Gentlemen submariners, what say you? Silent Hunter III, IV, V?

[undercovergeek]

I cannot shake the sim urge, fortunately lets play vids got rid of the urge to fly things, unfortunately lets play vids of SH made me want more - id like to get quite involved in it so if one is more arcadey than the other then id like the more serious one

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'd say grab IV with the Trigger Maru mod and all the radio stations.  Head over to subsim.com to grab the goodies you need.

III is a little too long in the tooth now and V had some bad "dumb it down to appeal to a wider market" decisions that can't be fixed with mods.

[Tuna]

All three of them are great!... Talk to Nefaro he is the house Grog on SH series, knows what the cool mods are and such!

[JudgeDredd]

III was my favourite. I had a blast trying to get out of Kiel and through the English Channel with the RN chasing me down.

[WallysWorld]

I still really enjoy SH III too. Install the Grey Wolves mod for it and it's a great game.

I have SH IV, but haven't played much of it. But thanks for the Trigger Maru mod mention, Silent Disapproval Robot. I'm downloading the mod now.

[Skoop]

Get sh4, there's a battle of Atlantic mod that adds Europe operations if you have uboat missions dlc.  The mod even lets you use late war uboats like the type XXI.  Plus you can do pacific if that's what you want.

My knock with sh4 series is, it models sub warfare so well that I get board with all the cat and mouse.  I would have loved a macro strategy game added where you subsim and coordinate wolfpacks. 

[salazarus]

You can't go wrong with SH3 or SH4. For U-boots I think SH3 is better, if you like Pacific or you are not sure take SH4 with U-boot DLC. SH5 is rubbish, even with mods its worse than SH3 or SH4.

[undercovergeek]

cool, 4 it is, its a bargain on steam

however, Trigger Maru needs 1.5 and theres lots of negative reviews on steam saying youre sold 1.2/1.3 and you cant upgrade or mod it

did you get it from steam or elsewhere chaps?

[mikeck]

I loved 3,4 and 5. Apparently I'm alone in that I liked 5. But to me, I found it realistic enough. In other words, a lot of mods add stuff serious sub simmers want. 5 had everything I needed and was realistic enough that I couldn't tell that anything was off. I liked being able to walk around the boat too. But 4 is good. I had the hard copy. Truthfully, with all 3 I got to the point someone above did...I got bored. Have to stalk convoys forever, then once I hit, it would take forever to deal with the escorts. THATS what a lot of people love about them though

So if you want a realistic sub sim, I think V is fine unless you really know what you're doing and when something isn't truly authentic I guess. Unless I'm missing something

[Nefaro]

I'd say grab IV with the Trigger Maru mod and all the radio stations.

Seconded.


Just check the Trigger Maru ReadMe for a few optional changes you can do.  IIRC, the author turned off External Views in the text files, for more realism, but who doesn't want to ogle the superb external cam in this series??  That, and many other (optional) adjustments, are easy text edits.

I also usually lower the base air patrol spawn percentages.  They were too high in vanilla and remain so in the mod, last I checked.  With default, once you get within something like 300 or 400nm of a Japanese airbase, you'll begin to get random air patrols spawned on you every few hours of game time.  I got sick of diving six times a day, at some points, to avoid them when I wasn't terribly close to a base.  This has been a regular issue in all the Silent Hunters, so SH4 isn't anything new in this respect.


Anyway.... Silent Hunter 4 with Trigger Maru.  It's the most complete, bug-free version of SH out there. Make sure you get the SH4 expansion with it, as that also includes the last patch to the vanilla game and the latest TM Mod!

SH5 isn't bad but it has too many problems vanilla and I don't think there's a single 'MegaMod' that fixes the problems.  Last time I played SH5, I had to go through the fookeen Mod Soup nightmare just to fix vanilla bugs and round out content.  It was a pain in the ass.  Not to mention it uses Ubisoft's login bullshit (even though you can set it to play offline afterward).

SH3 is far past it's prime, has two really annoying & unfixed bugs that drive me nuts, doesn't run in widescreen properly, etc, etc.  It's been surpassed awhile back.  It's sim modelling isn't as good as the latter ones, either.  Just skip it.  If you're one of those die-hard 3rd-Reich-Only players, then get SH5.

[Nefaro]

cool, 4 it is, its a bargain on steam

however, Trigger Maru needs 1.5 and theres lots of negative reviews on steam saying youre sold 1.2/1.3 and you cant upgrade or mod it

did you get it from steam or elsewhere chaps?

SH4 had an expansion (Uboats/Wolves of the Pacific or some such) which contained the last update along with it (1.5 IIRC).  You need that expansion, too, for the latest and greatest goodies.  As a bonus, you'll be able to also run some German boats in the Indian and Pacific Oceans too.

[Greybriar]

Gentlemen submariners, what say you? Silent Hunter III, IV, V?

Silent Hunter III with The Grey Wolves Freeware expansion.

[Sir Slash]

I've only played SH 4 but love it. Nothing like lighting-up a fat Jap tanker. Except for lighting-up two. I never could get any of the mods to work though. The U-Boat add-on is great too.

[endfire79]

Did someone say Genetlemen Submariner?

[Dammit Carl!]

SH4, and I managed to get a copy with the aforementioned U-Boat added bits at Gamersgate for a song a while back; might be a spot to watch if / when it goes on sale again.