Please give suggestions for Realism

[Otto Heinzmeir]

I was wondering if there are stats available for the war that list the average tonnage sunk per mission for each type of sub. I'm interested to know the avg for a typeII and TypeVIIB especially.

Also would like suggestions on how to adapt my play style to get closest to actual tonnage averages in real life. I have some guidelines that I already use that I will list below.

As suggested by Sailor Steve I believe, I set my minimum reload time for the deck gun to 10 seconds using SH3 Commander. Someone else suggested to only use deck guns on ships that are 1.5 tons or less.

What I do now is I only use my deck gun to finish a ship that has been torpedoed. For a ship of 4 tons or more, I don't use my deck gun until it has two fish in it. For a ship less than 3 tons I will use my deck gun after it has 1 fish in it.

I only allow 10 rounds of HE to be fired at any given ship. Then my deck gun mysteriously jams. I only allow 2 ships to be finished off with guns per mission.

With patrols. I patrol my grid for 24 hours. Then I allow myself to patrol a grid up to 2 grids away from my patrol grid for 24 hours. Then I start back to base and take the shortest route, only engaging targets I meet along the way and not searching prime areas.

I engage merchants in the order that I discover them. No letting a small merchant go to save torps for a T3 tanker. If I do miss a ship of 3 tons or less, (rare occurance but it happens sometimes if I play when too tired) I do not take another shot at it. Over 3 tons though is grounds for lining up a second attack.

I don't target escorts in a convoy first s0 I can attack the merchants at leisure. Only will attack a DD if it has discovered me and is DC'ing me. Then I will try to slip away, but if I can't then I may attack it. How long I try to slip away depends on what mood I am in and if I need to save quick I am more apt to finish the DD in order to save.

No harbour raids. There was only one during the War. I play with crew transfers and malfunctions using SH3 commander.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

I found this graph that compares tonnage sunk to u-boats lost. Its kinda hard to get a feel for tonnage per mission this way. I'm going to try to see if I can break this down into something easier to understand.

http://www.centroeu.com/uboote/effic.html

[Torplexed]

Clay Blair's two-volume tome Hitler's U-Boat War has appendices in the back that comprehensively list how many tons each boat sank on each patrol.

The average tonnage sunk by U-boats gets dragged down during the course of the war, because a lot of U-Boats came back empty-handed or never got to make an attack. The earlier in the war you commanded a U-Boat, the better your boat's averages probably were.

During World War II, some 1,171 U-boats were operational. Of these only some 325 actually carried out attacks on enemy shipping, sinking or damaging the enemy. Over 800 U-boats therefore, were used only on training duties, were never used operationally, or were used but failed to find or attack the enemy or were sunk before ever sinking a ship.

Total Allied shipping losses to U-Boats were in the order of 3,000 vessels representing over 14,000,000 tons. Over 4,000,000 tons of that shipping was sunk by the elite top 3% of the U-Boat commanders. Of all Allied shipping lost 70% was lost to U-Boat attacks. The vast majority of these losses, well over 2,600 vessels, were to torpedo attack alone or a torpedo attack followed by gunfire. Around 160 ships were sunk by deck gunfire alone.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Thanks for that great info Torplexed. Just what I was looking for. I just ordered a copy of that book by Blair online.

Obviously we all have to find our happy medium for game play. I'll read that book and see what types of tonnages the elite boats were getting and go from there. I know the tonnages per u-boat lost go way down as the war progressed. Just read that in the later stages of the war the average u-boat survived 3 missions. Ouch.

[Torplexed]

Blair's book is an excellent resource. Here's a scan from the appendices of the May 1943 patrols where things start to turn grim. It's an interesting comparison to 1940 where just about every boat is sinking tonnage.

http://neptoon.homestead.com/April-1943.jpg

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Here is a gook link, probably a lot of people know already but what the hey. I'm still newbieish.

http://www.uboat.net/men/aces/top.htm

These are the top 34 aces. On 259 war patrols these 34 men sank 873 ships for a total of 4,825,554 tons. That works out to 3.3 ships sunk per patrol and 18,631 tons per patrol. Note that the top ace's name was Otto :rock:

I broke it down further and found that in 8 missions in a type VIIB, Otto avaerage 35,594 tons. His 8 missions in a Type II averaged 3,453 tons. Huge difference. He survived the war and passed away in 1998. There are audio files on that site where you can listen to his accounts of the war.


edit-thanks for the scan Torplexed, was posting the same time you put it up. :D More info. Great stuff.

[RoaldLarsen]

Probably the best way to limit tonnage towards historical amounts is to limit the number of ships you find. Quite simply there are far too many ships in the game.

