Overpaid

[Raven_2012]

Originally Posted by misha1967

That's a good question, Raven.

I'm like you. I originally bought the Steam version (I may have lucked out and got it on sale for $20, but that's still quite a bit more than $5 or $6).

I bought it because I've been a subsimmer since forever (in gaming terms), I went through the whole SH3 debacle back in the day and learned just how much this community can do to finish the job, so to speak and then I watched the "let's play" videos stickied in this forum and decided that, bust or not, I just had to try it because it was just soooo beautiful. And with mods added from the A Team modders here, it couldn't possibly be bad.

And I loved it. Modded, and we're not even where SH3 is now yet, it's already prettier than I don't know what and has levels of immersion that SH3 never had, but maybe that's just because I love adding a touch of role playing to my Silent Hunter simming, and SH5 makes that so much easier with a sub you can "live in."

Anyway, that's when I found out about TDW's genius hydro patch which, unfortunately, only works on a "hard copy." Thinking about it for all of 5 minutes, I decided that, what the hell, it was only about $10 including shipping and handling and, to top it off, if I ordered it through the link at the bottom of this page, I'd throw a couple of pennies into this site as well.

Now, is it worth it? Yeah, I believe it is. Granted, the hydrophone "works" in the Steam version as long as you leave the listening to young Scheu. But it doesn't if you ever feel like taking over the station to see if he's missing something due to his lack of skill in the early days. You have to hit the contact right on, to within 1 or 2 degrees (if that) to even hear it. There is no gradual transition from a faint whisper to a clear sound like there was in SH3. TDW's patch fixes that, God bless him.

And then there's the side bonus, although I don't know if you're affected by that: In my Steam install, every single time I ran it it insisted on running the Microsoft .NET 2.0 install before getting to the UPlay Launcher. I tried deleting the game and reinstalling it, knowing from bitter experience with earlier versions of SH that most of the time that's all it takes to clear out strange "bugs", but it didn't help. Not that it ruined the sim, it ran just fine after that bogus "install" routine, but it was annoying me. That went away with the hard copy as well.

Anyway. Is it worth it? Depends on how you use your hydro station. If you like to leave it to your crew, to delegate it so to speak (and there's a lot to say in favor of that in terms of realism) then no, not really. But if you're like me and like to jump in and say "no way, I KNOW there has to be something out there!", then it's money well spent.

And it's only ten bucks.

Your choice, my friend

Yeah I get the Microsoft .NET 2.0 too. Not a big deal, if It didn't do that the game would of started sooner.

I don't really jump on the hydro station, maybe later on in the game I will do it more. I never really did that when I played SHIII - GWX. Maybe if I jump on it use it more, maybe I will find bugs with it, but at the moment it works for me.

The one thing bothered me was the loud engine sound when listening in the hydro station. The sound is coming from all directions instead aft of the boat. I use German U-Boat Hydrophone SFX to reduce the sound and when I hydro search I stop U-Boat for 5 minutes or so to do a search at 20m to 30m.

I guess I will try to get the most out of my purchase at the moment. I do want to get hard copy so I can use NewUIs_TDC patch to fix hydro and to use it to change the color of the plot lines on the navigation map. I think I can change the colors with the IO_StrategicMap_4_6_for_TDWv690 mod. I believe there is a config file to change some stuff with the map.

It's really not the point of not able to afford the dvd copy, it comes down to getting my moneys worth out of the Steam copy. I never thought I would like SH5 when I bought it, I thought I would try it. I read bad reviews on it prior, but now I learned to love it. I wouldn't loved it if it wasn't to all the modders, they made this game playable to where we can love it.