My first look - pros, cons, and all that

[CCIP]

Alright, let's get to the meat of this one

my points should be read as:
+ better than expected, = as expected, - problems, * notes

+ loading times - whoosh! As fast as the Type XVII
+ "strategic options" - work quite well and are a neat addition, even if they might appear somewhat gamey
+ "super crew" - see above. One thing that seems to be neat about them is that the limits on their use and their cost make them hardly a cheat of any kind - just a reward for your efforts, really.
+ a great IXD2 external model and cool new asian-themed ports
+ interface tweaks - new buttons and status indicators - very handy

= graphics improvements - there are definite engine optimizations on the plus side and the environment rendering is improved. For ROW fans however, good news and bad news. The bad news is that the rumored inclusion of ROW graphics in the game didn't materialize, and what it has is not nearly as good. The good news is that ROW is almost completely compatible out of the box and it will be very easy to make fully compatible.
= interior graphics - as expected, it's SHIII interiors with new textures/normal maps
= 3D crew - no more and no less interactive than SHIVs. On the plus side, the "informal" tropical dress is great.
= campaign - pure fiction on MANY points, but fun is to be had there
= Kriegsmarine grid on the map - on the plus side, it's much, much more detailed and better-implemented than SHIII's. On the minus side, it only extends to the add-on's operations area, which means it's not going to be so easy to implement the Atlantic campaign with a grid after all.

- German voice screwup - tsk tsk tsk. While ridiculously easy to fix, that's not something that should've been in the game.
- crew config - ??? for all the super-duper crewmen, there's NO officers on the boat by default for some reason besides a lowly-rated engineer. Too many crewmen for a typical IXD2, also. Easily fixed with mods (I even managed to add officers by default on my own), but someone will need to make these.
- no training, single missions or war patrols available for U-boats - a bit strange. You'd think at least some of these would be included to draw in a more casual crowd.
- some small glitches and things to be fixed here and there. I probably haven't seen them all, but one thing that is really annoying me right now for example is the sonarman reporting contacts while on the surface, absolutely everywhere in friendly waters (which drops the TC), and well before the ships even come into view.

*Some mod compatibility out of the box - skins, sounds. ROW, as I said, is almost fully compatible - just be sure NOT to install any ROW zones/effects (it makes your sub blow up if it tries to submerge). The only problem then is that some of the interior station cameras don't work correctly using ROW cameras, but that's even tolerable. The campaign structure for the German campaign is completely separate from the American, so I think this means that RSRDC can be adapted to 1.05 rather quickly. Thanks to some separation of structure between German and American campaigns/subs, except for some common files (like Library files) that are shared for all parts of the game, it should not be too complicated to adapt major mods like RFB and TM to 1.05.

So, is it worth my ten bucks?
Signs point to yes.

Screenshots later...

[AVGWarhawk]

What has it done for the Pacific Theater?

[CCIP]

First batch of screenshots: stock, minus grainy post-processing.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

What has it done for the Pacific Theater?

I haven't checked very much to be honest. It looks like the rendering optimizations, interface tweaks (I think the status indicators are available everywhere) and loading times certainly apply there. Otherwise, I would say the main thing it did is that it didn't touch it and kept its files separate, meaning existing mod work on it can be applied much more expediently.

[danlisa]

= Kriegsmarine grid on the map - on the plus side, it's much, much more detailed and better-implemented than SHIII's. On the minus side, it only extends to the add-on's operations area, which means it's not going to be so easy to implement the Atlantic campaign with a grid after all.

From what I've seen, the KM grid is completely editable and fully moddable. Check out the KGrid folder.

The biggest question is - "Can you actually use the KM Grid in mission assignments?". If you can't what's the point in having it, apart from eye-candy. Aa at the moment, the KM grids serve no function at all in terms of mission orders or even radio contact reports.

Which leads me to another question. Why did the devs add it in if it serves no purpose.:hmm: I must look deeper.

[CCIP]

Well they are mentioned in mission tasking. Otherwise I don't think there's much of anything special to the grids other than just being another set of coordinates! What else would one expect them to be?

Oh yea, got another silly one for you:
All radio messages still originate from COMSUBPAC

[CCIP]

Second batch of screenies - now with ROW

[sergbuto]

The choice of voices should have been coupled to the choice of campaign for fleet or U- boat. That is easy to do in terms of coding.

I hope that the "informal" tropical dress of the crew is automatically changed to something appropriate depending on the region of the world and the weather.

[CCIP]

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by sergbuto

The choice of voices should have been coupled to the choice of campaign for fleet or U- boat. That is easy to do in terms of coding.

I hope that the "informal" tropical dress of the crew is automatically changed to something appropriate depending on the region of the world and the weather.

Good point, and I'm not sure if that's the case. Probably not.

[danlisa]

Originally Posted by CCIP

What else would one expect them to be?

Oh yea, got another silly one for you:
All radio messages still originate from COMSUBPAC

Ideally, we'll eventually want them to be functional. i.e Large convoy BF12 (we're talking eventual Atlantic campaign here).

Yep, caught that one from COMSUBPAC. German spies must have infiltrated the offices.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by danlisa

Ideally, we'll eventually want them to be functional. i.e Large convoy BF12 (we're talking eventual Atlantic campaign here).

Yep, caught that one from COMSUBPAC. German spies must have infiltrated the offices.

Ah right. You got it there, I think the contacts are still reported by coordinates, not grid.

Afraid that's only something that can be done with hard-coding though. And so I guess the grid still comes out as a not-totally-great addition. The detail of it is nice, the function isn't.

[sergbuto]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Good point, and I'm not sure if that's the case. Probably not.

Looking at the number of posts from those who have already tried the addon, it does not seem to be the case. Seems like original voices need to be replaced with German ones before starting the U-boat campaign. I guess Devs have tried to save our hard disk space to avoid having two sets of voices at the same time.

[CCIP]

All the stranger still given SHIII lived with two sets of voices (which, unlike this, it never used) all along. :hmm:

JSGME is my friend for this one of course.

[danlisa]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Ah right. You got it there, I think the contacts are still reported by coordinates, not grid.

Afraid that's only something that can be done with hard-coding though. And so I guess the grid still comes out as a not-totally-great addition. The detail of it is nice, the function isn't.

:hmm: Possibly. However, if I'm reading the PatrolObjectives.cfg right, there's a possibility that dymanic in-campaign mission objectives might be assigned by KM Grids. However, I'll leave that to the experts.