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Old 12-05-17, 11:16 PM   #1
jcope
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Default Need Some Refreshers - Using TC to Find Targets and Why Am I Dying?

When I was playing before, I had some pretty good techniques. Trying to do the same, relying on my memory, it's not working out too well...

First question: Using TC to Spot Targets
I'm not finding the post, but it seems like Rockin Robbins was the one who pointed out that you can watch the stopwatch at high levels of time compression... sailing into the vicinity of a target will cause the minute hand to snag. It worked great. I justify it by reminding myself I have a crew who should be as effective at finding targets. What I'm not sure is what is the right TC to use to do this. Too low, and the minute hand doesn't jump. Too high, and I lose too much time reacting. I thought it was 1556.

Second question: What the hell?
I stay submerged during the day, and sail through using the TC technique I described above. Twice I've been sunk without warning and with no way to figure out who did it. I'm in deep water, submerged at 150 and 200feet, cruising at 2kts, and then boom it's done. A third time the system popped out of TC while an aircraft bombed me and missed. I assume it's an aircraft the other times too. How deep do I need to be to keep this from happening? Or is it not an aircraft?
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Old 12-06-17, 07:44 AM   #2
propbeanie
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That method is an old one, from back when the computers weren't quite so "efficient" with their then-meager resources. Older computers would "hiccup" with certain aspects of the game, but the newer computers don't so much.

Depending upon the mods you're using, if any, planes can see you down to 120-160 foot roughly. In stock, anything below PD will usually work. Dying while in TC can be any one of a number of things. There are a lot of ways to die in SH4. CO2 asphyxiation is one, smacking the ocean floor, hitting a mine (not so much in stock trim), planes or DD that detect you, etc, but especially so in enemy waters. TC in SH4 does not work as we'd like. You'd think it'd have a "look-ahead", but apparently doesn't. I did the math a few months ago over in the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate thread, and it's really kind of scary how much time can pass and how far your boat will travel at even lower compression settings. As an example, at 512x TC, your boat traveling at 2 knots, will travel 3.37555 feet per second of actual time, or 1728.28444 in that 512x TC. Say you're using that 1556x TC figure, three times that of 512x, and you've traveled 5184.85+ feet - one hundred feet short of a land mile. An hour's time passes in 2.31 seconds at that rate, about 26 minutes per second, correct? (I am not good at math this early - or ever, for that matter.) The game does not "detect" airplanes overhead when you're submerged until the first bomb drops, and the crew goes "We're under attack, sir!" You come out of time compression, and you're sunk already. 2048x TC is where you get the stopwatch to open, and you can lower from there and it'll stay open, but TC hiccups are not the way to find the enemy anymore.

If you have a sub with radar, it's better to do this:



Again, depending upon the mods used, you may have to make the "visual" circle a little bigger. Also, be sure your deck watch are the best "eyes" in the crew. Look at the crewmembers' ratings on the crew page.

If you "shell out" from the game in Windows, using the <Alt><Tab>, or the Windows key, or whatever, that will cause the game to "stick" on certain aspects, such as the CO2 levels will not decrease when you surface the boat, and will continue to rise, and when you submerge for your 2nd day's journey... the next thing you know, you're crew is dead, with no "warning" - other than that little flashing thingie in the upper right of the screen, which can be difficult to see in a submerged boat's interior... When things get stuck like that, you have to Save the game and exit out. Re-start the game and load your Save to continue.
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Old 12-06-17, 12:19 PM   #3
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Thanks for the great response.

Regarding Time Compression: I was a bit suspicious that the better system performance might make that stopwatch stutter thing risky. I actually did locate a merchant that way, but I also had tons of false alarms and sailed the last two thirds of my trip without ever running across another ship. But did die twice for unexplained reasons. Using RSRD/RFB, what is the recommended way to get across the entire ocean without bypassing targets? It looks like I'm back to the tedious cycle of hourly checks.

Regarding Unexplained Sinkings: It wasn't a ship or the ocean floor or loss of oxygen. I didn't think of mines, and don't remember having to deal with them outside of harbors and bays. I think it was aircraft, but honestly I'd think 150ft would be deep enough to stay out of sight. Something got me at 190ft though. In this career I'm still pre-radar. Looking forward to getting radar.
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Old 12-06-17, 12:40 PM   #4
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Ahhh yesh... and you have RFB on top of RSRDC. So, especially in an S boat, but, to an extent,the others also, your boat is basically an egg shell... one little close concussion and "poof", yer gone... but I'm not sure what that combo has for planes finding you at depth, since I never played it. Maybe they have something in the ReadMe stuff?? Try running around at 250 and see what happens.

If you're in Empire waters though, TC will kill you. Too much happens in that roughly 15 minutes of time that passes when coming out of TC... In FotRSU, I'll use maybe 1024 at night on the surface with radar between Pearl and Midway, 512x at night between Midway and maybe halfway across early in the war. I at least half those figures during the day. Without radar, as soon as I'm seen by the enemy, since I expect them to start "bird dogging" me, I lower that further. During daylight hours after that, I'm not above 64-128x. I'm not trying to "find targets" with TC though either. I rely on my "sensors", of which, just for reference, I've been bombed in broad daylight by a plane that the watch crew didn't see until the bomb detonated on the deck in front of the conning tower... "We're under attack, sir!" - really??... that was 1x TC, btw... - while I was distracted at the chart table, planning a route...
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Last edited by propbeanie; 12-06-17 at 12:51 PM. Reason: whoops! who taught you to spell - a person could get banned for that!...
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