Silent Hunter III

Azza

Anyone else prowling the virtual north atlantic seas in a U-Boat yet?

Excellent sim in my view. Looking foward to the multiplayer aspects on a lan.

_Kaiser_

just ordered it from Play this morning...hope it's as good as I've been reading

Winning Hand

Bought it on friday, fun for a while but even at 1024 time compression there is a ton of farting around waiting to get to your patrol zone. Engine is pretty nice though, much improved over aces of the deep . Still not sure what my verdict is on it.

Balfa

yaargh. i never got to finish my campaign in SH2. i love that game so much. i'll definitely be getting SH3.

bus77

Been eyeing this for awhile, gona be picked up real soon.

Azza

Bought it on friday, fun for a while but even at 1024 time compression there is a ton of farting around waiting to get to your patrol zone. Engine is pretty nice though, much improved over aces of the deep . Still not sure what my verdict is on it.

Well it is a sim. Lot of uneventful flying around to get to a target zone in combat flight sims. Part and parcel of the genre.

Gameplay and graphics are excellent. I'm quite enjoying it at the moment. I got Brothers in Arms (which looks pretty good too) on the same day and I have barely touched it because I'm just wanting to get stuck into this.

BlitzKrieg

i wish they had sims for being battleship captians

Enigma promised it but failed to deliver. but sub sims are alot of fun.

Trine

Think I'll pick this up tomorrow, haven't got really involved in a sim since B17 Flying Fortress and this video really got me going.

For the people who have it, what kind of rig are you playing it on and how do you find it runs? I've got a P4 3.4, 512MB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700, so I should be ok, though I hear it eats up the RAM a fair bit.

Balfa

BlitzKrieg wrote:

i wish they had sims for being battleship captians

Enigma promised it but failed to deliver. but sub sims are alot of fun.

Destroyer Command (also by Ultimation) might quench your thirst? I found it for just $5 Although, to be honest, i don't get anything like the same enjoyment out of it as i get out of SH2. I know there are specific tactics involved in surface battles, but it always feels kind of "sit there pounding hell out of each other until someone sinks"ish. Whereas with a submarine it's all sneak, sneak, sneak, follow, follow, fire torpedoes, run away like mad, get spotted by a destroyer, hide, hide, tremble as the sonar ping gets louder, hide, get depthcharged repeatedly for hours, repeat

edit: coo, just watched the video. very nice. It's a shame i rarely get to look at the nice visuals because i play on 100% realism and don't get any 3rd person cam views etc. It makes it more fun and scary when the destroyers are after me, anyway

abccormac

That video looks great! I just ordered it from play.com after seeing it. Hope it's as good as it looks, I haven't played a good sub game since silent service 2 on the amiga.

BlitzKrieg

theres a major difference between destroyer battles and battleships. hence i didnt pick up destroyer command.


a really good battleship sim despite being very old is Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic.

The appeal was that it was very open, you arranged your taskforce of ships and plotted a course into the atlantic (with fuel and ammo constraints) and tried to jump convoys while avoiding or engaging other taskforces.

Or you can play as British and try to catch these german task forces sneakign out.

exciting stuff.

But no one has come close to recreating it ever since which is very disapointing.

dearg_doom

Balfa, that post just sold me on that game(at least SH2;) i'll get it on the cheap just to see if I like it)

Bet it's mad hard, sounds intense though!

O_o... just compared SH2/SH3 on gamespot:

SH2: 6.1
SH3: 9.2

looks like I'm gonna have to get a new game!!

qwertz

This might help some of you wannabe submarine-captains to make a decision.

http://www.subsim.com/ssr/sh3_rc1/sh3_review1.htm

dearg_doom

ohOh, I smell obsession a-brewing!

That review was great! I'm kinda pissed off now 'cos I just bought RomeTW and was really looking forward to getting into it; but now I can't even bear thinking about siege towers and Greeks, this looks slick.



I'm far too fickle, moaning about having too many good games:rolleyes:, maybe I should just buy NFSU2 and be done with it:D

bizmark

IGN gave it 88%..Ordered my copy from play.com yesterday so hoping to be avoiding Yankee destroyers come Thursday (sh 3 far cry and full spectrum warrior for only 54 euro \o/ i love you play.com)

dearg_doom wrote:

ohOh, I smell obsession a-brewing!

That review was great! I'm kinda pissed off now 'cos I just bought RomeTW and was really looking forward to getting into it; but now I can't even bear thinking about siege towers and Greeks, this looks slick.

