Which game should I buy? III vs IV vs V

[Brett Sinclair]

Hello subsimmers,

I have finally decided to buy a Silent Hunter game, not really knowing why it took me so long...
But, which game should I buy? What are the pros and cons of each one? III seems to have great content, IV variety and V graphics (and bugs).
And what are the must-have mods for the respective games?
Thank you.

Best,
Brett

ps:
I hope this is the correct forum for this and the poll is not too much influenced towards SHIII by posting it in here.

SH3 !!!!

[Sailor Steve]

It really depends on what you want from the game. If gameplay is the only factor then the 23-year-old Aces Of The Deep is still the best.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

SH3 was the first subsim to actually have a crew on board the boat. Not only animated crewmen on the bridge and in the control room, but the names of the crew appearing in the boat's roster. The super-duper mod SH3 Commander, among its many cool features, adds a database consisting of most of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen who served during the war. Divided into first and last names it creates a possible 1.7 billion crew names. That's not really a big deal, but nothing like it has been done for the newer versions.

One of the complaints about SH3 is that you have to move the crew around as they grow tired or else shut off the fatigue altogether. SH4 fixes that, with the crew rotating themselves. SH5 goes a step further and removes the crew altogether. I hate that, but that's just me.

SH3 was so new and so different that a whole lot of modders went to work on it, and some still are twelve years later. SH4 came out just a couple of years later, but most of the modders weren't interested. Part of that has to do with the fact that SH4 is based on the American submarine war in the Pacific. I find those complaints to be funny, because the original Silent Hunter was also based on the Pacific War. Besides that, there is a brilliant mod that lets you play German U-boats in the Atlantic, just like SH3.

One of the coolest things about SH4 is the 'General Quarters' function. Normally only 1/3 of the crew are on duty, but if you call battle stations the entire crew goes on duty. Not only that, but efficiency is increased by automatically having the senior man at each station take over. Just remember to cancel the order when the fight's done or the crew will stay there until they all fall asleep.

SH4 is so good that the only thing stopping me from replacing SH3 altogether is the lack of the great mods that exist for SH4.

SH5 is visually far better than its predecessors, but it has certain failings. I won't go into most of them because they have mostly been fixed by great mods. They aren't the same mods I like for SH3, so I stick with the oldest one. A lot of people disagree, and love SH5, so arguments against it are mostly personal in nature.

All are good. As I said at the beginning, it really depends on what you want from the game. I continue to play SH3 simply because the mods I like best are only for that game.

On the other hand they're all pretty cheap, so it wouldn't be hard to start a collection and then decide which one you think is best.

[hauangua]

difficult to answer ... everyone has their own preferred SH ...personally .... I repeat personally opinion ... SH3 10/10 ....SH5 8/10 .... SH4 ..7/10....

PS this is SH3 thread... if you make this poll in SH4/ SH5 thread.. probably you will have opposite responses
and welcome in Subsim

[Brett Sinclair]

Thank you very much for your replies!
There seems to be great love for SH3, and I can see why.
Currently I actually tend to buy SH4. With the "Operation Monsoon" mod I can apparently play all U Boote (U boats) on all seven seas. Something I cannot do with SH5 and only with worse graphics in SH3.
@Sailor Steve: Which "irreplaceable" SH3 mods do you use? And which mods fixed SH5?
One last question: Subsim's review of SH5 states "For the first time, the campaign is truly 'dynamic.'" What does it actually mean? Does SH3 and SH4 feel scripted after a while?

Best,
Brett

Originally Posted by Brett Sinclair

There seems to be great love for SH3

If you post the same pol on the SH5 thread, you will probably have most people who prefer SH5 !

[bstanko6]

For me it is SH3. The pacific theater was over done. The US starts out, the war goes their way.. things get easier each year.

In SH3, you are the Germans! The Atlantic was one hell of a theatre! Each year it gets progressively harder. You know you are going to lose the war, so at some point the objective is just to survive. This game forces you to be a better sub captain, or else. And while you convoy hunt in both theatres, the priority in SH3 were convoys.

I remember playing SH 1 and I would hit a carrier in a group, and that would be it. I would go deep and get out of there. I didn't feel that I had to keep attacking the group. In SH3 I know I have to keep hitting that convoy, the war depended on it.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Brett Sinclair

@Sailor Steve: Which "irreplaceable" SH3 mods do you use? And which mods fixed SH5?

No mods are truly "irreplaceable". You do need one of the supermods, unless you like fiddling with hundreds of mods yourself. I use GWX, but NYGM, WAC, LSH3 all get high marks.
The one I wouldn't live without is SH3 Commander. It works outside the game and is more "tool" than "mod". Also h.sie's mod does some awesome things like force the watch officer to go to the bridge so you don't have to. Both of those are essential to my thinking.

After not playing for a very long time I started over again, putting together my favorite big and little mods. Progress wasn't always forward, but I finally got it to where I wanted it, only to end up having real life stop me playing again. I charted every step along the way in this thread. It's not for everyone, but it does give some idea of the pitfalls when you want things a certain way.

One last question: Subsim's review of SH5 states "For the first time, the campaign is truly 'dynamic.'" What does it actually mean? Does SH3 and SH4 feel scripted after a while?

It means that once you sink a ship it is removed from the roster, so you don't encounter 5 Nelson-class battleships when in real life there were only two. It also means that if you stay in a certain area too long the enemy will start concentrating forces on that area, looking just for you. At least that's what they told us at the time.

The one essential mod for SH5 has to be The Wolves Of Steel. It receives huge amounts of praise from everybody who uses it.

[Brett Sinclair]

Thank you for your reply.

I installed the "Wolves of Steel" mod for SH5, and it improves the game tremendously.

Best,
Brett