Silent Hunter V - Bugfest extraoridnaire

[Thanas]

For those who can read German, here is a trustworthy and excellent review of SHV.

Highlights:

- You have to walk manually with keyboard and mouse to every station. No one-click selection of vital stations.
- To top that off, graphics do not work as intended when walking through the boat, sometimes it is impossible to do that
- Torpedo aiming AI does not work, one has to manually aim torpedoes. Uuh....hooray for betatesting? The most important feature does not work?
- The first patch fixes that by forcing players to enter the speed manually. Yeah, I guess every player had a course in how to judge the enemy ships speed.
- no manual at all. You do not get an explanation for what does what, you have to learn by trial and error.
- no dynamic campaign. Your actions do not really have an impact, nor do you get a continous game experience. Instead, the campaign is didvided into missions.
- sometimes, the instruments stop working, meaning you are locked out from controling the boat
- "dynamic" missions sometimes stop working while you try to do them. But wait, it gets better. When you get back to base, you get a medal for succesful completion of that mission, and then the game ends due to you having failed that mission.
- when you are rammed by a destroyer, the destroyer is destroyed, makes a full-stop and sinks.
- ships in Kiel Naval base all ram the mainland at full speed and catapult into the air, then sink. Rinse and repeat.
- bad translation. The North sea is not the Normeer, it is the Nordsee. Also, it is Deutsche Bucht, not Deutche Bucht. Babelfish ahoy?


EDIT: Even better. Apparently sometimes the Echolot stops working, meaning you do not know how deep the water is. Gee, Ubisoft, of course you do not need to know how deep you can dive in a submarine game.



Translated review:

...Everything looks as if hastily put together at the last minute, without any betatesting or quality control...

Ubisoft should not have published the game in this state. According to our opinion, at least half a year of quality control and optimization done by more competent programmers would be necessary, to have this game even start to resemble anything approaching "fun".

[Vendetta]

- Torpedo aiming AI does not work, one has to manually aim torpedoes. Uuh....hooray for betatesting? The most important feature does not work?

QC for videogames doesn't appear to include feature testing. There are endless examples of really obvious features that just don't operate, that even a basic list of "this is what this feature does" with a tickbox to tick if it actually does it would improve a lot of games' QC.

[The Jester]

- The first patch fixes that by forcing players to enter the speed manually. Yeah, I guess every player had a course in how to judge the enemy ships speed.

I used to do this all the time in Silent Hunter 3 and got really effective at manual torpedo aiming (to the point that I could pinpoint the fuel tank on a C2 purely with manual aiming). It's not that difficult. Simply adjust your course so that you're running parallel with your target and vary your speed until you find a point where their bearing does not change. Even if you're not perfectly parallel, you still have their velocity in the direction you're heading which is enough to compute a firing solution if you input the speed and bearing as though they are parallel. It's a little tedious and time consuming and I can understand why some people would not want to do it, but since the u-boats are so stable, the accuracy is incredibly good and I prefer this method over automatic aiming.

[Thanas]

It is not that difficult, but completely impractical in convoy attacks to use that tactic - also, one should not have to do so in the first place.

[The Jester]

It is not that difficult, but completely impractical in convoy attacks to use that tactic - also, one should not have to do so in the first place.

I don't know what you're talking about. I used it all the time during convoy attacks. It's even easier then since all ships move at the same speed and heading.

But I do agree that it's tedious and there should be a way to avoid it. But I liked the extra control in computing firing solutions since it allowed me to set up precise straight shots.

[MKSheppard]

Man. Ubisoft really is running the franchise into the ground -- SH4 was an improvement in some ways over SH3; like for example, you could go to much higher time compressions more smoothly, but this was offset by HOW FUCKING HUGE THE PACIFIC WAS.

I always edited my SH4 game files, so that "Start outside harbor" actually had me start past midway island -- great time saver.

and lets not forget the infamous SH4 "don't save underwater" bug.

[Bounty]

I always edited my SH4 game files, so that "Start outside harbor" actually had me start past midway island -- great time saver.

How do you do that?

[MKSheppard]

How do you do that?

It's so useful I made a note.

How to start near your patrol location like in SH1!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, if you want to start near your patrol location, like you did in SH4, some editing is required.

