Silent Hunter V
Tactics & Tips
 

Campaign Intro

Starting a new campaign will find you at sea, as the First Officer. The beginning is scripted to introduce you to the U-boat, crew, Captain, and most importantly, game interface. Once you complete the objectives in the first mission, the rest of the campaign is dynamic.

The watcher officer will wake you and tell you the captain wants to see
you on the bridge right away. Use the W-A-S-D keys to navigate. To climb
a ladder, approach it and you should start climbing. It may take some practice.

The captain will wax poetic and then the war begins.
Your first target, a Polish freighter, is ahead of you.

Objectives are displayed by the golden exclamation marks. There are several objectives to complete, including going to the conning tower and manning the periscope, sinking the freighter, using the TAB key to display the TA chart (or use the small corner marks on the top-right of the chart, and finally, sinking two more freighters.

Line up your scope, press the space bar to lock, then fire away.
No TDC at this point in the game. Weep with me.
 

As you complete your first objective, you will get a flashing yellow box around different parts of the interface with a message icon, showing you how they work.

Sink the remaining two ships.

How to set a course with the mouse. You can remove the alert icon simply by clicking the X.

How to use time compression. This feature becomes available after you play part of the first mission in the campaign.

Returning to port

Once you complete all your tutorial objectives, you will return to Kiel and end the patrol. When the next patrol begins, you are in the U-boat pen with men busy working everywhere. Your U-boat is manned and ready, to get underway on your first patrol as the Captain, you need to speak with the representative from BdU and the dock foreman. The officer is wearing a uniform, and next to him is the dock foreman in  brown work clothes. You click on the dock foreman for upgrades and to reload torpedoes.

Click on the officer, then "What are my mission orders?" to launch the mission briefing.

It will be a short video, and once it is finished, click on the small mission objective icon  for details...

...then click on Start Mission, then hit the Esc key to see the officer again, then click him and finally, "Let's start the new patrol".

Returning to home port: Always check where your small blue port symbol is. That's where you are supposed to go home. Once I ended a patrol Kiel and then the next mission began out of Wilhelmshaven. I guess Doenitz moved my sub while I was in the bar.

If you are returning to port after finishing a patrol, and you cannot get the "Dock" icon to appear, so you can end patrol, hit SHIFT Z and toggle the UI and it will appear.  Here is a demonstration, the anchor never appeared until I was completely in the pen I hit Shift Z and it appeared.

Dropping off the Liverpool Spy

This can be tricky, no one knows exactly what triggers the popup message. You have to get pretty close to the drop icon, but probably not right on top like I did in this picture. I even bumped the shore and took a little hull damage, but still had to wait 6 hours before the spy was "ready to leave". So, be patient, sit and wait.