New aboard and some problems

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Hello,
My experience in WW2 subsims is Aces of the deep. Now I am playing SH3 (amazing game) and have this problem: I start a career and follow the mission to achieve the objectives, but when I make a contact in the navigation room and try to follow it, always loose the contact. Whenever I find a contact, I loose it and can't even see it in the periscope! Impossible to fire a torpedo, of course.

Thank you

[Fido]

Wilhelm :

Sorry I can't be of much help, just wondered if you are running a stock game or if you are using one of the so call super mods like GWX3. I have been using GWX3's 16 km atmosphere as opposed to the games 8 or so km atmosphere and find target recognition and observation much easier, but still realistic. I think there are also Binocular Mods out there that increase the magnification. You might want to give one of them a try.

Hope that helps a little.

Fido :salute:
U-52

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Thank you for the answer; I am playing the game just as come when you purchase it, the basic one.

:salute:

[KL-alfman]

SH3 + GWX + SH3Commander will serve you a lot better than just the stock-game.

regarding your Q:
your contact-reports are not within visual-range, so you have to plot an intercept-course and depending on speed and accurate estimations you will find the ships sooner or later .....

[RConch]

Do not always trust the soundman.
When you get a contact from him and you are following the bearing and suddenly he "no sound contact" you, hit the "h" key and follow the sound yourself in the sound room, tap the large control in the sound room and it will increase the volume, the contact will show up on the map.
As the other fellows said, when you are comfortable with the game, download GWX 3.0-your experience with the game will greatly intensify.
Good hunting!:salute:

[Paul Riley]

Wilhelm,

Welcome to the forum.
When you lose contact is it in good visibility or poor,such as in heavy fog and rain?.A good way to re-aqquire the target would be to quickly make a sound check,by that I mean dive to about 30m or so facing roughly the direction the ship was lost and cut the engines.Have the sonar man make a sweep for a minute or two,and if nothing have a check yourself.If you hear him pulling away,quickly set engines on flank and give 2 blasts on the air for an emergency surface.Then head in the relative direction the sound bearing was took for no more than 15mins,and do another sound check,then repeat.If this is not a bug and he is not faster than you then you should pick him up in no more than 1 hour,usually in about 30 mins,depending on visibility of course :ping:

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Thank you all of you for the answers.

I wonder if any of you could describe briefly the steps to follow when a contact appears on the map display.

:salute:

[frau kaleun]

Wilhelm,

IIRC when you are playing stock, contacts will sometimes show up on the navigation map before you are actually within visual range of them. Which means that trying to locate them with the periscope or with binocs on the surface will not help. (Even if they are within the max visual range, and visibility is limited due to time of day/weather/etc. you might still have the same problem.)

So what you have to do is "follow" the contact on the map to get an idea of its general course, and then plot a course for your sub that will bring you close enough to it to see it and/or attack it if you decide to do so.

If you can figure out the general course of the contact you can get closer to it faster by running on the surface, however until it's within your visual range you can keep track of it with the the hydrophone (which will pick up contacts via sound that you may not be close enough to see).

You can do this by either staying submerged and paying attention to the bearing of the contact continually, IF you are pretty sure it's moving slow enough that you can intercept it or catch up to it running at your max submerged speed. Or you can run on the surface and then submerge every so often to 30 m or so and do a hydrophone check to see where it is and then surface again, adjust your course if need be, and take off towards the contact again.

I hope that helps, I'm sure other more experienced players will have more and better suggestions! :DL

[Sailor Steve]

Nothing from me except WELCOME ABOARD!:sunny:

[Jimbuna]

Welcome aboard Wilhelm http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/welcome.gif

Looks like your getting plenty of 'sound' advice but don't forget there is a blind spot on early hydrophones of almost 10% either side of the centre axis of your boat so you can expect to wait a few minutes for the contact to move beyond these parameters.

[frau kaleun]

Good point, I sometimes forget about that and sit there scratching my head wondering "now where did they go?" until it pops up again on the sonar.

Sometimes if I'm really not sure I'm on the right track at all, and I'm still pretty far out from the expected intercept point, I'll adjust course a bit just to try and get the ship out of the blind spot momentarily and then readjust when I get the updated bearing.

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Thank you; it seems that after the first contact was made, I must go to periscope depht and wait to the second contact while follow the hypothetic curse of the ship.

:salute:

[frau kaleun]

Yes, if you have a contact that is still too far away to follow visually, you will need to submerge and follow it with the hydrophone.

I would suggest going deeper than periscope depth. Probably 25-30 m at least for your hydrophone checks. And especially if you're going to be running submerged for any length of time with no contacts at all in visual range. I don't know how closely it holds true in the stock game but in general, deeper = safer. Provided you don't go below crush depth, lol.

There's just no reason to stay at periscope depth if there's nothing close enough for you to see with the 'scope anyway. And if you're submerged, you will probably pick up any contacts with the hydrophone long before they get close enough to be seen. You'll have plenty of time to get back to periscope depth (or the surface) when you start getting near enough to make visual contact with the 'scope or from the bridge.

