Finding the right supermod

[Mios 4Me]

After watching some Let's Play SH4 TMO episodes, I'm inclined to move away from stock 1.5 for more of a challenge. The question is which one.

Here are my considerations:

- Some mods I've read about in the archives are said to feature destroyers with hypersensitive detection abilities and whose guns can hit you at extreme range on the first salvo. That doesn't sound like my kind of fun or very realistic either.

- One thing that irritates me about stock is its historical inaccuracies (e.g. two Taihos, more than two Shokakus, the "Maya class", the Mios Woendi base being hundreds of km west of the actual location, etc.). How do the supermods fare? I noticed in one that Peleliu had apparently been misidentified, but that's trivial in comparison to the mistakes mentioned above.

- How well do they work with smaller mods? For instance, could I eliminate duds or change torpedo availability dates & reloads without significant risk?

- Which are compatible with night surface attacks?

- Any criticisms worth sharing?

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

After watching some Let's Play SH4 TMO episodes, I'm inclined to move away from stock 1.5 for more of a challenge. The question is which one.
Here are my considerations:
- Some mods I've read about in the archives are said to feature destroyers with hypersensitive detection abilities and whose guns can hit you at extreme range on the first salvo. That doesn't sound like my kind of fun or very realistic either.
- One thing that irritates me about stock is its historical inaccuracies (e.g. two Taihos, more than two Shokakus, the "Maya class", the Mios Woendi base being hundreds of km west of the actual location, etc.). How do the supermods fare? I noticed in one that Peleliu had apparently been misidentified, but that's trivial in comparison to the mistakes mentioned above.
- How well do they work with smaller mods? For instance, could I eliminate duds or change torpedo availability dates & reloads without significant risk?
- Which are compatible with night surface attacks?
- Any criticisms worth sharing?

I completely switched to stock SH4 v1.5 on a 10 year old laptop after playing SH3 since 2005. Looking for more, I went to Webster's Game Fixes Only mod or GFO for short and then added additional mods by Webster and others. Over time I went up to about 40 mods and a few mini tweaks of my self. It then played quite realistically and somewhat difficult.

I switched to Fall of the Rising Sun Unlimited Edition v1.0.1.g EN or FotRS U for short when it was released in early November 2019. See this mods workshop link: https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...d.php?t=243064

I now play FotRS with approximately 20 mods by others and about 6 mini tweaks of my own. In many respects it quite a bit more realistic and interesting than other Mods I've played. In some respects it's more challenging and difficult, but in some respects, it's not. I look at it as a work in progress. A small update is due out soon. It has its own "Sticky" on the SH4 Mods Workshop so you can post questions, problems, issues, etc and you'll receive quick replies and help. The folks who originated this mod are working to make it as good as they can.

To answer a few of your questions:
I don't believe the destroyers in this mod have hypersensitive detection abilities or guns of unusual abilities. I normally close to within 2,000 yards to fire torpedoes without difficulty, if a enemy vessel sees a raised scope nearby, they will fire at you. One night I learned a lesson by getting to close to a small fishing boat and received a hail of small arms fire. I personally don't believe the destroyers are as good at hunting and killing with depth charges as I've previously seen in SH3 or SH4 with Webster's GFO. It's still a lengthy challenge to break away from an attacked convoy.

The moders of FotRS are trying to make their mod as historically accurate as possible I do believe and to eventually correct all the mistakes that are found with future updates.

I play with some 20 plus small mods and some tweaks of my own without issue. I've tried a few small mods that didn't play as good as I wished or had issues and have thus discarded their use. You just need to install mods with the JS Generic Mod Enabler; then, it's easy and safe to remove mods that are not what you expected.

Night surface attacks were something U-boats did during the "Happy Days" I don't know if it was historically correct for US subs? You certainly can do them but you'd probably come under a lot of gun fire at the short ranges.

I really don't have any criticisms to mention. I think you'd be missing an opportunity if you do not try FotRS UE. I believe it has a lot of potential, and the people willing to put the work into it, to make it great.

Hope you find my response helpful.

[Mios 4Me]

Thank you, that's exactly the sort of information I'm looking for, von Zelda.

It's been 20 years since I read Blair, but if memory serves, Red Ramage had a memorable night surface attack on a convoy while on the USS Parche, for example. Not sure how common they were though.

One technical thing that popped out at me: not sure if I should say mods or tweaks for what I have in mind. I simply edit text fields to add an extra gun or more torpedo reloads, etc, instead of using jgsme for most things. Does that complicate or simplify things?

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

One technical thing that popped out at me: not sure if I should say mods or tweaks for what I have in mind. I simply edit text fields to add an extra gun or more torpedo reloads, etc, instead of using jgsme for most things. Does that complicate or simplify things?

I do both.

I'd call a simple text edit of a rather large file a tweak. For example, I don't like nomographs on my Nav map. A little research led me to the appropriate data file and I placed ";" in front of each line responsible for adding the nomograph, which is now gone. That's a tweak.

