[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Konrad

Kudos by the way on creating a new and fresher mod for Silent Hunter III.
I applaude the efforts and results that led to GWX 3.0.

WELCOME ABOARD!

Now I am sure that some of you older wolves would poo poo what would be seen by others as some fresh cub's whining and crying because of the difficulty level of the simulation but hear me out.

Not a problem. Everyone's opinion is welcome.

No game, no matter how intense the graphics, no matter the time spent on making realistic scenery and dialogue, will stand up to this one simple point.

If the game takes more effort and time than necessary to win, then the game isnt worth the software that it is intregrated into (Anyone remember Ghosts'n Goblins?).

That depends on what you mean by "win". A simulation game isn't necessarily meant to be "won"; it's meant to be experienced. If you're brand new to this kind of thing, then sure you want to just blow stuff up and survive the war. That's fine. When you've been doing it for awhile you'll begin to discover that it becomes more fun to just experience it.

I have abstained from using the absolute 100% realisim mode when playing, and I like to keep it at least 33% realistic. 100% is just simply too much.

That's great. Play it the way you find the most enjoyable.

If that much realism was needed, the individual might as well travel back in time and experience the terrors and triumphs of u-boat service first hand.

That's actually the point of a mod like GWX - to experience what it might have been like to really do it. On the other hand, that is why there are different difficulty settings. You can make it as easy or as hard as you want.

However, even when setting aside the fact that some effort and patience must be practiced by the participant in this simulation (incorporating GWX 3.0) even at 33% realism or less the GWX 3.0 fails in my book to allow for some enjoyment in playing Silent Hunter III.

That's why there are different supermods. They give different experiences.

Consider this, I have sailed on 13 seperate patrols, from 1939 to 1940, from Kiel to St. Nazaire. Five patrols resulted in null contacts or sinkings, I sailed around for 33 simulated days on average, recieving only messages of convoys I could neither find (they never showed on the map when radio messages were received), or of lone wolf encounters that likewise never showed on a map. Very frustrating!

Frustrating for someone who just wants to blow stuff up. I can understand that. On the other hand I've played subsims for almost thirty years, from Sid Meier's original Silent Service to SH4. You can reach a point where even an empty patrol is worthwhile and entertaining.

Thats all well and good so to speak if we are actually u-boat men, but this is a simulation, a game gentlemen! I did not purchase and download a game and a mode to pick my nose and wonder when the paint would crack on the ceiling!

A simulation and a game are not the same thing. GWX is described right up front as a "realism" mod. If you don't like that, then pick some simple mods to fix what's broken and stay away from anything with the word "realism" in the description.

And on the matter of radio messages, with all that skill and effort made to embellish and enrich the overall appearance of SH3 (again, what you all have achieved is spectacular in that respect) you would think to at least allow for some leeway in sendiing reports!

How about letting us give some details on what we encountered in the patrols and having the mod offer some suggestions other than the basic "search at your discretion" nonsense.

The game itself is coded that way, and there's nothing any mod can do to change that. You should probably make that complaint directly to Ubisoft, though I doubt they would listen even if the game wasn't already eight years old. As for GWX, that team broke up several years ago, and while some of them still continue to add things to the mod, no one is going to tear it apart and rewrite it, especially when the feedback they get is overwhelmingly positive. It's done, and you can either live with it or use something else.

Do you think Admiral Doenitz would have tolerated such a lax manner of shifting uboats from one grid to the next? Heil No! (play on words was intended)

Game code. Not GWX's fault.

And on the four times I encountered convoy's, they were all during horrendous sea storms, and tossing waves that annoyingly had not affect on the destroyers in their chasing me down and turning me into fish food!

Game code. Not GWX's fault.

No matter the region, it was always the same storm!

See above. This has been the subject of hundreds of complaints for the past eight years. It will never be fixed, though there are mods that force it to stop. If used, the storm will go away and never come back.

The destroyers were really annoying. I know for a fact that it took time to improve anti-submarine warfare tactics and that such efforts were influential in the destruction of uboats but really? come on!

To have a four stacker tub loaned to the brits by the yanks on discount no less! zero me out in the middle of hurricane weather when I am not even moving and at a depth of 120 meters? The bastard zoomed in from 40 miles away and it was supposed to be protecting a convoy? At that range it would have been lucky to have even gotten that far without turning turtle!

I play at 99%, and I've found that destroyers are fairly stupid early in the war, and get better as time passes. So have a great many others. I'm not sure why you're having so much trouble.

Granted, it sounds as if I want realism in my favor and not in the favor of the enemy, but should there have not been at least SOME difficulty in getting bearings on my location?

Again, the vast majority of GWX users don't seem to have that problem.

A fun improvement to this game this does not make gentlemen!

GWX has been finished for a long time. Harsh words are not going to make a team get back together just to fix what you don't like, especially when you're pretty much alone in that judgement.

On the matter of crew promotions and awards and qualifications, to borrow from the song "how many paths must a man walk on, before you can call him a man" (yes I know I don't have the quote correct!) but how many patrols does it take to get a crewmember his uboat clasp? In the career I had, I did 8 patrols before a single sailor got the clasp! What it is up with that?

SH3 Commander lets you give all the medals and badges you want, any time you want. It also lets you adjust a great many parameters of the game easily, and creates a real history for your captain character, and gives names and cargo to the merchants you sink.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=2923

Okay I am done with my griping for now, and I am sure my gripes are so full of holes and entire convoy of convoys could sail through undetected, but this point must be made: if you want this game and GWX 3.0 to be accessible to all, and that includes little whining cubs llike myself, than I beseech you all to not have this fine game and this otherwise excellent mod (GWX 3.0) go the way of "Ghosts'N Goblins".

Fair enough, and comments good and bad are always welcome. That said, GWX seems to be in no danger of going anywhere, seeing that it is one of the most popular and highly praised mods ever made for any subsim.