But always do a periscope check before surfacing completely! Even if your soundman reports no contacts. Just a good habit to get into IMO. :DL

[Paul Riley]

Good point about the periscope check before surfacing,and do a sound check before raising the periscope...just to be safe.Its all good practice for later on.Even get into the habit of checking the skies with the OS before surfacing,again another good drill to get into the habit of.
Not sure if this is modelled in GWX3 but also be wary of using compressed air when enemy vessels are suspected to be in the area,in which case I surface at slow speed with no air.According to the 'the uboat commander's handbook' captains had been known to have been detected simply by using their compressed air to aid in surfacing.I personally DO hope it is simulated in the game,and if it isnt,I still do it anyway hehe

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Well, last night I practiced to follow the contact submerged and was able to made new contacts! The hunting changed drastically and made contacts with warships too!:o I hope to learn more tonight when I enter those cold waters again!

Thank you
:ping:

[Jimbuna]

SINK EM ALL!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[frau kaleun]

Well, last night I practiced to follow the contact submerged and was able to made new contacts! The hunting changed drastically and made contacts with warships too!:o I hope to learn more tonight when I enter those cold waters again!

Thank you
:ping:

:salute:

Happy hunting!

[KL-alfman]

great, that the community could help you out.
and (I forgot in the first moment) welcome aboard! :yep:

[Wilhelm Bauer]

I started a career, follow a path to my patrol cuadrant and made my way through cold waters (the patrol is near Scotland). Reaching 1/4 of the journey, I received a message saying "new contact: slow, etc etc". The direction this ship is following, leading it right to...ME! I kept myself submerged and reduce the speed... but no new contact was done! The initial distance was 20km aprox. I decided to surface the boat, but I only could see the sea and the moon. No new contacts were made. I lost a ship once again.

So...

What was wrong?
What was my mistake?

Please, a little help is needed; I am sure that when I was able to fire some torpedos to a ship, I would never stop til the Iron cross!

:salute:

[Jimbuna]

Was it a message from your hydrophone guy or a radio message?

[KL-alfman]

watch this small vid.
it sure will help you finding your sonar-contacts:
http://nefelodamon.blip.tv/

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Thank you again; maybe the game's standard realistic settings are "more realistic" than Aces of the deep's.

:salute:

[Wilhelm Bauer]

By the way; I think the message came from the sonar guy. But now I am not sure.

[Gilbou]

It probably came from the sonar guy.
Dive to 20/25 meters and stop engines.

You have to know that there is a huge difference between the GHB (the hydrophones you start with) and the KDB with is better. The first one has trouble hearing in front and back. So turn your sub so the contact is either left or right of your sub.

Get into the hydrophone set. Find where that sound is coming from. Go on the map, use ruler to draw a line from your sub to where the sound comes from.
Go back to hydrophone station, do not move the needle and wait until the sounds goes away. Check which side that sound went to : so you now if the ship is going to your right or to the left of your current position. Go back to the map and set up an interception course.

For example. if you hear a sound left of your sub and it's going UP to the north, plot a 45 degree interception course, 45 degrees higher than the line you draw from where the contact was. Surface, go full ahead (setting 4 or 5) and make sure you have men in good shape on conning tower.

Run like that for 10 minutes, dive again. Repeat.

As soon as the ship is spotted, check at which distance is it. Try to find out where it's going. Check then what torpedoes you have, and what their maximum range is : if it's type II for example, it's 5 Km. Draw a 5 Km circle, and put it over your target. You will have to draw a line that begins at the target, and marks on the map it's course. Add two lines to create a "tunnel" of where your torpedoes can it.

Check the following pics for explanations.

Here I'm very close so instead of doing a 5 Km circle for my type II torpedo, I'll draw a 1 Km circle.

First, I'm on surface, and I see ships. I choose my target (usually, the biggest one). First thing I do is check depth under keel, so I know already, and then I choose the biggest target.

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_1.png

Now I start a line with the ruler where the ship is and where it is going :

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_2.png

Now I need to know where I can shot. Let's imagine the ship is 10 Km away and I am loaded with type II torpedoes, that have a 5 Km range. I need to draw a 5 Km wide circle and put it over the ship :

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_3.png

Now I add two lines from each side of the circle, which I make parralel to the line that starts from the ship. This creates a kind of "Tube" and I can only shoot my torpedoes when inside of it :

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_4.png

Here the tube is drawn and it shows me where I have to shoot. What is left is change my course. What I usually do is I chose a course that will bring me 90 degrees to either side of the target's path. Sometimes I have
to shadow it, so I choose to make a parralel course to this attack tube, to get farther ahead and dive when I'm within or close to the attack area I have chosen :

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_5.png

Since I am very close here (within 5 Km) I can plot a 90 degree interception course dive and shoot as soon the ship will be where my gyroscope angle will be 355 to 0) :

http://perso.orange.fr/gilbert.fernandes/sh3_attack_6.png

You do the same kind of thing to plot where you are going to intercept a ship. You plot where you think it is, and where you think it is going. If the weather is not too bad, you can see the ship within 8, perhaps 9 Km away. So you make a 8-9 Km circle and draw this kind of tube. Then you move as fast as you can to get within that tube and try to find the ship inside of it.

With some mods like GWX 3.0 Gold you have charts. Estimating the target speed you can know how many Km it will do per hour. Then, you calculate where you will be in 1, 2 or 4 hours, and do the same for the target. So you know where the ship will be, and where you will be. And plot a course so you will be within 10 km or less of that interception area. This is when you are starting to get better at drawing interception plots :arrgh!:

[Wilhelm Bauer]

Thank you very much!
This is an awesome help and a big work.
I will put this instructions in practice tonight. I am sure that now those ghost ships will have no opportunity at all!

:salute: