A long long time ago ..............

[Red Devil]

I had a pc with nvidia game card installed and was having loads of problems and changed to ATI, excellent. But as a result of problems had not played RSRD mod for eons, been on the original version (with patches) for quite sometime.

As a consequence have not been around here for a while.

So, update please, what is best Mod to install on SH4 (No U Boats please) and is RSRD still around.

Does it still require JSME manager (or whatever it was called).

That'll do for now - suggestions anyone?

Now on Quad core HP Pavilion with ATI Radion HD 6700 on 24 inch flat monitor, 3GB ram on HD cable. Win 8 Pro.

[sharkbit]

Trigger Maru Overhauled(TMO) will make your hair stand on end. It tends to make you act more like a US sub commander by the way it is designed. TMO is what I play but haven't looked at the latest version yet.

Real Fleet Boat(RFB) is very good too. It is more realism based.

I've tried both and both are excellent mods. It just depends on what your tastes are. Try both and see what you like.

RSRD is still around and is probably a must to go along with the above mods. Make sure you use the correct version for whatever mod you use.

And JSGME is a must have to make enabling mods a snap.

There's a ton of other mods that you can use to season your game to taste.

[Red Devil]

thanks a million, appreciated

[JoeCorrado]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

thanks a million, appreciated

ROFL - you may want to hold off a minute on that thanks.

TMO is a fantastic super mod. It took literally years of dedicated hard work to complete the final version of TMO ... 2.5 -

However, I personally prefer one of the earlier versions- my favorite was TMO 1.9 with the patch. Lethal enough for edge of your seat enjoyment, some suspense, some danger and plenty of reason to "Be careful out there!"

Several of our most notable sub commanders in real life, would likely have suffered death and defeat on their first patrols had the Japanese been as formidable as Duci has made them in his final revision!

Not completely certain about just how realistically proficient the IJN and the Japanese Merchant Marine are in TMO 2.5, compared to real life- Bungo Pete does come to mind! But it certainly does deliver on the "don't mail it in, or you will quickly pay the price for your complacency" concept!

You simply have give a tip of your hat to Duci, he deserves all the credit in the world- He catered faithfully to the wishes of the most suicidal simmers on the board! Quite a labor of love if you ask me. It is most likely a form of poetic justice that, in the end, he gave even the staunchest masochists here just what they had asked for.

Pain. And then a little more pain!

If you call someone a masochist, you either mean that they take pleasure in pain, or — perhaps more commonly — that they just seem to.

[Red Devil]

Thanks for the update but TMO sounds 'unrealistic' to me. Whilst the IJN had a well trained navy, they overestimated their worth. Complacency and belief in the sub humans of the USA proved their undoing. Yamamoto predicted 6 months of glory then the fight back would begin rolling, it proved correct.

I have SH4 (patched) on 'normal' setting, I have tried others but I deemed them a bit OTT. Normal is hard enough because if an IJN vessel spots you, all hell breaks loose and I have to break contact and dive to 300+ - quickly. The rougher the sea, the least effective is sonar, they cannot see me so I try to go under them and come back up to get a shot off.

I wanted a mod to make it historically more accurate and to reflect the efficiency of the sub men and the IJN. Last night, on my laptop, I was in the correct position to encounter the 4 carriers attacking Midway, historically, they never showed. But have encountered them there in the past. According to history, I was in the exact right place to 'have a go'.

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

Thanks for the update but TMO sounds 'unrealistic' to me. Whilst the IJN had a well trained navy, they overestimated their worth. Complacency and belief in the sub humans of the USA proved their undoing. Yamamoto predicted 6 months of glory then the fight back would begin rolling, it proved correct.

I have SH4 (patched) on 'normal' setting, I have tried others but I deemed them a bit OTT. Normal is hard enough because if an IJN vessel spots you, all hell breaks loose and I have to break contact and dive to 300+ - quickly. The rougher the sea, the least effective is sonar, they cannot see me so I try to go under them and come back up to get a shot off.

