SH3 goes gold is it just me

[Tankerace]

If you think that's bad, try it my way. Since I am currently in the early phase of the war, I eyeball everything. I don't use any TDC whatsoever. I watch the ship, figure where its going to be, turn the Uboat to that area, and fire a zero gyro shot. I get a hit rate of about 4 torpedos for every 5 fired, with 3 of those for typically exploding. I use manual input when I have to, but since its early war and I am usually not in imminant danger I just eyeball it. Its challenging, but rewarding as hell.

Just remember, if you set the TDC to fire a spread of 2+ torpedoes and you eyeball it, set the spread angle to less than 2 degrees or you just wasted your eels.

[Tankerace]

On the storm, that actually refers to any seastate other than calm. If the waves are the slightest bit rough, your crew won't man the guns.

Take it from me.... just dive. I stayed on the surface and was attacked by 3 swordfish. A 50lb bomb killed my Flak gunner, and smashed up the watch tower. I barely had enough time to get to 20 meters before they came again.

[DeepSix]

I'm starting out early, too. 1939 based at Kiel with U-45. The funny thing is that I scored "Excellent" in the training session, with 5 for 6 -- never engaged the engines and even the stern torp found its mark.[:D] The trouble is, the targets in your career are most uncooperative. They don't sit still; they even turn into the torpedo! Egad![;)] I watch as my fish pass down one side of the hull or the other and then head off into the deep sea world of Jacques Cousteau. So I surface and blast them with the deck gun -- I am Kapitanleutnant Krazy Ivan![:D]

[Tankerace]

Hehehehe. I restarted my campaign, I did 2 patrols in U-6 (Type IIA), and now have U-53. yeah, I find that if you can get in front of a ship, dive, and let him come to you unawares, he won't zig zag.

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

On the storm, that actually refers to any seastate other than calm. If the waves are the slightest bit rough, your crew won't man the guns.

Take it from me.... just dive. I stayed on the surface and was attacked by 3 swordfish. A 50lb bomb killed my Flak gunner, and smashed up the watch tower. I barely had enough time to get to 20 meters before they came again.

No problem with that advice -- that's what I've been doing. I probably couldn't get the target plane in my binoculars anyway.[:)] It's just funny to watch the boat go bobbing over gentle swells with a conning tower full of Gorton's fishermen....[:'(]

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

yeah, I find that if you can get in front of a ship, dive, and let him come to you unawares, he won't zig zag.

That must mean I'm firing too soon. The last target was a coastal merchant (neutral, I realized too late) barely making 8 knots. I fired a 2-torp salvo at about 725 meters, and he missed 'em both. So I surfaced -- he can't mess with Krazy Ivan and get away with it....

[Tankerace]

I try and fire at about 400-500 meters. Especially if I am using G7a Steam torpedoes. By the time he turns because of the wake, its too late.

G7e Electrics I usually save for taking out tin cans, so they don't have time to turn.

BTW, as far as neutrals go, I gunned downa Dutch trawler.... OOPS! [:D]

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

I try and fire at about 400-500 meters. Especially if I am using G7a Steam torpedoes. By the time he turns because of the wake, its too late.

G7e Electrics I usually save for taking out tin cans, so they don't have time to turn.

BTW, as far as neutrals go, I gunned downa Dutch trawler.... OOPS! [:D]

Ah, ok -- cool. All I have are G7a's. Thanks!

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: DeepSix

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

On the particle effects, just hit Cntrl-P to disable them. I typically leave them on, but when I hear ship or plane spotted I have to turn them off, thanks to the Nvidia bug. Still, best darn subsim I've ever played, bar none.

Excellent! Thanks for that tip -- the only time I'd like to have them off completely is when using the UZO.

I read above that some people are having trouble hitting anything using manual firing. You can always come down here to my level, where it's hard to hit anything using the idiotproof targeting assistance. I have yet to figure out how to even turn that off.

