[Pablo]

Originally Posted by Captain Shadow

Hey all.

I'm revisiting SH3, and it's my first time trying out GWX. I'm having some problems getting into it, however.

Tried to carry out four patrols on an IXC (2nd Flotilla, 1942). Three of those ended in my sinking, with no more than one little merchant ship spotted (and sunk) after crossing the Atlantic each time. I used the ostensibly handy convoy map to sail along routes with expected traffic, yet only encountered a single convoy. That was my first sinking, as the thing spawned in my face, with the fore escort being spotted less than 50 metres away from my surfaced sub.

Interesting. Stock SH3 convoys aren't supposed to spawn if you're camped on their starting point. GWX convoys should be the same in that regard.

It was really frustrating, like the second sinking, which happened at night on the eastern side of the quadrant off the coast of Florida. My incompetent watch crew "spotted" the warship closer 500 metres when the first shell rocked the boat. Great job there, men. The U-boat was destroyed in no more than five shots, before it was even half-dived.

I never rely on my crew to visually spot an approaching ASW vessel, since the crews can get tired and unless you're watching their fatigue levels they can lose a lot of their effectiveness. Try listening to your hydrophones more frequently.

Only the third sinking felt in any way fair. Tribal-class destroyer sailing in front of a beeline of two merchant ships not too far WSW of the British Isles. I positioned myself very well, about a thousand metres away and perpendicular to the mini-convoy's projected course. The idea was to let the DD sail by and hit the merchies. But even though I was submerged (12 metres or so), dead still and had my periscope down, the Tribal started pinging me. It turned and started coming straight at me. The situation was a bit like the stern shot at the end of U-571 (the film), only we were face to face. I could only fire a single torpedo, and it ran right under the destroyer. I had my fish set to Impact to hit the merchies, so maybe if it had been magnetic the Tribal wouldn't have smashed through my conning tower.

A real-life destroyer would use the narrow beam of its active sonar to search for submarines near the surface that were lying in ambush. (see the manual for some evasion techniques). SH3 uses a percentage chance that the sonar operator has activated its sonar and that its pointed in your direction, so it sounds like the computer had "hot dice" that time.

The sudden deaths are annoying, but maybe they're just unlucky flukes. I guess my main beef right now is that I can hardly find any targets across the Atlantic even if I follow convoy and single-ship routes. Is this a realism tweak or something? I remember having enough action in vanilla SH3, so maybe that density of shipping was unrealistic and changed in GWX?

Any thoughts, guys? I'm feeling really frustrated. Even with time compression, sailing back and forth the Atlantic Ocean takes a good while, and it's not that much fun when you only have two spottings along the way and a 50% chance it turns out to be a warship

Hello & Welcome Aboard!

Well, GWX convoys don't always follow the original game map: some folks figured out where the convoy routes were in earlier versions and just camped out on them. In response, our crafty campaign designer set up the convoy routes so that their waypoint locations are a bit random, just as they were in real life, so the convoys don't always follow the same path.

One way to counter this is to refine your search method. I personally do the following:

1. Use the 16km horizon mod.
2. Buy the advanced Kristalldrehbasisgerät (KDB) hydrophones as soon as possible, possibly before my first patrol. Dive, stop, and listen to the hydrophones myself rather than rely on the computer-controlled hydrophone operator.
3. Listen to my hydrophones at least once every few hours to find distant (30+ miles) contacts that aren't anywhere near the visual horizon.
4. When I hear a contact, go down that heading for an hour at full speed, stop and listen again, adjust course, and continue. Keep track of where you find ships and you'll eventually map out the rough convoy routes. If you find enemy ASW vessels, avoid them.

I realize the lack of contacts can be frustrating, but IRL contacts were generally few and far between.

Hope this helps!

Pablo