Rome total war is the best game ever made by man once you download the rome total realism mod http://www.rometotalrealism.com god bless those mod makers

Azza

Ekk did the single mission where you try and penetrate the English naval base at Scapa Flow at night.

After about 4 close calls with a few destroyers I entered the major inlet that leads to Scapa Flow. About 12km away I got detected by a destroyer but I threw him off track of so I thought . Then 4 more of them showed up. Worse still I was at 14m depth with only 2 metres left under my keel. After about 25 minutes I was eventually rammed and depth charge after being attacked no less than 8 times. A few minutes later despite the efforts of my repair crew I lost the boat due to flooding.

Swinehund Royal Navy...I'll have my revenge.

JCDenton

Having just finished "Pirates!" 5 minutes ago (a whole 10 minutes after I bought it in the first place), this is starting to look really promising.

The thing is though, I'm really divided as whether to get this or "Brothers in Arms"?

Can anyone help me with this?

Winning Hand

Grr, just had the game crash on me after a long mission patrolling north of malin head, managed to sink an armed trawler near scapa flow, took out the plane that was dispatched after me, once I got to the patrol zone I took out a huge tanker with the rest of my torpedos (most of them just bounced off, boo to realism) but hit it in the rear with one that sent that guy down. Just to finish up my mission requirement time I continued patrolling with just my deck gun and took out a torpedo boat who came after me in the dead of night with a huge spotlight but I got him first! With only two hours patrolling to go I sat back waiting to return to base and the immense accolades to come ONLY FOR THE GAME TO CRASH! AAHHH. Fun game though once you get into it, gradually upping the realism. Still maintain there is too much waiting to get to your patrol. Sim or no sim I dont have too much time in the day to play videogames, I would rather 60% was not taken up watching a line on the map get smaller (anyone who plays it will know what I mean )

btw there is already a patch out that stops your guys staying on deck when submerged and wont let you quit to base if there is an enemy ship in sight and other changes.

Azza

Sim or no sim I dont have too much time in the day to play videogames, I would rather 60% was not taken up watching a line on the map get smaller (anyone who plays it will know what I mean )

However if the developers had gone the other way and given you instant transport to your destination others would be complaining that you would not come accross by chance encounter with other ships. Can't please everyone I guess.

The thing is though, I'm really divided as whether to get this or "Brothers in Arms"?

Can anyone help me with this?

BIA looks good and plays good (bar for the corny voice acting).
Problem that annoys the crap out of me is the insane loading times. After second of third mission load times are about 5 minutes long even if you just reloading a check point. Its really annoying me. I assume its the same for everone. Can't be my machine its plenty powerfull too.

Trine

Picked it up earlier today, just finished the training missions and can't wait to get stuck into a career game. The graphics are amazing, picking off an incoming bomber at the last second with your flak gun and watching the twisting, burning fuselage buzz feet over your head and crash into the water behind you in a ball of flames and sea spray has to be seen.

I read some guy on the offical SH3 forum is doing a 72-hour patrol in real-time, he works at home and has a screen set up which he can monitor the whole time. Crazy.

Can't wait to get a multiplayer game going too, reckon there'll be some stiff competition on this very board.

Azza

Alas my internet connection will prevent me from playing online (for a few months at least)

But I hope to playing this at the next midlans lan in under 2 weeks.

Balfa

Azza wrote:

Alas my internet connection will prevent me from playing online

I can't imagine ping being all that important in a sub sim... or am i not understanding?

Does SH3 have online co-op? that would be delicious. mmmm... wolfpack


Hrrr... This is strange. Ubisoft have apparently penned the release of silent hunter 4 for under 12 months from now! http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/silenthunter4/news_6120654.html
Something is amiss.

BlitzKrieg

just thought i mention that the game Enigma (other not so good sub sim) is making a sequel which is a massive mutliplayer sub sim...


but back onto silent hunter 3...do you have freedom to sail around the atlantic or is it an scenario list of missions?

dearg_doom

Balfa wrote:

Hrrr... This is strange. Ubisoft have apparently penned the release of silent hunter 4 for under 12 months from now! http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/silenthunter4/news_6120654.html
Something is amiss.

That is EA-itis for ye!

It's not just Ubi that are 'hoping' to emulate EA's crap policies, even LucasArts announced a little while ago that they're going to start releasing yearly updates of Indiana Jones and Monkey games!


Also, SH3 was supposed to be released 6months ago, so maybe SH4 won't actually make it out until next Xmas?

Azza

In SHIII you given a patrol area so your suppose to sail there and patrol it. But you could defie orders if you wanted to and bugger off elsewhere.

