[misha1967]

To get back to what kimurajin was talking about, what makes the Silent Hunter series and this forum so great to me is that we're all here because we love the subject matter. And because we love the subject matter, we don't waste time bragging about our career tonnage. Yes, we share stories along the lines of "you won't believe this, but guess what just happened?", but they're more to share great moments than to pat ourselves on the back and, more often than not, to share not so great moments about truly stupid things we've done or even just a screenshot of something that looked truly awesome, like a perfect sunset with our boat in the foreground.

As an aside: If I had to nominate one truly useless "new feature" of SH5 as far as I'm concerned it would be the "leaderboard." I'm not playing PacMan here and, besides, I know that when I see somebody with a career tonnage of 334,999,237,883,165 tons, he's spent more time fiddling with the files than actually playing the game. Good for him, but color me totally indifferent as in "I really, really couldn't care less even if I tried very, very hard."

Another result of us Subsimmers' love of the subject matter is that we want others to love it as well, because that means more people to share the hobby (and funny stories) with which, in turn, leads to this community being one of the most "noob friendly" communities I've ever been a member of, right since the day I was myself a "noob." Put a request for help in here and you'll have people tripping over each other to make sure that you have a good time, not to mention a horde of talented modders who will be only too happy to see if your latest suggestion can be turned into another mod if it sounds interesting.

That's what I was met with 8 years ago, and I'm doing what I can to the best of my limited abilities to keep that torch going today. It's more like a History Club than a "gaming forum" to me. Others might find it silly, but I love going into long discussions about what the proper shade of grey is for a TypVIIC in 1942 or which version of a particular song is more historically accurate for a given time period. Who cares what they think? I love it, and I'm surrounded by others who love it too.

I also love having the sim as yet another way of trying to understand "what it was like." Yes, I know that you can never understand it unless you were there, but every little detail, every book I read, every movie I watch, every additional historically accurate detail that gets added brings me closer. With the extensive help of my vivid imagination, of course. Never there and, considering the casualty rate of the U-Bootwaffe just to mention one thing, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be there, but just a fraction closer. Just to try to understand. Which is why every little bit that adds to the atmosphere is something I'll go for in a minute.

But, most of all, what makes us "unique" here is that we're not "gamers", we're "simmers."