Any Subsim Fans Out There?

[KG Erwin]

Hi, guys. Apart from my SPWaW addiction and forum moderator duties, I also sometimes indulge in my favorite WWII sub simulation, Silent Hunter II. This game has been completely transformed from its out of the box version by dedicated modders, which has been helped by the game's open-ended setup. This means that just about any soft-coded unit, mission and eye-candy parameter can be tweaked, and the SHII community has come up with some spectacular results.

Now, I can immerse myself in missions with voices, music and sound FX from the classic
"Das Boot" (one of my all-time favorite movies), realistic changing weather fronts, better-looking water and sky, cool-looking explosions and burning oil from doomed merchants, tougher AI opponents, and different-looking stations on my boat.

In any case, you can still find SHII in some bargain bins, and with the support of the community at http://www.subsim.com, you can now have a great time with this game.
I don't usually plug other companies' products here, but this one deserves a second look, if you bought it and put it aside, or never considered buying it.

This is now a really cool game experience, and a nice change of pace from SPWaW.

[RayM]

KG:

Yes indeed. I was a big subsim fan for many years, I went through Grey Wolf, Wolfpack, Seawolf, Aces of the Deep (various versions), SH, SHII (stayed in the box I must admit), SubCommand (just a bit of play). Wait...more old games like Gato (on the old Mac SE), Silent Service, and Silent Service II.

I must admit that I passed out of the subsim world some time ago when I came across Task Force 1942, Fighting Shps, and GNB (especially Vol II, Guadalcanal), which lead me to TOAW, PacWar, UV, then last but not least SPWaW.

There was a another separate path for flight sims.
Ray

Ray

[Tactics]

Did they fix the "save bug" yet for that SSII mod?

I'd definately give this mod a try, but I sold off my Silent Hunter II cd a few months after it was released. Those canned missions really ruined it for me. Although I do still play Silent Hunter the original every now and then....now that was game!

[chief]

Tactics till I found SPwaw thats all I played....still on machine...when things look bad in germany, subs un the Pacific rule....[:D][&o][8D]

[Besenwesen]

My favourite ist Aces of the Deep!
i cannot say how long i played that classic, but for me its still the best sub sim.

I tried SH2 for some hours, but it wasnt so easy to handle like AotD and somehow I hadnt so much fun with it as with AotD.
perhaps thats also the reason why i think Strike Commander is still the best sim ever published, and not Falcon 4.0 or 6.0 or whatever

[Marc von Martial]

I have to agree. SH2 pretty much turned me off too. I adored Aces of the Deep, played it for days and days on. I was a huge fan of Silent Service back then too. I played that till I dropped, but then again that was when I still was in school, so you had the time for that, LOL.

Silent Hunter brought an end to my subsim addiction.

[Frank W.]

yes, silent service ( 1 + 2 ) were some of my fave games on amiga.

then on the pc silent hunter 1 and sometimes 688 attack sub.
while i like WW2 sims more than modern ones...

i must say i liked the pacific front more ( silent hunter 1 )
while i dind´t play much of SH2. will try the mods as soon
i got time.

[pzgndr]

The latest Pacific Aces mod at Subsim for SH2 is really nice. For those who have not played SH2 for a while, this is like a brand new game. [8D]

[marky]

Silent Hunter III is due out in september [:D][:D]

[&o][&o][&o][&o]

[Pippin]

I didnt get much into the WWII sub games. I am more of the modern sub fan, tracking ship markers and trying to evade mark torpedoes. I still got the old Red October package, unfortuntaly, they copyright protected it, so I cant play it without a 5.24 inch floppy drive. Hell, I cant even back it up to another floppy. Been against copy-right protection ever since...

BTW, did anyone ever get Tom Clancy's newer SSN game? I think that was it, or SBN or something. I looked all over but couldnt get ahold of it years ago. I just hope if I do find it, it's not as silly as the novel was. One amercan sub takes out a whole country's navy + reinforcements... RIGHT!!!!

[marky]

i played it, and i still have it sumwhere


its pretty decent

try ebay

[NefariousKoel]

Fortunately there is the Pacific Aces mod which is the US in the pacific, but at the moment you'll have to pay to download it. It includes a random mission generator but you'll still be limited. No Silent Hunter/Service type war patrols since it's limited to the SH2 engine. It's just not enough fixing to make me want to pay for it. Supposedly there will be a free version of the mod useable only by people who also own Destroyer Command. I've actually seen my local gamestop restocking them for super cheap. It may be worth it then.

No offense to Neal Stevens, he has a great site and he's a good guy, I can understand with the download size and all. It's still the same game with a different skin IMO. [:(]

[Pippin]

I think the last sub game I played was Sea-Wolf. I spent quite a few hours playing that one. Though I was quite upset at some of the mechanics behind it. While you DID have the option to take over sonar YOURSELF and try to interpret sounds YOURSELF from just looking at the radial graphs, and then trying to compare readings to numeric readouts, etc, they seem to have totaly missed other basic mechanisms.

For example, while being chased by torpedos, I would attemp to dive DEEP and place underwater mountains between me and the oncomming torpedos. Ironicaly, the torpedos had a habbit of borrowing right though the ocean floor as though it never existed, and still came after me. Silly nonsense like this is what made the end of the game very damn hard. If I remember correctly, there were maybe 2 typhoons and 4 or 6 akulas, with other stuff out there too. I ended up having to be VERY VERY quiet that mission, basicaly standing still, then target all 4 torpedos tubes on 4 different akulas at once, then run like hell while pinging the hell out of the ocean just to get a rough evaluation where my objective targets were moving too. All this while evading constant torpedo after torpeo coming my way, for perhaps 20 or 30 minutes.

And woudln't you know, those typhoons always needed more than 1 hit, and you had to basicaly make sure none of your torpedo's missed as the crappy stasis weapons they gave you never worked worth a damn. grrr.

Any other past sea-wolf players?

[marky]

lol

i played seawolf ALOT too

i still have it sumwhere, but it doesnt work anymore

i used the "make the torps run into mountains" trick too [:'(]

i used all kinds of other trix too

including crazy ivan

[:'(]