Returning skipper - Is SH3 still the best SH?

[XenonSurf]

For the Atlantic Battlefield (german U-Boote), IMO you basically have the choice between:

- SH5 + TWoS (state of the art grafics and all stock bugs corrected, best IMO because no need to mess around with lots of mods)
- SH3 + GWX3.0 ; SH3 + WAC5.01 ; SH3 + LSH3-2015 (all megamods after stock game, and chose a good Widescreen GUI suited for you).

For Pacific Battlefield you should play SH4.

Cheers,

Thanks for the help guys

I didn't really listen and got the Steam versions of all of them instead of Amazon. I hope I can make the mods work without too much of a hassle. I just didn't want to end up with missing discs...again

[propbeanie]

In which case, you'll definitely want to read through the links that THEBERBSTER has above in his post. He helps walk you through the process. SH3 is easiest to deal with from Steam, followed by SH4. SH5, you have to do some hoop jumping, but you barely get off the floor for it. One thing to note with SH4 from Steam is that you ~have~ to purchase the UBoat Missions separately. What you get when you buy SH4 from them is v1.3, and you cannot apply a v1.4 update to it (Steam security). Most mods are made for v1.5, UBoat Missions... As for "King" of the series, going by the mods, SHIII is... it's a gorilla.

[XenonSurf]

Yes, I echo this , I don't know much about SH4 but by reading the stickies and mod descriptions, the situation is so that without patching to 1.4 (at least) you don't have a decent stock game, and Steam AFAIK doesn't have the U-Boot expansion. (1.5)

Also generally speaking, I would never chose the Steam platform for complex games to mod, you just don't have any freedom there as I very recently said in another topic (Cold Waters; Steam vs. GOG). Simple example is that you cannot just use an external patch with Steam versions of games. If Steam doesn't have the right game versions you are stucked with an uncomplete - and in some cases even unplayable game, for them all what matters is that you can 'start' a game, after that they pretty don't care.

Normally I use GOG.com but they don't sell Silent Hunter as far as I could tell. The Steam pack does include "Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific U-Boat Missions" beside SH3, SH4 and SH5. I'll try to follow the guides but if I give up I'll go look for some boxed versions. We'll see

[propbeanie]

You'll do OK with the Steam version, it just takes a little more research and effort is all. Follow THEBERBSTER's links. Do not install any of the games in the Program Files directories. Manage the Steam Library first, and edit the path to not include "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)" (as the case may be). Steam itself will have a folder in one of the Program Files folders, but the games have to be in a folder elsewhere, as previously mentioned. Here's a screenshot of the Library from one of my other posts:



which came from here:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...97#post2534397

which is from an older post...

[XenonSurf]

Oh, I forgot to mention one aspect that makes SH3 still the prime game:

In SH5 the sub interiors are awesome but this comes to a high price: only Type VII u-boats are in the game AFAIK, however a modder is just working on a Type IX one, however in SH3 all subs are modelled and playable already from the stock game (incluse the Type XXI).