So, you can do things to reduce your detection effectiveness, or you can fiddle with the campaign files to remove ships. So far, I have been doing the former. I now almost never conduct a hydrophone search myself unless I have already learned about the contact through some other means (like my crew found it earlier, or I got a radio report). I run submerged at 32xTC when patrolling and leave it to my sonar operators to find targets. When surfaced, I patrol at 32xTC if in enemy airspace, or at a higher TC if there are not likely to be any enemy aricraft around. The higher TC reduces the number of contacts I make. (I am considering increasing my TC in enemy controlled space, because I think there may be too many aircraft as well.)

In the future I may edit the campaign files to reduce the percentage chance of random units spawning, and I will definitely get rid of those two-merchant unescorted mini-convoys which are just a giveaway of free tonnage.

[mookiemookie]

No harbour raids. There was only one during the War.
Not quite. You're right in saying it was rare, but Prien's raid wasn't the only harbor attack. Albrecht Achilles of U-161 attacked Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1942.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

No harbour raids. There was only one during the War.
Not quite. You're right in saying it was rare, but Prien's raid wasn't the only harbor attack. Albrecht Achilles of U-161 attacked Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1942.

I stand corrected. Also the St. Lawrence River in Canada was attacked several times because Canada devoted all resources to convoy escorts and only have maybe 5 units to Patrol the St. Lawrence entrance. These attacks were not planned and happened sometimes because The sub was experience difficulties in rough water and picked the river because the water was calmer.


@RoaldLarsen Regarding there possibly being too many planes. I think you may be right. I was checking reports of when subs were attacked from one of the sites I posted a link to earlier. The most attacks in a single mission I saw from planes was three. I didn't read them all but took a fair sampling. In game I have gotten 3 air attacks on a single day in 1939.

I had a look at the airstrike.cfg file and looks like this could easily be adjusted in there by changing the probability. The probability also goes up if you radio a report.

I play in the 16k environment. This helps give you a better chance to avoid the bombs from a plane because your WO sights the planes further away. This also gives me a greater chance to visually spot ships which I don't really want. I may go back to the 8k environment and decrease air strike probability to offset the fact that by the time my WO spots them they already are droping bombs.

There is a setting in Contacts.cfg for visual contacts but I think this is just for how the range is classified. Either short, medium or long. Not sure if it actually sets the limit on how far away my WO will spot them.

The Campaign.SRC file is beyond my grasp at this point. I think I could reduce the number of merchants by changing their Roster.cfg. There is a folder for each country that has every ship in it. I am thinking of moving back the availability dates of some of merchant ships for Britain. For example I could move the Granville Frieghter availibility to 1941 instead of 1939. Not sure i the game would just substitute another merchant ship or if this would actually lead to less ships being generated early on.

You gave me good ideas. I am going to back up all my game files and play around with this.

[Pepe le Moko]

Something you could do is simply ignore the ships reports sent to you by bdu unless they're convoys. I am not sure how realistic it is at the moment that you get a sighting message for ships in your area so often.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Something you could do is simply ignore the ships reports sent to you by bdu unless they're convoys. I am not sure how realistic it is at the moment that you get a sighting message for ships in your area so often.

I found the cfg file that affects this and changed the range of radio contacts from 250 to 100k and the important contacts(Convoys/task forces) from 750 to 250K

I also found the setting that effects range of visibility and after changing it my initial ship sightings on a clear day went from about 14500m to 8500m. Plus I reduced airstrike probability from 35 to 20. Left my hydro alone, because I like to use it myself and the reduced visibility and radio sightings should have a big effect.

Tested out a Sept 1939 mission from Kiel in a typeII. In a mission to grid AN47 (Not a great grid for ships) I found i neutral merchant and that was it. So I got skunked. Perfect, never got skunked before. I think the contacts may be as I like them now because things will pick up in early 1940 and once in a typeVIIB I will have access to better patrol grids.

I'll run at least 8 missions with it and see how it goes compared to real life tonnage during the same period in the same sub.

[Murr44]

Something else you can try to increase your level of realism is to only load external torpedoes when the sea state is 6m or less. The stock game (& GWX too I think) allows you to load torpedoes in practically any kind of weather.

[RoaldLarsen]

I also found the setting that effects range of visibility and after changing it my initial ship sightings on a clear day went from about 14500m to 8500m. Plus I reduced airstrike probability from 35 to 20.
Which files, keys and values, please?

[Oneshot/Onekill]

Personally i dont think there is an abnormal amount of ships in the game. You have to understand that most of the time that contact was made whether by hydrophone or visual, there were many factors that had to be accounted for before a U-boat commander could even think about making an attack or attempting an intercept. Here is just a small sample of what went into the equation.

(sea conditions)would affect a U-boats surface speed and thus their ability to overtake or intercept a target. Not accuratley moddeled into the game IMO.

(time of day) If during daylight hours had a much higher probability of being spotted on the surface.

