Silent Hunter III

[WSUCougar]

Since I’ve been playing quite a bit of Silent Hunter III, I thought I’d bang out a few comments about it. I’ve seen many statements about the mandatory StarForce security system that loads with the game, so keep in mind that may be a deal-breaker for you.

Overall: Excellent
This is a great game. If you have ever played submarine sims in the past, this one is a quantum leap in a variety of ways. It truly sets the bar.

Documentation: Good
Solid manual, nice map with authentic Kriegsmarine patrol zones and merchant/convoy routes, nice keyboard template & command key. I’m generally a stickler about manuals, and this one is definitely above average. It has some significant holes, but for the most part you can find what you are seeking.

Graphics: Excellent
In a word, wow. Start with the ocean…this game boasts the best sea effects I’ve ever seen. Whether clipping along at 15 knots on a calm, moonlit night or thrashing through a North Sea storm, the scenery and effects are spectacular. Yes, you could get seasick from the game.

Next to mention are the ships, and perhaps more importantly for a sub sim, how they look getting torpedoed or hit with deck gun fire. Again, this is a quantum leap over anything I’ve ever seen. Each ship-type has multiple variations on sinking, torpedo hits, shell hits, explosions, fires, and so on. It is freaking awesome, I have to say, to hit a type of merchant vessel once and have the thing slowly heel over and capsize without a hint of flame, and the next time have it explode in dramatic fashion. It may sound silly, but this was always a pet peeve of mine in older sub sims: the torps always hit the same spot on the ship, and they always resulted in the same animation. Now it matters where you hit the ship, what angle, and so on. And you get a visual representation.

Your crew is represented visually populating the different sections of your sub, which are accessible through hot keys or mouse buttons on the interface. If they’ve been awarded medals, they’re wearing them on screen! To be honest, it’s been difficult for me to get attached to them as individuals; I look at them mainly for their skills and whether they are fatigued or not (more on that later). But it is cool to see them throughout the sub. You also access many of your sub’s operations through your crew (i.e., check remaining battery power through your engineer, man the deck gun through your watch officer, or depth under the keel through your navigation officer).

Dials, gauges, navigation maps, damage control, torpedo loading/status, deck & flak guns, periscopes (which even get clouded by waves washing over them), binocs, UZO (targeting binocs)…it’s all there. Note: I did have a major issue with the binocs and UZO initially, due to my NVIDIA graphics card, where the screen looking in the forward arc (around 330 to 30 degrees) was pixilated and painfully slow due to spray off the bow. This has been fixed in the patches.

Gameplay:
There’s a certain niche element here, I’m sure. If you like sub sims, then I think you’ll love this. It’s the game we’ve always wanted. If not…well, there are aspects than can be dull or frustrating. You have scaleable time compression (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024x) to ease the pain, but there are plenty of times where you are traversing empty seas, or it’s too damn rough or dark topside to do much of anything. The AI alerts you when something happens (that is, you drop out of high speed time compression), and you can plot courses with waypoints and patrol patterns, so a lot of this is manageable. But bottom line is that this is not an arcade game where you’re blasting ships non-stop. You need to be patient about finding targets, then maneuvering to get the best shot, lining up your targets, and so on. Also, if you are being tracked by a destroyer or other enemy ship, you cannot do the high-speed time compression (32x is the most underwater, and I believe 8x on the surface).

Game play proceeds as follows: you start either a mission or campaign (which is all I’ve played), selecting your flotilla, staffing your U-boat, and then getting a mission. Depending upon your “renown points” (gained through experience and mission excellence), you can buy upgrades for your boat, recruit better crewmen, etc. As the war progresses you can request a transfer to different flotillas/bases. Then you’re off to sea, navigating out of port and into hostile zones. The mission will usually direct you to patrol a particular zone (although not mandatory, doing so for 24 hours gains you renown), but where you want to hunt is up to you. There are various game settings which affect the realism rating for each mission; these include such things as manual targeting of torpedoes (which is a huge one), reload times for torpedoes, how long enemy ships take to sink, and whether you get a “god view” on your navigation map indicating other ships (another key one). I have played at around 70-75% realism thusfar, but have not manually targeted my torps yet.

