I agree with that, I don't want instant gratification either. My favourite sim is/was Grand Prix Legend, a game I had to play for weeks, even months before I could finally set up my car correctly and compete for the top places.
But I think there can definitely be a middle ground between "action all around" and "gameplay wasteland". What has kept me playing for 2 years now is the feeling of the hunt and the escape but even that is wearing thin because of its predictability. I just wish there was more to the game than that.

IMO it has nothing to do with mods or no mods. Mods add content, but they don't add new gameplay. In SH3 no matter what mod you use the cruise from Kiel to North of Britain and beyond is still void of anything to do.

Actually it's that boredom that got me into modding. Somewhere between Spain and Freetown I had nothing to do in game so I thought, ok, I want a sboot and short trips to the Brit coast :) But it's the same thing, just on a smaller scale and the hunt is nowhere near as exciting, so meh.

Really? Nothing to do with mods? Fascinating that, considering it's mods that either "enhance, "advance" or "alter" gameplay....to give the game player something extra!
Now, i'm not picking a fight here, but really, that's what a mod is, in it's simplest form, file or files that alter a game......

That is why i thanked the modders, because the "stock" SH3 would have been just that, stock........

I agree that mods "enhance" gameplay, for example the GUI mods for SH3 enhance manual targetting. But they don't "add" gameplay, if SH3 had no mechanism for manual targetting programmed in, there would be nothing to enhance.

If you take my points in the OP, even if you don't agree with them, it's a fact that 5 years of mods didn't change anything on these matters.

Absolutely take your point........:up:

Which is not totally true, to be honest.
The real navigation mod brought quite some new gameplay. It wasn't perfect, mostly because of the flat SH-world I think. But I was pretty astonished how well you still could work with sunrise/set times and the night sky.
And I spent quite some time 'real navigation' instead of just zipping through the ocean.

It even brought up one of the things you brought up: if you wouldn't use the game's GPS-keep-on-course-functionality by just setting the course yourself on the compass, your boat would even get adrift in rough weathers which could make the whole process of estimating your position even more interesting. And intercepting reported convoys all of the sudden become quite a challenging and uncertain issue.

If that's not what you would additional gameplay elements beyond the release version, then I don't know what will be ;)

Hmm, I think the realnav mod is proof that a real new element of gameplay isn't doable by just mods (unless the game structure is that open, but SH3 wasn't) and is mostly in the hands of the devs.

Real nav aimed to bring new gameplay, but it failed because the game had no provision for that, at least not enough. The sun and stars were here so you could find your position with a decent accuracy even with the cylindrical world.

But in terms of game it was more or less equally boring as the stock system. First there's a big flaw of the "blinking pixel" that gives away the position of your sub on the map, removing all incentive to even bother.
And then, even at low TC rates you had to keep clicking on the compass every 10 seconds to maintain course because the "drift" was so poorely modeled that your boat would just run in circle if you didn't pay attention.

Those things make the GPS system look acceptable :woot:

So why not just play single missions if the journey is so boring to you?
I like wondering if I'm going to get buzzed by aircraft. I like the wondering what I'm gong to encounter in the next grid, I like calculating an intercept on a convoy that's 150km away and seeing if I get them - I did this just last night and had to recalculate my intercept thre times because the convoy kept changing course. It was a fun chase that I enjoyed, and when I finally caught up with them I felt like I earned that tonnage.
These are all aspects of "the journey" which are fun, and they make up more than 10 - 20% of the gameplay.

SOMEBODY SPEAKING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!? OH MY GOD!

Very good post Mikhayl, hit the hammer right on the nail.

Hopefully SH5, once DRM/OSP/KACK has been removed, will allow modders to correct these shortcomings. If its as modable as they say then I have every faith the modders will make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. :salute:

One of my complaints in the OP is "And the fact that your presence in the game world is meaningless." How am I going to get that immersion in single missions?

What game action did you actually perform before the convoy was reported?
Yesterday I spent 20 minutes traveling from Pearl to Tokyo with absolutely nothing to do except re-cranking up TC after a radio message. Sure I wondered what I'd find on my patrol zone, but this isn't a gameplay element.
And that's what the "journey" is about, intercepting a convoy is the action, because once it starts, even with GPS waypoint you actually get to do something. But all the time between port and contact (either visual or on map), you don't have anything to do except "wondering".
"Wondering" isn't a game action, it's just not relevant to my points. With a better navigation system and more detailed simulation of the boat you would still have to wonder, actually you'd wonder even more.

Aircraft attacks in SH3 are just as boring as radio messages, precisely because of stuff I find lacking in the OP.
For me it always goes that way:

-surfaced, TC 1024.
-aircraft spotted, TC 1.
-crash dive, wait 30 seconds.
-ahead slow, level at 80m, TC to 1024 for a couple game hours.
-surface, ahead standard, TC 1024.

Boring. With a good navigation system you would have things to do, like estimate your position at the time of diving and recalculate your route to take into account the different speed underwater. The same kind of things that are FUN to do with manual targetting, because the player is involved.
In SH3 it's just "ok, nuisance over, now where are the ships, when do I get to actually do something".

:yawn:

O.k., firstly new gameplay elements introduced by mods are a rare thing, right. Secondly they also cannot reach the quality of things the developers can do, of course.
But I still think that it was a whole new element in gameplay nonetheless. It gave me something to do during the cruise, not constantly but in relatively short frequency at least. It also changed some of the already existing elements as well. Intercepting a radio reported contact was more interesting and finding your way back into your own harbour could be a bit of a challenge as well.

I give you that this can be destroyed by the blinking pixel thing and the constant course corrections. But while I never had the first problem the latter one was quite annoying but very infrequent - i.e. only in very stormy conditions.

I was going to craft quite a long and in-depth response to this post but after reading it I think I've found your problem. I'll just let you read this instead.

You've got a subjective personal opinion based on your own experience and are trying to present it as a "fact" about the game being boring. It's stupid. ......

Whoa, Kapitanleutnant, easy there. You made a point, don't clutter it with insults. :salute:

So instead of a well thought out argument, you chose to post a bunch of insults, and I'm the stupid. You win.

(rewriting this out of respect for Neal's request)

See this is your first problem - you don't actually have a point from which a real discussion can progress. Certainly nothing that can be argued with, because it's your personal subjective opinion. It is not a fact, but you've presented it as such and then expect people to counter it - and when they do counter with their own experience (which is different from yours) you just go BLAR BLAR BLAR THAT'S WRONG.

Pretty much.

May I suggest you guys take your fascinating exchange of opinions to PM? :doh: