GWX questions

[Bosje]

Hello, gang

I got killed and was determined to adhere to DiD so I thought this might be a good time to try running GWX 2.0

my computer seems to manage just fine and I have been checking it out all night, what a glorious piece of work!

First of all: I prostrate myself humbly before the team, you are gods
second: I have some questions (after reading almost the entire manual)

-what is that round rotating antenna on the bridge doing? is that the radio?
-is it even at all possible to complete the academy exams in gwx? (mainly the gunnery exam)
-I find the observation scope kind of annoying, right in my view as I try to communicate with my LI and as I want to climb through the hatch to the radio room. do you guys advise using shiftF2 while the boat is rocking about or while depthcharged or is that prone to game instability?
-Is there a tutorial for learning to interpret hydrophone noises correctly? would be good to be able to hear some examples of merchants moving away and closing, slowing down and speeding up, warships dito, biologicals, torpedoes etc.

[danlisa]

1) That's the RDF (Radio Direction Finder) Loop.
2) Possible, but hard, esp the Flak exam.:lol: It can be done though. It's not a requirement to complete them.
3) Shift+F2 (or free cam) will work and no known issues exist to date. Just don't go out of bounds.
4) GWX Hydropone sounds are distinctive. You'll know them when you hear them. There is no current GWX sound tutorial however, the easiest way is to determine the differences while in game. You only need to worry about the difference between Warships & Merchants, the rest are very easy to classify.

[Bosje]

thanks

ok so i have a radio detection finder in 1939...
will that give me bearings on radio messages like sss etc from nearby contacts?

oh and I received several SSS radio messages from steamships (SS rights?) with lat/long specifications, my old atlas tells me those coordinates should be somewhere in the Bay of Biscay. are those ships actually there under attack? hmmm no wait its more fun to find that out for myself

final question at this time: i have my torpedo crew sorted in 2 shifts of 6 men each, one shift in the bow room, the other in the bow quarters. why are they now all completely exhausted??? will it help if i use left/right click to just put 'on duty' torps in the unused motor room while cruising to minimise fatigue? the manual hinted at that but i'd like to think they have some maintenance and greasing to do while we are merrily sailing to the horizon

greets,
bosje

(7th day at sea in GWX and I just want to say again that I absolutely love what you guys have done, completely different game (hence a lot of questions))

[Graf Paper]

My two cents...

For the Flak and Gunnery exams, you can simply let the qualified officers man those stations for you. Their aim and eyesight tends to be better than yours, for some reason. This leaves you free to maneuver the u-boat out of harm's way from the airplanes in the Flak Exam

You'll earn a score of "Excellent" every time. :up:

Some talented soul did indeed create a standalone Hydrophone Trainer. I do not recall if it is compatible with the propeller sounds in GWX, but it was on a spanish-speaking SH3 website. I'll see if I can dig it out of my folders and upload it to my FileFront account for you.

Welcome aboard the GWX 2 flotilla, Bosje! :arrgh!:

[Sailor Steve]

ok so i have a radio detection finder in 1939...
will that give me bearings on radio messages like sss etc from nearby contacts?
No, and no. The antenna is there in the stock game, it's just retracted into its housing. The GWX team activated the antenna, but it just looks cool; there's nothing there to pick up.

oh and I received several SSS radio messages from steamships (SS rights?) with lat/long specifications, my old atlas tells me those coordinates should be somewhere in the Bay of Biscay. are those ships actually there under attack? hmmm no wait its more fun to find that out for myself
Here is a link to a quick and easy converter that will tell you precisely where the messages are from:
http://files.filefront.com/MQK+Converter7z/;9768851;/fileinfo.html

I'd love to tell you whether they're there or not, but you asked us not to.

final question at this time: i have my torpedo crew sorted in 2 shifts of 6 men each, one shift in the bow room, the other in the bow quarters. why are they now all completely exhausted??? will it help if i use left/right click to just put 'on duty' torps in the unused motor room while cruising to minimise fatigue? the manual hinted at that but i'd like to think they have some maintenance and greasing to do while we are merrily sailing to the horizon
Even in the stock game, there are no bunks in the torpedo room. These are represented by the forward crew bunks, but of course there aren't enough. Yes, putting them in the empty engine room will help.