(Fuel remaining)depending on how far away you are patrolling from your base had a dramatic influence and impact on how far away a Kaptain was willing to track distant contacts, especiallly if you were already mid patrol!

these are just a few, there are literally dozens of other factors that came into play.

You have to understand that in reality, during a typical patrol U-boat Kaptaind did recieve quite a bit of information about ship movements or convoy traffic its just that more than 50% of the time they were not in a favourable positon to prosicute these reports!

[Otto Heinzmeir]

I also found the setting that effects range of visibility and after changing it my initial ship sightings on a clear day went from about 14500m to 8500m. Plus I reduced airstrike probability from 35 to 20. Which files, keys and values, please?
For visual sightings by your watch officer. Open data/cfg/Sensors.cfg in notebook.

Change this first setting called Visual range factor. What it is currently depends on if you are playing a mod or a stock game. Mine was at 0.5 and I changed it to 1.0
It appears that the higher the number the shorter the distance that your WO can see.

[SensorParameters]
; Sensors Detection Parameters

;Visual.
Visual range factor=1.0

Since this changed my WO sightings on a clear day from 14500 to 8500 I also edited what the WO considers as long range in the Contacts.cfg file.
Open data/cfg/contacts (see below) My medium was 8000 while my long range was 16000. I changed those to 4000 and 8000 respectively.

[ContactRange]
;under the (right) value a contact is considered as:
Short=1000 ;[m]
Medium=4000 ;[m]
Long=8000 ;[m]


For airstrike Probability open data/cfg/airstrike.cfg
There will be a line that reads something like:
Default Air Strike Probability=20

In my game this was 35 so I changed it to 20.

Be sure to copy the original files elsewhere just in case. I always uncheck the option in vista that reads "Always use the selected program to open this file" when I open in notepad.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Something else you can try to increase your level of realism is to only load external torpedoes when the sea state is 6m or less. The stock game (& GWX too I think) allows you to load torpedoes in practically any kind of weather.
Good point. I have also wondered what would happen if the sub had to emergency dive while removing the external torpedoes. I have had to do this and of course when I resurface the process of loading the externals just starts where it got left off. Its entirely possible that they could be lost altogether.

@ Oneshot/Onekill (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=244003), those are all good points. Daytime attacks were avoided if possible. I am considering not using them after 1940. In my typeIIA fuel does often become the reason I have to return to base and with malfunctions on there have been times in bad weather where my top speed was only 8 knots.

There are also cases where a sub returns to base because of a crew member illness or injury. I have wondered how you maintain silent running if half your crew has colds or the flu.

[RoaldLarsen]

I also found the setting that effects range of visibility and after changing it my initial ship sightings on a clear day went from about 14500m to 8500m. Plus I reduced airstrike probability from 35 to 20. Which files, keys and values, please?
For visual sightings by your watch officer. Open data/cfg/Sensors.cfg in notebook.

Change this first setting called Visual range factor. What it is currently depends on if you are playing a mod or a stock game. Mine was at 0.5 and I changed it to 1.0
It appears that the higher the number the shorter the distance that your WO can see.

[SensorParameters]
; Sensors Detection Parameters

;Visual.
Visual range factor=1.0
...

Thanks, Otto!

Does anybody know what factor constrains the longest range at which a target can be seen?

I don't use a 16k environment mod because of my ancient graphics card. If I reduce the Visual range factor to 0.4, will the maximum range at which I can detect aircraft be increased, or will I just have a higher chance of seeing an aircraft which is far away but still within some maximum range that is established elsewhere?

[Oneshot/Onekill]

@Otto Heinzmeir. You can also try this sometime, its what i do. If i recieve a contact on my map and its more than 100km away as a rule of thumb i do not attempt to track it down, UNLESS its on a general course heading to allow me an easy intercept. ie using very little fuel.

[RoaldLarsen]

Something else you can try to increase your level of realism is to only load external torpedoes when the sea state is 6m or less. The stock game (& GWX too I think) allows you to load torpedoes in practically any kind of weather.
Good point. I have also wondered what would happen if the sub had to emergency dive while removing the external torpedoes. I have had to do this and of course when I resurface the process of loading the externals just starts where it got left off. Its entirely possible that they could be lost altogether.

What I do is to arbitrarily divide the loading time into phases and then give myself options within each phase.

Phase 1. First 10% of loading rime. Crew setting up, torpedo still in storage. Options: A) Abandon gear. Stay on surface 30 seconds before crash dive, lose ability to load any externally stored torpedos for rest of mission. B) Stow gear. Stay on surface 3 minutes before crash dive. Wait three minutes on surface before next attempting to load this torpedo. C) Stay on surface until next phase.

Phase 2. 10% to 50% of loading time. Crew removing torpedo from stowage and positioning over hatch. Options: A) Ditch torpedo and gear. Stay on surface 2 minutes before crash dive; lose ability to load any externally stored torpedos for rest of mission. B) Ditch torpedo, stow gear. Stay on surface 5 minutes before crash dive; do not attempt to load this torpedo again this mission. C) Stay on surface until next phase.

