Look what I found at Guam- mid 1943

A tough little booger- took a hit from a Mark 23 and actually was blown clear out of the water. Reported as sunk the little sucker seemed to hold together pretty well all the same. This is how she looked on her way to the bottom.

Sorry for the darkness of the image, it was a dark night. I would not have detected this one at all were it not for the targer triangle illuminating as my scope passed over her. Kind of made me feel sort of exposed all the same to know there was another sub in the area that I had had no idea about. Mini sub, or not.

Still have no idea what she was doing in that location at that time of the war but I'm not complaining since it was a happy ending.


http://webpages.charter.net/joecorra...niSub_Guam.jpg

HAH!! I made the 1,000th reply to the thread. Where's my cookie? LOL

I also have a question about finding, well... anything really :D

I can also definitely appreciate that the ocean was not overrun with ships every mile. But my first RSRDC patrol was to sink enemy merchant shipping near the Marshall Islands. I cruise over there, and spent my entire fuel except for a return reserve searching, but didn't see a single other ship. Went back to base, got more fuel, came back, and did another search pattern all around the area but no luck. Same on a third tank of gas, and a 4th. I zig-zagged across a big area, at least in a 250 mile radius covered by going back and forth in an 8-mile separation square wave, without seeing any signs of life.

I also tried starting a new campaign, and got assigned to a different area, but didn't have any better luck with that one. The mission directed me to stay with 300 miles of the patrol point marked on the map, so I can't go *too* far looking for prey. But I'd like to find any old thing to sink :D

I'm sure there must be a trick to it that I haven't mastered yet. I just can't seem to locate anything in my assigned patrol areas. I'd be very thankful for any help about it. I have searched online for maps of shipping routes, and found a few but nothing with enough detail that would really help me find things. I tried extra search time looking for possible routes such as between the Marshalls and Truk, but again no luck. Thanks ;)

I usually just draw a radius around the area that I am given and patrol nearly the entire area. Don't limit yourself to a narrow search pattern, spread out a little. Sometimes the traffic is not where you might expect. That makes sense right? After all, they are trying to avoid being sank so adjusting their approach to avoid the obvious would seem well, obvious.

Also take a look at the map to make a best guess of the direction merchant traffic may be headed. For the Marshal Islands I would expect traffic to/from Truk and/or the Mariana Islands so I would patrol along a North / South axis to the west and try to cross the path of merchants regardless of whether they have shifted their approach or not- they still have to cross that North South axis at some point.

Also, a tactic used successfully was to patrol "in place" along a "likely" route of merchants and just see if the would come to you. You don't use up your fuel either so time is on your side... if the patience lasts is another story.

Know the limits of your detection equipment and adjust your search to take advantage of whatever range you have. This will vary quite a bit as the war progresses and you gain access to better equipment.

You could also simply move out to sea about 30 miles from a likely port and just wait for traffic coming or going. Thirty miles is a good place since ships will not spawn with 20 miles of your location so there won't be any out going ships if you are within 20 miles of the port of origin.

In RSRD the ships are there. Finding them is up to you but once you find the sweet spot you can make up a lot of lost ground in a short amount of time. Several ships in a single day is not out of the question once you find the alley. Maybe this map can also help you out.

http://webpages.charter.net/joecorra..._LanesTiny.gif

Sometimes I flat out ignore (usually just postpone) my assigned mission. Here is why. Unlike the stock game, in RSRD when you get flash traffick about IJN unit activity in a certain location, IT IS REAL. If you are near the location mentioned, get your steel ass over there. Every time I've been near the location identified in teh flash traffick I've run across at least a few ships, sometimes even an entire TF.

One time, I responded to one of these messgaes in "The Slot", just NW of Guadalcanal. I ran across a large IJN TF composed of heavy cruisers and destroyers. As I was moving to intercept, another large TF showed up on my radar. This one was on a collision course with the IJN TF. Not being sure if it was foe or friendly, I moved in to investigate. It was TF of American cruisers and destroyers. The American line of ships actually headed toward the IJN column and crossed the T. The IJN column saw this and turned tail the other direction. I was hoping to see a big battle but it did not happen. Regardless, it was pretty awesome and the ships are out there. Just change up your patrolling strategy a little and respond to the flash messages even if you are more than a few days away becuase they tend to happen in groups over a period of 5 or 6 days. Good luck.

RSRDC Upgrade Readme

This is a general upgrade for all “supported” versions of RSRDC.

This is a list of the following changes:

Campaigns

Added 97 Ultra Messages (Convoy Locations)

Revised Japanese Mine Fields, especially around the entrance of Japanese control harbors.

Revised all Japanese Harbor Traffic. If a users wants to do his “Cary Grant imitation” i.e. Destination Tokyo, and attack Japanese harbor, the user will now find that the ships will “react” to him and if they are ASW capable, will go after him.

Error corrections to some of the IJN convoy that were detected during code review.

Added OMPaula Class Oiler to IJN tanker convoys.

Revised “ALL” ContactReport missions under the DynamicMiss folder i.e. upgraded the messages, lowered the required amount of tonnage, and type of ship required to complete the mission.

Revised “ALL” the photo recon missions. Using a “stealth” ship target, the user will now have to take a periscope photo of the target area. The “stealth” ship target is located under the “photo” icon on the nav display. If you have “map contacts” turned on you will see a “green” ship contact under the icon.

