My advice: Aim for the bow!

[patterchon]

Hi all!

I am on my 11th patrol now in September 1941 with GWX 1.3 and due to my experiences i can highly recommend to aim for the bow when attacking with torpedoes.

With this method i managed to sink small merchants of course, a lot C2's, 2 large tankers, 1-2 troops, whale factory, aux cruiser, light cruiser and so on.
Most merchants will sink after a llittle time. I assume that heavy weather and rough sea is to your advantage then. ships will slow down as soon as the amount of water ducks down the bow until the engines cant push the weight forward anymore.

Attaking C3's and this other type of large cargo u may have bad luck, the most of the time need 2 torps.

U will save some torpedoes trying this, check it out. The following picture shows a bow hit. Aim for this spot or a few meters more to stern and u'll probably be successful. As this was a C3, it needed one more hit this time..

http://w148.de/%7Epmai/HP/files/SH3Img@23-6-2007_15.33.33_897.JPG

[Brag]

You are right about hitting near the bow. You'll get one shot kills on all ships most of the time by hitting them just slightly forward of the foremast.:yep: :yep:

Big exception are the blasted passenger/freight torpedoe gobblers :shifty:

[Avatar]

I believe that the deck gun works equally as well when aiming at the bow.

[johnno74]

patterchon (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=229630)
Patterchon, thats a nice pic but can you please change it to a jpeg? Itas a 2.5 mb bmp file :o

Open it in your paint program (ms paint will even do it) and save as, and change it to jpeg and re-upload it to whatever site you have it on.

it will drop to 1-200 kb.

BTW is that the stock torpedo damage texture?

[KeptinCranky]

Typical, I usually try to hit Large Merchants (C3) right between where you've hit it in the picture, this usually sinks them with one eel after 30 minutes maximum waiting for it, or if they're in a convoy and don't sink they generally straggle out of it at 1 or 2 knots after a few hours and you can pick 'em off later:up:

[patterchon]

@johnno74 (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=228579)
U r right, I've changed the pic into a JPEG of smaller size.
This damage texture is a mod called "torpedo damage final" of some modder here who's name i don't remember now. So it is not stock damage. I think in stock SH3 u can't see any damage on ships...

[Jimbuna]

This chart will give you some idea of the weak spots :up:

http://files.filefront.com/shipchartpdf/;7154954;;/fileinfo.html

[Sawdust]

Your idea of aiming for the bow sounds good.

I just got finished sinking a C2 Cargo ship using up *four* (!) torpedoes. :oops: I'd disabled it with a T-IV acoustic torpedo which destroyed its propeller. I came back later to find it motionless, but afloat and, being that I happened upon it at an AOB of 180°, sent 1, then 2, torpedoes into its stern. These stern shots didn't seem to bother the ship at all except for starting a harmless fire. I had to re-position my sub and send the final torpedo into its port side to finish it off.

I pr'y could've saved a couple of torpedoes if I'd hit it closer to the bow.:hmm:

[maillemaker]

I love that damage mod - I went and found it on the web and installed it. It's awesome to see a big hole blown in the side of the ship instead of the little smudge you get with stock SH3. Very cool.

I think I read somewhere on the forums here that there is a problem with cumulative damage in SH3, so that if you punch a second torpedo into the same hole as the first one you won't do as much damage as if the two torpedoes struck in different parts of the ship. I notice in your photo you had shot the ship twice. I wonder if that accounts for what made the bow shot seem so powerful?

[Elysion]

Semi-related question

So that german u-boat manual thing says that ships sink faster if they are taking on water only at one end, and slower if you put a hole into each end of them. Does SH3 reflect this?


I think i read somewhere that sujested otherwise =/

[Jimbuna]

The ship should (in theory anyway) sink quicker the more compartments you put a hole in ;)

[KeybdFlyer]

"Aim for the bow". "Aim for the stern". "Hit the engine room first". Geez - I consider myself lucky just to hit the damn ship! :lol:

[Nuoz]

"Aim for the bow". "Aim for the stern". "Hit the engine room first". Geez - I consider myself lucky just to hit the damn ship! :lol:

Same here. specially in bad weather. If you can't see the ship at 300m and you've plotted (wrongly) the AoB and speed based on hydrophone information, when your sonar man says "merchant medium speed bearing 0" you just let the fish go and pray. Last time i did just that i missed :( I need to learn how to use the audio features better. Only the scope wont help if the ship is moving at night with lights apparently out and extremely foggy weather.:damn:

[ReM]

Just installed the torpedo damage mod....didn't even know it existed....great stuff!

Thanks for pointing it out patterchon!