Phase 3. 50% to 100% of loading time. Crew passing torpedo through loading hatch. No options. Stay on surface until torpedo loaded.

[RoaldLarsen]

Personally i dont think there is an abnormal amount of ships in the game. You have to understand that most of the time that contact was made whether by hydrophone or visual, there were many factors that had to be accounted for before a U-boat commander could even think about making an attack or attempting an intercept. Here is just a small sample of what went into the equation.

(sea conditions)would affect a U-boats surface speed and thus their ability to overtake or intercept a target. Not accuratley moddeled into the game IMO.

(time of day) If during daylight hours had a much higher probability of being spotted on the surface.

(Fuel remaining)depending on how far away you are patrolling from your base had a dramatic influence and impact on how far away a Kaptain was willing to track distant contacts, especiallly if you were already mid patrol!

these are just a few, there are literally dozens of other factors that came into play.

You have to understand that in reality, during a typical patrol U-boat Kaptaind did recieve quite a bit of information about ship movements or convoy traffic its just that more than 50% of the time they were not in a favourable positon to prosicute these reports!
I'll have to respectfully disagree, though admit I do so on the basis of limited research.

All the factors you list are modelled by the game, though perhaps they don't have quite as much effect as they did in real life. In the game, sea state affects a U-boat's speed, light conditions affect chance of being visually spotted and fuel affects range.

I do not disagree very much about the number of radio contact reports. The number might be a bit high, but German naval SigInt (XB-Dienst?) and reconnaisance from other boats and aircraft resulted in a lot of radio contact reports. In fact I don't like mods that remove the colour of contact reports from the map, because in reality, those contacts would often be reported as enemy or friendly.

You seem to be arguing that in real life, u-boats saw as many ships as we do in-game, but they sank a much lower proportion. I take the position that they made fewer sightings than we do. Perhaps they also sank fewer per sighting. I have no opinion on that.

As for the number of sightings, I have read a couple KTB's and a few books. The number of sightings per day on my in-game patrols is higher than what I have read was actual experience. Also, while the number of convoys spawned in the campaign may be similar to historical, in real life the allies were using Ultra to route convoys around u-boats, so fewer were seen than is the case in-game.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Does anybody know what factor constrains the longest range at which a target can be seen?

I don't use a 16k environment mod because of my ancient graphics card. If I reduce the Visual range factor to 0.4, will the maximum range at which I can detect aircraft be increased, or will I just have a higher chance of seeing an aircraft which is far away but still within some maximum range that is established elsewhere?

I would think this would be the Visual range factor setting. I havn't tried modding this in a 8k environment. I suspect that in an 8K environment the max sighting range is 8k. I haven't playing in an 8k setting in awhile. IIRC correctly the furthest away I would see a ship is about 7600m. Lowering the Visual range factor may give you 300 or 400 extra meters. Probably would not have any effect plane sightings. I am curious about the visual enemy speed setting. Since planes are fast changing this may be of some help. Though not sure which way to go with it. I suspect in the stats I list if I increased it from 0.2 to 0.3 I might have a better chance to sight planes sooner.

You might try testing it out in a game that you aren't playing as a career.


;Visual.
Visual range factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Visual fog factor=1.1 ;[>=0]
Visual light factor=5.0 ;[>=0]
Visual waves factor=0.8 ;[>=0]
Visual speed factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual aspect=0.9 ;[>=0]
Visual enemy speed=0.2 ;[>=0]
Visual noise factor=0 ;[>=0]
Visual sensor height factor=0.4 ;[>=0]
Visual already tracking modifier=600 ;[detection probability modifier], most accurate, once a contact is detected it will lose it very hard
Visual decay time=200 ;[>0] already tracking bonus decay, in seconds
Visual uses crew efficiency=true ;[true or false]

I like the idea about having to abandon your external torpedoes.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

@Otto Heinzmeir. You can also try this sometime, its what i do. If i recieve a contact on my map and its more than 100km away as a rule of thumb i do not attempt to track it down, UNLESS its on a general course heading to allow me an easy intercept. ie using very little fuel.

I just had something similar to this in my current mission. Was tracking a merchant on Hydro but he was going away and the contact was faint. Probably 12k to 15k. My top speed in rough seas at the time was 10kts so I would have used tons of fuel and maybe not even have caught him if he as doing 10kts. Then I get a radio contact from only 17k away, moving almost directly towards me. So I broke off my pursuit of the one going away and took the one coming towards me. Which ended up being 12 tons.

[Murr44]

Sure the number of ship contacts & sightings is greater than would happen in RL but if we only saw as many ships as RL U-boat commanders did I think that a lot of us (myself included) would quickly lose interest in the game.

