General

• Vary your underwater speed when under depth charge attack. Don't be afraid to make noise when escaping.

• Finish crippled ships after you've eluded their escorts.

• Pursuit of convoy vessels that get by you is often rewarded by a lucky zig in your direction.

• Enemy escorts are easy to take out. Down-the-throat shots are high percentage shots.

• Use time compression judiciously when transiting in the career game. You could end up nose-to-nose with a patrol group.

• Special attention should be paid to the XO's estimates. He's very good.

• Likewise, remember the ocean depth. Hitting bottom is hard on your boat.

TIPS

• Silent Service II is a very small program. You can copy the whole works on one floppy. Very portable.

• Don't lose the identification manual. You need it to start the game.

• If you have any trouble running the game, be sure the properties of your SS2 files are not set for "Read only".

There are some details in Silent Service II that didn't make the print deadline for the manual, especially the use of the 's' key (super-slowdown), which helps with today's faster computers.   
Read the Silent Hunter II Readme file.

Digitized speech  fix

1) Even though I use a Creative Labs Soundblaster card, I was able to make SS2 think that it was an Adlib card, by substituting 'ADLIB' for 'IBM' in the command in the file 'Silent.bat', as in 'SS2 VGA ADLIB HARD'  Then the sounds and music worked through the sound card.

2) I wondered why digitized speech didn't work, though, and experimented a little.  I tried a few ideas, without success, but then I noticed that most or all of the files in your distribution have the 'Read Only' attribute set.  As a hunch, I decided to remove it, at the DOS prompt, by typing 'attrib -r *.*'.  Then, when I played the game again, I had digitized speech.  For instance, when I order the sub to dive, now I hear 'Clear the bridge' (usually), and always 'Dive'.  Also, when diving or surfacing, I usually hear 'Aye, aye, sir'.  I also had to turn up my sound card volume to hear it clearly, though.

Tip contributed by Will  Baldwin
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