Still on Patrol 1. It's still running pretty well for me, but I have a weird problem when attacked by aircraft. If I try to assign crew to the flak gun, it says "Cannot man flak gun in storm!" Well, WHAT storm? The sun is out, the sea is like glass. Why the heck are my guys wearing their foul weather gear and why are the planes flying if we're in a storm? Ask the navigator for the weather report, I get something like "Fog - none, Precipitations - none, wind 0, bearing 100." Where's the storm? For that matter where's all the great thunder, lightning, and heaving seas? Anybody else run into this?

Go to F6 and hit 'manual input on/off' which is a small black button. I just hope that the Channel is usually that bad in early September, because I'm thinking the seas further north would be worse, which unfortunately if true would mean almost constant foul weather. If the weather is that bad in September, then I have a long wait till summer. I just hopt the weather I'm seeing hasn't been programmed year-round like that. I suppose that at least when there's resupply ships (should they ever get programmed in) and the French ports get taken then at least the South Atlantic shouldn't be so awful.

[KG Erwin]

I was informed today that my online purchase was cancelled, as I requested. The FilePlanet/GameSpy tech support team offered prompt help, so anyone who wants to get the game thru direct download can rely on them. They are helpful and easy to contact. Good tech support is hard to find these days. Kudos on them. [&o]

I hated to cancel the order, but I will have to upgrade my Dell 2400's video card before I have any hope of getting SHIII to run. What a bummer.

For you guys who are enjoying the game, I look forward to hearing more comments. One of these days, I will be able to join the crew of the fortunate ones. [:(]

[leoforet]

A friend just told me that it reboots his PC. He checked their website and apparently that's a common complaint.

Also, I found out that Ubi is a French company, and I'm not too hot on sending my money over to them at the moment.

The game looks cool though. If some non-French entity were to purchase Ubi, and they fixed the bugs, I will certainly buy it. [:)]

[DeepSix]

Buy the game and boycott the wine instead. That'll hurt 'em more anyhow.[:D]

[DeepSix]

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin
I hated to cancel the order, but I will have to upgrade my Dell 2400's video card before I have any hope of getting SHIII to run. What a bummer.

For you guys who are enjoying the game, I look forward to hearing more comments. One of these days, I will be able to join the crew of the fortunate ones. [:(]

Don't sweat it; if you wait a few months before you get the card, the game price will have come down, too. At least, that's usually how it works.[:)]

BTW -- I found the storm... and in the midst of it I sank a C Class Destroyer with 1 torpedo (never mind that I fired 4 and the first one sent it down like a rock, leaving the other three to wander off toward Bermuda) at 1500 meters!

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: leoforet

A friend just told me that it reboots his PC. He checked their website and apparently that's a common complaint.

No problems here.

[Warfare1]

ORIGINAL: DeepSix

ORIGINAL: testarossa
or get yourself ATI 9600 XT for 100 presidents. It has twice the power of Ti 4600.

Heheh. Tried your suggestions (thanks; I had high hopes there for a while[:)]) and everything else I can think of. You're probably right; it probably is the card. The 3D environments have some minor artifacts in them (polys that flicker, but nothing I couldn't live with if I didn't have the stutter problem). As much as I agree with the suggestion to get a newer card (and maybe this will ultimately be a good excuse to get one) I still think that if the fr****n system requirements claim it'll run on an Nvidia 4 series card, well then, call me crazy, but....



I wasn't put on this earth to help hardware and software manufacturers scratch each other's backs.

I know the game's hardly been out a week, but if anybody else is running it successfully on a GF4 it would help me to know that.

Sorry for the gruff posts about this; I really didn't mean to take over the thread, either -- I really need to take this up with UbiSoft instead of just ranting. Thanks for everybody's suggestions. FYI here's my tech support webmail to UbiSoft:

OS: Windows XP
Processor: 2.0GHz
RAM: 1.0GB
Card: Ti4600
Drive: New (yesterday) Lite-on DVD-RW
Hard disk: 80 gig RAID 1 that's not even half full.
Other:
- clean install
- patched to 1.1
- latest Nvidia drivers (7184)
- DirectX 9. I had it before but when I reinstalled I reinstalled it also -- from the SH3 disc.
- I run a virus scan at least once a week and defrag about once a month; most recently the day before I bought SH3 (Saturday, in anticipation of what was to be THE sub sim.).
- have uninstalled and reinstalled
- no background programs except Norton, the Nvidia tray .exe, and the usual MS background tasks. Including that dam-blasted msmsgs that you can turn off as many times as you want.