On the other hand, I've made small, numerous shortcut changes to the keystrokes by changing particular letters on particular commands in the Commands file. For example: shift+enter fires a torpedo, Tab key locks on a target instead of letter L and shift+C is now crash dive. And others, so over quite some time, I've made a keystroke mod that I continually update and with every new edit, the new mod goes in the Mod folder and is enabled with JSGME to test.

Most of the mods I use are developed by others, they go in the Mod folder and are enabled with JSGME. Let me know when you begin developing some tweaks, I mean mods; there are some ideas I have but I've been totally stumped on results.

[propbeanie]

I do similar. I make me a "mini-mod" with my own tweaks for the game / mod combination, and that way, if I mess something up, I can pull it back out. It is also a good way to test future releases.

[Mios 4Me]

Truk seems to be a non-starter in stock 1.5, which pretty much removes any serious consideration of a Brisbane assignment. How well do the various supermods handle it?

[propbeanie]

All sorts of "shallows" in the game are messed-up, such that any water shallower than say 50 foot can lead to issues with the bigger ships. In Stock, look in just about any harbor, and you will find ships spawned into the "mud", or "banging" on the bottom, even though you might zoom-in with the external camera, and see that there is a good 10 foot beneath their keel. I don't know if that has to do with the "detection" area for a "magnetic pistol" torpedo or what, but the ships "hit bottom" before their draft figures say they should. With that, I think Truk and a few other atolls like that were avoided by the devs.

Carotio did a "terrain" mod for Truk years back, which was included in RFB and TMO (??), and that was re-worked in FotRSU. One thing also about the area, is that it is "tight quarters" in there, and a two-column convoy cannot go in, and come out the other side, without losing some of its 'contents' on the way, such that some of the ships will run aground, or collide with other ships, both in its own group, and in others, so it can be a mess in there, even with Carotio's mod. But you should find that RFB 1.5 & 2.0, TMO 2.5 (and previous - and along with RSRDC) and FOTRS and FotRSU all have a re-worked Truk, apparently mostly based upon Carotio's version. I think (warning: biased opinion) that the FotRSU version is the best, of course...

There are minefields and anti-sub nets around the atoll in most of the mods, in an effort to prevent harbor raiding. I'm sure there are other such mods that do a re-working of the area, and I am thinking that when Carotio did the mod, it was for stock, which would work in GFO. Just read his documentation... ?? - I found the old thread: Carotio Truk Corals Harbours Cities Locations, but unfortunately, the links to his pix and apparently the download also, are broken. However, one more click, and I did find the Carotio_SH4_TrukCoralHarbourCityLocations download, thanks to Lt commander lare...

[Mios 4Me]

Thanks for posting that, propbeanie; it's much appreciated and I'm glad to hear the fix is in general release among most or all of the supermods. That had been the greatest disappointment of stock SH4, so I was pleasantly surprised to see just such a raid as you mentioned on a Let's Play SH4 TMO video. The player infiltrated the harbor, fired off 14 torpedoes against a Yamato, and blew back out to sea past three minuscule escorts with little effort, so I suspect he was either extremely lucky or his version hadn't been upgraded to the minefields and nets.

Speaking of minefields, is FM sonar an option on the supermods? That could be a lot of fun.

Btw, does the shallow water issue explain why there's almost always a merchant in an inaccessible basin on the south side of the Wake Island harbor or is that something else entirely?

Sorry, I posted this to the wrong forum. Moved to FotRS UE forum in SH4 Mods Workshop.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

Thanks for posting that, propbeanie; it's much appreciated and I'm glad to hear the fix is in general release among most or all of the supermods. That had been the greatest disappointment of stock SH4, so I was pleasantly surprised to see just such a raid as you mentioned on a Let's Play SH4 TMO video. The player infiltrated the harbor, fired off 14 torpedoes against a Yamato, and blew back out to sea past three minuscule escorts with little effort, so I suspect he was either extremely lucky or his version hadn't been upgraded to the minefields and nets.

Speaking of minefields, is FM sonar an option on the supermods? That could be a lot of fun.

Btw, does the shallow water issue explain why there's almost always a merchant in an inaccessible basin on the south side of the Wake Island harbor or is that something else entirely?

Those ships are sometimes there to tempt you to do things you really shouldn't. However, some of them, you can set your Mk14 to slow, impact, and maybe 6-10 foot, line up on the sonar line from between islands or at the mouth of an atoll, and do a long shot or two. Just be wary of harbor guns if you're on the surface...

The FM Sonar is something you can see the devs were trying to do, going by all the parts that are dormant in the game, just like with the Observation Periscope radar (which a few mods, including FotRSU managed to get working), but unfortunately all of the functionality for the FM Sonar does not appear to be there. Attempts have been made, and are continuing, in an effort to work around some of this, but don't hold your breath...

[Bilge_Rat]

There is no right or wrong answer, it is really a question of personal taste. I tried RFB for a long time, and then TMO for a long time. In both cases, I wound up tweaking both to my personal taste. Currently using GFO+RSRDC, with some additional mods.

The problem you quickly run into are the inherent game/AI/design limitations that cannot be addressed by mods.

Every Supermod has strengths and weaknesses, best way is to try each and pick the one you like the most.