Everyday I see less and less postings in this form. Is the newness wearing off?

Still think this is a great game but... the campaigns seem to get a wee bit routine, and the AI is anemic. I'm sorry, but if a destroyer catches me at point blank range with my conning tower still above the water, I should be seagull bait. Wish it were a bit more challenging.

Summer is here.

waiting for 1.4

I got sunk just before 1.3 was released(25th patrol) 2nd time by a "very good" escort while coming up to periscope depth.

Figured I would catch up on some work and found starforce had messed up my RW software.(how they can get away with screwing up someone else's software, I dont know).

Sort of. Its hard to get myself to play for more than an hour any more. The reward of sinking ships is all too familiar. I think I have burnt out.

Yeah, same here.

When it came out, I played nothing else for weeks, and now I haven't touched it for weeks.

I'm with Paajtor...

I even went back to Civ III conquests for a bit... At least it is dynamic....

The current AI and DM stop me from playing. It is no challenge, thus no fun.

I hope.think that this may be addressed. As I said in the review, if it gets finished it will be the sim of the year and an all time classic.

As it stands, COAD is still the gameplay king if this genera.

My attention has weaned recently, more down to the poor performance around ports, lack of difficulty against destroyers (dive deep + silent running, wait for him to bugger off) and general feeling of being the only vessel in the entire kriegsmarine (suprising how much of an immersion killer that last one is)

Fixes needed, and getting long overdue now. Meanwhile there's Rome Total War and Tiger Woods 2005

Hello...
I am the artist formerly known as MosheDyan to these boards. You may even find a crummy book review of "The Forgotten Soldier" somewhere in these archives!

Anyway...I thought I would pop in again as I saw SimHQ referenced over at Subsim and say hello to you all....and I will try to keep my infamous tangents and Dennis Miller asides to a minimum....

The last thing I expected when lurking in these forums is a post topic like this one. Especially when IMO you have the best sim since Steel Beasts in SHIII. I see that Teddy Bar has been posting excellent mission reports over at subsim and I find the comments on this board surprising to say the least (I also read your review). I have to say that with over 200 hours of time in SHIII I am seeing something new on each patrol. I am still running a vanilla install with only the 1.2 patch applied (I am glad I am not an early adapter...I need that sonar man!) and am looking forward to expanding the game with all the interesting mods (RUB etc) once the next patch is validated as a good fix for what 1.3 broke.

I can see references in the earlier posts regarding AI and the campaign which I feel like adding my nickels worth to. I will agree that the AI seem fairly dumb in the early years of the war (1939-mid-1941); however, once the US enters the war and the air coverage begins to dramatically expand it becomes a whole new ball game. I feel this models well the learning curve the Brits and Yanks had to follow during the convoy wars. It was in 1942 that the Allies started acting like an ASW asset rather then shepards to the flock and the game seems to do a good job of modeling this behavior with gradual improvement.

With regard to the campaign I believe there is a misunderstanding of what "dynamic" is to SHIII. The publishers (not the devs) should have used the word "variable" or a nice version of "random" instead. Dynamic campaign (to me anyway) means a new and different mission every time AND my performance during that mission WILL affect the outcome of the overall war. With SHIII I get a variable assignment with the ability to do as I see fit once the initial patrol goal is met....BUT...and its a crucial BUT..the outcome of the war is not going to be affected regardless or my performance. And I am cool with that...if I want alternate history I'll go read some more of Harry Turtledove's formula rubbish (He should have quit after "The Guns of The South").

I have another theory as well for you folks to contemplate. From what I can read on the forums here and at the official SHIII site (yuck...I would never register there) the majority of complaints about the actual gameplay (NOT patch errors or tech problems) seem to be from folks with rather short attention spans, the tactically clueless, the history-challenged (if I read another "why is the English Channel/Gibraltar/Scapa Flow so hard" thread I am going to puke), and the folks who like to play Quake on the high seas. I know this may be somewhat harsh...but I do not feel I am incorrect. Mix in the odd grognard who is mad about the toilet not modeled in game (you should read my comment on that one at subsim ) and you wind up with a lot of silliness on the various boards.

Now perhaps I am an optimist...and a gamer who likes to go slow and think (I also love the Combat Mission series and the Talonsoft Campaign series). I will also freely admit that most flight sims leave me feeling pretty cold (ok...I like IL-2...a lot!). I personally do NOT enjoy anything pretending to model advanced avionics and weaponry for a variety of reasons (with a couple of exceptions...I'll go into that another time if anyone cares) and prefer to fight my virtual wars from the days when it was MKI eyeball and at best primitive sensors.

Anyway...thats my pitch for not giving up on SHIII. Flame if you must...but be warned that I will only respond to INTELLIGENT flames...not that I expect anything less from SimHQ folks! I made the mistake of joining the Counterstrike:Source forum (ok...I like a bit of twitch gaming sometimes and those graphics are drop-dead beautiful) and I could not understand what the heck the threads were about (i.e. "dude u suxors 100110)....they can't even get the binary right .

Regards.....
SGT_Rock (formerly MosheDyan)....and BTW...hello again to...Cofield right? Worked in telecomms in the San Diego area...Qualcomm maybe?