[maillemaker]

"Aim for the bow". "Aim for the stern". "Hit the engine room first". Geez - I consider myself lucky just to hit the damn ship!

I'd be willing to bet that every post where they say "aim for part X of the ship" they are using auto-TDC. With Auto-TDC, you just point the crosshairs anywhere on the ship and press fire. That's what I do, anyway.

I played around with the manual TDC, but I found it not very fun or realistic, though I was able to hit things. Mostly I didn't like it because I have to flip through the manual (and the manual is slow to click through) to identify the ship, and I think most captains would know what they were looking at on sight. So I went back to auto-TDC. To me the game is challenging enough just setting up attack runs and escaping.

[patterchon]

I use auto-TDC, and with this and the right situation (no heavy fog and time to position the sub for a shot) I aim for the bow.

I'm just telling u because many Kaleuns here fire 2 torps at equal or bigger C2 ships for a sinking on the safe side when engaging convoys. But if u have the time to think about which torp to shoot when at what ship and at what speed, then u can as well take the time and make a good shot and sink 4 big ships with only four eels.

Of course there are situations, in which u don't have time and u just can react and shoot a magnetic.

@maillemaker: the picture above shows a sinking C3. These sometimes survive a bow shot and won't sink. Or maybe in this case i was to impatient to wait 30mins for her to sink :) Here is another pic. These two T3's slow down and sank with 1 shot each, and the oil didn't catch fire or something.

http://w148.de/%7Epmai/HP/files/SH3Img@30-4-2007_12.33.26_833.JPG

[Corsair]

Same here. specially in bad weather. If you can't see the ship at 300m and you've plotted (wrongly) the AoB and speed based on hydrophone information, when your sonar man says "merchant medium speed bearing 0" you just let the fish go and pray. Last time i did just that i missed :( I need to learn how to use the audio features better. Only the scope wont help if the ship is moving at night with lights apparently out and extremely foggy weather.:damn:

bearing 0 is too late... following distance and target speed, a 0 gyroangle is obtained when target is 10 to 15 degrees before bearing 0. Also assuming your torpedo doors are already opened before firing...

[Hadrys]

Aim for this, aim for that... First I was a huge fan of midship/mechinery room shots, than bow shots... until I've sunk 17k tanker with one eel! It hit the stern, at about 1/4 of the ship and changed it into one big ball of fire. Now my favorite is to pick only tankers and Groser Ladung (13k) and sunk them with one shot. If it doesn't blow up it will sink in no time as its proppelers push the water inside and stern under the surface. Of course you need a magnetic, haven tried this at heavy seas as I only use shallow impact than...

Yesterday we were slowly heading for home and run into big fat convoy. Having only to eels in deck compartments (!) I've run in front of it with flank, took my position, stopped to pull the eels inside and submerged (trying to be realistic). When convoy was close stern and bow eels were ready. 2x13k in no time and 3 very pissed DDs. I luv Reykjavik!!

PS Now they found me a day after and doing very close with the DCs... I wonder how much do they have it?

[Nuoz]

Same here. specially in bad weather. If you can't see the ship at 300m and you've plotted (wrongly) the AoB and speed based on hydrophone information, when your sonar man says "merchant medium speed bearing 0" you just let the fish go and pray. Last time i did just that i missed :( I need to learn how to use the audio features better. Only the scope wont help if the ship is moving at night with lights apparently out and extremely foggy weather.:damn:
bearing 0 is too late... following distance and target speed, a 0 gyroangle is obtained when target is 10 to 15 degrees before bearing 0. Also assuming your torpedo doors are already opened before firing...

That is really gold. Thanks sir! On a side note to the people who are using auto TDC, you are missing out. You don't need to know exactly what type of ship the vessel is, you can almost on all ocasions guess the draft by it's size and if you use auto updates (i confess i do use that because: 1) the GWX recon manual doesn't tell you the generic type of an warship, Hunter class i know it's a destroyer but alot of those i don't know. 2) findind range too a vessel using the scope/UZO at night in rough weather is about the most challenging thing the game has to offer. 3) Its very time-consuming to manually plot. 4) These are excuses my brain makes up to compensate the frustration and somewhat make up for the cheating.)

[maillemaker]

findind range too a vessel using the scope/UZO at night in rough weather is about the most challenging thing the game has to offer.

Or annoying, depending on how you look at it. :)

I tried manual TDC. It was cool, and I could hit things, but just not many. Just last night, though, I figured out you if you pause the game you can still page through the recognition manual, so that should buy some time to make up for the slowness of the book page turning and my inexperience identifying ships.