The problem is: It doesn't matter whether I have low or high detail settings; SH3 skips like a broken record. Works ok in 2D screens (Navigator's station, for example) but forget 3D. Which is hilarious in a game where 90% of the visuals are full 3D (with a free flying cam to boot). Every mouse movement in 3D seems to provoke a freeze in picture and sound. The worst area is definitely the control room; the bridge is a close second. Sometimes it runs perfectly for five minutes and then starts getting the hiccups. As long as the music plays (even if it skips), the program will right itself and keep going, but a few seconds later it hangs up again. Other times it just completely freezes and I can't even CTRL-ALT-DEL my way out. I have to power off and hard boot. This is not pleasing to me. Then there is the moderate distraction of having to always start from the autoplay (instead of the Start menu) in order to avoid the White Blob and black sky.

Anti-aliasing on or off, hardware acceleration low or full, particles on or off, nothing fixes it. I've used the Nvidia manager and the built in XP display dialog and tweaked everything I can tweak.

I would be most grateful for some help, since the manual (and the box)clearly states on p. 4 that Nividia GeForce 3, 4, and FX cards are supported. I can find no reason why my hardware should not be able to run Silent Hunter III.

I heard that SHIII may have problems with some DVD-RW drives. UBI won't list which drives are incompatible, but that may explain the hang you are having...

[DeepSix]

I thought that's what it was, but apparently not. I eventually got it running (quite well, actually), but thanks anyway.[:)]

[Hard Sarge]

I just got it the other day and was impressed with it

it got good points and bad points, some are just plain silly, shouldn't have to mircomanage the crew, you did have Officers and "watchs" aboard ships (but now, I tend to put my gunenrs/Trop men to bed when I first spot a ship, so they get a little rest during the hunt

LOL
I did 2 training missions and then hit the Real Deal, my first boat, a IIa, sank as I tried to pull out of the harbor, oops, map veiw and bridge veiw do not match up very well !!!! (hint, pull out of harbor from topside)

LOL, first missions, fired at a GE DD and a GE Tawler, missed, later figured out that Blue is Germen , Green is nutral, and Red is bad guys (or good guys, depending on your point of view)

6 out of 6 misses for me on the first mission, but I completed my orders and limped back to port with no fuel and very little batt left

2nd mission, I leave the Poor GE type ships alone, but again miss with my 6 trops

3rd mission, I hit one, I hit one, what you mean it bounced off !!!!!!, ah man, oh well, the Skipper of the base is a good man, and gives me a IC 2nd class

hmmm, need 2500 reknown to get me a bigger pigboat, and I got 2200, okay one more mission and maybe I can get a real SUB

4th mission, run into a C2, fire 3 trops at it and miss, move and dance, enjoying the hunt, and am waiting for the trops to reload, what the hey gang, what is taking so long ? , what, you went to bed !, wake up and load the fish, you can sleep later !!!

didn't see it, but heard a BANG, so think I scored a hit, see smoke from the middle of the ship, close in and fire again, BAMMMM, yeap, that one was dead center, she is smokeing and listing, wait for the 3rd trop to be loaded and make sure everything is just right and fire, this one does the trick and the ship breaks in half

with out any ammo, I still head to my patrol zone and then head for home, first mission that I have gotten a kill and made it back to base with some fuel left over !

the Skipper gives me a IC 1st class for this mission, I even show up on the Sub Ace list, well, at the very bottom of the list

trade in my sub and get a REAL pigboat, this one got a deckgun on it and can carry some Trops, and I get a bigger crew, so the sleeping hassles will not be so bad

