Any advice? Am i screwed?
 

First patrol, I did really well. I will admit I loaded saves after dying a few times.

I found a convoy near southern Japan and was attacked by 4 destroyers, who when I acted as I did in SH3 by diving, killed me. Very badly. It appears the Japanese Navy is very good at using depth charges.

Trying again, I instead SURFACED and slogged it out with the deck gun. The destroyers were terrible shots and rarely fired, I survived. They did not. Is this a viable tactic, or did I do something stupid and get lucky?

Then I sunk all of the cargo ships in the convoy. ~80k tons for whole mission

Unfortunately while doing this my submarine got damaged, and I cannot dive.

I'm completely out of ammunition except for 40 deck gun AP rounds, and I'm making as fast as I can for Manilla. (Ahead flank all the way, I accidentally turned off limited fuel)

But those bloody airplanes! I can't dive, is there any way I could thwart them? Learned from SH3 that a zig-zagging course does nothing, I'd not be surprised to learn there is nothing I can do.

Are you running stock game, mods? which ones?

Month? Year?


Not a viable tactic against a DD, you got lucky.If in stock game, its more possible as subs are tanks lol and DD's in general are not very competent.


planes are planes, out of AA ammo and cant dive, just make a run and wait for them to dive so are committed to their attack while at ahead full, then go ahead flank and throw rudder 30 degree to full port or starboard, depending on direction plane is coming from. Most of time they will miss.

Ahoy! My thoughts on surface gun battles.

A surface slugout should be forced upon you--not a tactic you choose to do. There's just too much at stake with little to gain.

The only time I willingly surface to do gun battle with escorts is if there is only one of them and they're holding me down while a super juicy target gets away (battleship, huge troop transport or flat top).


If you do have to go topside and shoot it out:

Make sure you've got a rear-facing gun. (there's a mod for this)

Position your sub to surface directly astern of him or on his bow. This limits the number of guns he can fire at you.

Surface at full speed moving away from him with your stern pointed directly at him (meaning make your sub the smallest target you can).

Make sure all your scopes and antenaes are down.

I Surface as close to 3k yards from him as I can. From that distance I'm still accurate but he'll miss alot. Closer than this he tends to clean my clock.

Make sure you've called battlestations. The deck crew loads faster when at general quarters.

If he zigs or zags (to bring more guns to bear) do a tiny course correction to keep your butt pointed directly at him. Again, this presents him with the smallest target. It also tends to steady the rolling of the deck and makes you more accurate.

Hit him at the waterline whenever you can. Why just damage when you can damage and flood?

Remember it can take some time to submerge lower than his keel. Don't wait too long to dive or he'll ram you as you're going down.

Once he gets a hit on you, he's got your range. Unless you think you are about to deliver a death blow, it's best to get down instead. He's probably going to keep hammering you.

At some point you might damage him badly and he loses engine power. He'll do a hard turn to bring all the guns to bear. Instead of stay up and continue to take my chances against all his guns, I get down and reposition in line with his stern or bow and repeat the above steps to apply the coup de gras.


All this from a relatively inexperienced captain. The vets will chime in about where I'm wrong or left something out.

S!:salute:

Yes, I'm playing stock, I tested by diving very slowly (at 0 knots) and I can almost submerge the conning tower before I take damage. (Does submerging everything but the conning tower make me harder to spot?)