Persuade me, please

[washishu]

I've been playing SH (on and off) since SH1 but have spent most time with SH2 & SH3. I have decided to give SH4 a try and I have a couple of comments/questions which I'd appreciate responses/answers to. All comments received of course, but I'd be especially interested to hear from those who regularly play both SH3 & SH4.

Seems to me that the whole SH4 interface is not well designed and is extremely fussy and visually complex. Especially the clumsy orders buttons, the text box (for the orders etc.) which is in the way no matter where you put it, and that crew management screen - whoever designed that should be hung by the neck until dead. I appreciate that it takes time to become accustomed to any new interface but the whole thing seems so poorly designed that I'm bound to wonder if it's worth the effort.

It's not unreasonable (is it?) to expect that version four of any software would be an improvement upon previous versions and although this will be, to some degree, a matter of opinion, SH4 seems to have more in common with SH1 or 2 than it does with SH3. And I don't mean the change back to the Pacific; for example the inability to control precisely the raising of the periscope - this was a feature lacking in the early versions when processors etc. were not as powerful and in this and other aspects, we seem to have taken a step backward here. What am I missing?

Q: is there a decent manual available for SH4?

The standard pdf "manual" is little short of an insult to the intelligence. It was written, it appears, by someone with either a limited level of literacy or who was just having a laugh; certainly they had almost no idea of how to communicate in written English. I wish games companies would recognise that copy writing is a skill and would not just give the job to anyone who happens to be sitting there doing nothing. (I believe it was George Bernard Shawe who once said that he spent a morning deciding where to put a comma and the afternoon deciding whether to take it out). If you think I'm being quite picky and critical here, damn right I am; they're wanting us to give 'em money for this stuff and the least they can do is pay some attention to the details. Besides, I've spent over thirty years working in the graphic communications business and I just can't help noticing sloppy, careless presentation.

As far as I can find out from the forums here, the "standard" mods for SH4 seem to be TMO and FOTRS. The Grey Wolves mod for SH3, apart from adding additional ships and environmental details and such, also considerably improves the interface and gameplay of the boxed set game.

Q: do these mods improve any of the (seems to me many) design faults of SH4 or are they just what might be called eye candy?

On the positive side, the visuals are excellent and I love the Japanese warships sending semaphore light signals to each other - see? I'm not opposed to eye candy but it seems to me there are many other issues to be put right first.

To all you dedicated SH4 Wolves of the Pacific; come on, persuade me; I'd like to spend some time in warm Pacific waters or should I just go back to the cold North Atlantic?