[Sailor Steve]

But others of us would like it even more. I think it needs to be one of the realism options.

[RoaldLarsen]

Does anybody know what factor constrains the longest range at which a target can be seen?

I don't use a 16k environment mod because of my ancient graphics card. If I reduce the Visual range factor to 0.4, will the maximum range at which I can detect aircraft be increased, or will I just have a higher chance of seeing an aircraft which is far away but still within some maximum range that is established elsewhere?

I would think this would be the Visual range factor setting. I havn't tried modding this in a 8k environment. I suspect that in an 8K environment the max sighting range is 8k. I haven't playing in an 8k setting in awhile. IIRC correctly the furthest away I would see a ship is about 7600m. Lowering the Visual range factor may give you 300 or 400 extra meters. Probably would not have any effect plane sightings. I am curious about the visual enemy speed setting. Since planes are fast changing this may be of some help. Though not sure which way to go with it. I suspect in the stats I list if I increased it from 0.2 to 0.3 I might have a better chance to sight planes sooner.

You might try testing it out in a game that you aren't playing as a career.
... I agree with the bolded parts. Each of the factors affects the chance of detecting the aircraft each cycle. The range factor doesn't change the maximum visual range, it just determines how much effect the range to target has on your chance of seeing the aircraft. That's why I think the absolute limit must be defined somewhere else, such as the environment limit.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to mod that, and I'm not going to move to an existing 16K mod w/o first buying a new graphics card, which I won't do without buying a whole new computer to go with it. That's at least a year away. In turn that really limits my ability to play type IX boats after 1942. I have started 9 patrols in type IX boats in 1943. Six resulted in the sub being lost. In the other three the sub made it back to port with severe damage. All due to aircraft. I think that's just about double the appropriate power of the air forces.

I will definitely experiment with tweaking the enemy speed factor, as you suggest, and possibly reducing the chance of air attack as suggested in an earlier post.

If I understand how the air part of the game works, there aren't actually any aircraft out there flying patrol routes, the way surface ships do. Rather, the game caculates the chance of you being attacked by aircraft and when that chance is hit, spawns aircraft some random distance and bearing from your sub already heading to attack you. The problem with this is that it means just about all enemy aircraft sightings end with an attack by the aircraft. That is not how it hapened in real life. U-boats would often detect the aircraft and dive without the aircraft ever seeing the u-boat. I wish there was a better way to simulate this in the game. The amount of aircraft sightings is about right, but the number of aircraft attacks is too high.

Perhaps one approach would be to reduce the maximum speed of aircraft, so it took them more time to get to the sub. A downside would be that this would make it easier to shoot them down.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Yea the setting to actually expand the 8k limit may be in perhaps a dat file, or some other type that can't be opened by a text editor. There is a program called 3sd that can open and edit the other files. In the 16x environment mod I use, the files seam to all pertain to scenery. I don't reallly know which file it could be or if you can have a 16k viewing radious without a 16k environment which is what you need at present. We need to get the modding experts in here. :DL

The idea about reducing the planes speed would work I bet. Just don't shoot at them I guess. I notice they also have size parameters. You could half there speed and half there size to make to make them smaller targets to compensate. I'm pretty sure that they would still appear the same in game and just be harder to hit. Maybe halving there size would then make then 2 hard to hit.

This sounds like a lot of work. I'm going to take a nap:up:

[Oneshot/Onekill]

Personally i dont think there is an abnormal amount of ships in the game. You have to understand that most of the time that contact was made whether by hydrophone or visual, there were many factors that had to be accounted for before a U-boat commander could even think about making an attack or attempting an intercept. Here is just a small sample of what went into the equation.

(sea conditions)would affect a U-boats surface speed and thus their ability to overtake or intercept a target. Not accuratley moddeled into the game IMO.

(time of day) If during daylight hours had a much higher probability of being spotted on the surface.

(Fuel remaining)depending on how far away you are patrolling from your base had a dramatic influence and impact on how far away a Kaptain was willing to track distant contacts, especiallly if you were already mid patrol!

these are just a few, there are literally dozens of other factors that came into play.

You have to understand that in reality, during a typical patrol U-boat Kaptaind did recieve quite a bit of information about ship movements or convoy traffic its just that more than 50% of the time they were not in a favourable positon to prosicute these reports!
I'll have to respectfully disagree, though admit I do so on the basis of limited research.

All the factors you list are modelled by the game, though perhaps they don't have quite as much effect as they did in real life. In the game, sea state affects a U-boat's speed, light conditions affect chance of being visually spotted and fuel affects range.

I do not disagree very much about the number of radio contact reports. The number might be a bit high, but German naval SigInt (XB-Dienst?) and reconnaisance from other boats and aircraft resulted in a lot of radio contact reports. In fact I don't like mods that remove the colour of contact reports from the map, because in reality, those contacts would often be reported as enemy or friendly.

