This is the best way to evade aircraft

[GoldenRivet]

Every officer aboard the boat has certain actions he will perform by default in certain situations.

if you go to the depth gauge and order a crash dive (or perisocope depth etc) the following sequence of events takes place.

1. engine order telegraph remains unchanged and stays on the currently selected speed

2. the chief engineer's default job, regardless of what he is doing in that situation, is to run to the ballast valve and operate it for surfacing or diving.

3. two crewmen man the dive planes

this is all good and well except often times, your chief engineer is all the way astern and takes a long time to get to the ballast valve! He may have to run from the diesel engine room to the command room to do this job, or climb out of his bunk and run there to do it. this all takes an agonizingly long time

so i have found the best way to evade aircraft is this:

1. pause the game (it may do so automatically immediately when the aircraft is spotted), then, while paused...

2. Order the fastest forward speed you can select

3. Order whichever officer is manning the navigator's station to operate the ballast valve since he is standing closest to it (you keep the nav station manned yes?)

4. if you have the captain on watch with 2 assistants, order him to bed, and release his two assistants

5. un-pause the game

6. select the desired depth preferably deeper than 50m AFTER the boat has completely submerged.

what this does is set forth the crash dive sequence of events in the most efficient way possible and thus, gets the boat under faster.

i timed it, these were the results

first test, ordered crash dive by hitting the crash dive button and waiting... 54.67 seconds to completely submerge

second test, followed the steps i outlined above... 36.86 seconds to completely submerge

third test, followed the steps i outlined above again, only starting at maximum forward speed... 34.74 seconds to completely submerge

as you can see, following the steps above 1-6 cuts your crash dive time by about 20 seconds, which as you know is an eternity when trying to get under and evade an airplane attack