Perspective from a complete newbie :(

[JokerOfFate]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Pocket sized!

I tried printing it and it jammed my printer

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

@Frau - It would probably have been cheaper, and quicker to nip down to your nearest PC store and buy a cheap laptop just for this one PDF, then you'd also have the advantage of Ctrl+F-ing (not being rude!) to search for something specific.

Lol, but the whole point of printing it out was so I could read it or search through it without having to go all squinty peering at a computer screen. I do that with anything that's more than a few pages long and which I know I'm going to want to look at repeatedly and to which I may want or need immediate and easy access. It's much easier on my eyes and far more convenient for me personally.

I have the stock game's manual (such as it is) and the Commander manual printed out for the exact same reason, in addition to a small collection of tipsheets and tutorials.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Lol, but the whole point of printing it out was so I could read it or search through it without having to go all squinty peering at a computer screen. I do that with anything that's more than a few pages long and which I know I'm going to want to look at repeatedly and to which I may want or need immediate and easy access. It's much easier on my eyes and far more convenient for me personally.

I have the stock game's manual (such as it is) and the Commander manual printed out for the exact same reason, in addition to a small collection of tipsheets and tutorials.

Do you have shares in HP/Xerox/Epson/etc...? A papermill? A forest?

I occasionally wish I had a printed copy to hand, but not enough to actually print it - not even at work!

[frau kaleun]

Lol, what actually might've been cheaper would've been to take it somewhere like Kinko's or some similar service joint and let them print it. But I so rarely have a major print job at home that I didn't think about it.

[poetic hunter]

Apparently, my previous installation of SH3 was bugged , and I think that goes a long way to explain some of the frustrations I documented in this thread.

I recently re-installed SH3 and things are going much, much better this time around.

1. For the first time I actually encountered airpolanes on my patrol. I then saw a screen that gave me three options like: a) engage the enemy b) maintain current orders c) dive to periscope depth. This alone proves that my previous installation had to have been bugged because I NEVER saw that screen which gives you three options when you encounter an enemy.

2. I now detect ships that are actually there. In my previous installation, I would spend real-life hours upon hours going on patrol after patrol, and never once engaged in a proper fight. I would detect ships on my map screen, but these were almost always false alarms or phantom ships that weren't actually there. This leads to number 3.

3. I realize that going over TC 256 messes up the enemy detection system on the map screen. This time I always stay below 256 TC on the map screen and I detect enemy aircrafts and ships just fine.


I don't know if it's just my compouter, but 256 time compression is the magic number. If I go above that speed, my enemy detection gets messed up which leads to phantom ships on my map that aren't actually there.

----------------

I just had a very enjoyable battle with a huge cargo ship that survived two torpedoes. I had to finish her off with the deck gun. I never had an encounter like this on my previous installation, which again drives home the point that something was messed up somewhere.

I also watched Das Boot for the first time, and I'm really looking forward to playing some more. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like certain parts of SH 3 was directly inspired by that movie ?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by poetic hunter

I also watched Das Boot for the first time, and I'm really looking forward to playing some more.

Dang! I think I've watched the Uncut version at least four times a year since I bought it six years ago! And that's after watching the original on VHS over and over again, and the Director's Cut countless times in between!

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like certain parts of SH 3 was directly inspired by that movie ?

Certain parts of Aces Of The Deep, released sixteen years ago, were directly inspired by that movie.

Originally Posted by poetic hunter

I did...and that's the problem! As I explained in that long post, the tutorial videos are useless, and some of the academy lessons are still difficult to complete for a new player because many things aren't explained at all. There is help available online, but much of it seems geared towards people who are already familiar and not for complete newbies.

From only starting playing this game a few weeks ago the best advice I can offer you is to play around with the game itself by this I mean make career and use tactics that intentionally get you killed. The more you play the more you learn, Ive went from knowing absolutely nothing in two weeks to enough to survive a career. As far at the hunt page, if you look farther in the posts of that page a man posted a very easy to read diagram which I copied and referenced every time I needed an intercept (used different colors for each step and such) He didnt explain WHY you used the steps just what to do, which is what I think your looking for. All I can say is that after days (yes at the moment I have time on my hands) of playing and interceptions (successes and failures) it has become second nature to me to intercept ships now and I rarely ever need to use the diagram, save for when I have a small brain fart. Its like muscle memory, do what youre shown (especially if it's simple) enough times, and your body does it without thinking, I caught myself yesterday catching report of a convoy and instantly almost in my head Id figured out around where (within a few kilometers like 30 or so) Id need to intercept. The best advice I can give you is to keep on trying and if that isnt working out keep on asking questions, if you need help with seeing things in a simpler manner (ie. Interception) I might be able to help explain them to you, just send me a PM. However things like manual targetting I cant do, I keep auto targeting for now, and soon I shall turn that off and use the W/A (pretty much like auto, just you have to get your officer to range and set it all in, so in actually its auto with a few more button presses, at least I believe so some one correct me if I'm wrong)

PS: Another thing I'd do is start learning tactics, again by getting yourself killed, I just made a new career and took a Type IX down to about 260 Meters for a few minutes just to see how long I'd survive and how deep I could dive.

Hope that helps and best of lucks Herr Kaulen

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

From only starting playing this game a few weeks ago the best advice I can offer you is to play around with the game itself by this I mean make career and use tactics that intentionally get you killed. The more you play the more you learn, Ive went from knowing absolutely nothing in two weeks to enough to survive a career.

