The expansion to SH4 features the Type XVIII, a cancelled project that influenced the Type XXI.Using it is almost a completely different experience compared to the other subs in the series, especially when all six auto-loading torpedo tubes load faster than one manually-loaded tube on earlier U-boats. SH3 includes the Type XXI U-boat, the first true submarine and the ancestor of every submarine built post WWII.The Captain: The player, irrespective of your in-game rank.Taken to exteme if based in La Spezia - you're locked in the Mediterranean, so not many places to go, but anything between Algiers and Sicily is yours to take with impunity - you might not make big tonnage, but you can easily survive until the end of the war.It's a very small sector of the map, but shipping is plentiful. Targetting convoy routes around Murmansk and Canary Islands.
Trying to pull it in English ports is near suicidal, since there are warships and air coverage, but places like Freetown are free game.
Blood Knight: Isn't it grand to see Stuff Blowing Up?.Any other part of the vessel and you might end up needing up to six hits to bring it down. Attack Its Weak Point: A single torpedo to the beam and grand majority of ships will either instantly explode or will be severely damaged, take water quickly and sink.The torpedo taking a turn or simply adjusting own course to the target is something that AI not only can't, but won't even try to shake off. They show up in the late game, but AI can only perform evasive manouvers against things that follow a straight path. Breaker: AI can't handle acoustic torpedoes at all. The player is given an assigned grid to patrol, but is free to head elsewhere if they feel they can find better hunting grounds on their own. The series is primarily noted for its dynamic campaign mode: rather than using specific missions the game engine simulates ship traffic according to historical shipping lanes, convoy routes and traffic patterns. SH1 and 4 take place in the Pacific Theatre, while 2, 3, 4's expansion ("U-Boat Missions") and 5 place the player in the shoes of a Kriegsmarine U-boat Kaleun (short for Kapitänleutnant, "lieutenant", two steps above Ensign Newbie) during the second battle of the Atlantic.
The series has 5 entries, with the latest having been released in March 2010. (original and II) and Ubisoft (II and later) which place the player in command of a WWII submarine. Mission design in the pacific theater was a joke at best and several bugs, like trying to sink a big ship in shallow water that simply doesn´t sink just because the water is too low, magically blowing up the own ship while crashdiving, crashing destroyers who had their path plotted quite badly and sunk themselves right over me and things like that do not really make me smile.Įither they do a real overhaul with SH5, or I´m skipping it.InvokedAh yes, 7, the perfect age to learn making aiming solutions!Ī series of Simulation Games published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. Of course this all looked nice graphically but I lost the fun on the way there. The "save survivors" didn´t work for me, so the deck gun also had something to do after sinking a ship. Spot two C3´s line up to them at a 90° angle, wait till they are passing, do the torpedo maths, adjust torpedo depth according to book and weather and fire. For me this felt very repetative after a while. The all had the same paintjob, no matter what. The damage model was too simple at points and there was not much variety on enemy ships. While the gfx were all nice and dramatic, the gameplay itself never really got a needed overhaul. I´m only partly holding my breath as I think that the series somewhat degraded with the last parts.