Silent Hunter 3 Merchant Fleet Mod
WILL MAKE SOME MAPS WITH THIS MOD ACTIVATED UPLOAD AND POST LINK TO MAPS HERE.DOWNLOAD.Compatibility with existing Silent Hunter 3. Silent Hunter 3 saving the bismarck. Silent Hunter 4 - Typhoon Mod - Duration. Sinking some Merchant ships in LSH3 2015 Edition - Duration.
Although my first sim crush was Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, my first true love was Silent Hunter. The hours of patrolling empty seas, many attempts and frequent failures to infiltrate heavily defended convoys were more than paid in full when those torpedos hit. The sight of a burning and listing tanker hull through your soda-straw periscope would fill your heart with joy one moment and then a single sonar ping from a vengeful enemy destroyer would instantly fill it with cold fear.
Ah yes, submarine warfare is a special kind of warfare – strategy and tactics, emotion and hunches, it’s a hard habit to break once it has gained its hold. Every kill is a trophy, every depth charge a lesson. Each time you set out to sea, you never know which you are going be bringing back.
Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific. The Silent Betrayal I followed the Silent Hunter series from the first blocky and bleepy Commodore 64 version up through Silent Hunter 4, which I play in this after action report. I also played modern versions of the submarine experience – by Electronic Arts which debuted in 1989, Janes’ which represents one of Janes’ best technical study sims of all time (ALL TIME!), and Sonalyst’s – but, at least to this old salt, the World War II submarine experience remains the epitome of the submarine hunting experience. Unfortunately, Silent Hunter 4 took some serious depth charging when Ubisoft released and then abandoned it with bugs that seriously impact gameplay. This crank and dump approach burned me as well as other sub simmers, and I haven’t even glanced towards Silent Hunter 5 because the memory of the pain is so strong. Thankfully, the great community at did and continue to do a fantastic job of keeping a collection of patches, modifications, tutorials, and other support items to keep the submarine simulation experience accessible to anybody who can read through a forum. If you’ve ever been interested in submarine simulation, head over to their site and check them out.
They continue to keep their news items freshly stocked and the forums and file download areas are chock-full of incredibly useful information and data that you just can’t find anywhere else. Without their thankless (and free!) service, the submarine simulation community would be in dire shape indeed. Bravo Zulu, SubSim.com. There are an immense selection of patches and modifications available for Silent Hunter 4 (very few are actually compatible with each other!), including a selection of well-designed supermods that greatly improve the submarine hunter’s experience, but, in this AAR, I’m playing a mostly vanilla Silent Hunter patched to version 1.4. The only two modifications I’ve made to the sim configuration files correct egregious errors in the mast heights in the onboard recognition manual and changes the default torpedo fire key from just Enter to control-Enter.
If I had a nickel for every time I have randomly shot a torpedo out into the Pacific, I could probably buy a venti Starbucks cafe mocha. The Start of a Career The typed letter with the handwritten signature is a nice touch, but I would have been happy with just a simple text message. December 9, 1941: I report to Manila, Philipines to accept command of my first submarine: the S-27. The S-27 is an S-class submarine.
The S-boats (aka “Sugar” boats) were produced between WWI and WWII and represent the coming-of-age of the submarine as a formidable weapon of war., the S-class is by far the most primitive, but a fitting place to begin my submarine career. It’s hard to repeat FDR’s historic speech without deliberately over-emphasizing “deliberately”. Since there’s a war going on and all, I should probably get going, but I need to set first things first. I need to ensure my ship and my crew are ready for the grand adventure I’m about to bestow on them, so, while in port, I check my ship’s configuration.
Getting Decked Out Japanese aircraft patrols were a serious threat to WWII submarines, especially in Silent Hunter 4 where the skies are practically crawling with them, so my first acquisition is an air-search radar that will help me detect the pests before they are on top of us. The radar costs me half of my renown – the currency of Silent Hunter 4 submarine commanders – but is a sound investment. The 4″/50 deck gun (4-inch projectile, 50×4″=200″ barrel length) already installed to my ship is standard issue and will be a welcome addition to our armament, especially in this phase of the war where I’ll find mostly single unarmed merchant ships as my prey. Sinking a small ship with a handful of rounds from the deck gun will save precious torpedoes for larger prey or spread shots into convoys, if I am lucky enough to stumble into one. “Well, I see you’ve got a full tank of gas, but you’ve got a few cartons of cigarettes, not just a half a pack – and Chicago’s a lot farther than 106 miles, mate.” Next I check out my crew.
Silent Hunter 3 introduced an advanced crew management aspect to virtual submarine warfare which requires the commander to actively manage the crews tasking and stations based on skill sets, fatigue, and health, and Silent Hunter carries forward this tradition. The more crew I have, the larger the damage control party I can muster, so I use most of my remaining renown to crew up the torpedo rooms, even adding a number of fresh still-wet-behind-the-ear seaman recruits.
These junior seamen will gain experience over the course of our war patrol and will advance into their own specializations as torpedo-men, gunners, or lookouts, improving the effectiveness of my ship over the course of my career. While the crew system is automated enough that it’s not actually required to actively manage your crew to be successful, the task is akin to a managing a group in an RPG where you can gain attachment to individual crew members and proudly look over them as they ascend in rank to become chief of a station, or agonize when they are killed in combat. Personally, I enjoy the challenge and benefits. Crew management is a fun, but not terribly critical aspect of the Silent Hunter 4 experience. One downside of the S-27 is that the Group I S-boats only had four forward tubes and eight reloads – a meager loadout considering the vast expanse of the Pacific I’m supposed to be patrolling. Before setting out, I ensure all available torpedo slots are each fitted with the latest torpedoes I can carry – the steam-powered 36 knot Mark 10 with a 500 lb explosive warhead.
