A single mission surprise :0

[msalama]

S! all again, and thanks for the warm welcome the other day. This is a nice community, one where even a n00b like myself feels right at home immediately :up:

But anyway, being the beginner that I am I've set up a couple of simple missions to get myself acquaintanced with submarine warfare, and one of them goes a bit like this:

http://koti.welho.com/msalama/Combat_training_3.JPG

So it's all very basic stuff as you can see, and in this case the goal, of course, is to survive that Hunter and his DCs.

OK, so no problem there, and I actually did succeed in fooling the bugger and subsequently escaped him by running silent & deep. But then, after having surfaced again later on, I suddendly heard my watch officer call out "flugzeug gesichtet!". And yes indeed; I had just the time to grab my binoculars to see a RAF Sunderland diving towards me with a seemingly dead-serious intent of putting my sorry a*se out of the U-Boot business, so down under we crashed again pretty sharpish :o

He missed, however, so I lived to fight another day. But how the HELL did he came about??? Did that Hunter call him up or what? I most certainly didn't put him in there myself!!!

Now don't get me wrong. This is not a gripe but on the contrary a praise, in that surprises like this are just the coolest thing IMHO :up: It's just that I didn't know there's seemingly a built-in random element to the missions in there somewhere - or is the AI actually so clever as to request for air support if they deem it worthwhile?

And oh yeah - that particular cat-and-mouse session lasted 16hrs game time before I was finally in the clear :lol:

And yep, I'm still totally jazzed up from the encounter... :lol:

S! all again and happy hunting. What an EXCELLENT simulator this is!

[JU_88]

Im not the best person to answer this in detail, but I belive that in a single mission, 2 out of the 3 campaign layers are also loaded up along with what ever you scripted your self.
One of these is LND layer which contains all the airbases, you will never physically see an airbase as its an invisible radius that will randonly spawn aircraft within it - when an enermy unit (ie - the player) is detected.
So yes - random units will still spawn in a single mission. And yes units can call in other units to hunt you down, not sure exactly how it works though.

Its funny but I find that the more you learn about the mechanics of SH3 and how the world actually works, the more 'magic' you lose from the actual experience of playing it, i think ignorace is bliss in this case. :lol:

[msalama]

So yes - random units will still spawn in a single mission. And yes units can call in other units to hunt you down, not sure exactly how it works though.

I see. Thank you for the explanation m8.

[msalama]

i think ignorace is bliss in this case. :lol:

Yeah! I've been like :o:rock::arrgh!::doh::dead: - and, occasionally, maybe a bit :damn: too - playing this game so far, but bored? Not bloody once...

[Kaptain Hans Wolf]

good on ya mate, hope you keep loving the game. when are you planning to join us on the frontlines(start a carrer)

Good hunting kaptain!

[Mush Martin]

it works like this

when you put in your mission its layed into the scripted
layer of the campaign
the units from the lnd layer
and the random layer of the campaign are layed in also

in the lnd layer (land) there are naval and air bases
with units available to dispatch to any contact within
a defined sphere
(put a base in your mission and go through the settings)
what it means is if your inrange of the base and get
detected they will dispatch units air or sea or both
to get you. plus the random layer units you may
come across.

the only real way to eliminate random units in your missions
is to just have your mission in and no campaign layers
I made my first mod to do this its called

MBFL mod (Mission builders Fast loader mod)
it takes out the campaign layers gets your mission working
with only units you put in it and drops mission loading time
to less than a minute in most cases.
it does however disable your campaign game while active
but jsgme puts back the layers unharmed when you deactivate
so you can still continue your career

its more a mission builders mod testers thing than a player thing
but it is fine to do single missions on as a player if you like
its available on my FF

here

http://hosted.filefront.com/MushMartin

and heres the release thread

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=103633

Warning missions that came included with GWX 2.0 may not be
useable with MBFL as some of those missions utilize units from
the campaign layers

M

[msalama]

Thanks for the answers gents. Will most likely start a career sometime next week after getting the ropes a bit more sorted I think... so wish me luck skippering that type IIA guys :D

And thanks for the layers and mod info MM. I'm going to try your mod out at some point, but still think I'll keep the layers activated for now because I want to see what the game throws at me when I least expect it...

S!

[Brag]

Wishing you a succesful career, Msalama. You are off to a good start! :D

[Brer Rabbit]

Best of Luck on your upcoming career. As a Noob myself, I am returning to Brest from my 12th and most successful mission to date. I started off in a type IIa, moved to a IId and finally to a VIIC, just prior to moving to Brest. I am playing 88% after starting off at 80%. It has been a great simulation exercise. You will thoroughly enjoy yours too.

Sink as many as you can and bring your boat and crew home

Brer Rabbit

[Kaptain Hans Wolf]

good luck mate, hope you get some big ships to your tonnage total:up:

good choice on the type IIa, it was perfect when i started the game, and it is a good boat to learn the ropes on.

good hunting:arrgh!:

[Jimbuna]

Good hunting Kaleun :arrgh!:

[siber]

If I may be so bold, a word of advice: If you begin your career in a Type IIA with external camera, event window and realistic torpedoes etc, make an effort to learn about manual targeting (assuming you're that way inclined towards the realism/action balance).

In my experience, it would have been easier to learn immediately about manual targeting rather than develop tactics with automatic targetting solutions and then have to 'unlearn' them and relearn tactics required for manual targeting. If you haven't already, once you're confident with Stock SH3, try adding one of the supermods. These add a whole new dimension to the game!

However, Type IIA and 1939 are ideal opportunities to learn, as there's no too much punishment from escorts (as they haven't gotten wise to subs yet) and there's also lots of single merchants running around the North Sea.

A word of warning though: Watch out for neutral Norweigan ships in the North Sea at the start of the war. I keep sinking them by accident in my haste to get a good torp solution! :damn: