Going to try SH4
 

Hi, been playing SH3/GWX for a year or so and loving it. Now I am going to give SH4 a go and have just ordered the gold edition.

I have been reading though this forum looking for info on the best setup for me, re mods etc, and at the moment my plan is this:

Install game
Install RFB v.2
Install RFB patch
Install RSRD campaign

I was undecided over RFB and TMO, but in the end I chose RFB as apparently it is the more 'realistic' of the two. The RSRD seems like a must have.

I am really just looking for some confirmation that I'm going down the right road as far as my choice of mods goes, and also if there are any other mods I will need to supplement those mentioned- especially if those mods were to 'fix' issues.

I'm presuming that SH4 doesn't require a screen resolution mod fix like SH3?

No matter what advice you get in here, including mine, you will have to go as far as it takes to satisfy your own curiosity on how each mod plays out. The problem with getting various advice is, none of the advice givers knows the level of patience you will go to in order to research your perfect combination.

Personally, I have posted my combo list, but the list itself does no justice to the amount of reading and study I had to go through, and eventually allowed me to make a mod of my own, a sound mod to offer to the community, along with understanding how it all works and why some mods overwrite other mod files and therefore arent compatible.. so I learned a lot about the "re-making" of the game by the modding community in the process.

Personally, I found it useful to play enough missions to run into some issues, see the world as it looks stock before mods.. and then slowly add, pick and choose mods based on what I wanted to see changed or fixed. It gives no perspective at all to see only the nice eye candy and never know what was broke and how bad.. you just simply become accustomed to the eye candy otherwise without being able to determine how big a change was involved.

I can also teach you how to get the same high rewards and kick-ass scores on 100% realism that I can systematically reproduce too.. lol :)

This idea just came to me while posting this.. if someone could burn a ISO of every major useful mod into one large RAR file.. how awesome would that be? For someone to have multiple types of experiments with all the files at their fingertips?

Welcome to the dark side! :D

Well, there's 'realism' and there's 'realism'. RFB strives to duplicate real operations and real difficulty, which can sometimes be easy and sometimes hard. The concept behind TMO isn't to make the game more difficult and less real, but to make the player behave in a more realistic fashion. Let's say the Japanese never set their depth charges for more than 200 feet. RFB might keep that precisely, which is more 'realistic'. TMO might set them for as deep as 600 feet, because the reality was that the submariners might not know they couldn't be set for more than 200 feet and having them that way, while realistic in a technical sense, gives the gamer information he wouldn't have had in real life, which means we get to cheat in the name of 'realism'.

The above example has nothing to do with the actual settings in either mod, and is just an example. But you get the idea. All of that said, I prefer RFB because while I like my game to feel 'real' to me, I don't usually bother to remember actual settings of that sort, and so I don't need to be pushed to play realistically, since I'm pretty bad at it anyway. Even with auto-targetting I tend to get pretty low tonnage scores simply because I tend to imagine it's really happing to me and so play in a fairly cautious manner.

But that's just me. I'm not trying to suggest one over the other, just point out the difference in the different concepts between the two mods and how they each deal with 'realism'.

No. It has setting choices and runs fine at several different resolutions. Mine is set to match my screen at 1440x900.

RFB fixes most of the things that are fixable so your pretty good on that score. For realism you have a good start.

The fleetboat TDC and PK take some getting use to, work differently than Uboats.

RSRD is a good mod and it will send you to the right places but if you miss whatever it is that is in the area there isn't much else to shoot at so you have to freelance a bit.

This link will give you some good ideas about where to be and when to be there. http://www.combinedfleet.com/battles These battles are well scripted in RSRD and can get quit exciting.

There are a ton of mods out there and as you get use to SH4 you'll want to check some of them out.

Welcome to the PTO :salute:

Magic

That's great fellas, cheers. Now I can confidently proceed!

@Sailor Steve- Gimme the dark side! :arrgh!:- Like you I like it to feel 'real'. As much as I like sinking the enemy I also enjoy just sailing around and managing the boat, so if I see nothing I don't feel cheated by the game, in fact the opposite. It only serves to build the excitement and tension for the next encounter. Everything you're saying tells me RFB is right for me. :up:

@Magic452- Definately going to check out that link. Might even just show up to spectate! And the freelancing bit you mention is right up my street.

All good then. Finally, is there some issue with the stadimeter in SH4?, I've seen a few mods addressing the stadimeter but not sure if that's due to a problem with the original or not.

Thanks again! :salute:

For the record, the submariners knew full well about the 200ft depth charge rule, and made good on it, till that damn Andrew J. May let it slip to the Japs that we could go far deeper than that.

NEVER GIVE UP THE SHIP!
Unless they have cake

Why not try them all? Its only a couple of downloads for TMO, and there's also Operation Monsoon (OM) which is also great.

With the marvel that is the generic mod enabler, you can change between them at you leisure anytime.

I hope you enjoy it, but don't forget your roots :yeah:

Do not fear Berbunch! The Four word story game will always be my first love!:woot:

Andrew May was a 'great' guy indeed. I am just reading that "Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, later estimated that May's security breach cost the United States Navy as many as ten submarines and 800 crewmen killed in action"

Hey, that's me!

You say that "damn" as if you were actually there. Also for the record, I mentioned that my 'example' had nothing to do with anything, and was just an example off the top of my head. We were talking about the difference between two mods, in case you missed it.

Still don't know how he escaped prosecution:stare:

try congressional immunity for starters.

I think if you keep your late war U-Boat instincts alive, you'll do alright.

Remember, you have the dreaded 5 inch naval gun turret at your disposal, too

And all your torpedoes internal - great advantage... And 2 extra tubes front and back