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welcome D.R:yeah:
you'll find lots of help here when you need it


i agree too, SH3+GWX - ssssslickest cat on the block:woot:

I've got a lot of love for SH3+GWX Gold, but it's a big fish in a small pond.

SH4+TMO 2.5 is a damn solid subsim as well for when one tires of the Atlantic.


It's buggy. Not a very good game without mods, and the number of mods needed to polish it to an acceptable level can lead to a very healthy bowl of mod soup. I will say the modders over in SH5Land have done a smashing job of making the game enjoyable. I wish I didn't suffer from constant CTD's because of SH5 not liking 32bit OS's very much :(

I addition to what's been already said about it needing mods to be good (but then it's very good if you ask me, though not quite "there" yet), and having been through the whole process with SH3 from the day it was launched, I'd sum it up by saying that SH5 is, as far as being "finished" goes, about the same place where SH3 was a couple of years after it was released. Not quite "gold" yet, but getting there.

Now, the reason that I personally use both (I'd never give up SH3!) is that SH5 is, and I never thought that possible, even prettier than SH3 (and quite the system hog as a result, I should warn), but most of all me being able to move freely about my boat and interact with the crew.

That being said, if I were new to the franchise today and just wanted to get my feet wet as quickly and painlessly as possible, I'd go with SH3 + GWX and SH3Commander. Three easy steps and your family won't hear from you again for months :DL Eventually you'll want SH5 too, but it won't be for quite a while and by then it probably has its own SuperMod.

SH5, on the other hand, you have to work on a bit before it's good at this stage, with quite a few different mods necessary.

As a certified nub, I have to agree with misha1967.

SH3+GWX+SH3C = :yeah:

Even though the first game in the series I tried was SH5, that's the combo I'm subbing with now. Mainly because my laptop couldn't stand up to the system requirements the game had though. Still, I'm glad I had to go with SH3.

For comparison, 'things I had to do to play the game':

SH5
- Install the game
- Browse Subsim for community recommended mods
- Make a list of those mods and see which ones were compatible with each other
- Download about a gazillion of them
- Figure out a stable loadout order
- Play the game, enjoy the 10 frames per second I was getting and pray to God the bugger doesn't crash

SH3
- Install the game
- Install GWX & SH3C
- Play the game

Even still, SH5 has its own unique draw to it. Other than the nifty looking graphics, it seemed a bit more nub-friendly and it had that roaming about the u-boat which was pretty cool. Gave it a completely different atmosphere.

Maybe I'll try it again one day when I can afford a new, more powerful laptop. :haha:

I must add that I must admit the mod soup problem is not exclusive to sh5.

I don't know how many mods sh5 has but my guess it has far less mods than sh3.

I spend a lot of valuable playing time trying to make different very good sh3 mods to work together as they more often than not conflict with each other. :shifty:

I still love the sh3 + JSGME + shC + mods combination though. I have not found any "game" (sim) better than this one until now. :rock:

It's possible to get yourself into a bit of a soup in SH3 too, of course. So many great mods to choose from.
But as far as I see, in SH5 you pretty much have to get yourself into one if you want to play it. :DL

That's it exactly. You can make quite a soup for SH3, but you don't have to if you're fine with GWX. For SH5, you pretty much have to at this point, but that is being worked on even as we speak. :DL

With a community as active, dedicated and resourceful as this, I'm sure SH5 will experience the same transformation in modding/playing experience in no time :yep:

And as said before, let's hope I'll be ready tech-wise when that day comes. I'd love to give the game a proper spin. :DL

Thanks explaining the SH5 'problem' guys.

So to sum it up:
SH5 is pretty damn awesome if u got a very good laptop or PC and you manage to download and install all necessary mods. Which is not easy and it isn't fun, because when you're doing it wrong the game won't run very well.
When u got those two things you will have a game which is good, but which isn't a 100% finished like SH3 is.

SH5 modders need more time to finish the game. There isn't a super mod for SH5, we hope modders will come up with something like that one day.

My personal opinion on the matter is that I hope Ubi will work together with the modding community when they will develop SH6. Other game developers are doing that aswell.

I'm sticking to SH3 no matter what as my laptop doesnt run SH5, like I said I was just curious to know why you would keep playing SH3 when u got a good system. It's not like I'm new to the game, I used to play SH3 + NYGM years ago. It's just that I've been away from the game for a quite while. Never lost the touch tho...

SH4 is a great one.
Also RFB, Fall of the Rising Sun, Run Silent, Run Deep, Game Fixes Only and Operation Monsoon for the ATO are other
great mods ( larger ).

One major plus for SH4 are the very short loading times, even with mods. I have all three on my desktop, SH3, 4 and 5.

Pretty good summary, Vince.

The Super Mods are almost ready to roll off the production line and there are a few "pseudo" supermods already, it's just that it's still being worked on so much that they are constantly being modified too. Modding the mods, so to speak :DL

That being said, if you follow the baseline guidance on what mods to use and which order, such as in this excellent thread, you've already got a pretty dang awesome game and if you know how to use JSGME, it's as easy as pie putting it together. The only "trouble" occur if you, like me, just have to have "the latest of the bestest" all the time, in which case you end up having to play with your mod soup quite a bit. Just as we all had to back years ago when SH3 was in that phase. I lost count of how many times I toyed with my soup and performed clean reinstalls back then, but it was great fun. To me, anyway. Thing is, already at this point you don't have to with SH5. It has reached the phase where you can get it to look and feel every bit as good as SH3 in a few steps, though more than you need for SH3, which is done in one go.

And yes, SH5 is a system hog. That's the main concern. If you're a quad-core, 4Gb RAM, great graphics card user, no need to worry (and 64-bit OS is highly recommended too). If you have something better, you're golden.

Again: SH3 was quite the system hog in its day. My state of the art system (back then) was still having trouble pushing the frame rates much above 20 but, as I upgraded, it soon became a thing of the past.

So why do I keep playing both? Why don't I just scuttle SH3? Because SH5 isn't SH3. They're both excellent in their own way and, besides, SH3 and I have a long history. I love that girl. She's still beautiful and I ain't letting her go :DL

But if I were just starting out, I'd go with SH3. This isn't dissing SH5 either, because I just know that if SH3 gets you hooked, you'll eventually want SH5. I know because that's how I got there. But SH3 is a great place to start. It's one heck of a sim in its own right, and if it's your cup of tea, you'll stick with the franchise.

Kinda like when I train new shooters. I don't start them out on a 1911 in .45 ACP, even though it's a great pistol, the greatest ever. You don't want your new shooter's first impression from their first range day to be "holy hell! That thing almost tore my wrist off!" I'd rather introduce them to a fine and respectable 9mm and then let them take it from there. In both simming and shooting the objective is the same: You should have fun while at the same time getting a good starting point. The rest is just gravy. And if SH3 isn't fun to you, then sub simming probably isn't what you want to be doing :DL

I agree with you, curently playing SH4 again after big interval, but SH3 has his own unique spirit.
I miss my VIIC/42 sub patroling the coast of Great Britain but first i need to finish my SH4 carrer and then go back again to GWX 3.