How do I find a target in this blue mess?!?

[Heinz_McDurgen]

I've been playing for about two weeks now and everything has been going well for the first bit.

I'd run around on easy career after the school portion of the game and blast things to kingdom come. Then I decide to challenge myself and pick it up a little bit, so I read up on the TDC and what not, hone my skills, go out and take out some ships, only to run out of fuel. Then I start again, only to get shot up by some aircraft.

Lessons learned. I run submerged during daylight at 2-2.5 knots and on the surface at 10 knots at night with 2 hour dips for sonar checks. So I've solved the fuel problem, and the bird problem... so what should arise now?

I can't find a single other boat in the whole Pacific. Scratch that; I can't find a single ENEMY boat in the whole Pacific, merchants included. I'm running in 1941, at 73% realism... any ideas? Does playing it on a harder difficulty drop the number of ships at sea?

I'm just a little urk'ed because I've sharpened my teeth, but can't find anything to sink them into. No pun intended.

Thanks in advance.

-Heinz

[SteamWake]

You just need to know where to look.

Ill let the others fill in the blank.

By the way, Ive gone weeks in a patrol without a single contact. But then again I run some mods. Stock games should have your ships runneth over.

[Heinz_McDurgen]

Earlier I had two months without one... All through where my mission area was to "disrupt enemy shipping" so I failed the mission, because I couldn't sink ghost ships.

[kylania]

Check the map that hopefully came with your game (it should be a JPG in your installed directory) for maps that show where convoys often are. Just head along those and you should find some ships at some point. :)

Wow, this is so not Silent Hunter III, sorry! Here's a PDF of the convoy map that came with some versions of SH4 (Collector's maybe? I got it, but some people didn't.) http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4902

[SteamWake]

Earlier I had two months without one... All through where my mission area was to "disrupt enemy shipping" so I failed the mission, because I couldn't sink ghost ships.

There are two types of these missions

Star with binocluars : Stay within 100nm of the star typically for 72 hours. That is all. Tonnage is irrelevant.

Star with fllag: Reach the star, you are then free to seek out shipping anywhere on the map once you reach the required tonnage that mission will complete. Location is irrlevant.

[Arclight]

Running submerged by day and recharging at night will only worsen your fuel problem; recharging gobbles up a lot of fuel.

Like stated before, search for targets along the shipping lanes. Still, if you're running the stock campaign there should be plenty of stuff to shoot at, no matter where you go. :hmm:

[Heinz_McDurgen]

Well, as luck would have it, I stumbled across what I can only guess is a trade lane, because in about 4 days I sank 7 ships for 22,000 tons in a 100nm area. Good deal. Thanks for all your help fellas.