5th mission (hmm think that should be Patrol)
run into a Ship right away, get in close and hammer with my deck gun, yes, a kill and still got all my trops and most of my gun ammo left, what, a nutral ?, ah man, don't they know there is a war on, report it

hang around for a bit, playing with the crew and get attacked by a plane, ah man (forgot rule number one, don't hang around the kill zone) dive and sneak off

get the patrol zone and get the crew some rest and wait, ships to the north and south of me, soon right after another 2 small ships pass my way, both end up being very small, should of been gunbait, but am in a storm !, both kills are in the 100-150 ton range, make the report

soon, my time is over on station and since I got lots of fuel, I go off to hunt, find a nice slow C2, and still in the middle of the storm, put a few fish into it and watch it go down

kind of close to the Isles, and trying to get away, so stay on the surface, and get surprised with another plane attack, lucky for me he missed, as my crew didn't go to the engine run when I SCREAMED DIVE, once I noticed I was still on the surface and the plane was making gun runs on me, I ordered a 80m dive, I am getting toar up, what is that plane under water with me, oops, what you mean the floor is only 50m deeps ? , oops, climb to 45 m, stop, ah, gang, we kind of need to work on the boat a bit (rule number 2, always check to see how much water is under you)

run into a C3 and put it down, still in a storm, only got 3 trops left, plus 2 on the extrenal mounts, trying to figure out how to load them ?

run into another C3, hit it with both bow trops, got it crippled but can't get to the deck gun, man this is a big storm

turn around, stop all engines and line up the shot and put the stern trop right in the middle

we sail home as Heroes, 6 ships sunk, 22 K in tons, Skipper hangs the Knights Cross on me and gives me a IC 2nd for the crew and a bunch of different sub badges

(give the IC to my WE Officer)

HARD_Sarge

[DamoclesX]

Wow, I had an awsome mission.

I started out near the channel, normally I take the long way around, because, well, evey other time I tryed to pass through I would never make it, I would end up getting in fights with every damn ship in the british navy I think lol.

This time, half way through, I ran into a long merchent, ya, well what are ya gonna do? thats gun, deck gun her to death lol.

So, all happy that the fat/stuipid merchant had been sunk, I proceeded away at flank speed to try to leave the scene of the crime lol, about 12 hours later a plane flys over, ya, it died fast thanks to mr flak, all good right?

Hell no.

All hell broke loose, it was maby a day later and I was jumped by two destroyers, I went to scope depth and took them head on , I was pretty sure they didnt see me yet, they were sailing nice and level, so I closed head on to around 500 for the first one, I setup the torp for mag detonation and max speed.

FIRE!!

Torp ran perfect, RIGHT under her belly then BOOOM, the crew knew instantly that she was dead.

One kill.

The second destroyer, must have woken up to the fact that it might be unsafe lol, she started opening up with machine gun fire on my scope! I hear the sound of smashing glass and got scared my scope was going to get smashed, so I dropped it down and jumped to the map screen, thankfully, the destroyer was passing along the port and heading behind me, so I did a hard turn at flank and waitied for the rear tube to line up.

I jumped the scope up for a quick reading and fired.

BOOM another sweet shot, I couldnt belive my luck, two dead destroyers.

At this point I had been under for a bit, and really wanted to do some repairing, so I surfaced, proceeded away at flank and started repairs, I was going at 128x looking at the map screen when I heard a BOOM!!! I jumped to the main in ship screen and everything was flickering and the ship was bucking, my crew shouted out we were under attack and I jumped on deck.

TWO!! Destroyers, a patrol boat, AND a plane had just come into range and I was being shelled!

I called for emergency dive, flank speed, and hard right

To last

I saw a shell hit the conning tower head on, BOOM, destroyed, everybody was dead.

I took two more hits before getting under, the situation was grave, my conning town, flak gun, and main gun where destoyed, along with my scopes, my main engines were down, and the electrics were in the red, also hull integerty was at 20%!!

