Going to try SH4

[Flaxpants]

Hi, been playing SH3/GWX for a year or so and loving it. Now I am going to give SH4 a go and have just ordered the gold edition.

I have been reading though this forum looking for info on the best setup for me, re mods etc, and at the moment my plan is this:

Install game
Install RFB v.2
Install RFB patch
Install RSRD campaign

I was undecided over RFB and TMO, but in the end I chose RFB as apparently it is the more 'realistic' of the two. The RSRD seems like a must have.

I am really just looking for some confirmation that I'm going down the right road as far as my choice of mods goes, and also if there are any other mods I will need to supplement those mentioned- especially if those mods were to 'fix' issues.

I'm presuming that SH4 doesn't require a screen resolution mod fix like SH3?

[Cpt-Maxim]

No matter what advice you get in here, including mine, you will have to go as far as it takes to satisfy your own curiosity on how each mod plays out. The problem with getting various advice is, none of the advice givers knows the level of patience you will go to in order to research your perfect combination.

Personally, I have posted my combo list, but the list itself does no justice to the amount of reading and study I had to go through, and eventually allowed me to make a mod of my own, a sound mod to offer to the community, along with understanding how it all works and why some mods overwrite other mod files and therefore arent compatible.. so I learned a lot about the "re-making" of the game by the modding community in the process.

Personally, I found it useful to play enough missions to run into some issues, see the world as it looks stock before mods.. and then slowly add, pick and choose mods based on what I wanted to see changed or fixed. It gives no perspective at all to see only the nice eye candy and never know what was broke and how bad.. you just simply become accustomed to the eye candy otherwise without being able to determine how big a change was involved.

I can also teach you how to get the same high rewards and kick-ass scores on 100% realism that I can systematically reproduce too.. lol

This idea just came to me while posting this.. if someone could burn a ISO of every major useful mod into one large RAR file.. how awesome would that be? For someone to have multiple types of experiments with all the files at their fingertips?

[magic452]

RFB fixes most of the things that are fixable so your pretty good on that score. For realism you have a good start.

The fleetboat TDC and PK take some getting use to, work differently than Uboats.

RSRD is a good mod and it will send you to the right places but if you miss whatever it is that is in the area there isn't much else to shoot at so you have to freelance a bit.

This link will give you some good ideas about where to be and when to be there. http://www.combinedfleet.com/battles These battles are well scripted in RSRD and can get quit exciting.

There are a ton of mods out there and as you get use to SH4 you'll want to check some of them out.

Welcome to the PTO

Magic

[Flaxpants]

That's great fellas, cheers. Now I can confidently proceed!

@Sailor Steve- Gimme the dark side! - Like you I like it to feel 'real'. As much as I like sinking the enemy I also enjoy just sailing around and managing the boat, so if I see nothing I don't feel cheated by the game, in fact the opposite. It only serves to build the excitement and tension for the next encounter. Everything you're saying tells me RFB is right for me.

@Magic452- Definately going to check out that link. Might even just show up to spectate! And the freelancing bit you mention is right up my street.

All good then. Finally, is there some issue with the stadimeter in SH4?, I've seen a few mods addressing the stadimeter but not sure if that's due to a problem with the original or not.

Thanks again!

[Anthony W.]

For the record, the submariners knew full well about the 200ft depth charge rule, and made good on it, till that damn Andrew J. May let it slip to the Japs that we could go far deeper than that.

NEVER GIVE UP THE SHIP!
Unless they have cake

[Daniel Prates]

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

For the record, the submariners knew full well about the 200ft depth charge rule, and made good on it, till that damn Andrew J. May let it slip to the Japs that we could go far deeper than that.

Andrew May was a 'great' guy indeed. I am just reading that "Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, later estimated that May's security breach cost the United States Navy as many as ten submarines and 800 crewmen killed in action"

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

For the record, the submariners knew full well about the 200ft depth charge rule, and made good on it, till that damn Andrew J. May let it slip to the Japs that we could go far deeper than that.

You say that "damn" as if you were actually there. Also for the record, I mentioned that my 'example' had nothing to do with anything, and was just an example off the top of my head. We were talking about the difference between two mods, in case you missed it.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Anthony W.

For the record, the submariners knew full well about the 200ft depth charge rule, and made good on it, till that damn Andrew J. May let it slip to the Japs that we could go far deeper than that.

e

Still don't know how he escaped prosecution

[vodkaphile]

Originally Posted by magic452

RFB fixes most of the things that are fixable so your pretty good on that score. For realism you have a good start.

The fleetboat TDC and PK take some getting use to, work differently than Uboats.

Magic

That has been my biggest issue.

I know all the math behind everything but the whole system is just different.

I mean just 30min ago I finished a patrol in SHIII heavily modded for realism and sunk 4 merchants, 1 destroyer and 1 submarine. Granted it is early 1940 in my current career in a VIIB sub.

The most I have sunk in a mission in SHIV are 2 merchants and 1 sampan (Deck Gun).

I have played SHIV far far less mind you.

[magic452]

Originally Posted by vodkaphile

That has been my biggest issue.

I know all the math behind everything but the whole system is just different.

I mean just 30min ago I finished a patrol in SHIII heavily modded for realism and sunk 4 merchants, 1 destroyer and 1 submarine. Granted it is early 1940 in my current career in a VIIB sub.

The most I have sunk in a mission in SHIV are 2 merchants and 1 sampan (Deck Gun).