I wanted a mod to make it historically more accurate and to reflect the efficiency of the sub men and the IJN. Last night, on my laptop, I was in the correct position to encounter the 4 carriers attacking Midway, historically, they never showed. But have encountered them there in the past. According to history, I was in the exact right place to 'have a go'.

Were you using RSRD?

[Red Devil]

originally, a long time ago, but had problems with the pc/rsrd; so reverted to SH4 patch 1.4 and everything worked. I have a quad core now, on win 8 pro, but never retried rsrd. I also have laptop in win 7 pro with sh4 installed.

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

originally, a long time ago, but had problems with the pc/rsrd; so reverted to SH4 patch 1.4 and everything worked. I have a quad core now, on win 8 pro, but never retried rsrd. I also have laptop in win 7 pro with sh4 installed.

Well if you want the battles to actually be recreated well then you need to have RSRD installed. Otherwise you have to deal with the stock battles that are poorly designed and might not even spawn at the right date.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by Red Devil

Thanks for the update but TMO sounds 'unrealistic' to me. Whilst the IJN had a well trained navy, they overestimated their worth. Complacency and belief in the sub humans of the USA proved their undoing. Yamamoto predicted 6 months of glory then the fight back would begin rolling, it proved correct'.

I've always felt TMO does a good job of recreating the hesitancy and fear which gripped US sub skippers in the opening phases of the war. US submarine policy actually advocated only making attacks by sound as it was felt ASW measures would doom a sub attacking from periscope depth let alone the surface.

However, I don't' know how realistic it would be in the latter stages of the war. Could one conduct a Red Ramage like rampage through an enemy convoy at night on the surface in TMO?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_P._Ramage

I've yet to recreate that sort of success.

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

I've always felt TMO does a good job of recreating the hesitancy and fear which gripped US sub skippers in the opening phases of the war. US submarine policy actually advocated only making attacks by sound as it was felt ASW measures would doom a sub attacking from periscope depth let alone the surface.

However, I don't' know how realistic it would be in the latter stages of the war. Could one conduct a Red Ramage like rampage through an enemy convoy at night on the surface in TMO?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_P._Ramage

I've yet to recreate that sort of success.

I had no clue that they told them to attack via sound only. They really didn't think they would get a ton of hits right?

[JoeCorrado]

Originally Posted by Admiral Halsey

I had no clue that they told them to attack via sound only. They really didn't think they would get a ton of hits right?

The navy removed a large number of the more senior sub commanders for being TOO cautious. It was the youngsters who were new to command who led the way with their aggressive mannerisms.

The stay submerged during the daytime operational doctrine was ignored, staying on the surface and only submerging when you had to- simply sighting a plane would not dictate a dive- the plane had to become an obvious threat of sighting you before the order to dive was given. And once dived- the sub commander and their crew felt pretty safe from danger. And they were proven correct for the most part. TMO overplays the role of air patrols by giving them the eyes of God, and the hit power of Thor's Hammer.

Attacking while surfaced at night was a wildly successful tactic that was doctrine from fairly early in the war. Closing to ranges that would get you detected at twice that distance in TMO.

Japanese sonar was not very good to begin with, and they used "active" sonar only AFTER detecting you in some other manner... typically AFTER your attack had commenced. TMO ignores this fact to a large degree.

The Japanese merchants were typically not armed well enough to pose an immediate and serious threat to your boat unless you chose to engage in a short range surface action- and even then, the gunnery skills of the merchants were lacking to say the least. TMO gives merchant gunners a skill that would have made the fleet admiral proud! And TMO also gives the Japanese machine guns used most often by these merchants throughout most of the war, armor piercing capabilities from ranges that simply were not factual.

Originally Posted by REd Devil

Thanks for the update but TMO sounds 'unrealistic' to me. Whilst the IJN had a well trained navy, they overestimated their worth. Complacency and belief in the sub humans of the USA proved their undoing. Yamamoto predicted 6 months of glory then the fight back would begin rolling, it proved correct.