So you hunt until you (a) run out of torps and deck gun ammo, (b) get low on fuel, (c) take so much damage that you have to limp home, or (d) get sunk. Then it’s back to the base, where you get some down time and repeat the process before your next mission.

The “Bummer” Department
The game, of course, isn’t perfect. In terms of negatives I have to start with crew management. There are many positive aspects of this; you have a crew that includes officers, warrant officers, and seamen, with various tasks for them to perform and skills with which they perform them. In a Type VIIB U-boat, that amounts to over 50 men, divided up by stations within the sub. How well they affect the operation of the U-boat is determined by their rank and experience, as well as their qualifications when it comes to officers and warrant officers. Qualifications are in such areas as torpedoes, navigation, machinist, gunnery, watch, radio, etc. As you gain experience and reputation, you are able to qualify your crew in new areas (this appears to be one new qualification per patrol) and give them medals. All of which is well and good.

However, the kicker with the crew is that they are affected by fatigue as time progresses, and you must swap them out when they get tired because fatigue affects operations negatively. You rest the crew in their quarters, where they regain their strength over time. The game has a limited ability to set assignments in batches (called “watches” for you land-lubbers), but the problem is that the mix of officers (with their qualifications) and seamen creates a complex mingling of who-goes-where-when. This is exacerbated by the time-compression, since the crew does not gain fatigue at high speed, but once you drop down to 32x or less suddenly they tire ridiculously fast. As it’s played out for me, it’s a bothersome procedure of assigning the best guys to the key areas, then waiting until the dreaded red exclamation point appears over them to indicate they are fatigued, and juggling the mix.

I understand what they are striving for with the process, but it is more trouble than it’s worth in my opinion.

Another minor bummer is calibrating various instruments, namely the hydrophones and the aiming device for the deck gun. If you do them manually (which can be very cool), and then leave the station for a moment and then return, the range setting on the gun or the direction on the hydrophones has altered. This is especially frustrating with the gun; you are shelling a ship at 3000 meters, leave to handle something else, then come back and the range has reverted to 500 meters. It’s possible I just haven’t learned how to lock it.

Anyway, I realize this is a ridiculously long post, but if anyone has any questions about the game, I’d be happy to answer them. Check out some of the web sites for screen-shots. It’s a fantastic game.

[WSUCougar]

A Few Exciting Moments

I thought I’d share a couple of particularly cool episodes from my U-53 campaign to give you a taste of the game.

The U-53 is a Type VIIB, which I started with in 1939. I think I rated this better boat because I completed the tutorial “academy,” as normally you start with a Type II coastal sub. But anyway, my first mission took me to the area west of lower Scotland. I had some happy hunting and then decided to dash home past Scapa Flow. Whoops. The channel south of the port is heavily patrolled (of course, since this is a major Royal Navy base for the British), but the biggest cause for concern was the shallowness of the water. We ended up getting cornered by three destroyers with the boat penned up against the shore in around 20 meters of water. I even scraped the hull up bad trying to make us as invisible as possible. But the Brits kept thrashing the nearby water, depth charging away, while we are tracking them via hydrophone (can’t risk the periscope or they might spot it). Three red lines on the navigation map marked their presence, tracking back and forth while we can hear the depth charges off in the distance. We are at “silent running” which means the crew can’t do anything – including damage control – and we’ve got a slow leak…so we’re waiting out the destroyers hoping they’ll get bored before we need to address the leak and make noise doing so. Finally, the red lines begin to spread out and fade…and it falls quiet. I risk a peek with the scope barely above the surface, waves lapping over it, and it looks all clear as darkness begins to fall. Off we go! The crew works on the damage furiously as we head eastward, but I know there’s destroyers out there waiting, and our battery is low. It gets dark enough where I feel like we can surface, and we ultimately make a dash through the gauntlet despite being inside 5000 meters from the prowling Brits. Safe at last!

