I say good on the lot of you for making a stand:up:

I caved in and bought the game, I got it cheap at Amazon uk £22 - I thought it worth the risk.

Downside - yes there are bugs , you've all read about them. Obviously the DRM. The first weekend outage didn't affect me much. The second outage did, can't tell you how frustrating it was to not be able to play the "new" game.

Upside - Tonight, in a massive storm in the atlantic (thunder, lightning , stormy seas) I ran into a convoy protected by only 1 dd. Sat myself infront , at periscope depth and waited for them to come to me. The dd went past me at about 1000 meters, could only see him now and again - the waves were so big.

First freighter we've been tracking looms out of the storm, I let him have an eel (set to slow) whilst its travelling I line up on the next and loose another. It's happy times so I'm feeling brave , I keep the scope up and watch as the first hits - pretty fireworks , he must have been carrying arms. He's a goner, slowly sinks as I watch

The second eel misses the target so I re-line up , recalculate and let the eel go. 30 seconds later it hits and the ship snks, check behind - the dd is homing in on me , I check depth under keel and dive to 50 meters, speed set to 3. As i reach 45 meters I hear the second torp hit, lucky shot , can't hear her sinking but she must be crippled.

I cut engines and let the "sound guy" do his job. The dd sails overhead and starts searching my old position, I've cut to 2 knots now and am sinking. I know I have an extra 50 meters or so before I have to worry and the dd seems to be searching the wrong area at least 2k away

I chance my luck , set speed to 3 and bring the sub up to periscope depth, look behind me and sure enough the dd is searching the wrong area (about 2k away) but better still , there's a freighter right in my sights. Again I lose an eel and 20 seconds or so later it hits, she goes down too - three sinkings and a possible cripple. This time I go all the way down and slowly move in the direction of the convoy. "Sound guy" reports the dd searching and then about 10 mins later moving away. I follow him till we loose him, wait an hour then bring the boat up.

We then head in the direction of the convoy (obviously we plotted their direction whilst we were down below) at Flank (extreme) speed. At this point I go below as there is a broadcast I want to hear on the radio(radio Germany mod).

30 mins or so later we see the crippled tanker. By now one of the bugs has kicked in (or its lag from the server, or lag from my machine) either way I can't lock the target. We get in pretty close (the weather is really awful) he's not zigzagging and he's only capable of about 2 knots or so. I target by eye (and luck) set to fast and let him have it - the feeling as it hit and he sank I really can't describe.

We then dived to 50 meters and I saved (yes you can do that) and left the game.

Notice I wasn't running from crew member to crew member, most of what I did , I did from the conning tower. I seriously believe that this game MAY go far

Honestly - it's not SHIII GWX , but by crikey I love it.

Your so mistaken it's funny.
I know exacly what I'm missing, one just has to brouse these forums.
I do hope your right about one thing though, being a matter of time.
But that depends on Ubi, not me or your opinion.

I'm still holding out, not too difficult really, plenty of other games to keep me occupied. There's no point spending good money on something which is going to be a pain in the backside most of the time (the server outages are but one example).

The posters claiming that they have experienced no DRM related problems are the lucky few, that or they are mindlessly defending the game despite not being able to play it, it's hard to tell these days. Some of the posts on here are straight out of an advertisement for the game, honestly, these people should be put on Ubi's PR payroll!

I guess I am a bit of a mixed bag......

I don't own the game. I won't buy it due to the DRM. Once that is gone - I will buy it. The funny thing is - I have played it. Not illegally - but a friend bought it and I have tried a bit of modding on his pc at his request. In doing so, I have also gotten a little play time in.

Let me say this - the game has ALOT of potential. But its currently unrealized. The FPS side of things don't bother me. Yes, I wish it was optional so that a player could CHOOSE to walk about or just jump around (or hit a hotkey and let the pc do the work of moving you to whatever station at a run or walk). The biggest gripes I have with the gameplay is the gui, targetting and bugs.

Let me give you an example of one issue I have. Lets say I use just basic autotargetting. It gives me the 1/2/3 and shows the same for the ship. These adjust based on the speed setting of the torp. Sounds good.... but what if I am firing a long range shot? The numbers don't correspond to any adjustable range - so if your shooting long, you are guessing once you get past the #3. It would be better to say give me a run of 1:30 and show me where the target and torp are.... then adjust your run time to where the numbers are at usable lengths (with the understanding that longer ranges introduce longer discrepencies) and then use that to fire. I mean - this is AUTO shot.... But its not really auto - its point, line up the dots and try to hit. It would work great for newbies to have a hotkey to increase of decrease the dot range - otherwise they have to use the sub to move to where something lines up. In other words - oh crap I misjudged it - hit EXTREME SPEED AHEAD to get the dots right.... Not a good way to do auto-targeting in my view. The idea is sound - the implementation needs work. Remember - that is on AUTO....

I haven't played long enough to work with manual tdc yet. Depth controls leave me lacking the patience to do it in my limited time with the game.

Now - on the flip side - something I think the devs did right - at least from the introduction to the player side - is the deck gun. The expected shell travel graphic is wonderful, as it lets a new player jump right in to the use of the station. It would be great if we could flip that off as an option and put in rough ranges at higher levels of difficulty - or just introduce more error in the graphic - but the concept was implemented very well on that function.

SH5 is much like its predecessors in that it is a work in progress. It likely will be a great game down the road. Should Ubi remove the OSP, it will be a great game I gladly purchase. If not, I will play it on the occasional weekend when I am at my friend's house. Its up to Ubi how badly they want my ~$50.00.

And there are posters who do not own the game and have no first hand experience any of the bugs or outages who then accuse people of lying about it.

Well, it does seem strange that the servers go down, there's about ten threads a minute posted on the subject, and yet there are many who claim they've never seen an outage. Bit odd don't you think?

No it doesn't. Is it possible there is more than one server globally?
Also, if you look at the posts again you'll notice that a lot of the guys experiencing an outage where based in Europe.

I can only think of one poster who claims never to have seen an outage, and I take what he says with a pinch of salt.

Have I missed anyone else?

It is possible, but has it been confirmed? I was under the impression that both US and EU users connected to a server located in Canada?

I'm sure many of the posters on here, experiencing said faults, would disagree with your calling it hearsay.

And not having experienced an outage once I find it odd that you think it's so common. I'm in the US, Kansas to be precise. Only play during primtime M-F and Weekends.

I find it somewhat ridiculous that so many individuals who haven't even purchased the game feel the need to go on and on about how bad the bugs are and the server outages based on heresay.

I wonder if the outages have anything to do with location of player.
From what robbo (and others) said it sounds like Ubi gave tha allied side a secret weapon, DRM. Something along the lines of the Philidelphia experiment, only its the sub that disappears. Death Ray, Magnetic.

It's posts like his that cause me to chomp at the bit, but it's nice to see I'm not the only one that's still being obstinate.:DL

I don't know. I'm sure you could be right. If that is the case then the only other explanation of why some are experiencing outages and others not, is the time difference. If Europe suffers an outage in the early evenings, that's lunchtime in parts of the US, so I conclude there are less players based in the US online at the time the server goes down.

Some people here have know each other for several years. And when one of their long time fellow gamers state how the game is going for them they trust their words much further then mere 'heresay'.

That does seem plausible, it would certainly explain why some have experienced it, and not others. We still don't really know what set-up they are using, as they have not given any official info on servers.

I've bought every Silent Hunter that's ever come out. But after all the free entertainment over here over the DRM stuff, I'll stick with SH 4. Maybe in a few months if they get the bugs worked out.