You seem to be arguing that in real life, u-boats saw as many ships as we do in-game, but they sank a much lower proportion. I take the position that they made fewer sightings than we do. Perhaps they also sank fewer per sighting. I have no opinion on that.

As for the number of sightings, I have read a couple KTB's and a few books. The number of sightings per day on my in-game patrols is higher than what I have read was actual experience. Also, while the number of convoys spawned in the campaign may be similar to historical, in real life the allies were using Ultra to route convoys around u-boats, so fewer were seen than is the case in-game.

You missundertood me. I was only referring to U-boat surface speed in high waves as not being realistically modeled in the game, although GWX did a very good job trying to. For example i can go to flank speed in 10+ meter per second winds and still maintain 12-14 knots. In reality waves that high at that speed would beat you to death and your watch wouldnt stand a chance.

Again i think i didnt clarify or maybe i miss spoke, but when talking about # of contacts spotted during a patrol, i was more reffering to other U-boats, aircraft, surface vessels, and radio intercepts. Not personally spotting them yourself!

[RoaldLarsen]

Yea the setting to actually expand the 8k limit may be in perhaps a dat file, or some other type that can't be opened by a text editor. There is a program called 3sd that can open and edit the other files. In the 16x environment mod I use, the files seam to all pertain to scenery. I don't reallly know which file it could be or if you can have a 16k viewing radious without a 16k environment which is what you need at present. We need to get the modding experts in here. :DL
Let's hope one of them notices this thread and offers some info.

The idea about reducing the planes speed would work I bet. Just don't shoot at them I guess. I notice they also have size parameters. You could half there speed and half there size to make to make them smaller targets to compensate. I'm pretty sure that they would still appear the same in game and just be harder to hit. Maybe halving there size would then make then 2 hard to hit.

This sounds like a lot of work. I'm going to take a nap:up:
Is the chance to hit a target proportional to its radius or to its area? Is the chance to hit a target inversely proportional to speed or inversely proportional to the square of the speed? Intuitively, I'd say that target area not radius, matters, and that doubling the perpendicular speed of something reduces the chance to hit it by more than half, but doubling the speed of something coming straight at you doesn't affect your accuracy very much at all. However, that is for a single shot - for continuous firing the amount of time you can shoot at the target directly affects your chance of hitting, so multiply the effects by 1 over speed. So, what I might try is to reduce the speed of aircraft by about 30% (that's what I guess I need to give my subs a better chance of diving before an attack), assume this increases my chance to hit them by about 117% (about halfway between (1/0.7)cubed and (1/0.7) and then decrease the dimensions by about 1/3 to compensate (square root of 1/2.17 is about 0.67). The only question is: does changing the MaxSpeed, Length and Width parameters in data\Air\<aircraftname>.cfg actually change in-game performance, or does it just change data displayed in the museum? I suppose an easy way to find out would be to build a test that changes these values to extremes and increases the chance of an airstrike. If an aircraft has an effective length and width of 200 metres and min and max speeds of 30knots, I think we would notice.

You're right, it does sound like a lot of work. Before I do that I'm going to try the following:

Keep a log of all occaisions I surface a boat, to see how long I run before an aircraft shows up, and whether I am attacked. Then, try tweaking the Sensors.cfg file to decrease Visual range to 0.4 from 0.5, increasing the Enemy speed factor to 0.3 from 0.2 (but setting use of crew efficiency to true), and then, in AirStrke.cfg, reducing Default Air Strike Probability from 10 to 7 for 1943 and later, and log the results and compare.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Keep a log of all occaisions I surface a boat, to see how long I run before an aircraft shows up, and whether I am attacked. Then, try tweaking the Sensors.cfg file to decrease Visual range to 0.4 from 0.5, increasing the Enemy speed factor to 0.3 from 0.2 (but setting use of crew efficiency to true), and then, in AirStrke.cfg, reducing Default Air Strike Probability from 10 to 7 for 1943 and later, and log the results and compare.

The thing to watch out for is not to change too many parameters all at once or you won't know which one is having the greatest impact. But sounds like you have done these types of testing before. I might suggest making a save in an area of high concentration of allied planes. Setting the airstrike probabilty high. Is 100 max? Then change just one of the values, but go overboard. For example change enemy speed factor from .3 to 1.0 just to see if anything changes dramatically or maybe its not noticable. If it is dramatic but in the wrong direction then try 0.1

The same with the other factors. You can load the same save game in allied airspace and just change one parameter at a time. When you want to test stuff like this is usually when no planes ever appear :O: Good luck. I'd be interested in how it turns out.