Go into:

\Data\UPCData\UPCCampaignData

and open up Flotillas.upc

(don't worry, it's just a TXT file renamed differently)

You'll see some stuff; but what you want to look for is:

DepartureDescriptionOut1

Replace the value for that flotilla's DepartureDescriptionOut1 in there with:

16887670, 2520495, 236 - A little bit south of Iwo Jima

And when you start the game and pick "start outside harbor"; you will end up south of Iwo.

Please note that you have to repeat this for each flotilla base;

[Flotilla 1.Base 1]
ID= PearlHarbor

[Flotilla 2.Base 1]
ID= Manila

;[Flotilla 2.Base 2]
;ID= Corregidor

so on so on etc. Some more work is needed to find good patrol start points for non Pearl Harbor based boats; but this is a start.

Oh yes, you'll start with 100% fuel, unlike SH1, in which you had like 50% fuel....so just impose a self restriction, that you can only take your fuel down to what 60% or so.

[Bounty]

You just gave my back several hours of my life.

[CaptHawkeye]

Man, is it a testament to the current status of the sim genre that the only major naval sim being released is a buggy, broken, unplayable mess?


I predict someone will slash through the word "naval" in a future quote of this post.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Man, is it a testament to the current status of the sim genre that the only major naval sim being released is a buggy, broken, unplayable mess?

I predict someone will slash through the word "naval" in a future quote of this post.

Silent Hunter has been a bugfest since the very first installment in 1996. At least since Silent Hunter II most people have learned to wait until several patches have been released. It still remains to be seen if part V can be saved through patching.

As for the sim genre; arent't they still developing new game variants based on the Il-2 Sturmovik engine? At least the console version is fairly recent.

[Bounty]

As for the sim genre; arent't they still developing new game variants based on the Il-2 Sturmovik engine? At least the console version is fairly recent.

Sturmovik itself is getting a sequel, and if they keep the current model it should be good for a few years of expansions. There's also a nifty WW1 flight game but the name escapes me.

[MKSheppard]

From Subsim:

Earlier tonight i played some SH5. Found a huge 32 ship taskforce and attacked it. Went rather terrible.. Managed to cripple 2 ships. They started burning alot, so im confused they werent destroyed in the first place. (If those kind of fires were present on any real life ship, the sailors would get the hell off it. and fast). Anyway, i apparently destroyed the engine on one of those ships. So i observed it and happily waited for the rest of the convoy to leave their friends behind for shark food. Once it seemed safe i got up, sunk the ship with the deck gun, since i was fresh outta eels. After that i gave myself a pat on the back and set up a nice route to head home for some sauerkraut.

Sometime during this journey i was ordered by my "captain" to join her in the sofa for some TV. So i saved the game and were fed some junk TV instead.

Now later i decided to pop in to just sail home and start my second patrol. I Load the save, and was surprised to see it rather far down the list, and sure enough, the save was old. Altho the timestamp said othewise. I got mad, and reloaded another auto save, which, luckily enough was at a point where i was waiting for the convoy to move away from the crippled ship. Hooray!.. Altho, when i peered thru the periscope that ship was not burning anymore. and was happily trying to catch up with their friends..

And all i could do was to laugh. and get angry.

My theory is as follows:
To reduce the file size of the save games, because they are transferred to the stupid UBI servers. Minimal info is saved.

The reason i had to load that save is also because somewhere my real save game disappeared, which is UBI's servers fault.

If i hadn't bought the game digitally, i would have thrown this piece of crap out the window.. I had some hope for this game, but all the bugs and other gameplay issues. And recently the DRM servers not working and even savegames vanishing from the face of the earth have finally gotten me fed up...

Needed to vent some anger and frustration, and i shall stop now before i end up typing stupid things about the devs and such..

..

You can turn online saves OFF.

but i doubt this would make any differance since :-

This is an old save bug.... present from SH3... so i would say the rules for saving would be the same advice from SH3....

DO NOT SAVE
when submerged.
when within 50km of a ship.
when within 50km of a harbour.
When within 50km of a sunk ship.

But Ubi have made the bug issue worse with this online saves.

*Edited to add more info.*

Unfortunatly, you cant blame DRM on this one. Here's a tidbit that i just assume is common knowledge because it's the same behavior in SH3, and SH4.

The game keeps track if basic info. Speed, heading, position, ship type, stuff its equped with, etc. It does NOT keep track of things like damage incurred, shells expended, things of that nature.

