A few books returned recently to my reading rotation. Silent Victory, Thunder Below, Clear the Bridge and the usual suspects. It is amazing the effect it has. As I read through them, I get overcome with the urge to return to the sea. It is so inspiring. Same thing last year with Hitler's U Boat War, and before long I was back in command, and you can read about it here

War Patrols of U-46


For a long time now I've wanted to give FotRSU a go, it's one I have never played. Instead I installed Trigger Maru Overhauled 2.5. I like this mod a lot and maybe I'll give Rising Sun a shot down the line. Spent some time deciding which career start to use. My last one was New Construction from Mare Island in 1942. This time I chose middle 1942 out of Pearl. Installed the aft deck gun mod and took command of USS Kingfish, a Gato and set off with a mission to insert agents at Majuro. Good area, between Saipan and Truk. I'm snapping pics and kicking around a new AAR. Unlike German boats, where I play dead is dead until I'm dead or the war ends (mostly dead), in US boats I restrict myself to four or five patrols, so an AAR isn't quite the workload. We'll see.

And also unlike German boats, I'll restart until I get command of a boat that was not sunk in the war. So it was I got Kingfish. It's good to be back at sea once again

I took Kingfish to Majuro only to find I had not unchecked "no map contact updates" So I had to start over. All other difficulty settings are checked. So it was I became skipper of Guardfish, one of the most famous boats of the war. This is the boat that 'watched the Tokyo horse races, placing bets'. Of course that's a war-time embellishment that made for good copy at a time when the nation was desperate for good news.

Given no special mission this time, but again to the Marianas. It's been successful so far, sending two good freighters to the bottom. It took some time to adjust to the US equipment, but not too long. My approach and attack methods are the same in German and American boats, but the way the solution data is entered is different between the two.TMO is a difficult mod, with skilled enemies and authentic torpedo performance, but by shooting salvos of four I've been able to cover the faults well enough.

I'm snapping pics and taking notes with the intention of doing an AAR. Maybe not much interest so I'll kick it around. But it's great to be back in command of an attack submarine once again.

Is there a big or main difference between FotRS and Trigger Maru Overhauled? I've been enjoying 33Lima's SH3 photos. I'd really love to play that again but I'm not sure I have to patience to figure out how to install my physical copy. I think I can manage another SH4 install and an overhaul mod though.

Hey Coot, can't say, as I can only judge FotRS by its dev description and Subsim forum comments. I have not played it.

TMO on the other hand has proven to be my favorite SH4 Pacific mod. I don't claim it's the best, that's for the individual skipper to assess. But I like what TMO brings to the table. I like Real Fleet Boat too, but overall I see TMO as more complete and polished.

It's a simple install, if you use JSGME, which you should, to install and remove mods. It will probably also be required to do the Large Address Aware fix, but that is standard fare for SH4 mods. I also moved on to SH4 from SH3 due to the installation hoops you need to jump through. So even if I am in the mood to sail a German boat I'll play Operation Monsun in SH4 instead of the top SH3 overhaul mods..

I haven't played TMO, but have played RFB and FOTRS. I loved FOTRS...the best sub sim experience I have ever had. That said, the mod team made some decisions I wasn't a fan of and so I stopped updating it a long while back. The thing that got me was one modder insisting on enabling the Japanese destroyers to be able to fire torpedoes at your submerged submarine. Once that "feature" appeared, I disappeared, lol.