Does it work? I've heard the mast heights are broken.

On the positive side, I really like the new crew and damage management systems. The graphics are simply fantastic, and with the stickied guidelines for NVidia cards, I have a great widescreen image with no sparklies or other weirdness.

The crew still freaks me out a bit. Why do they look at me like that? Do I have spinach in my teeth? Are they mass murderers plotting their next crime? Sometimes their eyes are red like devils, and other times missing entirely, like a ghost crew. And always, always watching me.

Given the goal of this release was to have U-Boats in the Pacific using the SHIV graphics engine, I would rate this as a clear success. Compared to my initial experience at release with SHIV, which sent me back to the Atlantic until now, this is a working, stable product with beautiful graphics.

Since I'm a U-Boat guy, I'm not sure if I'll stay here or GWX 2.0 over the long haul. But I consider 1.5 to be quite viable, and much, much better than SHIV 1.0 in every respect.

Plus:

- SHIV graphics are just amazing, from ships to waves to sunsets
- Crew management
- Damage repair system
- Stable - I've had no CTDs and no major bugs

Minus:

- Too easy
- No SH3 Commander
- Losses of interaction with the sub
- Few patrols before end of the war
- All the GWX goodness (some of which may be in TM, I haven't tried it yet)