[Bosje]

ok cheers :)

the manual said i need to tell the gun crew to load HE first time they man the gun but in the exam they just started firing. also in the exam, i have no gunners on the crew and they insisted on hitting the hull, in blatent disregard of my specific order to aim below the waterline. After half an hour of watching ships sailing merrily away while they were being peppered without visible results other than fires and exploding bits of ship, i could no longer be bothered but then I found I had 1500 renown at the start of my career anyway so what the hell

also i notice an important difference with stock: kleine fahrt voraus puts the rpm under 100 but gives a speed of 2 kts. in stock i had to set speed at 1 to get rpm under 100 and thus being unheard by listening DDs. the simple 'z + 1' will now make as quiet as can be, short of completely shutting off the engines?

[Laufen zum Ziel]

You can find Canovaro's Hydrophone tutorial at the below link under "Canovaros Document Collection" index + a lot of other SHIII (GWX) good stuff.

http://s262.photobucket.com/albums/ii113/laufen345/th_Warship_animated.gif

http://silent-hunter-addict.com

[Bosje]

that kept me off the streets for a bit, excellent!

i dont suppose i can run on electrics while surfaced, right?

[Umfuld]

the simple 'z + 1' will now make as quiet as can be, short of completely shutting off the engines?
Actually just 'z'. It will set you at 1 by itself

[Bosje]

so it does

i once got picked up by a frigate in the stock version for going TO silent mode, as i was running at 1 knots and going to silent running made it go to langsame fahrt, thus stopping the torpedo loading etc but instead putting me over 100 rpm

my basic question was: schleichfahrt in GWX will make me as silent as can be, including keeping her under 100rpm (which gives me 2 kts)

correct?

[Brag]

In the game no electric motors available when surfaced

[Umfuld]

Bosje, GW does make it so 1 (slow) on electric power will be under 100RPM.

Not sure what you mean by schleichfahrt, been awhile since I used the German speech setting.

[Gezoes]

The same m8, z a.k.a. silent running.

I think it literally means 'crawling and/or sneaking speed' :hmm:

[Bosje]

yeah there is no direct translation which covers the semantics exactly but the basic meaning is 'sneak, steal, slink, slip' that kind of thing, with a heavy connotation of being stealthy, secret and likely illegal

but thats a bit too much, lol

sneak speed, then

[Bosje]

Hey people,

sorry to bother you again but I have an issue and I can't find the details in the manuals, on this forum or in the The Submarine Commander's Handbook, so here it goes.

I'm trying to run my crew somewhat close to historically accurate

All I know (or at least seem to have deducted) is what I've seen in Das Boot, really.
-1.WO calls the TDC settings from the Uzo, calling out target speed and distance etc when they finish off that burning tanker from the surface (weapons officer below in the control room actually setting the values into the TDC?)
-LI is the one who takes care of fixing the boat when they are in serious trouble
-Always the same guys at the helm controls?

so,given what you can do and what you have to do in the game, that leaves me with a couple of questions:

1) Is the 1.WO usually the most senior officer after the Kaleun? And is he the one who should be the ship ID and solution when you have 'weapon officer assistance'?
2) Who is the officer most qualified to have torpedo specs, 'the officer in charge of the house of lords' when there is some work to do there?
3) Did they have an officer in the engine rooms, in charge of the machines? (in game, the officer with machinist specs who can greatly improve efficiency there)
4) Did the navigator have any other duties?
5) Who is the 2.WO and what are his duties? And how did they rotate the watchcrews?