Excellent advice, and not something an old-timer like me would have thought of!

You're right. It's a game, and playing and failing is the best training there is, since we can't get hurt doing it. I have the advantage of having played sub sims since 1986, almost twenty years before SH3 was released. This means I had an idea of what was going on, and could jump right in.

But someone new has to learn from scratch, and the two best ways to do that are to ask questions here, and as Casey just said, try and try again until you understand what's going on.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Excellent advice, and not something an old-timer like me would have thought of!

You're right. It's a game, and playing and failing is the best training there is, since we can't get hurt doing it. I have the advantage of having played sub sims since 1986, almost twenty years before SH3 was released. This means I had an idea of what was going on, and could jump right in.

But someone new has to learn from scratch, and the two best ways to do that are to ask questions here, and as Casey just said, try and try again until you understand what's going on.

Well watching and really loving Das Boot game me a heads up on some stuff

But since youve been playing them since 86, I have to ask what was that like?? I was born in 91' :p I didnt even think they made actual 'sims' in 86, just blips on screen and all hmm

[Draka]

Silent Service - MicroProse - Commodore 64 - Google it! LOL! That was my first taste of being a submariner. 1985 .....

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_...8video_game%29

Wow my first experience was Wolfpack, I loved that game then I lost sub games for a few years and got sub command, I honestly hated that, then Enigma Rising Tide, eh I was indifferent to that, and then the SH series, thank god I stumbled upon this thread and got this game I love it. errr simulation


@POETIC HUNTER; just in case you read this thread and look at the top and notice its been slightly hijacked, look at my post a posts down and hopefully that will help

[Sailor Steve]

Yep, Silent Service. Actually a pretty good sim. The "campaign" consisted of dragging your sub icon around the Pacific looking for encounters. That said, the encounters were a lot of fun, and it had a good feel to it.

In 1994 came Aces Of The Deep, arguably the first "real" subsim, since it introduced the random campaign. You started out in a Type II u-boat and could progress to better boats, or start a career later in the war. I still play it from time to time.

The original Silent Hunter, released in 1996, was a Pacific-based riff on Aces, with newer graphics and sound and a campaign that let you start in any month of the war.

Those two still have certain items that have been lost in later Silent Hunters, and are sorely missed, but SH3's combination of modability and graphics is pretty much unbeatable so far.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Yep, Silent Service. Actually a pretty good sim. The "campaign" consisted of dragging your sub icon around the Pacific looking for encounters. That said, the encounters were a lot of fun, and it had a good feel to it.

In 1994 came Aces Of The Deep, arguably the first "real" subsim, since it introduced the random campaign. You started out in a Type II u-boat and could progress to better boats, or start a career later in the war. I still play it from time to time.

The original Silent Hunter, released in 1996, was a Pacific-based riff on Aces, with newer graphics and sound and a campaign that let you start in any month of the war.

Those two still have certain items that have been lost in later Silent Hunters, and are sorely missed, but SH3's combination of modability and graphics is pretty much unbeatable so far.

yeah I was reading about them and saw that like if you took on water and it got on your batteries youd kill your crew from the gas that formed and stuff. Now thats realism.

Funny thing my uncle was joking around with me one day and stated
"They need to make games more real, like if youre playing a playstation game and take a bullet to the head, the game should eject from the Playstation and snap, no restarts and youd have to start all over again!!"

Always makes me chuckle when I imagine a SNES shooting its cartridge out and blowing up in mid air

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

yeah I was reading about them and saw that like if you took on water and it got on your batteries youd kill your crew from the gas that formed and stuff. Now thats realism.

One of the tricks you could pull in AOTD was to sit on the bottom in shallow water, and the asdic would lose you amid the bottom clutter. On the other hand I died more than once because I got stuck in the mud and couldn't get loose.

Funny thing my uncle was joking around with me one day and stated
"They need to make games more real, like if youre playing a playstation game and take a bullet to the head, the game should eject from the Playstation and snap, no restarts and youd have to start all over again!!"

Always makes me chuckle when I imagine a SNES shooting its cartridge out and blowing up in mid air

We had a thread in which someone was asking how to play with absolute realism. I suggested that he keep in mind that real sailors could lose their lives. I didn't say he should go that far, but think about the idea of dieing in the game and putting it away and not playing for a year. That might make him a little more careful.

[poetic hunter]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

From only starting playing this game a few weeks ago the best advice I can offer you is to play around with the game itself by this I mean make career and use tactics that intentionally get you killed.

Thanks for your understanding. Speaking of learning from mistakes, I just had a Das Boot moment. I attacked a ship from periscope depth, and instead of running away the thing started charging towards me! Before I knew it, it was right on top of me and smashed my deck and flak guns to oblivion. I decided to dive down below, and rig for silent running, but the ship started pinging for me. I heard beep beep until, boom. Depth charges took out my sonar and radio. Then I started leaking in my command room. I was surprised that the game actually depicted the water coming out from the pipes in the command room. Very nice touch there. Unfortunately, there was no way to recover from that "mistake." I lost my entire crew to the merciless depths of the never-ending blue.

This is the very first time I ever got attacked by a (destroyer?), so there was definitely something wrong with my previous installation. I'm having a lot more intense but fun moments on my patrol this time around. In fact, I've had more encounters on this one patrol, than I had in about seventeen patrols on my previous installation.