What this means, is that in SH3, Sh4, and Sh5, when you damage a ship, you MUST follow through. The damage incurred, shells it expended, etc, is only kept track of while the ship is within 30KM of your own. ( At least i think its 30KM). After a ship gets away from you, and has exceeded 30KM distance, it is no longer rendered. So all temporary information is reset. After that, the game ony keeps track of basic information again, and does not render the ship until it is within 30KM. It does this to save system resources. (consider how many convoys and single ships the game is simultaniously tracking).

So as an example, you can create a single mission where a convoy of Allied battle ships are traveling in a 60KM circular route, but passing some stationary axis battleships. As the allied task force goes by, it will incurr damage, and use its shells firing its guns. Sit there and wait for it to come back, and it will be fully restored to prestine condition because it exceeded 30KM distance. The game stopped rendering it, and when it started to render it again as it came closer, it called upon the data files for the specifications of what to render.

This is what your encountering when you reload a saved game where you know you damaged a ship. The damage is not tracked. Its temporary data not written to file. So the moral of he story is, if you damage a ship and you really want to sink it, DO so before it gets too far away from you, or before you decided to save the game and quit.

I find it pretty hilarious that in Fallout 3; somehow Bethesda can literally keep track of every damn body, clip, bullet etc around 26 km2 of the wasteland (that's a lot of stuff); but after THREE TRIES, the guys at Ubisoft Romania still cannot fucking fix the savegame bugs that have plagued the SH franchise since SH3.

So basically, moral of story: stay the fuck away from anything produced by Eastern European or Russian Dev studios -- while they can produce a very nice looking game on the cheap; it seems like quality control in those areas is weak to non-existent.

I can understand these problems with SH3; because it was Ubi Romania's first subsim, and the game was nearly cancelled several times during development; plus a major game element (dynamic campaign) was slotted in at the last minute. But they've since had two follow on A+ titles to work on it (SH4 and SH5), and the same problems keep showing up.

[PeZook]

It is not that difficult, but completely impractical in convoy attacks to use that tactic - also, one should not have to do so in the first place.

Bah, hardcore sub fanatics will tell you that automating certain functions makes a game cheaper and not as deep as it should be, so you don't need automatic torpedo targeting anyway! A submarine captain should do everything himself!

This may be a somewhat contributing factor to the fact why many sims nowadays are horribly unplayable.

[MKSheppard]

I always liked playing SH3 in hardcore mode, but with weapons officer assistance turned on -- it actually increased the immerson of the game -- I could just ask my crew to do things, while I concentrated on the best method to get into the convoy, rather than juggling torpedo firing angles...

[Bounty]

I always liked playing SH3 in hardcore mode, but with weapons officer assistance turned on -- it actually increased the immerson of the game -- I could just ask my crew to do things, while I concentrated on the best method to get into the convoy, rather than juggling torpedo firing angles...

Yeah. It's not like sub captains had to practice getting firing solutions while on patrol with a manual on their lap - it would have been second nature for them through their training, and automation simulates that nicely. It's cool that the manual system is there, and I wouldn't remove it, but I see no issue with using the automated system.

[MKSheppard]

I actually built a Angle of Bearing computer out of cardstock from the SH3 forum, and let me tell you; it was always damn fun to set up a torpedo firing run manually.

First; figure out teh speed of the contact! I usually put the scope up for several minutes and watched the contact move on the map, made some markings on the map for beginning and ending location; and then figured out it's speed and course from that. Then I used the AOB calculator to get the right angle to spin into the TDC.

(Yes; I am one of those who always fixes Real U Boat or Real Fleet Boat to re-enable the on map contact drawings -- I just pretend that those are from my crew making markings as i call out ranges and bearings from the scope).

It was always damn fun to nail a zig-zagging ship after making the right assumptions in the TDC. But a lot of times I just said fuck it and let my WO do the solution.

[PeZook]

I always liked playing SH3 in hardcore mode, but with weapons officer assistance turned on -- it actually increased the immerson of the game -- I could just ask my crew to do things, while I concentrated on the best method to get into the convoy, rather than juggling torpedo firing angles...

I hear you: it was really cool how they made it possible to aim and fire your torpedoes using the same methods as real sub captains did back in the day (though, of course, it was the modders who had to provide basic tools like a goddamned protractor ), but in a pitched battle, there was simply no time to run around computing firing solutions.

