Should I get SH4?

[Howard313]

Yeah guys, it's gonna be one of "Those" threads, just bare with me here, I'll go through this as fast as possible.

So, I've owned Silent Hunter 3 for a long time now, and while the experience has been golden so far, I'm starting to wonder what else this series has to offer. Plus I've noticed that despite now having played three WWII subsims, none of them let me play as the allies thus far (Something SH4 would easily remedy.)

My main concern is if it will run good on my PC, now I did a check on the canyourunit website and it said I passed the recommended requirements for it but here's the thing.....I experience some slowdown on Silent Hunter 3. Now for the most part the game runs smooth and fine on it's highest setting, but when I'm at port I notice that the framerate drops in the 20's and sometimes when i sink a ship in a large convoy I notice a drop as well. Advice?

Christmas is right around the corner, so now is the perfect time for me to consider expanding my subsim collection. My eyes are set on SH4, but I'd prefer to know for sure the thing will run before I get it, too many a-time i've purchased something thinking it would be fine only to find out that I don't have enough PC Power Juice to run it.

My Specs:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2220 @ 2.40GHz
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 610i
RAM Memory - 4.00GB
Operating System - Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2
64-bit Operating System
Memory: 45.5GB free out of 298GB Total

Final Note: I would be purchasing the Steam version if that means anything to you guys.

I thank you for your help in advance.

[0rpheus]

Can't offer any real advice on your system specs, but the Gold Edition, which you'll need to update to version 1.5 contains both the Uboat Missions (which contain the 1.5 update) and the main game, and will be a lot cheaper on disc. I bought SH4 from Steam and ended up having to buy Uboat Missions that way as well, so I spent around £30 in total - on disc you can probably get it for half that!

[Ducimus]

Ive run and modded SH4 with the following system specs:

Intell Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.20 GHz
2GB RAM
Win XP Home SP3
Nvidia 9800 GT 1 GB RAM


With no problems what so ever.

[Sailor Steve]

SH4 is actually easier on the system than SH3 is. It loads faster, runs smoother and crashes less often. This is because it doesn't load the whole war, just the part you're in. It runs fine on my system, and your specs are a bit better than my old rig.

As for the Allies, there was SH1, but that's old. Compared to SH3, SH4 has better graphics, a much better crew management system, some old bugs and some new ones, but the supermods all fix those. And if you get the Gold version with U-boats, you can also run Operation Monsun, which is a killer mod in its own right. What you will lose is some of the graphics mods that have never been ported over (ports, bridges, blimps). I still long for those, but I think you'll find SH4 has everything you really need for both sides of the world.

Personally I would get the Gold edition on disc, but that's just me. I think you'll be fine either way.

[Renesco]

I was in the same boat (excuse the pun) as you OP, and my experience has been a mixed bag, silent hunter 3 is definitely a better game, more subs and more variety in the subs, better German subs and I might be alone in preferring the crew management in sh3 to the one in sh4, I've come across a lot of bugs in sh4 to the point of it being nearly unplayable until I got the U-Boat missions add-on which fixed quite a few but some serious bugs remain, I've spent as much time editing .cfg files and .upc files as playing the game itself but if you're a sh3 veteran you'll probably have gone through that already with sh3.

Overall the crew management needs less micromanagement, the graphics are very nice (but the animation is poorer in my opinion). Keep a lot of save games around because sometimes they get bugged and you'll need to reload several save games back to find an uncorrupted save, the voice acting is poorer and buggier, the subs you'll be using are not as good as German ones with much shallower depth and they're all pretty much the same except a few minor differences, on the plus side they carry more fire-power on average, 6 forward 4 aft torpedoes on most subs. The Japanese ships take more torpedoes to sink from my experience too.

If you can get over the bugs and put in the time to edit the .cfg files to get the game working the way you want it's fun, but it doesn't hold a candle to sh3.

[Ducimus]

SH4 has it's share of bugs, but it isn't THAT buggy. Now SH5... that's another story.

[Howard313]

Well, you guys have talked me into it. In fact I'm considering to just say "screw Christmas" and buy it tonight.

I would buy it on disc (Lord knows it'd be faster than steam's ungodly download times, and cheaper.)

But my cd-drive stopped working years ago, can't even get the darn thing to open, acts like it's jammed, piece of junk.

So Alas I'm forced to buy the $30 steam version (that's counting the U-boat missions add-on)

As for bugs Silent Hunter 3 has had quite a few on me so I know what's in store, like that lovely bug where the game crashes 70% of the time when you try to use one of the Auto-arrange crew buttons. Or maybe how the lighthouses in it have the ability to generate lights so strong that they can penetrate and shine right through your crew-members on deck. Don't even get me started on the time I saw a disembodied floating head manning the flak gun (I still have nightmares.)

Not hating on them, I'm just saying I'm used to Ubisoft's ability to seemingly miss out on what should be obvious and easily fixed bugs. And for the most part these glitches are not game breaking in any way, in fact they can be kind of humorous at times. (Except that bloody auto-manage crew button, that thing caused me lots of frustration back before I learned not to use it.)

If the bugs in SH4 are anything like the ones you can find in SH3, I'm sure I can handle it. (Seriously, I doubt SH4 has anything that tops disembodied floating heads running around on deck, prove me wrong.)

EDIT: Just bought it and the U-boat Mission expansion pack, can't wait to see how it goes when the download finishes 3 days from now. I'll keep you all updated.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Renesco

the subs you'll be using are not as good as German ones

American subs were capable of winning. German subs were not. Which were the better subs? Just playing the games SH3 and SH4 leaves no doubt that the American subs were superior war machines by a large margin over the WWI designs of German U-Boats used in WWII. And the games give only an incomplete picture of how bad the comparison really was.

[Flaxpants]

I recently took the plunge and bought SH4 after playing SH3 for some time- I now play both, depends on my mood.

I would say that if you like sumarine simulations in general, then you can't put a foot wrong with SH4, and as has been mentioned, the performance is just as good, if not better.

Your system specs will run the game just fine, they are slightly better than mine. I also got some lag in Sh3 ports and around convoys (anywhere where there's a lot of other objects), SH4 is no worse.

Fast loading times are a bonus, as is the crew management and obviously the graphics.

I am currently using the Real Fleet Boat Mod with the RSRD Campaign, plus a few additonal bits and pieces. I plan to play the TMO mod and Operation Monsun mod (german subs again!) in the future.

Go for it.

[Renesco]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

American subs were capable of winning. German subs were not. Which were the better subs? Just playing the games SH3 and SH4 leaves no doubt that the American subs were superior war machines by a large margin over the WWI designs of German U-Boats used in WWII. And the games give only an incomplete picture of how bad the comparison really was.

German subs had less striking power as the yank ones have mostly 6 forward 4 aft and superior radar, but German subs had a much deeper diving depth and snorkels, and were fighting an uphill battle versus airpower and a large enemy surface navy yet still nearly strangled England, also the XXI was the pioneer of most cold war subs. The Americans had it easy by comparison, with air power and surface naval power on their side.

Just because the soviet union won the war for you does not mean your subs were better than the German ones, correlation is not causation in this instance.