6) Did any Kaleun EVER reload torpedoes during an attack? (great tactic which I picked up from the forums, launch 2-4 eels from range, get closer while reloading and get off 2 more from inside the convoy in the next 15 minutes while the escorts search the original launch spot. This works well in game but seems horribly unrealistic)

Everyone will agree, as the handbook also states, that having an efficient lookout is vital, so you always need an officer of the watch and a fresh watchcrew. how did they sort this out? Would EVERY officer spend some time on the bridge or was the LI never ever out there, for example?

I know it may be a bit fussy, most of you may say something like 'whatever works for your playing style' but I like to get immersed and do things realistically. (apart from doing the solutions manually in difficult conditions with multiple targets, I'm mathematically challenged :know:)

My current system:
Surface attack -1.WO on the bridge, me on the Uzo, weapons officer below doing solutions. LI at helm, navigator on duty, machinist in engine room. If we get damage, the LI joins the damage control and the machinist takes over at the bridge. weapons officer joins reloading crew and as we have now dived, the 1.WO does the solutions for any subsequent attacks. This works well but I don't like doing it, if you catch my drift.

I assume they would only start reloading long after the enemy was out of range, thus making that a job for the weapons officer who no longer has a job. Historic gameplay means launch 5 torpedoes and getting out of there, right?

Any thoughts?

thanks and greetings,
Bosje

[JScones]

Just answering some of the quick and easy questions first...

1) Is the 1.WO usually the most senior officer after the Kaleun? And is he the one who should be the ship ID and solution when you have 'weapon officer assistance'?
This is not as simple a question as it seems. To appreciate the answer, you need to understand the German officer structure of WWII PLUS forget about the way command was handled by Allies.

In WWII there were two general streams of U-boat officers - "Line" and "Engineering" (and "Medical" in the later years). In some instances the LI (Engineering stream) would actually outrank the Commander (Line stream) either in seniority or rank (look at U-516 for example, at one stage near the end of the war the Commander was an ObLt whilst the LI was a highly decorated KptLt). So it was possible that even the Commander wasn't the most senior on his own boat!

However, it was Line officers that took command of U-boats. The most senior ranked Line officer was always the Commander. The 1WO was the 2IC and the guy who took over should something happen to the Commander, regardless of what rank the LI had. Indeed, there were *many* instances where the Commander was an ObLt, the LI was an ObLt and the 1WO was an Lt.

The 1WO was responsible for the weapons system: torpedo control and aiming. So yes, it should be he providing the weapons assistance.

3) Did they have an officer in the engine rooms, in charge of the machines? (in game, the officer with machinist specs who can greatly improve efficiency there)
Apart from the floating LI, no. Two Chief Petty Officers - an Obermaschinist and an Elektro Obermaschinist - were responsible for the diesels and electric motors and batteries respectively. Both reported to the LI (Engineering stream).

4) Did the navigator have any other duties?
Provisioning.

5) Who is the 2.WO and what are his duties? And how did they rotate the watchcrews?
The 2WO was generally a very junior officer and was responsible for the flak and deck guns plus overseeing communication.

The 1WO and 2WO each undertook two 4 hour watches per day, with the Obersteurmann (navigator) and Oberbootsmann (discipline and conduit between officers and ORs) doing a 4 hour watch each. The balance of the watchcrew was made up of enlisted men undertaking one 4 hour shift each day.

Would EVERY officer spend some time on the bridge or was the LI never ever out there, for example?
See above. The LI was too busy being in charge of the technical department (engines, motors, batteries, trim). It should also be noted that he was the last person off a boat if scuttling was necessary.

Further, out of the usual four Chief Petty Officers, only the Obersteurmann and Oberbootsmann undertook watch duties, with the Obermaschinist and Elektro Obermaschinist remaining below with the engines.

NB: It goes without saying that there were always exceptions based on unique or otherwise circumstances. The above is simply the "usual" way things were done, at least according to a few sources I have here.

[Bosje]

Brilliant, that's exactly the information I was looking for, thanks!

