Silent Hunter III ships

[Nelson]

Or perhaps should I say 'Silent Hunter sinks ships".

Anyway, if you enjoy lurking in the North Atlantic like I do, this one should be good. Includes a dynamic campaign.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03...s_6120450.html

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

This sounds really quite interesting. How steep is the learning curve of the silent hunter games?

Edit-found a review. This sounds awesome, I will probably get it.

[Voigtkampf]

I’ll be getting it tomorrow, I suppose, or day after. It seems I’ll be doing a review of that one as well.

Can’t wait to shout “torpedoes away!”

[The_Doctor]

Is there a/going to be a demo?

I have never played a game like that before. It looks quite good.

[Blodrast]

not too steep. I played the first one for quite a while, together with "Aces of the Deep" (which is quite old).
A common characteristic of both games, which I'm sure will exist in SH3, is the "realism" settings. Basically, you can play any combination between an invincible sub with perfect torpedoes that never run out, without weather affecting you, and a very realistic sub sim. And most controls were quite intuitive, even for those old games - and I'm sure they're improved in SH3.

If you haven't played this genre before (i.e., a sub sim), a word of warning: even though there is an in-game "time warp" feature (i.e., speed up time, by up to huge factors like 4k or such), the absolute majority of your time will be spent navigating around watching for ships/stalking them, without too much "action" happening... you'll spend more than an hour just to fire one lousy torpedo...and so on.
That's not to say it can't be fun, ofc, but YMMV. Even the old games had cool music/sounds, so I expect a lot of cool stuff from SH3.

edit: dunno about a demo, but both AOD and SH1 are prolly abandonware, and you can find them as such. I'd give you links, but froggy edited them out in the past, because they're prolly sensitive material, so google it up.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Woo, I found an abandonware version of CAotD. Any tips?

[Nelson]

If you haven't played this genre before (i.e., a sub sim), a word of warning: even though there is an in-game "time warp" feature (i.e., speed up time, by up to huge factors like 4k or such), the absolute majority of your time will be spent navigating around watching for ships/stalking them, without too much "action" happening... you'll spend more than an hour just to fire one lousy torpedo...and so on.

Absolutely true. Despite liking them a lot, I have to be in just the right mood to play sub sims. They are a lot like the Thief series. Stealth, self control and patience are the real tools of the trade. Runnin’ and gunnin’ makes for a short career.

[Spino]

Wow, Subsim.com gave it a perfect score! If a hardcore sim site gives it that kind of grade it must be the real deal. Count me in!

First Russia gives us Oleg Maddox and his brilliant IL2 and Pacific Fighters sims and now these clever young developers from Romania give us what appears to be the best sub sim ever made!

Thank you Eastern Europe!

[Jacque Schtrapp]

I've been looking forward to ths one for a while. Hopefully whoever takes the plunge first will inform us as to the true worth of the game. Hurry though, there is simply to damned much allied shipping in the north atlantic.

[Catiline]

This sounds really quite interesting. How steep is the learning curve of the silent hunter games?

Edit-found a review. This sounds awesome, I will probably get it.

Apparently the manual is 571 pages long

That said, it sounds very good.

[screwtype]

Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like bananas.

I really needed to know that

[Krypta]

Hey Fellas,

I just wanted to let you know that Ubi has just released patch 1.2 for Silent Hunter 3. From reading the patch description, seems they have fixed a quite a few things, but namely they fixed what is known as the Multiplayer "Ready" bug(which is great ! ). Here's a link to the homepage where you can find links to download the patch.

Silent Hunter 3 Homepage(Has Links to the Patches)


BTW: Hosakawa are you running it yet?(ie Bought a dvd?, no other problems?)

[Spino]

Hey Fellas,

I just wanted to let you know that Ubi has just released patch 1.2 for Silent Hunter 3. From reading the patch description, seems they have fixed a quite a few things, but namely they fixed what is known as the Multiplayer "Ready" bug(which is great ! ). Here's a link to the homepage where you can find links to download the patch.

Silent Hunter 3 Homepage(Has Links to the Patches)


BTW: Hosakawa are you running it yet?(ie Bought a dvd?, no other problems?)

Already?!? EXCELLENT NEWS!!!

Hey kids, check out the 1.2 changelog...

