Advice on getting started

[orangehat44]

Okay so i started my first campaign in SH4 with RFB and RSRD. I started in pearl harbor, and was first given a patrol of an area to the south of the bungo straight, and then after completing that was sent off of Okinawa again to patrol for merchants. In both cases I never incountered a ship plane or anything. even getting very close to japan. Is this normal? My sonar guy never dectected anything. i would cruise in seach patterns in the objectives. and would submerge regularly at all stop and never spotted or heard a peep. like I said no planes ships nothing. I was wondering if i was just unlucky at the time or was wondering if I was doing something wrong in the sonar department. Do i just tell him to scan? when i give that order it says he conducts a sweep, but as he never dectected anything I cant be certian hes doing his job lol.

Any pointers, Ive read quite a fair bit of theads and pointers and thought i was ready to bring the fight to the japs, but i cant find any.

[Armistead]

With RSRD, think historical. Doesn't hurt to complete your patrol zone, but don't feel obliged to stay there hunting.

Stay in shipping lanes and try to find narrow straits where you can bottleneck them.

Early war think invasion forces. That's why I prefer starting out of Manila and moving down south. Many large invasion forces hit the Philippines at the start of the war. Then Feb/March you can find several large invasion forces hitting Borneo, then Java. You'll run into large convoys of 30-50 ships.

Don't forget the historical battles. Some are easy to find, others not so easy, but they're all in RSRD. Here's a good map for battles, just click a battle to the left then view battle animation. I prefer to cut TF off at points before the actual battle took place. Check out the Jap onslaught for idea's where invasion forces land, you can almost look at the animation and compare it to the SS in the bottom link and are identical.

Again, starting out of Manila, I'll head North and attack the invasion fleet at Vigan and Ling. Gulf. You'll lose Manila, so head to Surabaya. I'll then attack all the invasion forces hitting Java late Feb and early March. After that, you have to move to Fremantle, but I port at Brisbane as soon as it becomes available. I then partake of the Battle of the Coral Sea. I may even take the trip and do Midway, but usually stay in the Solomons. I'll stay in the Solomon's most of 42, just stay in the slot and you'll run into stuff about every night. Love the Bismark Sea in 43.


http://www.historyanimated.com/pacificwaranimated/

Here are some SS's showing locations of battles, invasion forces and convoys with RSRD.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=159862

[orangehat44]

Okay well after never seeing so much as a seagull in my Tambor, and after an unfortunate incident involving TC, my boat, an island so small it only shows up if your on like a 1nm scale, and my friends distracting kids lol, I decided to restart my campaign. Once again I started in Pearl but this time in the USS Gar.

Once again I chugged across the ocean, this time my orders were patrol 80 nm south of tokyo harbor. After setting up shop in the area and not spotting much in my search pattern. And still with the bitter taste of the attack on Pearl and the casualty count message we relieved. I decided we are really gonna take the fight to the Japs. And chugged right up into Tokyo Bay with the idea of laying waste to some of the ports during the night. Everything was dead quite. no sonar contacts anywhere as I glided into the first port. In the first port all the docks were empty save for one tanker (maybe) and parked just out side of the port was a Furutaka class Heavy Cruiser. I glided within 1000 yards of it and set up shop.

Heres where things get fishy and I dont know if everything is correct. As in my first post I have RFB and RSRD. As Its my first campaign, but i do like realism so I only had update map contacts and manual targeting not checked in realism, so like 80 something percent. First thing Ive noticed is Nothing ever displays on my map or attack map. No sonar contacts I myself only show up as a dot (not the box with the line im use to) and I can only see my heading on the map if I zoom soo far in that my profile shows up on the map. I was sitting 850 yards away from the heavy cruiser, with scope on it and sonar man trained on it, both OOD and sonar reporting stationary heavy cruiser RIGHT THERE. and nothign shows up on map, except on the attack plot it said the "Furutaka Heavy Cruiser" in text but no marking of where the ship actually was.

I fired 4 torps, and got 3 or 4 hits and the thing lit up on fire and such but other than that no respons from the entier port that I had done anything. Cruiser just sat there, other boat in port just sat there.

Wait excuse me the cruisers spot lights turned on but that was it. It didnt start moving or anything. After that I think I shot most of my remaining torps into it and seemingly never scored another hit despite "good Locked" solution light. the torps whould expload some where but I have no clue where. as I would just hear the torp impacts but even in external view not see any explosions anywhere.

cruiser still just sat there. I even surfaced and pounded like 30 deck gun shells into it and it still just sat there. I expected it to at least shoot back.

One final note when I shot the remaining torps and was mising every single time I looked in the attack plot and the torps dont show up either.


Nothing posts on my maps or attack plot. Ive read and watched lots of the tutorials, and this all seemed fishy. In all the videos (rockin robins and werners ?) torps were showed in the attack plot and such.

Can some one tell me if im doing something wrong here?

Thanks

[TH0R]

Nothing posts on my maps or attack plot. Ive read and watched lots of the tutorials, and this all seemed fishy. In all the videos (rockin robins and werners ?) torps were showed in the attack plot and such.

Can some one tell me if im doing something wrong here?

Thanks

Rockin Robins uses TMO supermod in his tutorial videos, and Wrener's videos were done in the stock SH4 IIRC.

RFB is different. If you haven't installed the latest patch all the contacts are not going to be visible on the map as RFB removed the completely. The latest patch brings them back for no realism percentage penalty.

