First timer with SH5 needs help and pointers
 

So, I bought SH5 from Steam and had a quick tutorial and a bit of looking around. Coming from SH3 (and Uboat) this one is confusing to say the least.

First off: Is there a Ship ID book anywhere in the vanilla game? I can't seem to find one.

Then:
I know there is a clock at the navigator's desk (and 2 in the radio/sound rooms but they have missing hands) but it would be really useful to have the time displayed in a 24h format. Is there a place where I can find local time as well?

Weather report: Can one get a better report than to look out to see if it's raining or not?

Deck gun: So I misclicked through the binoculars on a friendly freighter and the crew manned the gun and went trigger happy. To stop them I first had to tell one of my officers to man the gun (as if it wasn't already!) then tell him to secure the gun. However, through the binoculars I saw the ship was still selected. Any way to deselect that target and NOT having the crew shoot everything to smithereens?

Any hints and tips welcome!

I do plan on modding it eventually but first I want to get a feel for the vanilla version before going mod crazy.

Abandon vanilla and install TWoS mod. Complete, stable, fun and you can use an SH3 GUI.

Good hunt!:Kaleun_Cheers:

Fitzcarraldo :Kaleun_Salute:

I do plan on modding it eventually but like I said in the first post, I really want to look at the vanilla first.

For me, looking at the vanilla is lost time. SH5 is modded or nothing. I think is the opinion of all the subsimmers.

Best regards.

Fitzcarraldo :Kaleun_Salute:

1. Ship ID book is available only when you lock a specific target into the periscope, and click on the Executive Officer (XO) icon in the lower right corner and invite him to participate in targeting: XO determines the type of ship (in the dialog window, the inscription "warship" / "merchant"), you click on "warship" / "merchant" and the manual pages appear, according to which you choose a particular ship.

2. 24-hour time format is displayed only in the logbook in the lower right corner of the screen, opposite any event or order. There are no other options for finding out the time in a 24-hour format.

3. There are no weather reports.

4. It is impossible to cancel the artillery fire, you can only choose another target. In addition, how to stop firing by removing the crew from the gun with the F5 key, it remains only to get away from this place until the ship is out of reach or it is necessary to dive.

Thanks tons, Alpheratz! :Kaleun_Salute:

Yeah I was confused over what you said there about the ID book since apparently I can't use it in the tutorial, which is peculiar to say the least. Now on my first test patrol, it's there alright! Sweet!

Seems there are more peculiarities with stock SH5 than I thought. The sound man is doing sod all, I have to manually listen to get any bearings (no map updates). No way I have found to communicate with the sound man, no track target, no report closest, nothing, he's just sitting there with his feet up pretending to be working.

I am beginning to wonder if my crew is active at all.

The deck gun mechanism is a bit of a mess if I can't tell them to hold fire.

EDIT: Looking through the config file for commands, there seems to be commands for everything I remember from SH3 like track/report nearest, hold fire, target water line, report weather and so on and so on but no keys have been bound to these. Not sure if I'm ready to mess around with that file yet. Been way too long since I did any editing of the SH3 files.

Well, there is "hold fire" command in Watch Officer's command menu but I'm using TWoS, no idea if this was something that is also in unmodded game or added by a mod...

Looks like this weekend is the time to look into that config file. I found several commands there that are game changers, all puns intended.

As for twos, I need to have a look at the recent reports both here and on steam, about an update from Ubi conflicting with twos.

TWoS works perfect for me on steam

Installed and tested twos. It does bring the game up to sim standards. A bit more cumbersome to use than gwx in sh3 but I put that on sh5 and its code.

One thing I haven't really found is a plain tutorial mission using twos features. It sure would be useful.

A couple of days later, testing twos, I'm really not sure if I will continue with SH5 with or without twos. Features disabling/re-enabling themselves whenever they feel like it, watchcrew refusing to move, crash to desktop... Not sure if I have the patience to spend the little gaming time I have on this.

is that with TWoS or without TWoS if configure right is pretty much stable

With twos. I don't know about stable. There were so many things going haywire but then again, that's pc for you, all these different configurations.

I did enjoy twos over vanilla but I ended up wth so many headaches I think I'll stick with SH3/GWX and Uboat for now