But for hardcore retard fanatic brigade, the fact that goddamned Otto Kretschmer delegated responsiblity is not a good enough reason to have weapon officer assistance

I've seen people who would claim anyone automating sonar operations in Dangerous Waters was an arcade gamer not worthy of playing the game...

[MKSheppard]

but in a pitched battle, there was simply no time to run around computing firing solutions.

Well, in a pitched battle; ranges were close enough that an experienced captain could simply eyeball ships (remember, the flat screen of a computer monitor takes away a lot of dimensional data we're used to) through experience and just fire off the cuff.

But for hardcore retard fanatic brigade, the fact that goddamned Otto Kretschmer delegated responsiblity is not a good enough reason to have weapon officer assistance

My biggest beef with them is the way they try to remove any and all markings of ships on the automatic map -- in many of their mods. I simply delete the files that replace the stock ship icons with blank files, and go on my way; because in real life, Silent Otto would be calling out ship ranges and bearings, and a Lieutenant would be marking them up on the map.

[PeZook]

Well, in a pitched battle; ranges were close enough that an experienced captain could simply eyeball ships (remember, the flat screen of a computer monitor takes away a lot of dimensional data we're used to) through experience and just fire off the cuff.

Or tell an officer to figure out a firing solution for the convoy while he gave helm commands and maintained situational awareness, and nobody in the OKW would later say he didn't do his job properly

Of course, many times it was done just like you described: SH3 play feels more like sniping, when IRL u-boat commander would often fire spreads at convoys or even single ships, because it's not always possible to ascertain range and bearing with the necessary precision, and of course ships don't zig-zag in a standardized manner.

My biggest beef with them is the way they try to remove any and all markings of ships on the automatic map -- in many of their mods. I simply delete the files that replace the stock ship icons with blank files, and go on my way; because in real life, Silent Otto would be calling out ship ranges and bearings, and a Lieutenant would be marking them up on the map.

You can do that? Wish I knew back when I still used Real U-Boat

GWX, fortunately, keeps the markings, which is only logical.

[MKSheppard]

SH3 play feels more like sniping, when IRL u-boat commander would often fire spreads at convoys or even single ships, because it's not always possible to ascertain range and bearing with the necessary precision, and of course ships don't zig-zag in a standardized manner.

You do know you can fire spreads automatically in SH3? Just set how many torpedoes you want to fire in a spread, and the angles between each individual torpedo; and then push the LOS button?

[PeZook]

You do know you can fire spreads automatically in SH3? Just set how many torpedoes you want to fire in a spread, and the angles between each individual torpedo; and then push the LOS button?

Yeah, I know, what I meant was that the game rewards sniping with the way it's set up (and the fact it allows you to ascertain ranges with great accuracy). The renown rewards system especially favors obscene tonnage sinkings: you can't get promoted from a Type II to a Type VII naturally, like in real life when the tiny IIs were being replaced and their commanders could expect to just get issued a brand spankin' new VII or IX, you need to become a hero to do it, so you conserve torpedoes as much as possible to maximize your sinkings.

Of course, it's a game, so it's understandable: doing a 90 day patrol with no sinkings and no contacts is freakin' boring

[Julhelm]

I don't get that mindset either from the 'lol realism' crowd. I liked it much better in say, Red Storm Rising where even the sonar and TMA are automated because the game assumes you have a decent crew who actually take care of these things for you, letting you concentrate on the fight. It's for the same reason Dangerous Waters is nigh unplayable for me.

[PeZook]

I don't get that mindset either from the 'lol realism' crowd. I liked it much better in say, Red Storm Rising where even the sonar and TMA are automated because the game assumes you have a decent crew who actually take care of these things for you, letting you concentrate on the fight. It's for the same reason Dangerous Waters is nigh unplayable for me.

Dangerous Waters has lots of automation options. The problems with the game lie elsewhere, in its pathetically underpowered weapons, messed up mission scripting and wholly anemic time compression.

[Julhelm]

It has lots of automation, yes, but the autocrew is ridiculously bad at their jobs.

+1 on time compression, which seems to be a recurring 'feature' in these games. I mean, it's not like Silent Service had that problem solved back in 1986 or anything.