What is the point of 1939?

[casey.phobic]

Ahoy,

I suppose I may be jumping the gun in a way, but is the point of 1939 to go out to sea and wait for war to be declared?

I'm pretty new to this game (been playing only since October), and i just reinstalled with GWX 3.0. I started the earliest career I could since I'm still very n00bish and I want to have the least amount of resistance while I hone my skills. I started a career with that Flotilla that begins near Finland. I set out and just started sinking Polish merchants and whatever other Polish ships I could find. I suppose they were still neutral at this point because when i returned to base, there were German ships firing on me, coastal artillery firing on me etc. I just dove for periscope depth and they lost me. I continued to hear shells exploding and such so I went to the bird's eye view. Oh MAN was it chaos! German ships sinking German ships..every man for himself! It was pretty fun to watch, but it clearly is telling me that I did something wrong.

Can any of you give me some advice here?

On a side note, I keep getting a patrol assignment for BF10. I'm sure you all know that BF10 does not exist. I figured that maybe they're meaning for me to just patrol anywhere in BF sector for 24 hours, but that doesn't seem the case. I did a search in the forums and found that GWX won't give you any renown for patrolling an assigned sector anyway, but it looks like the BF10 thing is sort of a mystery to a lot of sailors here.


Salut!

[bgey]

Quoting the GWX manual out of laziness:

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Campaign Start
The stock Silent Hunter III campaign began on September 1, 1939. Historically, U-boats began moving to their wartime patrol areas starting around August 15, 1939, so GWX has advanced the start of the campaign to August 1, 1939 to allow players to reach their historical patrol areas before the war begins.
--------

Most people do a short (4 or 5 days) shakedown patrol. Go sight seeing. :03:
Oh, btw, be sure to take a look at that GWX manual. It has tons of useful and interesting information! :up:

Benny

[mookiemookie]

The point is to get out and have a shakedown cruise. Get a patrol's worth of experience for your crew and earn a qualification for one of them.

[TarJak]

After your first patrol you should begin your next patrol with enough time to get into your patrol position before England declares war on Germany.

[gord96]

There is 4 months of war in 1939. After Sept 1/39 the war is on and that is probably the best time to learn the game as most merchants are unarmed, many travel alone and their is few escorts.

[Sailor Steve]

The game originally started on September 1, the first day of the war. Many of us pointed out that a bunch of u-boats were assigned to be on station that day, so departed two weeks earlier. The game can be modified to allow a starting date of the first of any month of the war (stock game only allows for Sept '39, or the first day of 1940, '41, '42 or '43) but it can't be made to start you on August 19, so GWX3 does the best it can with what it was given.

So, you can select Sept 1 as your starting date if you want, or August as some of us do.

[A Very Super Market]

Also, some first patrols would not give you tonnage, so the shakedown will eiliminate that possibility.

[casey.phobic]

Thanks mates,

I'll have to start a new career to undo my sole responsibility for the beginning of international war. :)

[Chad]

Okay, here's a dumb question.

I've got the latest GWX and SH3 commander, however, when i start a career in Sh3 commander the earliest I can start is 9-1939

[bigboywooly]

Okay, here's a dumb question.

I've got the latest GWX and SH3 commander, however, when i start a career in Sh3 commander the earliest I can start is 9-1939

Do you have the GWX 3 cfgs for SH3commander ??
Doesnt sound like you do

[JScones]

Okay, here's a dumb question.

I've got the latest GWX and SH3 commander, however, when i start a career in Sh3 commander the earliest I can start is 9-1939
Do you have the GWX 3 cfgs for SH3commander ??
Doesnt sound like you do More like he doesn't have GWX installed correctly - as you know BBW, the flotilla start dates are defined in Flotilla.cfg, not in *any* files used by SH3Cmdr. ;)

@Sailor Steve, do you ever get a sense of continued de ja vu when you post? :rotfl:

[mmm...Dönitz]

I'll be starting a career soon, and I plan to use the first shakedown cruise to sort out my crew management and do some practise torpedo runs on neutral ships - just to get some experience of doing the Naval Academy stuff well away from home waters.

I plan to be in it for the long term :) Long enough to turn into a drunkard who yells "ALARM" whenever the phone rings :)

[Sailor Steve]

@Sailor Steve, do you ever get a sense of continued de ja vu when you post? :rotfl:
:yep:

Of course there are only so many questions that can be asked, and always new people to ask them, so it's always cool.

[casey.phobic]

Yeah, especially if you've installed GWX 3.0 AND you're new. I can understand, though. I've flown IL-2 for years and years and by now the sim is about 6 years old. Over that time so much has been learned by the people who began on day one, it would really be impossible for any newcomer to read the amount of material necessary to be completely knowledgeable about the sim without spending time with an instructor! That definitely does happen, but most people just want to have some fun and studying and studying for a video game just doesn't seem right to most people.


Personally, I probably spend more time reading related material than I do in-game. For now it has just been general u-boat information. I haven't really read much on the subject since my elementary school days. (I definitely was a nerd). The last subsim I really played was Wolfpack back in 1990! Amazingly, I still remembered enough of the concepts from that game to not be lost in this new sim.

TL;DR:

This game has progressed so much since release, its a real daunting task to get up to speed. (but that's where a lot of the fun is)

[Jimbuna]

When starting at the beginning it should be August 1st.

On 4th you'll get a radio message ordering you to return to base.

Upon your return request a transfer to, say the 2nd and you'll have a few days to cruise to your designated patrol grid prior to the commencement of hostilities just like they did historically.

[Threesixtyci]

I think that extra month also helps the unknowing to bypass the glitch that SHIII has. The one where, if you change the sub's configuration the game quits tracking your kills.

It's noted to be a SH3 native glitch in the GWX manual... To bypass, you ether scrap the first patrol, or you don't bother with the modification screen until after you come back from the first patrol. Being that you can't kill anything during that month and you're likely not going to change the beginning date the first time with GWX, you bypass the glitch on both fronts.

BTW: My first sub sim was Mircoprose's Silent Service.... on a Tandy 1000, back in '89 or something.