Originally Posted by Mikhayl
...and stuff I hope SH5 will adress.
Aside from the many little (or not so little) details that SH3 missed, there's some big gameplay flaws that kill the game for me:
-Boring navigation. You click on the map to put waypoints up to your patrol zone, then hit the time compression and just wait until something happens. Something being either an aircraft spotted, or a ship spotted. This brings me to the next point:
-Boring u-boat simulation. Let's face it, this aspect is almost totally absent from SH3. No separate engine management. No meaningful use of compressed air. No actual ballast. The boat handles like an arcade game. Forward, back, right, left, dive, surface, level. Trim dives aren't necessary, engines don't overheat, nothing breaks down.
The bottom line is, there's absolutely nothing to do in game between the moment you leave port and the moment you make contact with the enemy, except for the aforementionned waypoints and pressing the time compression key. Boring. You might as well have a random mission generator and start within visual range of enemy shipping.
-Boring campaign. Sure, it's somewhat randomized, enemy skills and ASW evolve, but then what? There's the obvious "I sunk Nelson 5 times between September 1939 and June 1940". And the fact that your presence in the game world is meaningless. If you pick a sweet spot in the Western Approaches, you can hammer enemy convoys here with no actual enemy reaction, then go back home, and on your next patrol do the exact same thing.
Basically after some hours of play, you know where to go and where not to go, and these spots only slightly change as the campaign scripting is altered over the years.
-Boring torpedoes. Manual targetting was ok in SH3, and mods have made it a very strong point of SH3 (strongest IMO). But the torpedoes are much too reliable (=boring). They can detonate too early, ok. But that's it. They maintain depth perfectly, they can breech the surface in rough weather and keep going straight like nothing is happening, they don't deviate one bit from their course (not even an abstract representation of sea currents).
If you read on Prien's attack of Scapa Flow, only 2 out of 5 torpedoes hit the static targets. He says "The torpedo misses I explain due to faults of course, speed, and drift. In tube 4, a misfire."
SH5 will adress the campaign and that's a big immersion booster.
The presence of the whole crew and some tidbits in the crew descriptions on the SH5 website bring some hope regarding the boringness while transitting to your patrol zone (mentions of trim dive, navigator's role...)
Nothing yet regarding targetting and torpedoes
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