The list of issues related to realism and TMO is sort of a mute point. TMO was not meant to be realistic as it progressed. Instead, it was meant to give the AI enough advantages that you would be hard pressed to survive to late war, let alone to wars end if you did not exercise an UNREALISTIC level of caution. - The type of caution that led to the dismissal of many sub commanders during the early war.

Just my opinion and it is not intended to take away from TMO at all. Simply saying that Duci gave the fans of TMO was he believed they wanted- more and more challenges delivered via a more and more unrealistically skilled AI.

TMO is well worth the time to learn. Well worth the time to develope your own skills to defeat even a Bungo Pete type of adversary. Well worth the effort to "flavor it to your own taste" as Duci used to say. Meaning tweak TMO as you wish in order to bring it into line with what you want. There are some mods available that will modify certain aspects of TMO and you can tweak others on your own.

As for RSRD- when it comes to historically accurate NAVAL actions- NOTHING else comes close. RSRD is a bit weak on the merchant side- but then again...

The only way to make SH4 exactly what YOU want, is to experiment and modify things that you dislike about the stock game, TMO, RFB, OM, GFP or any combination. "Borrow from one and patch another- it can be challenging as facing down a trio of Ducis destroyer escorts who have a few freinds in the sky to keep you hopping!

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by JoeCorrado

The Japanese merchants were typically not armed well enough to pose an immediate and serious threat to your boat unless you chose to engage in a short range surface action- and even then, the gunnery skills of the merchants were lacking to say the least. TMO gives merchant gunners a skill that would have made the fleet admiral proud! And TMO also gives the Japanese machine guns used most often by these merchants throughout most of the war, armor piercing capabilities from ranges that simply were not factual.

With RSRD installed most merchants don't have any guns other then machine guns until mid-43.(Right about the time the Mark 14 starts behaving.) Still those machine guns are the reason I wait until the merchants start to get guns before I leave my trusty Narwhal for a newer sub.

[JoeCorrado]

Originally Posted by Admiral Halsey

With RSRD installed most merchants don't have any guns other then machine guns until mid-43.(Right about the time the Mark 14 starts behaving.) Still those machine guns are the reason I wait until the merchants start to get guns before I leave my trusty Narwhal for a newer sub.

Not so with TMO though, and that's a fact. You will die from machine gun fire alone at a range of a thousand yards coming from a small freighter in 1942 if you care to test it.

[Admiral Halsey]

Originally Posted by JoeCorrado

Not so with TMO though, and that's a fact. You will die from machine gun fire alone at a range of a thousand yards coming from a small freighter in 1942 if you care to test it.

Tell me about it. I once had my entire deck gun crew killed because of the machine guns. The sub wasn't in that much better shape either.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Admiral Halsey

I had no clue that they told them to attack via sound only. They really didn't think they would get a ton of hits right?

You have to remember that thinking and doctrine was very different in the pre-war period.

Before the outbreak of war, it was thought that our subs would be either patrolling coastal waters to repel enemy fleets or acting in concert with our own, scouting, and trying to whittle down their cruisers and battleships before a major engagement. Attacking unarmed merchant ships was against the Laws of War, after all.

Along with this, choreographed naval exercises showed aircraft could, and did, spot submarines attempting to "attack" the naval vessels, and the sub commanders, who were spotted, were criticized and their careers jeopardized. You can imagine the effect this had on the way they trained, and the methods employed.

How far did this idea about attacking from deep submergence go? I'm not sure, but the TDC did have a mechanism called a "sound bearing converter" to assist in this method.

In any case, everything changed dramatically after Dec. 7th. The quaint strictures about not attacking merchant shipping were gone. "Unrestricted Warfare" was official policy now. Skippers coming back, even from their first war patrols, were now harshly criticized for not making attacks, or being too cautious. There was pressure on all concerned, to "get results". The Pacific Fleet was a shambles and someone had to fill the gap. In effect, the pre-war submarine attack doctrine evaporated overnight.