The longer, faster, and more powerful Mark 14 torpedoes were intended to be extremely effective against ship targets, but the reliability issues of these torpedoes over the war were quite serious, so I’m actually glad to be “limited” to the older weapons. Lots of bang here for very little buck. Ship fitted, crew decked out, ammunition sorted, and mix-tapes recorded, I check in with Ops to get our mission. Luckily our first patrol assignment is just down the coast – a short trip from base into what should be some heavy sea lanes. The assigned missions are pretty typical for the era – sometimes it’s a milk runs and sometimes it’s a suicide mission. Today’s assignment looks good. There’s no way to reject a mission, or to select another one, so I accept our orders and have my XO prepare our boat to get underway immediately.
Silent Hunter 3 Merchant Fleet Mod Skin Pack
Getting Underway This slideshow requires JavaScript. In my humble opinion, most of the mods try to go too far. The major changes to the interfaces aren’t really done very well (overlapping images, cluttered screens, objects linked to each other in non-intuitive ways, etc.), the “corrections” to the stock AI change its behavior but this isn’t the same thing as “fixing” it, etc. What was frustrating for me is that most of the mods are labeled for one fix, but include a bunch of other items I don’t really want. For example, the optics correction mod sounds great – realistic periscope and TBT screens – but it includes a bunch of other interface mods, splash screen changes, etc., that I don’t really want. It’s like trying to get a law changed through the US Congress – too many other items get added as riders. Modding, ultimately, comes down to a personal choice.
My preference, in general, is to not mod at all. For SH4, however, the stock experience was just unplayable – I.need. to have reliable mast height data and also be able to prevent torpedoes from being launched by an errant key press (DCS World trained me to use the enter key to reset my views, so I press it and Numpad 5 by reflex now!). There’s still a laundry list of issues that bother me as I play it (incorrect drafts in the recog manual, inability to look around the conning tower on the bridge, unrealistic aircraft presence, over simplified damage model, etc.), but untangling the web of mods to find what fixes my issue without adding a bunch of other unwanted fluff has been difficult.
All that said, Silent Hunter is still the best submarine hunter experience out there. That is an awesome article Erik! (I knew there was a reason we wanted to collaborate on a site like Mudspike!) That was the quintessential morning coffee cup read. I too have enjoyed the Silent Hunter series over the years. I never learned the intricacies of TMA stuff though and always used some of the gameplay crutches that were made available.
To me, submarines are like the helicopters of the sea – stealthy and then able to (hopefully) slink away given their vulnerability. It makes for compelling gameplay. The graphics of SH4 have really held up well – those are some fantastic shots. I’d be interested to hear more about the campaign ins and outs. I assume you also run across Allied vessels and (submarines?). Is there sub v. Sub warfare at all – I’d imagine that scenario was highly unlikely during WW2 (?).
And given you statement about the campaign unfolding to a somewhat high degree of historical accuracy, it sure would be cool to be in the vicinity of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal and see how they are presented in game. Stanley, I described the mods I used in the article, but if you’re looking to install the same mods I used, you won’t find them, I didn’t install any downloaded mods. I took the recognition manual.cfg and.dds files from, but didn’t use all the other mods he packaged with it. I modified the game’s Commands.cfg myself to fix the key command issue. Mastiff, Yes, Ubisoft did the sim community a great disservice with their lack of follow-through and support, but the game is pretty salvageable.
I’m not sure about the Steam version, but the DVD plays right out of the box and patches easily to 1.4. Once you get into modification territory, all bets are off. Remember to keep backups!
Beach, Yes, you run into allied ships and aircraft, although in my experience, it seems like you only run into them near friendly bases. I’ve read reports of folks encountering other subs, even Japanese submarines, but have never been close to one myself.
At least, I never saw it if I was! It pleases me to see others who can appreciate what the Silent Hunter series has served up over the years. I too have have had an ongoing secret affair with SH4 but mostly SH5. Yes Ubisoft dropped the ball releasing the product in such a broken state. However, the modding community is strong, perhaps the most tenacious and talented out there, and are keeping the submarine simulation genre alive and well. SH4 and SH5 work beautifully with a few essential mods. A few more visual mods etc and the game is fantastic.
Jaw dropping beautiful and, more addictive than crack once manual targeting is figured out and the skills set in, to the point where you can just close your eyes and plot solutions in your head of what the 4 ships above you are doing, exactly, without seeing them. This game actually forces you to think, which makes it so much more satisfying, watching all that tonnage disappear slowly into the dark abyss below, then slipping away into the murky depths undetected, off to create another watery graveyard elsewhere. I like it as realistic as possible.
Silent Hunter 3 Merchant Fleet Mod
Admittedly though, I do like to use map updates to accurately calculate distance and speed and angle off bow, I manually formulate my solutions, but use the map update. I also use the external cam. But not for tactical awareness. The game is just too beautiful to not admire all the eye candy, so I leave that on too.
Realism is around 80% or something like that. Absolutely in Love with Silent Hunter. Respect to the modders over there at subsim radio room.
“Subsim radio room” for more info on the Silent Hunter series and what can be done to “fix” these wonderful sims. Uboats: I don’t own Dangerous Waters – I preferred the grittier approach to submarine warfare – but. I like the larger scale of command, commanding multiple units across a battlefield (a la Fleet Command), but also able to jump into individual units to directly control the action. Capn’Lenny: Congrats on the new addiction! There’s plenty of references over at, but I’ll warn you now that the plethora of mods can be overwhelming. I recommend you play stock for a while and learn what you DON’T like about the vanilla experience before you look for the optimum mod. For example, the mast height bug that I whine about above is really only an issue for manual targeting.
If you use the automatic system, you’d never know there was an issue. Happy hunting!