Yet another "What mods should I get?" thread + other questions

[Mar01]

Greetings SH4 players, yet another noob here full of questions.

I'm having a hard time deciding what major mod I want to use. From what I'm able to determine from my atrocious forum search ability, Trigger Maru Overhauled focuses on realism in the Allied Pacific campaign, Real Fleet Boats focuses on game mechanics, and Operation Monsun focuses on the German campaign and adds more U-boats to the game.

Is this right? What else do they do? I'm migrating over from SH3 mainly because I like the graphics more (I have a decent rig) and I like the more diverse missions I can be assigned. What I'm looking for is something that can make me feel a little more at home in SH4.

In SH3 I play with the MaGui mod and I absolutely LOVE it, but I haven't been able to find any GUI mods for SH4. The primary problem I have with SH4 is that there is no way to tell what your exact current course is, and the compass dial for giving heading orders is just so much smaller than what I'm used to it's ridiculous. I can live with it if there's no way around it, but I would prefer not to have to.

I also notice that I can't go to the Chief Engineer's station and manually use the engine telegraph. This makes it much harder to get a full stop (while I know a full stop isn't really realistic, I'm not quite good enough yet to get good firing solutions while on the move) since my drunks (we're still good friends however) often like to wait 3 seconds before responding. Unfortunately, as I understand it, that issue is hardcoded in SH4 so I'm stuck with it. Please correct me if I'm wrong. (pretty please?)

What are the differences in the major environment mods? My preferences would be for beautiful lighting effects, sunrises/sets etc, clear water, and realistic ship movements.

One more question off the top of my head, is it true that that are no snorkels in SH4? That's a big letdown for me, considering how important it is for the Germans to use them.


It definitely appears that my experience in the Pacific is going to be much different than what I had in the Atlantic.

Thank you all for keeping this wonderful community going. <<S>>
I'll be back with more questions as soon as I can remember what they are.

Oh! I should also mention that I do have the U-boat missions expansion. It was probably obvious from my mentioning of the Germans, but just so it's clear...