Overpaid

[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