Special note: The concept of using a invisible ship as a “photo” target was first put forth by “tater” in one of his “Improved Campaign” mods

Roster

Added two “stealth” ship target

Sea

Revised ASW weapons loadouts for the following ASW ships based on ONI documentation supplied by LukeFF:

Type B
Type C
Type D
Kamikaze
Minekaze
Mutsuki
Matsu


Added Target1 & Target2 (“stealth” ship target)

download links are in the first post

Those are some great additions! :cool:

Thanks for the reply JoeCorrado. I had the same thought and did do quite a lot of N/S searching between the islands and Truk, but still didn't manage to find anything even in several tanks of gas (I'm using RFB, which I believe has some effect on range).

Maybe I've just been unlucky. I'll keep trying :). Is there anything I can do to increase the 'random' traffic just a little bit in this mod? I do think the vanilla game has too high levels of random encounters, but I could stand just a little more now. The occasional lone ship going from here to there, and so on.

Actually that's another question I have. If I go to 0 throttle, 0 knots speed, on the surface, it seems like I still do use fuel. If I'm on time accel I can see the fuel reserves going down, although I'm not sure why. Maybe that's to model use of the engines for purposes other than propulsion, like generating electricity to run other ship systems, or something?

I never noticed that fuel useage was even noticeable submerged or on the surface when stationary. I'll have to give it a try to see but it should be modeled to reflect very little use at all and that mostly for station keeping.

Anyway, check out the map that I posted- click the map for a full sized version. RSRD stays pretty faithful to the shipping routes has been my experience.

I'm not sure how this is modeled in the game, but IRL the engines were not directly connected to the prop shafts. Rather, the engines were connected to generators which powered the batteries. So even on surface running the screws were actually battery-powered, with the diesel engines topping up the batteries.
So I suppose even if surfaced and screws not turning some amount of fuel would be consumed in topping up the batteries, which would also be powering electrical equipment such as radar, lights, etc.

That's true, however the batteries weren't actually being "topped off" constantly. In most Fleet type subs it was like this(simplified):

On the surface the diesels would drive the generators(one per each diesel, directly connected), which could be used to supply power to the electric motors or to recharge the batteries. The electric motors(4) would drive the props through a reduction gear(1 per shaft). Underwater the power to the electric motors was naturally supplied by the batteries. More here: http://www.hnsa.org/doc/fleetsub/chap6.htm#6A

edit: Removed a diagram and corrected some wrong info

RDRD and SCAF
 

Lurker and Captn Scurvi,


I am running RFB1.5 and RSRD 3.95 (patched) enabled by JGSME by the BOOK as instructed on page 1 of the RFB1.5 thread.

I noticed an omission in the integration of both mods, namely:

The ships added by RSRD to RFB do NOT have the SCAF red aiming line in the recognition Manual as ALL the RFB ships DO have.

Maybe the newly created ships were not yet "blessed" by Captn Scurvis SCAF?
(maybe only a silhouette pic would do the job?)



Hope this helps to finetune your marvellous mod. After reading Clay Blairs fascinating "Silent Victory" and then reading that U guys modelled the mod after it
I knew that this is it!

Thanks, Trebb

SCAF is in the process of being modified for RFB, whereby the historically-known mast/funnel heights (and draft & tonnages) will be the values given to you by the game. Some ships have better data than others, so it will be all the more imperative to check your firing solution by multiple methods and to get as close as possible before firing.

It fascinatiing reading all the technical know how from you chaps. The attention to detail is truly amazing but, are we trying to achieve the impossible here?

This is but a game, a simulation of what took place 60 odd years ago? The diesel engines on a sub, like in a boat/ship were running at some power, all the time, to power the generators I would imagine, so fuel was a constant drain until "finished with engines" in port; then the sub would be powered probably from shore.

What has been achieved with the mods is phenomenal and you should all be highly congratulated, but it is, only a game.

RFB team,

RFB 1.5 already is SCAF enabled (at least some beta or better).
My point in the above thread was that none of the ships added by
RSRD (added, as is is on top in JGSME) has the red line and thus data of SCAF.
My conclusion was that RSRD is the one without SCAF support.
If I am correct, that would be a pity, its preventing an "universal" targetting technique...:hmm:

Cheers, Trebb

It would certainly be nice to have all the ships integrated in RSRD for RFB, but maybe some element of uncertainty is good, too. ;)

Well AKD,

I think you mix up uncertainty with inaccuracy my friend...:88)

Questions from new guy
 

I'm new to playing Silent Hunter 4 v 1.5 and to this forum. I downloaded and installed the RSRDC mods per the insturctions in this thread (RSRDC_V355_for V15 and RSRDC_V355_Patch5). The Readme file indicates that there should be new missions and patrols available but when I'm in the game it appears that only the original "stock" game missions and patrols are listed. Is there a way to determine that the mods installed properly (I did use JSGME for installation and also ran the game files to snapshot task which listed the file changes from the original installation) and should the new missions and patrols show up as choices in the game? Sorry for my lack of knowledge on this. Thanks.

RSRD is an all new campaign layer. The missions are those assigned to you during the campaign.

There are new historical missions and war patrols in RSRD, as well. If these are not appearing, then something went wrong in the install process.

Did anybody notice that the Momi Class Destroyer is lacking the starboard bow wave?

Also.... Wasn't that thing officially designated as Matsu Class?