Trine

Balfa wrote:

Does SH3 have online co-op? that would be delicious. mmmm... wolfpack

Yup, seems they're pushing that as the main multiplayer element, hunting as a Wolfpack in scripted or generated missions. Maximum of 4 players online though, 8 over a LAN. I haven't tried it yet, has anybody? I take it you can battle Sub vs. Sub?

That's interesting about Silent Hunter IV for early next year. If they're releasing an expansion pack as planned then that'll be out in a few months probably.

What realism setting are people here playing on?

TheGreatOne

Just bought this puppy today, chose it over BIA. Looking forward to getting well stuck into some action tonight. Looks like its gonna take a couple of hours to familiarise myself with all the controls tho.
Multiplayer sounds pretty cool, i'd say a co-op mission with a few other 'Human' controlled subs would rock!

Azza

Would some of you guys be interested in attending the midlans lan on next thursday. We could get a lan game going. Be at least 2 others playing it.

Trine

I'd love to play this across LAN but I have no way of getting to Roscommon. Online is excellent though once you get past the bug that stops the "Ready" button from appearing. Great game.

Would there be any interest in setting up a clan for a regular online game? An Irish Wolfpack...we'd be the terror of the British Navy...

TheGreatOne

Clan is a great idea, although i wouldn't be able to participate much myself atm, studying for finals.
Do my best though to make it for any late night online sessions once i get the feel of this game. Still find it hard to work out how to accurately pull off a torpedo attack, i'll get it soon I guess

Sand

Still find it hard to work out how to accurately pull off a torpedo attack, i'll get it soon I guess

I feel your pain. Its like supporting Ireland, so many chances going *just* wide. I actually found the convoy attack to be easier than the torpedo training exam because the convoy is moving in a line at a constant speed so you can just set yourself up at the head and nail 2 or 3 with your first salvo before they even know youre there. Whereas in the exam the ships break up and head in seperate directions as soon as the first goes down so you end up having to surface to chase and then they start tacking and its a pain in the arse trying to nail them after that.

Once I get a bit more practise in, I wouldnt mind an online game or two.

Sand

Does anyone know any decent "walkthrough" websites? I know that it being a dynamic campaign theres no set way of doing things, but Id appreciate a "this is what you should be doing generally" type thing, as Im running into some difficulties - finding and intercepting merchant ships. Currently what Im doing is leaving port, plotting course, putting my watch and bow torpedo crews into rest - leaving me blind but hey - and steaming for my patrol zone. As soon as Im on station I head for the center, dive to 30 meters and manually use the hydrophone to listen for ships, and then try to intercept through manual use of the hydrophone. If nothings up, I move around to different points and try again. Its not going great guns quite yet so im open to advice.

Im just after completing my second patrol from the 1939 start point in the rickety old boat you start off in. First patrol was an uneventful cruise of the Norwegian coast, with the weather and sea being atrocious and not the slightest hint of action.

Second patrol was in the North Sea off the English coast. On my way to the patrol zone I came across a lone British merchant by chance and was by now desperate for a kill so I diverted to engage. I managed to intercept somehow, submerged, and fired two fish at long range hoping for a quick kill.... one was a dud the other missed. I cursed. By this point the merchant man had passed me and I could only hope to catch up by surfacing, which was too risky so I resumed course for my patrol zone with only 3 fish left from my starting 5.

My patrol was again uneventful, though the weather was much better. I was determined not to go home without a kill this time so when I saw a contact appear 40 km away on final approach for Hartlepool I said **** it and off I went after it. Of course I never managed to intercept it, but I did intercept a C2 Merchant man heading east from hartlepool. I stalked him for the best part of 30 minutes and closed to within 1700 meters before hitting him with my last 3 fish. By the luck of the gods, the first one hit, and the second, and the third but the bastard was still floating! I had killed the engines after I had fired and watched through the periscope disbelieving as I had never seen a ship take 3 torpedos one after the other and survive, and was just about ready to tear up the manual, smash the disc and burn the map when finally the ****ing thing sank - 6,395 tons to me. Which places me in a not too shabby 4th place in the submarine aces list. Though some gimp managed to get 16,000 + tons somehow.

This may be the one game where I dont reload whenever things get tricky as its going to be interesting to see If I maintain my no casualties record so far.

Trine

Guess it depends on what difficulty you've got it on. Few things I've noticed that help are:

Try to lauch your torpedoes under 1000m distance, gives the target less time to react if the torpedo is spotted. But not under 300m because the torpedo won't have time to arm!