Attack plot screen is still there but won't show nothing. You can access it by clicking on the bar, next to the map (no hotkey IIRC). It is pretty much useless in RFB.

As for the damage model. Warships, apart from DD's still haven't received a treatment. Only merchants did. Warships will sink in stock behaviour when hit.



If there are no DD's patrolling the port, then don't be surprised. However, in the morning there should be some air patrols searching for you after the harbour raid. ;)

[orangehat44]

I have the uboats expansion so I should have 1.5 and RFB 2.0. But I still didnt have any map contacts (I noticed in the settings my Realism % didnt change cliicking map updates on and off, but I should have them on, and nothing other than my boat ever shows up on the map). So In RFB theres no use for the attack plot? only way to see your torps would be to physically watch them in external?


What about the cruiser just taking all those torps and shells and doing nothing but turning spotlights on. I thought it would at least move, or shoot at me when I surfaced. I mean should it take almost my full torp load out to peg a HC thats sitting stationary in port? And it seemed after my first few hits on it where fire broke out, the torps after that all shot with "good lock" solution and all would expload a good 30-40 seconds after the timer. and I never saw any of the explosions after the first few torp hits. Even if they missed I heard the sounds of them blowing up but even in external veiw I couldnt see where they were exploading, certinaly not anywhere near the HC.

[Gilbou]

I might be wrong but doesn't RFB removes contacts from map and you
have to handle that yourself ?

[TH0R]

What about the cruiser just taking all those torps and shells and doing nothing but turning spotlights on. I thought it would at least move, or shoot at me when I surfaced. I mean should it take almost my full torp load out to peg a HC thats sitting stationary in port? And it seemed after my first few hits on it where fire broke out, the torps after that all shot with "good lock" solution and all would expload a good 30-40 seconds after the timer. and I never saw any of the explosions after the first few torp hits. Even if they missed I heard the sounds of them blowing up but even in external veiw I couldnt see where they were exploading, certinaly not anywhere near the HC.


A ship which is stationary in port can not just move when its captain wants. It takes time for the boilers to hear up, so to say...


I might be wrong but doesn't RFB removes contacts from map and you
have to handle that yourself ?

The latest patch restores map contacts: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1227834&postcount=1

[orangehat44]

Ok I see your point on the firing up the engines thing. But I mean I popped it with at least 3 definite torp hits, no listing no real indication I hit it at all. I popped up shot like 30 deck gun shots into the water line at like 700 yards. And It didnt even turn its turrets towards me. You cant argue it didnt know where I was deck gun has pretty decent muzzle flash.

[TH0R]

Maybe the game had considered it destroyed, I can tell as I rarely encounter warships. One thing I did realise that anchored ships are as good as dead. That might be stock game inherent behaviour.

As for the torpedoes, I just had my very first circular run in RFB. Now that was something, missed my conning tower by 5 ft lol. I fired 6 fish, and observed only 3 wakes going hot straight and normal. Only to find one fish doing a circular run on me...

[jerm138]

Some possible explanations as to why you're missing with a good "lock."



Gyro angle too large
Torpedoes set too deep
Torpedoes hitting the target at too steep of an angle and bouncing off
Torpedo net or other obstructions in the harbor (The draw distance in the program can screw you up here... I've seen ships through my scope that appeared "out in the open" in a harbor, when there's really a pier between me and the ship. I think the non-ship stuff has a shorter draw distance.)

I sometimes do a little harbor raping, but they usually shoot back with machine guns once they spot me. It does seem a little too quiet in the harbor when you're doing this though. I guess they didn't put too much into programming a realistic response to a harbor attack. It would be cool though to see all kinds of activity when they realize they're under attack.... alarms, search lights, etc.

[orangehat44]

Thanks for the help. I actually switched to TMO. To give that a try. Again was in a gar the USS Grayback, and was told to patrol south of the bungo straight. After reviewing the charts alot of shipping enteres the mouth of the straight there so I patrolled the there. Caught a loan merchant and sent her under then under the cover of darkness cruised into port with 4 boats, 2 merchants an aux gun boat and a sub chaser all napping. loosed to fish into each boat, had 2 send 4 more out and some deck gun pounding to finish them all off slipped back out of port and almost out of the straight by morning.

Was trying to make it to my next patrol zone and got caught by a zero before I could get under. Pretty bad but was able to surface with an emergncy blow and managed to fix all the bulkheads and flooding before I had to dive again. Decided I better call it quits early and slinked back to pearl, rather than get stung again. Got a shiny new medal for sinking 5 boats:arrgh!:. What do I do with crew that got promoted and stuff It seems I have 2 crew medals to give out. Can I just give them to anyone should I give the medals to officers?

[Armistead]

Things are much harder to sink in shallow water. Most the time the keel touches ground, but the deck is above the surface, so it doesn't flood out, thus doesn't sink. It takes a lot of damage to get it to flood and you have to spread the damage out, not just hit the same spot and it will take a lot more torps. Deckgun rounds do nothing to capital warships, just bounce off...waste of time.

If a ship is stationary in port, you don't have to worry about it moving, it won't if it's truly stationary.

As for them shooting back, I don't play RFB, but they have to be in range to see you, not your shells or splashes. I think stock was 3000 yards, TMO is around 6000 yards, not sure about RFB

[orangehat44]

Im confused its 1942 and I just finished my first patrol and got enough points to get the first radar. it says its installed on the boat how do I use it?