I was really fooked I figured, I knew I Couldnt dive deep or it would be all over, so put it in silent running mode, and slowed down to min speed while trying to figure out how bad it really was.

I was hooped, the ship looked like it was flooding!!

I did an all stop, and called of silent running and started repairs, I Couldnt let the leaking go on, they didnt know my exact position, but I could hear them in the area and I could hear them depthcharging the area!!!

It took around 20 minutes to fix the damage to a level I felt wouldnt sink the damn ship, all the time the depth charges were getting closer!!

Just as I re-assigned the last crew a charge hit that shook the ship, okay, this is bad.

I knew I couldnt surface, I would be fryed, and I didnt have a scope, so that was bad. There was at least two destroyers up there, I didnt hear the plane or the fast attack boat.

I figured I had one chance, I went up and opened all the torpedo tubs, then started plotting ont he map, I figured out that one ship was just circiling my position, I was close to the center but not exact, the other ship was off to my rear doing something else, I knew what bearing they were, but I had no idea how far they were away.

The good news was, I had fully loaded tubes, so...

I set a firing solution to hit the general area I figured the destroyer in front of me was going, I selected to fire all 4 tubs and setup the spread so they would have a pretty good chance of covering the area, the bad this was the only idea I had on their speed, or even distance was a wild guess and some wilder guesses.

Praying to all the sea gods I let all for tubes out.

wait
wait
wait
BOOM!!
BOOM!!!

WOOT!! Ship fryed I had caught her with the second and third torpedos, she was hooooped

Now just one left, and only one torpedo left, but I had a plan.

I cranked the ship up to max speed and brought her up to around 13-11meters, enough to bring it close enough to the surface to poke some of the smashe tower through, it worked, the destroyer started comming right at my, well at least I though it was with the returns, so I set the rear torpedo to follow that bearing and let her loose

KABOOM!!!

LUCK!! such LUCK!!

My ship was so messed up at this point, nearly half my crew was dead , everything was smashed, and co2 was really building up so I Brought her to the surface, all the other ships seemed to be gone, and there was a graveyard of ships that had half sunk.

Feeling lucky, and stunned at how awsome this game is, I set course to return to base and limped away, thankfully, the rest of the trip home was safe.

Short enought to say, this game OWNES, amazingly owns!!


Now I just need to run into some bigger ships, have not seen anything other then merchents or destroyers so far!!

[Tankerace]

I just played my worst (yet funnest) patrol yet. A few days out of Wilhelmshaven, I find a lone flower class corvette, I dived, got him to find me, and BOOM.

A day later, I find a C2 merchant. I dive, and give her 2 fish. She doesn't go down... I get ready to finish her off when "Warship Spotted Herr Kaleun!" Verdamnt! An Armed trawler. "Alarm!!!!!" I dive, line up, and Torpedo Los! Verdamn dud. I swing around, and he presents his beam. Los! Miss. I fire again Los!..... runs deep. Third shot, runs deep. The Merchant is still visible, limping away. So I reload my tubes, and try again on this guy. I want to finish off that merchant, but must destroy the C2. Reset depth 1.5 meters, Los!...... Dud. Fire again.... dud. Reset depth, torpedo runs deep. Screw it! And I leave the area. I wasted all but 3 fish on this guy, and the C2 I hit never went down. My patrol orders completed, I go to Norway (April of 1940) and find a Norwegian ship. Los.... miss. Fire again, and BOOM. I wait 10 minutes, and when he doesn't go down, I put my last torpedo into her, and she blows in half. A "Stellar" patrol... a frigging corvette and a small coastal merchant. Oddly enough though, for continually engaging the corvette, I got the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (92% realism).

[wodin]

Ive spent the last three goes trying to get more than two kills in the torpedo exam! First two ships go down a treat. The rest evry torpedo misses and that with assisted. Must be doing something wrong! When you lock onto a target you see either a little yellow/orange or green arrow pointing down or up. Where should I place the arrow before I fire?