Page 5 of 7Reloading. Where's the nearest gas station?Pacific is vast with a lot of distance to cover just to go to your patrol zone and return to the safety of your harbor and even with a range of about 11,000 nm you may find difficult to get back to your home base after a tiresome patrol with the fuel left. Because of that, the US Navy put in place during the war some mobile 'service stations' in some areas that were not too exposed to the enemy defense and yet sufficiently close to the patrols zones to be of some value. These 'nursing zones' developed throughout the war following the advance of American forces in the conquest of the Pacific. These zones are guarded by one or two destroyers and harbor 2 submarine 'tender' ships able to provide you with fuel and torpedoes which may, depending on the case, allow you to extend your patrol time or to get enough fuel to end your mission.
What these ships can't and won't do is to provide any of the repairs that can only be made in docks.Managing the crewWhat makes the difference between a useless metal tube and perfect sea hunter? The crew, of course.
Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition v.1.5 - 1DVD Genre: action/shooter Silent Hunter IV: Wolves of the Pacific Studies Ubisoft is the next part of a series of maritime simulators, collecting very high ratings among both gamers and critics. Foxhole Review: Silent Hunter IV - Wolves Of The Pacific. Where's the nearest gas station? Pacific is vast with a lot of distance to cover just to go to your patrol zone and return to the safety of your harbor and even with a range of about 11,000 nm you may find difficult to get back to your home base after a tiresome patrol with the fuel left.
As the captain you'll be responsible for some crew management although to a lesser extent that what could be seen in the previous Silent Hunter opuses where sometime the skipper spent more time managing the crew than fighting.According to US Navy standards, the crew on the sub is spread over three shifts. One doesn't have to take care of that, the timing of the shifts is all managed by the computer (or if you want more realism. Your second in command).
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Nevertheless it will be your job to make sure that the talents of everyone is the best employed. Each member of the crew has a rank and a set of abilities (some basics and some specials). In career mode these abilities evolve with the experience gained from missions and promotions (that you'll also be the one to grant). For example a seaman with a natural ability regarding electrical will be best trained when the moment has come in either torpedoes, engine or sonar/radar.
It would be a waste to train him to be a gunner. In a similar way, it would be pretty dull to affect a gunner to the sonar/radar stations.The experience gained by the crew from mission to mission directly affects operational capabilities. One soon finds that the submarine dives faster, that the tubes are reloaded more efficiently and that repairs are done in a decreased amount of time. Even more, the crew will get tired less easily.If you keep members of your crew long enough with you, you may even find that some of them picked a special ability along the way.
These special abilities are randomly given and make the difference between a pretty shark and a pretty shark with sharp teeth. Special abilities come in two flavors, local and general. Local abilities of crew members will only affect the shift they are in. General abilities will affect the whole sub. In these abilities one finds things like 'reduced broken chance', 'increased surface speed', 'increased underwater speed', 'increased torpedo speed' or 'increased torpedo damage'. The top most ability to pick is 'fanaticism'; this ability ensure that the crew will perform over the call of duty whatever the circumstances are and that they will follow you to hell (which in the game is translated by a submarine performing at 110% instead of 100%).
If you survive long enough to see one of your crew members picking this ability, you may consider yourself as a good skipper.At any time the skipper has the possibility to call all hands to battle stations to ensure the submarine maximum efficiency. However this disrupts the shifts management and while battle stations are ordered nobody can rest and let even sleep. Battle stations are something that one may do in specific conditions like a battle or an emergency situation (needed repairs) but it's not something to be prolonged. Because the crew cannot rest, one may finally ends up with a crew so tired that the whole submarine operations are compromised (it can be as bad as finding oneself in enemy waters, on surface with no mean of propulsion because there's no one left to take care of the diesel engines and no one left to even handle the AA guns and that is the perfect definition of 'being a sitting duck'). Of course even the worst situation will be solved with time but it may takes more than two hours of game time before some of the crew took enough rest to resume operations.
So the call to battle stations is to be used but sparingly and appropriately.Let's go faster. Much faster!The Pacific is vast.
We have here a problem that was not found in the Atlantic. The fact is that you can sail during weeks in the Pacific without even seeing a small sampan coming your way.
To reduce the annoyance of having to wait (and because the game is a simulator and hence doesn't feature anything like a 'jump to action' button), Silent Hunter IV like the previous opuses features time acceleration and unlike the previous opuses, this one is huge to compensate the dimension of the Pacific theater. It can be pushed to over 7000 times the normal speed although this is the kind of top speed that one only uses to return to base or to travel over long distances. You'll probably want to use time acceleration within a patrol area too but in this case you'll be happy with any setting between x1024 and x2048.Some limiting factors are implemented though. While in 3D view the acceleration cannot go over 32 because of the game engine limitations.