So that would suggest the following crew composition/management

-LI One of the first inline for promotion, Helmsman and repair specs, and machinist specs for role-playing purpose to have him hang around in the engine room every now and again, lol. He drives my boat and if there is some heavy-duty repairing to be done, he is the man in charge of that. (When he sleeps, who would take his place at the helm, historically?)

-Navigator/quartermaster. Helmsman and further specs might be Watch and Medic. One of the guys rotating into the watch schedule

-Some dude. Torpedo Specs, possibly watch specs. To be seen as Oberbootsman. Good guy to rotate into the watch for 1 shift a day and to be in charge of torpedo reloading.

-1.WO, Watch, helm and torpedo specs. Takes the weapon officer slot when at action stations. Does the solution and is the spare torpedo reloader if, for example, I need both bow and stern torpedo rooms at full efficiency. (Does it help in game if the weapons officer has helm specs? I never find my control room bar other than fully green because the LI and navigator are on duty, but perhaps the solution is more accurate if the weapons officer has helm?)

-2.WO, Watch, flak, gunner specs. On the bridge at surface action stations. If we are shooting guns, he is the one taking care of business.

Thus I get rid of the 'machinist officer' and my engine room is lead by an oberbootsman machinist, along with an other nco machinist. Another identical engine room crew in their aft quarters. My torpedo officer is not in charge of anything other than reloading the tubes, sleeping a long time afterwards as it seems a very tiring business and rotating into the watch. A junior Oberfahnrich will replace my machinist officer and if anyone ever gets flak and gunnery qualifications, it will be him.

For the watchcrews I now have 3 teams of 4. One on the bridge or sleeping when submerged. one in the control room (4th guy doing the radio when my 2 funkers are resting. the funkers are unique and don't have replacements on board. they just man their stations when necessary and sleep most of the other times) and the 3rd watch team is resting. I rotate them from the helm to the bridge to the quarters, never getting them really tired. This system of being at work 2/3 and sleeping 1/3 works because they sleep 2/3 whenever we are submerged.

this would appear to be quite an accurate system then, correct?

only matter remaining is the torpedo crew. I have 3 sets of 3: one torpedo qualified NCO and 2 matrosen. 2 sets are sleeping and 1 set is manning whichever engine room is not in use. (due to how incredibly tired they get if i stick them in the torpedo room all day)
would these guys have been rotated through the watchcrew historically?

[JScones]

My head hurts! :rotfl:

I'll respond this way. A typical Type VII crew looked like this:

Commander (usually an KptLt, KvtKpt or ObLt)
1WO (usually an ObLt)
2WO (usually an Lt)
LI (usually an ObLt or Lt)
3WO/Navigator (usually the Obersteuermann)
4WO (usually an Oberbootsmaat)

General (ie cook etc)
2 x Oberbootsmann
1 x Bootsmann
7 x Matrosenobergefreiter
3 x Matrosengefreiter

Engine Room
1 x Stabsobermaschinist
2 x Obermaschinist
2 x Maschinenobermaat
5 x Maschinenmaat
11 x Maschinenobergefreiter
5 x Maschinengefreiter

Radio Operators
3 x Funkobermaat
1 x Funkobergefreiter
2 x Funkgefreiter

Torpedo Room
1 x Obermechaniker
2 x Mechanikermaat
1 x Mechanikerobergefreiter
1 x Mechanikergefreiter

Medical
1 x Sanitatsmaat

Of course, crew numbers varied from boat to boat and type to type.

Usual rotation was 8 hours duty, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours misco tasks (inc 4 hours on watch), except for the engine room guys that worked 6 hours on, 6 hours off. No bridge watch for these guys. And no bridge watch for the cook.

If you are running SH3Cmdr, then pls note that it includes a "Realistic Crew" set that pretty much replicates this structure, notwithstanding the usual compromises required to make it fit in with SH3 limitations.

For more detail on this stuff, I highly recommend the book "Grey Wolf: U-boat crewman [sic] of WWII". It's a composite of numerous sources, but gives a nice summary. Also covers who did what during "action stations". ;)