Is NSM4 too easy?

After SH4 sat on my shelf for several months, I reinstalled it in the weekend and then downloaded all the "must have" mods. My installation order is now the following:

Silent Hunter 4 1.4 (without U-Boat addon)

Warships retextured
Trigger maru 1.5.2
RSRD for TMO
RSRD_patch
NSM4 classic
PE3_Install
PE3 Zones.cfg for NSM4 classic
Other parts of PE3
PE3 Patch for TMO

After sailing four patrols on 61% realism (unlimited fuel, automatic targeting, external cam) I am again getting bored. Every single time I shoot a ship, I get really close (1000yds), take good aim for the keel and then fire a torp. Sometimes (less than 20%), the torpedo somehow malfunctions, but 80% of the time I hit the ship and the very first torpedo sinks it (even the huge 8000 ton oiler).
Now I start to wonder: Is it realistic that every keel hit is an instant kill? Because if it were realistic, being crew of a surface ship in WWII would have been suicide.

I have one other grief about NSM4 (classic): Once I hit a ship with a keel shot, for example two thirds of the way from bow to stern, the torpedo explodes, the fountain rises and starts to fall down, and after that the ship suddenly breaks right in the middle as if its keel was made of TNT with a timed fuze.

Is this behavior normal or just limited to my computer (Apple MBP, 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, Radeon X1600 128MB, 2GB RAM, Windows XP SP3)

P.S. I don't want to offend the makers of NSM4 in any way, it is much better than the "roulette" stock damage model.

[DeepIron]

Bored? No wonder. The mods you're using are fairly "old tech" now and have been superceded by improved versions. My suggestion: Get the v1.5 upgrade, download and install the latest RFB, RFB patch and RSRDC mods (see my sig for a link), play at 100% realism and prepare to "white knuckle it". You should be anything *but* bored...

[Fish40]

Originally Posted by DeepIron

Bored? No wonder. The mods you're using are fairly "old tech" now and have been superceded by improved versions. My suggestion: Get the v1.5 upgrade, download and install the latest RFB, RFB patch and RSRDC mods (see my sig for a link), play at 100% realism and prepare to "white knuckle it". You should be anything *but* bored...

I have to agree! The addon is only $10. You won't be sorry. Trust me

[banjo]

And update to TMO which superceded 1.52.

[Digital_Trucker]

In the meantime, if you'll deactivate PE3 Zones.cfg for NSM4 classic, open up the zones.cfg file in the mods data folder with your favorite text editor, search for the word keel and every time you find a "chapter" that looks something like the following:

[NSKeel]
Category=Keel
Multiplier=10.0
Flotability=10.0
HitPoints=150
Destructible=No
Armor Level=20
Critic Flotation=0.5
Critical=Yes
Critical Chance=1.0 
FloodingTime=200
CargoType=None

make sure that the CargoType is equal to None, and then reactivate it you'll find fewer instant keel kills. I haven't looked at the old NSM files in a while, but originally the keels were cargoed with ammo, which made it easier to catastrophically damage the ship with keel hits. The name of the "chapter" doesn't have to be exactly the same as above, just make sure and change all of them that contain the word keel.

And, like the others said, do get the add-on, it's well worth the ten bucks and opens up a whole new world of mods.