After several missions, we had sunk a sizable amount of merchant tonnage, but it was all one ship at a time. It was mid-1940, and we cruised down to the southeast coast of England looking for targets. We expended most of our torps, and had not been able to use the deck gun at all due to heavy seas. Finally, however, one afternoon the weather cleared and the seas calmed…and the turkey shoot began. Normally it is dangerous to stay on the surface in good weather due to British aircraft, but I was too eager to use the deck gun, and the hydrophone indicated something slow was heading our way. Merchants come in various classes, including coastal vessels, small merchants, bigger C2 and C3 cargo ships, T2 tankers, and so on. Much of our past success had come against the smaller guys, but along comes a C3, heading north along the coast. Up we go, manning the deck gun and opening fire at around 2500 meters. Our fire is accurate, and soon the target is listing and on fire…and up comes another call from the hydrophone operator that another merchant ship is heading up the coast toward us! I maneuver the boat southward, sweeping past the poor C3 as we put her out of her misery with a few more shots to the waterline. She heels over and goes down slowly, and as she disappears below the surface we’ve already spotted the next victim, a C2 chugging right at us at around 6000 meters. I ask for full revolutions on the diesel, and we plunge forward at flank speed. Suddenly the call goes out: “Aircraft spotted!” Verdammt! It’s a solitary plane, and he’s got us spotted…as a crewman mans the flak gun and opens fire, I have to decide whether we should crash dive to avoid this bastard or continue on at the C2, which is almost in range and has no chance to escape. The hell with it, you don’t get to be a U-boat ace by living cautiously. Hard a port! We start to shake and bake a bit as the flak gun barks at the aircraft , and then open fire on the C2 as well. Two bombs send large spouts of water off our bow as the plane zips overhead, and then he’s gone and we have the C2 to ourselves. Buh-bye! That’s two. We head south, and next up comes a T2 tanker through the darkening gloom. He’s faster than the others, but not fast enough, as we run him down and light up the evening sky. Three in the span of an hour and a half! Next on the scene is an armed trawler…more dangerous prey to tangle with, to be sure, but I’m feeling my oats at this point, and we engage at long range. A few enemy shots kick up relatively close, but ours are on target and rapid under the command of my talented gunnery officer. Don’t mess with the U-53, Trawler Boy…she’s ablaze in short action, and sinks soon thereafter.

It’s not quite fully dark, and this is just too good a night, so I decide to boldly press on southward. We’re rewarded with a coastal merchant soon thereafter, and we move in to close range before firing a star shell overhead and then quickly pounding her to death. After that, our ammo low, we head out to deeper water to celebrate and continue recharging the batteries. What a night!

Finally, there was my first experience with a convoy. Conditions were less than ideal, but it was still very cool. I was tracking a slow moving merchant heading toward the Channel, and trying to keep a patrolling destroyer at arm’s length, when suddenly the hydrophone started picking up merchant contacts all over the place. Literally, the black lines on the nav map (which indicate merchant contacts) were so thick I couldn’t discern how many there were. Needless to say, this is boner material for a U-boat commander, so I did everything I could to catch up. To make a long story short, there was a host of destroyers, armed trawlers, and torpedo boats swarming around, but I was able to get a decent angle on the back line of this huge convoy, which included several T-2 tankers (yummy!). I launched two torps and then dove deep, humping it right into the midst of the rear merchants and hoping the escorts would search farther back. They fell for it, and man, were they busy back there, but I was able to pop up amidst the gang of tankers and cargo ships and sink two before running for it. Yee-ha!

[Dutch]

Damnit, I have avoided submarine sims since Silent Service (very addicting). Then thought I was done when I played SHII.

I've heard and read nothing but good to great things about SHIII. I've got to check it out.

Only negative, you can't be the allies. But I guess that wouldn't be much fun considering the theater of operations.

[Airhog]

This is supposed to help with fatigue. Just edit the Basic.cfg. Find these lines and paste over them with the stuff below. Don't forget to make a backup of the file first. I will try to post tomorrow night if this helps.