I have played SHIV far far less mind you.

In all reality you fight a fleetboat much different than a Uboat.
Stealth and ambush are paramount in Fleetboats. You gotta track, plot and set up your attack and most often from longer ranges unless it's a single. You shoot the fattest one or two targets and do a runaround and repeat.
For this the US TDC and PK are excellent tools. Uboats are much more suited for close in quick firing action.
The problm is in this game you can't do much of the things a real US TDC could do.

The tracking. plotting and set up are what I enjoy most, sinking ships is just frosting on the cake.

@ Flaxpants
Lock the target and input Speed, AoB and range/bearing (in that order) with the PK(red button) on. You can than unlock the target and the PK will continually up date THAT firing solution, you can look at other targets but can't set up any data for them. If your solution is very good you don't even have to look at your first target to fire. A handy feature in very bad weather.

Magic

[Flaxpants]

Well, a week in and this game is beginning to drive me up the wall!

I'm having awful trouble with this TDC. It doesn't seem to matter how I put the info in, whether constant bearing with PK on, single bearing with PK off, my shots always end up going astern of the target, by inches it would seem. It's very consistent- the same thing seems to happen every time I shoot. The most recent occasion I had lined up a freighter for a fixed bearing attack at 90 degrees, 1700 yards off, speed 7 knots. I had double checked everything, essentially a very simple set-up, sub stationary, but same again..... I must be doing something wrong as I tried it with map contacts on and just read all the correct info from the map which I then input into the TDC. I've even tried playing it with both Metric & Imperial units in case there was a measuement issue.

I think I must be missing something

[commandosolo2009]

Originally Posted by Cpt-Maxim

No matter what advice you get in here, including mine, you will have to go as far as it takes to satisfy your own curiosity on how each mod plays out.

+1

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Flaxpants

Hi, been playing SH3/GWX for a year or so and loving it. Now I am going to give SH4 a go and have just ordered the gold edition.

Welcome to the dark side!

I was undecided over RFB and TMO, but in the end I chose RFB as apparently it is the more 'realistic' of the two. The RSRD seems like a must have.

Well, there's 'realism' and there's 'realism'. RFB strives to duplicate real operations and real difficulty, which can sometimes be easy and sometimes hard. The concept behind TMO isn't to make the game more difficult and less real, but to make the player behave in a more realistic fashion. Let's say the Japanese never set their depth charges for more than 200 feet. RFB might keep that precisely, which is more 'realistic'. TMO might set them for as deep as 600 feet, because the reality was that the submariners might not know they couldn't be set for more than 200 feet and having them that way, while realistic in a technical sense, gives the gamer information he wouldn't have had in real life, which means we get to cheat in the name of 'realism'.

The above example has nothing to do with the actual settings in either mod, and is just an example. But you get the idea. All of that said, I prefer RFB because while I like my game to feel 'real' to me, I don't usually bother to remember actual settings of that sort, and so I don't need to be pushed to play realistically, since I'm pretty bad at it anyway. Even with auto-targetting I tend to get pretty low tonnage scores simply because I tend to imagine it's really happing to me and so play in a fairly cautious manner.

But that's just me. I'm not trying to suggest one over the other, just point out the difference in the different concepts between the two mods and how they each deal with 'realism'.

I'm presuming that SH4 doesn't require a screen resolution mod fix like SH3?

No. It has setting choices and runs fine at several different resolutions. Mine is set to match my screen at 1440x900.

[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Welcome to the dark side!


Well, there's 'realism' and there's 'realism'. RFB strives to duplicate real operations and real difficulty, which can sometimes be easy and sometimes hard. The concept behind TMO isn't to make the game more difficult and less real, but to make the player behave in a more realistic fashion. Let's say the Japanese never set their depth charges for more than 200 feet. RFB might keep that precisely, which is more 'realistic'. TMO might set them for as deep as 600 feet, because the reality was that the submariners might not know they couldn't be set for more than 200 feet and having them that way, while realistic in a technical sense, gives the gamer information he wouldn't have had in real life, which means we get to cheat in the name of 'realism'.

The above example has nothing to do with the actual settings in either mod, and is just an example. But you get the idea. All of that said, I prefer RFB because while I like my game to feel 'real' to me, I don't usually bother to remember actual settings of that sort, and so I don't need to be pushed to play realistically, since I'm pretty bad at it anyway. Even with auto-targetting I tend to get pretty low tonnage scores simply because I tend to imagine it's really happing to me and so play in a fairly cautious manner.

But that's just me. I'm not trying to suggest one over the other, just point out the difference in the different concepts between the two mods and how they each deal with 'realism'.


No. It has setting choices and runs fine at several different resolutions. Mine is set to match my screen at 1440x900.

Couldn't have said it better! This is the Beauty of this sim, that you can mod this game (and SH3) to your taste. I like to play as if I'm back in '41 as if the war is happening and history is in the making (sort of), at 1.5 with GFO (Game Fixes Only for the benefit of Flax) even at this level I'm constantly running into new problems to solve, (the latest being visibility. After upgrading, I'm using better graphics so fog has come into play). So Flax, welcome aboard and have fun tweaking the game to your liking and Good Hunting!!
D40

[Flaxpants]

Thanks Dogfish, looking forward to getting into it. Reckon I'm nearly good to go- all I need now is the DVD..... Just preparing the boat and crew for a sneak attack on Gibraltar in SH3 (Oct 41) so that'll keep me busy in the meantime.