1.2 Changes and Additions


SHIPS & AIRPLANES DAMAGE SYSTEM
Improvements in collision and damage model have been made for several ships:
Liberty Cargo
C2 Cargo
T2 Tanker
T3 Tanker
Tug Boat
LST

CAMPAIGN DATA
Netherlands properly enters and exits the war now
Gdansk is now renamed Danzig when under German control
Added mine fields and anti sub nets

INTERFACE
Local time displayed (under the current date) when the mouse is over the current hour (bottom-right corner) in game; this local time will depend on the U-Boot position on Earth (which is divided in 24 slices having 15 longitudinal degrees each)
Game version displayed in the bottom-right corner of the main menu page
Data from notepad (top-right section in periscopes or UZO pages) will not be reset on expert mode when the target in view is changing
A new tool: Angle tool (protractor) on navigation map
No weapon officer assist option (a new option in difficulty settings); when this option is checked then the Identify target and Solution to target orders from Weapons officer will be disabled
Wound badge fixed (when drag & drop)

WEATHER SYSTEM
Solved issues related to rain on time compression (rain will not became invisible after long time compression sessions)
A more balanced weather system

GAME EDITOR
Solved Game Editor crashes related to terrain data, mission objectives and triggers
IN-GAME
Solved the black sun problem and environment texture errors
The escorts will now make evasive maneuvers while pursuing contact (depending on the crew skill)

MULTIPLAYER
Ready button issue was fixed
Message box issues
The interface to servers list has been slightly updated to reflect the version of the game server and also to show if the server is password protected
The crash that is happening when chatting in session menu has been fixed.
Other minor updates

I simply cannot believe how responsive UBI and SHIII's Romanian based developer (anyone know the name of the developer?) have been with this game. This is the second patch since SHIII's release release roughly 2-3 weeks ago, simply fantastic! This game is one of the best sims I've ever played and it keeps getting better!

[Quid]

Great game if you have a lot of time on your hands. I have been playing like a maniac during the hols now and I can't seem to stop. Nothing beats sneaking up on a convoy and sink the ships undetected. On the other hand, no anger is greater when you run out of ammunition and there are still some juicy corgo ships and tankers left.

Just one little thing I have noticed. When a number of ships engage you, they tend to shoot and sink each other. I have had an instance where an escort had just detected me and was about to bomb me to high heaven, then all of a sudden the cargo ships engage the escort and blow it out of the water. It proved to be convenient but does that really have to be ?

Never the less, highly recommendable and playable. However, as I said, you do need a hell of a lot of spare time.

Ok, I really have to get my car fixed now. Should have done it two weeks ago...

Quid

[Hosakawa Tito]

Got myself a DVD Drive and started playing the tutorials. I can't get past the first step in navigation. I enter the channel okay because you get the initial course and speed before you start. My problem is the stupid radio man doesn't give me the subsequent radio messages. He reports, message received, then when I click on the message report icon the idiot tells me no messages received. He is now swimming with the fishes till I get this figured out. What the hell am I doing wrong?

[Spino]

Great game if you have a lot of time on your hands. I have been playing like a maniac during the hols now and I can't seem to stop. Nothing beats sneaking up on a convoy and sink the ships undetected. On the other hand, no anger is greater when you run out of ammunition and there are still some juicy corgo ships and tankers left.

Just one little thing I have noticed. When a number of ships engage you, they tend to shoot and sink each other. I have had an instance where an escort had just detected me and was about to bomb me to high heaven, then all of a sudden the cargo ships engage the escort and blow it out of the water. It proved to be convenient but does that really have to be ?

Never the less, highly recommendable and playable. However, as I said, you do need a hell of a lot of spare time.

That must be a very infrequent occurence because I've never seen it happen once and I've finished roughly 12 patrols (experienced lots of convoys) and and have completed several historical missions. Sounds like a weird bug. Not that I haven't seen friendly fire before, I once had a RN destroyer accidentally fire upon a motionless cargo ship that was situated between my sub and the destroyer. My sub was completely obscured by from the destroyer by the cargo ship's hull (I was really close and using my deck gun). The destroyer's shells kept slamming into the other side of the cargo ship and ultimately helped me deep six her alot faster.

A simple tweak to one of the cfg files can increase time compression beyond 1024x and lessen the doldrums. I have 2048x as my maximum TC setting now. It helps ALOT when traveling through zones with little to no sea traffic.

Got myself a DVD Drive and started playing the tutorials. I can't get past the first step in navigation. I enter the channel okay because you get the initial course and speed before you start. My problem is the stupid radio man doesn't give me the subsequent radio messages. He reports, message received, then when I click on the message report icon the idiot tells me no messages received. He is now swimming with the fishes till I get this figured out. What the hell am I doing wrong?

I didn't play through all the tutorials but I don't believe you're doing anything wrong. Most of the time the only kind of radio messages you'll get are simple, single ship contact updates on your Navigation Map. These messages are not 'proper' radio messages in that there's no descriptive text or spoken statement from your Radio Operator telling you about them. I don't recall ever getting text messages/spoken warnings from my Radio operator for individual ship contacts, only task groups and convoys.