[FATIGUE_COEF]
;comp 0
RegularFactor00=0.0035
SpecificFactor00=0.005
BadWeather0=0.01
;comp1
RegularFactor10=0.0025
RegularFactor11=0.0025
SpecificFactor10=0.005
SpecificFactor11=0.005
BadWeather1=0.01
;comp2
RegularFactor20=0.0025
RegularFactor21=0.0025
SpecificFactor20=0.005
SpecificFactor21=0.005
BadWeather2=0.01
;comp3
RegularFactor30=0.0025
RegularFactor31=0.0025
SpecificFactor30=0.005
SpecificFactor31=0.005
BadWeather3=0.01
;comp4
RegularFactor40=0.0025
RegularFactor41=0.0025
SpecificFactor40=0.005
SpecificFactor41=0.005
BadWeather4=0.01
;comp5
RegularFactor50=0.0025
RegularFactor51=0.0025
SpecificFactor50=0.005
SpecificFactor51=0.005
BadWeather5=0.01
;comp6
SpecificFactor60=-0
SpecificFactor61=-0
;comp7
SpecificFactor70=-0
SpecificFactor71=-0
;comp8
RegularFactor80=0.0025
RegularFactor81=0.0025
SpecificFactor80=0.005
SpecificFactor81=0.005
BadWeather8=0.01
;comp9
RegularFactor90=0.0025
SpecificFactor90=0.005
BadWeather9=0.01
;comp10
RegularFactor100=0.025
SpecificFactor100=0.005
BadWeather10=0.01
;comp 11
RegularFactor110=0.0025
RegularFactor111=0.0025
SpecificFactor110=0.005
SpecificFactor111=0.005
BadWeather11=0.01

[Peregrine]

Sounds like a really neat game, I would love to get it, but with Starforce it's a no-go.

[Dutch]

Father's day gift has arrived. I've already learned how to sink my U-boat. I am confident I will learn more in the coming days.

[Dutch]

Okay, I've got a hang of all the basics of my ship and how to manage my crew and I pick up pretty easily any new options or technologies that come along.

Manual finding the solutions for attacking a ship is the biggest task I still need to learn, but for now, I'm going with the auto targeting while I get better with my tactics and strategies.

I had a blast the other day trying to sneak my sub through Gibraltar in the built in scenario.

I dove under one warship and he never knew I was there. But later, as I was entering the straight, I decided I was going to hug the coast of Africa and gun it at flank speed for a bit.

And seeing how the straight is crawling with patrols, I happened upon a speed boat of some sort who was firing at me with a light gun and a machine gun. It was pretty dark outside and it's searchlight was blarring away. I just aimed at the center of the search light with my own deck gun and a few shots later, it was ablaze!

"Yeah!" came the roar from one of my officers as the patrol boat's fate was sealed. But no sooner had I had a chance to boast my small success we heard the sonarman tell us another warship bearing was detected and coming right for us.

Within moments we could see the searchlight of a second patrol boat bearing down on us. I rotated the deck gun over towards the middle of the light again and took aim. One shot, miss, then a hit...hit...hit....hit....and after about 5 hits I began to think that something was terribly wrong.

I thought I saw something in the darkness and went for my binoculars and low and behold, it wasn't a patrol boat but a hunter-killer destroyer! It wasn't trying to sink me from afar, it was going to ram me!

So Flank-Speed and hard to port! was the call....but it was too late. By the time my engines got up and roaring, the destroyer was less than a 100 meters away and it cruised right into the back-side of my little sub...sending me to the bottom in quick fashion.

Damn. But what a cool game.

[WSUCougar]

Yeah, I learned the hard way early on that a U-boat stands no chance on the surface against a destroyer going 30+ knots. The only way I sank one was by getting run over by it (and this was a game bug that has since been fixed).

[RendeR]

What is "starforce" and why is it a no-sell for some people?

[WSUCougar]

What is "starforce" and why is it a no-sell for some people?
It's a copyright protection method that loads onto your computer and, I believe, cannot be easily removed. Sort of authorized spyware.

[st.cronin]

I just picked this up and am enjoying it. Anybody interested in trying some multi-player?

[Coffee Warlord]

I really really REALLY wish they would release a starforce-less version of this.