Make sure your rudder is straight and you're heading in a straight direction (or even better at full stop) when you launch.

When you're looking through the attack periscope and locked onto a target, look at the Angle to Bow reading. This tells you what angle the ship you're targeting is to the front of your sub. At 0 it's facing you, at 180 it's facing away from you. Judge the launching of your torpedo so that it hits the ship at 90 or 270 degrees.

Also, when you're on the easier difficulty settings there's little coloured triangles under the targeted boat when you're looking through the attack periscope. When it's red you have little chance of hitting, orange you have an average chance of hitting, and when it's green you have a good chance of hitting. But that's cheating...:D

Hope that helps.

bizmark

I have 500,000 tons of shipping to my name by 1943 \o/

Only advice i could give is to have good watch and sonar men when you find a target line it up so your looking at it side on then line up your target solution so its at 0 degrees on your map press q to open your torp tubes then wait till your inside 1000m do not fire if your below 400m your torp will more than likely not arm itself.Deck guns rule for single or unprotected cargo ships blast a few ap rounds into the waterline and set the top on fire with HE then just watch it burn

Trine

Doesn't sound like you've had the best of luck yet Sand, but I was exactly the same on my first patrols, damn fishing boats seemed to be able to outmaneuver me!

I don't know of any walkthrough guides to be honest. I've seen video tutorials for manual torpedo aiming, but no actual patrol tactics.

What I do is take the sector you've been given to patrol as a very rough indication of your actual patrol route. Don't just head full flank for your patrol sector, circle for 24 hours and then head home. Your patrols should (and do historically) last much longer than that.

So if I was given BExx to patrol, I would first head north along the English coast, maybe even taking time to criss-cross the mouth of any busy harbours, spend a few nights observing Scappa Flow and the Norwegian shipping lanes. I'd then head north of Scotland, west of Ireland (one of the best hunting grounds), taking time again to patrol busy America - England shipping lanes. By the time you've actually reached your objective, chances are you've already had plenty of engagements.

The same idea applies if your patrol sector is close by. Go to it first and complete your objective, but then head off to some shipping lanes where the real action is. Hell, head over to the American coast and bag yourself an aircraft carrier!

I can't see why you dive to 30m and use your hydrophone to listen for contacts though. Maybe when you're near a military port with lots of Destroyer activity, but when you're hunting merchants and cargo ships you shouldn't be afraid to stay surfaced, plot a patrol course and let your watchmen spot targets. Plenty of lone ships out there at your mercy.

jonski

Much as I would like this it is probably too much of a "sim" for me , plus i was nearly divorced way back when , for playing silent service 2 for hours on end . I presume this game is more of a sim than that ?

calhob_ie

The subsim forums are full of advice and theres guys out there modding it already.

www.subsim.com

They've already worked out how to up the time compression and up crew stamina levels to more realistic settings as well as modify compression times when near the coast etc. Which I found to be a great help for getting things moving espec getting out of Harbours like Wilhelmshaven or Lorient.

Early in the war you should have no problem sinking lone merchants in and around the irish and north seas but as time moves on convoys will become more prevalent and you'll have to work a bit harder. When America comes in you can have a good couple of patrols sitting off Norfolk and New York but then your in big trouble. By the end of 42 most of the traffic will be in convoys and you'll have to work serously hard to get anything.

Really enjoying this at the minute has to be said, best of luck.

Oh anybody tried the Gibraltrer passage into the med yet? Now that is one heavily defended stretch of sea!

JCDenton

calhob_ie wrote:

Oh anybody tried the Gibraltrer passage into the med yet? Now that is one heavily defended stretch of sea!

By golly it sure is, I think it's mostly just a game of patience there though, I couldn't take all the silent underwater maneuvers (especially when the time compression won't go very high here)

I didn't think I'd enjoy this game so much, but yesterday as I was sailing out of Wilhelmsheven, the sun was setting and I had the rolling stones "gimme shelter" blaring from the grammophone downstairs as I stood on deck.....I could almost smell the sea air.

I can wholehartedly reccommend this to any sim fan out there; great stuff!

Maximilian

Sand wrote:

Does anyone know any decent "walkthrough" websites?

Try http://hometown.aol.co.uk/dominicobaggio/SilentHunterIII.html
LOL @ your signature btw - I hope its meant in an ironic way. SF are hardly ones to complain about secret meetings. Is SH3 now part of IRA training?