[RoaldLarsen]

Keep a log of all occaisions I surface a boat, to see how long I run before an aircraft shows up, and whether I am attacked. Then, try tweaking the Sensors.cfg file to decrease Visual range to 0.4 from 0.5, increasing the Enemy speed factor to 0.3 from 0.2 (but setting use of crew efficiency to true), and then, in AirStrke.cfg, reducing Default Air Strike Probability from 10 to 7 for 1943 and later, and log the results and compare.

The thing to watch out for is not to change too many parameters all at once or you won't know which one is having the greatest impact. But sounds like you have done these types of testing before. I might suggest making a save in an area of high concentration of allied planes. Setting the airstrike probabilty high. Is 100 max? Then change just one of the values, but go overboard. For example change enemy speed factor from .3 to 1.0 just to see if anything changes dramatically or maybe its not noticable. If it is dramatic but in the wrong direction then try 0.1

The same with the other factors. You can load the same save game in allied airspace and just change one parameter at a time. When you want to test stuff like this is usually when no planes ever appear :O: Good luck. I'd be interested in how it turns out.All good advice, thanks.

If I had no idea what the various paramaters did, that's exactly what I'd do. In this case, I have a pretty good working hypothesis of what's going on, and while I am changing four parameters simultaneously, only two will actually interact with each other. My test crews will have 100% efficiency, so that change will have no effect during the tests. The change to Airstrike will affect whether aircraft show up at all, while the other two changes will affect how well my crew spots them when they do show up. Since I am not too concerned about the relative impacts of the two sighting parameters, I'll only test them separately if something unusual is the result.

Also, the sensor changes will affect ability to see ships, too, and I don't want to affect that too much, so I will have to test against surface vessels as well.

[gigel_escu]

Of course first thing you can reduce the number of ships or randomize their routes on chart, maybe it is hard (programming I mean). I know a little bit of programming and I think it is very hard or the SH make 10 GB n HDD and took 3 days only for load the mission. It is annoying when I must patrol EG87 an example, and the most convoys and naval traffic are in DS15 or DG47. Of course you can divert you route, you don't take the striaght course on the patrol area (in real most uboats go in straight course, because of sortage of fuel), but its is quite impossible to find a convoy outside of convoys routes. Normally tou can find a struggler or something.

In the other hand, I had read somewhere here that the "damage meter" that percent who indicates the damage level of the sub was deleted because some wise guys do that or do bla bla. That is a stupid idea, I am very angry. In middle of 1942 with VIIC in mission on Venezuelean coast (why so far away) I was damage by a Hudson an Avenger almost dead in the water, not very hard flooding or something. I reload the saved game, I met few Hudson who make damage, flooding (about 5 minutes, the boat went down uncontrollable until 120 m), attack periscope destroyed and few damage not critical. I arrived in Lorient and surprise 76% damage, in conclusion not so hard. I don't know the real damage status, I don't understand what "hull damage" means, my CE officer indications not readeble (I played with English subtitles and German speak). Not important, but I must know about my sub are heavy, medium or light damage. I image Erich Topp asked his chief engineer about damage and chief engineer answered: "Her Topp it is a secret I will tell you in the base". Get serious.

Another stupid thing, in WW2 you hadn't be officer to maned a AA gun on the submarnes. At my type VIIC with type 2 connig tower with 2 AA's I must to put 2 officer at the gun, I put 1 just one guns shots, I put 2 sailor man no gaun shots. That is f.... stupid, who think that guys he or she can try that:damn:.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

In the other hand, I had read somewhere here that the "damage meter" that percent who indicates the damage level of the sub was deleted because some wise guys do that or do bla bla. That is a stupid idea, I am very angry. In middle of 1942 with VIIC in mission on Venezuelean coast (why so far away) I was damage by a Hudson an Avenger almost dead in the water, not very hard flooding or something. I reload the saved game, I met few Hudson who make damage, flooding (about 5 minutes, the boat went down uncontrollable until 120 m), attack periscope destroyed and few damage not critical. I arrived in Lorient and surprise 76% damage, in conclusion not so hard. I don't know the real damage status, I don't understand what "hull damage" means, my CE officer indications not readeble (I played with English subtitles and German speak). Not important, but I must know about my sub are heavy, medium or light damage. I image Erich Topp asked his chief engineer about damage and chief engineer answered: "Her Topp it is a secret I will tell you in the base". Get serious.



If I understand you correctly your playing one of the mods that doesn't show hull integrity? The SH3 Commander program has an option that allows you to show hull intergrity. You just check the option and your %damage will appear again. I like to have the % show because there is no way in game to inspect your damage.

[gigel_escu]

And that option is??

[Sailor Steve]

'Show/Hide Hull Integrity'.

[mookiemookie]

Another suggestion for realism: when reloading external reloads, only do it in fair weather and relatively calm seas at slow speed. No diving while reloading either. In other words, if you see a plane, you're screwed.

