Anyone play Silent Hunter 4 or IL Sturmovich for the PC?

Cafe Society
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I bought both these games on Amazon the other day. I have Silent Hunter 3 and really enjoyed it, though unfortunately I kind of broke it with mods. The neat thing about the Sub sims is that for a total newbie like me, they are fun, but FREAKING HARD :stuck_out_tongue: and yet there are people in the sub sim communities making mods to make the game realistic because they think its too easy O_o

I had heard about SH4 for a while, which is why I ordered it. But I also got IL2 Sturmovich, an older but very good flight simulator I hear, as well as a cheap joystick.

IL2 has a lot of spinoffs, which I am hoping are expansions. There’s also an extensive modding community. I’m guessing the flight sims (which I haven’t touched in years) have at least a steep, if not steeper learning curve then the submarine sims.

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Long-term subsimmer stepping in here …

I’ve got SH2, SH3 and SH4, also IL-2. I’m much more of a submarine guy than a pilot, though, and haven’t really played IL2 enough to comment on it other than it’s enjoyable until the enemy shows up and I get shot down. :rolleyes:

SH4, was, to be honest, a big disappointment after SH2/SH3. Graphically, it’s astonishingly superb, but the control interface is clunky and buggy. Having said that, I’ve not patched it with v1.3 yet, but then again I doubt if that’ll make much of a difference, judging by UBI’s release notes. When I get back into gaming, I may revert to SH3, which is tighter and quicker to control, with less clicking around on the screen. I’d just need to mod it enough to get rid of SH3’s ridiculous crew management system.

It seems as if there’s been a steady progression in the Silent Hunter franchise from hard-core sim to clunky eye-candy, the emphasis being too much on the latter for my tastes, even though I’m not a real hard-core player (for example, I’m not interested in manual torpedo aiming).

Subsims are great fun, though, especially the WWII ones. Slow, steady, often dull, but when the action happens … wow! Nothing like sinking an enemy battleship to make your day, especially if you live long enough to complete your patrol.

What are your impressions, Incubus? And have you checked out the Subsim.com forums? They’re mostly a good bunch of people there, especially in contrast to your normal gaming forums.

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I’ve got both games, although I haven’t played either of them lately. (The latest Civ4 expansion is too addictive.)

I play SH4 (and SH3) on the middle realism levels, about 75% or so. I even turn dud torpedoes on; a depth-charging isn’t as scary as when your own torpedo circles around and heads back towards you. I don’t know what the situation is with the latest patch, but there were some really rough edges on the initial release up to the first couple of patches. There are some mods to get around these, but the lack of true Imperial measurements is supremely annoying.

IL-2 is indeed the best combat flight sim there is. I hope you got the latest “1946” expansion for the full gamut of dogfighters, from late model biplanes to the early jets. The flight model seems more forgiving but at the same time more realistic than MS Flight Simulator. For full immersion, you’ll want not only a force feedback joystick, but also a throttle, rudder pedals, and the TrackIR.

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I’ve been playing IL-2 for years. The flight model is better than just about anything else, and the damage modeling is by far the best in anything I’ve played. I’ve lost wingtips, rudders, elevators and other major parts and wrestled the beast onto the ground (sometimes successfully, sometimes not!). Definitely go with the 1946 expansion - it has all the previous expansion packs rolled into one neat package.