This game is really great - Just attacked my first convoy last night - took out the destroyer escort with a salvo (having learned not to fire steam torpedoes at destroyers during daylight) and then was like a rabid wolf in a sheep pen, shooting at everything in sight - sunk another 6 ships before completely running out of ammo. It seems you can't sink a ship with a flak gun or with starshells!!

Great game!!

TwoShedsJackson

Having finally finished the tutorials (even that took me about six hours and was throughly enjoyable ) went on my first patrol in the craptacular 1939 U-Boat. Off to the coast of Norway, sank a German merchant and a neutral Swedish one before realising the nav officer colour codes the markers on your map at my easy-peasy settings

Nothing doing in the patrol zone itself, on the way back a trawler crashed into me and ripped off my periscope. Got home later, no actual enemy kills but bloody good fun.

Next patrol has me going to that grid off Kent so hopefully might actually sink a proper target this time

Check out those subsim.com forums for some handy downloads: the fatigue mod makes it much easier to manage the crew while still being somewhat realistic, they have a compass replacement which has numbers you can actually read, protractor tool for the nav map etc. etc.

Trine

Just recieved a report of my first convoy last night aswell, 16 ships with just one destroyer escort, off the south coast of Ireland. Intercepted it on the dot of midnight...and saved the game. Gonna attack tonight when I get a chance to play.

I downloaded a music pack for the gramaphone, has all early 40's German Nazi nationalist music, with such classic hits as "Heil Hitler Marschlied", "Panzer rollen in Afrika vor" and "Deutschland Du Land Der Treue"...

TwoShedsJackson

Using the Das Boot soundtrack myself where did you get the music pack?

Trine

This is what I have, Messervy's Gramaphone Pack, but be warned it's 130MB...

http://www.sushi-inc.dk/downloads/Messervys_gramophone_pack_complete.rar

There's other smaller packs, you just gotta look about for them. The Community board on the Ubisoft Silent Hunter III site is a good place.

Well my attack on the convoy went pretty disasterously, I was hoping to sink at least half of the 16 boats, but only managed to sink 4 and damage 3. :mad: Would have loved to have surfaced and let rip with my deck gun, but it couldn't be manned in the rough weather. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Oh well, got me 2 aircraft on the way home!

Terra

I love this game, been playing it for a few days now

Just got to lorrient, and its some port to navigate out of.

having a few problems getting my lads to reload the torpedos and fix and damage compartments...

it seems a bit odd sometimes they just do it and other times the torpedoe just say there que'd for loading but never load.

anyone have this problem ?

calhob_ie

Check your not rigged for silent running, that stops all noisy work on the boat Ie reloading torpedos, fixing damage etc. Also make sure you have enough guys in the relevant torpedo compartment.

Finally if your moving torpedos from external storage into the boat then it can only be done when the weather is good enough.

Sand

Anyone ever see ships sink of their own accord in rough weather? I intercepted this Norwegian trawler and decided to go to periscope depth so he didnt see me - Im not sure if neutrals report your position to enemy destroyers but I didnt want to risk it - and I was just poring over the maps wondering where Id go next when the trawler was marked on my map as sunk. I checked and yep it was gone.

The seas were quite rough so I guess its conceivable that it was swamped by a wave but its a tad conincidental that it would happen just when i was there to witness it.

Winning Hand

Never saw that before, did you get the tonnage credit?
Just finished a mission whereby i intercepted a convoy of tankers in the middle of the night off scapa flow with only one destroyer escort. Took that bad boy down and was free to unleash my torpedos on the rest of the convoy. 5 Tankers later and with no torpedos left and unable to use the deck gun due to bad weather I carried on to my patrol point where i hid for 24 hours to get the mission credit. Oddly enough there were no medals for me on my return, although i got the iron cross with oak leaves the mission before for taking out one armed trawler and nothing else

The second thumb has just gone up for this game in my book, now if only they could fix all the bugs!

Sand

Never saw that before, did you get the tonnage credit?

No, when I saw it sunk I wondered for some mad moment if I had accidentially hit fire with a very lucky torpedo but they were all there and there was no enemy shipping or friendlies around ( Norway was neutral anyway) so It must have been a freak wave that caught it.

Odd like I said, I wouldnt have throught it would have been that detailed that ships could just sink.

bizmark

Iv offen seen Pt boats sink in bad weather off the coast of England after they have been sent out to attack me

Azza

Seriously at the next midlans. I want to have this in a competition. Doing a co-op game see who sinks the most tonage. Winner gets a prize.

Trine

If anybodies up for a game some night gimme a PM, multiplayer is great.