[gigel_escu]

'Show/Hide Hull Integrity'.

Gotcha Einstein, but I don't have the mod:woot:

[Sailor Steve]

:rotfl:

Okay, you win. You do need SH3 Commander, for that but also for a dozen other reasons, all of them good. The fact that when you sink a merchant it gives it a name is among them.:rock: Also the ability to adjust many of the parameters in the game with a single mouse click. The ability to edit and write your own patrol reports. Realistic crew transfers. Realistic career length. Malfunctions and sabotage aboard your boat if you want it. Randomized gramophone songs. Randomized loading screens.:rock: Randomized anything you want to add in.

It's the ultimate tool for SH3. Period.

[gigel_escu]

Yep. You sayed brother, good point:yeah: Thanks

[Schöneboom]

To bump up realism, I ignore single ship reports, and convoy reports, too, when the weather's rotten (it never improves by the time I make contact anyway). In addition, my submerged shots are with manual targeting, the "notepad" version. I usually shoot anywhere from 1000 - 3000 meters. As the miss rate increases, the eels get used up sooner.

Even so, on my latest patrol in 1942, I bagged 8 ships, which is rather a lot for a month's work. I don't expect that kind of tonnage for much longer. Now I gotta admit, if I really want to make it harder, the first thing to do is never return to previous saves when the current attack goes awry. This is distinct from the DID approach, in that I'm not referring to impending doom or actual game death, but just when things don't go according to plan. "No going back" is really key, I think; that means, once the attack starts, don't go back, and don't save again till after you've disengaged (the enemy is out of range). If you're alive, and the boat still floats, keep going forward, never back.

[Sailor Steve]

I think GWX reduces the 'Range To Opportunity Targets' in the Main.cfg by a bit, but it can be reduced further. A long time ago there was a mod that reduced the number of single ships by 80% and then reduced the number of reports on them by 80%, making it very unlikely to encounter single ships in the game. Unfortunately the author had to change each individual ship, and with several dozen new ships in the game since then it doesn't work anymore.

Me, I never chase down any single-ship report, on the assumption that they came from an unreal source anyway.

[unterseemann]

For more realism i think of two solutions:
-You should fire 2 or 3 torpedoes for valuable ships like tankers or big freighters over 6.000 tons to ensure success.
-Someone should lower the tonnage of each ship because it's way too high in SH3 vs RL ( just look at uboat.net : ships sunk over 6.000 tons are not so often and sometimes they are only damaged)

[Sailor Steve]

Unfortunately just lowering the tonnage of each ship in the game would also be unrealistic. The Liberty ships really were registered at 7176-7255 tons. The T2 tanker really was 10,500 tons. The problem is having so many appear in the game. Fixing it is a real job.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

There are maybe too many high ton ships, though looking at the top ace's stats from his type VIIb missions he had a lot of high ton ships. His last patrol was 70k+ tons and he had several 10k ton or higher ships in that one. In his last 5 missions almost all the ships were 5,000 tons or higher. Of course he isn't the norm, because he was the top ace and these missions were in 1940, when tonnage totals were at there highest. I may have to see if I can figure out the average ship tonnage would have been.

The tonnage per ship for typeIIA's is quite small. There range prevented them from getting patrols along the Western side of the UK or the Atlantic. Lots more coastel vessels and trawlers.

I think the biggest problems with excess tonnage in game occur early on in 1939, when its just too easy to rack up 40 tons or higher on helpless merchants in a typeVIIB. This is where its also noticeable that you come across a lot of 6K to 10K single ships. I find that I can't let them go though, doesn't seem realistic either to say will its too big I won't sink her. I get around this whole situation by starting with a typeIIA for 6 to 8 missions.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

That uboat.net site is amazing. They have all the u-boat attacks analyzed. So just doing simple math with the numbers there gives an average tonnage of 4,875.9 per ship sunk. A higher number than I realized.

[timmyab]

I do a few things to handicap myself.Firstly I have to spend two weeks in my assigned patrol grid, after that I can patrol all of the adjacent squares, so 9 in total.The problem with radio contacts is that the ships are far too easily intercepted.In real life ships would change course more often and the radio reports wouldn't be so accurate in the first place.To simulate this I ignore 3/4 of interceptable contacts.I do this radomly by tossing a coin twice.Visual contacts I ignore 1/2 the time including convoys.If I get a hydrophone contact I ignore it untill it becomes visable although I do watch the horizon for it, just not altering speed or course.I have to attack on the surface at night and I can't attack if the wind speed is 15m/s.Opportunities to sink capital ships are far too common so again I ignore 3/4 of them.I don't allow myself to target destroyers at all.I do use the deck gun but only in a flat calm and it's not nearly such a powerful weopen in gwx anyway.
The combination of all this slows me down quite a bit but makes the ships I do sink that much more memorable.