How do I effectively patrol an area?

[theglenlivet12]

I restarted my campaign last night now that I understand how the progression should work. I am now on the second mission where I need to sink 100K tons of cargo, but I generally end up meandering about the sea hoping to get lucky. I have no clue what the game wants you to do when it tells you to patrol an area. Its not described in the manual or the tutorial. If theres a youtube tutorial on this or a written tutorial somewhere or if youd like to add your two cents below, Im all ears. Thanks!

[kylania]

Do this: M or this: * or this: @ or this: # :DL

Basically there's no right or wrong way to "patrol". I basically do a pattern like this: /\/\/\/\/ across a grid and submerge at each end of a leg to check the hydrophones. If the pattern is large enough I'll submerge in the middle of each leg as well. Other times I'll do a spiral search. If I hear something on the hydrophones I'll move to intercept, if not, surface and continue on. Sometimes if I see a radio contact near me I'll abandon the pattern and move to intercept that.

One "cheaty" thing to help is not upgrading your hydrophone. The GHG one you start work works on the surface, so you'll catch a lot of contacts you'd otherwise miss due to distance or weather. Your call of ease of finding contacts vs realism.

[SteamWake]

Yes taking a dip for 10 to 20 minutes occassionally might reveal distant contacts you would otherwise miss.

Believe it or not you can hear them alot further than you can see them.

What I do is dip to or below periscope depth, If I pick up a sound contact I will mark it on the map, surface and sail in the general direction of the contact for an hour or so then dip again and make a second mark. With the two marks you can determine course and approximate speed making it easier to intercept them.

Here is a question. If you play without map contacts do the ... uh... sound lines still show up?

[theglenlivet12]

I was entertaining the idea of submerging near a trade lane and camping there until Im told to go elsewhere. I suppose that would work too.

But, to complete the patrol mission you basically have to search around the marked area until they tell you to go somewhere else or come home?

[kylania]

Yeah, it's like 72 hours 'in the area', the area being 70km or 200km in the open sea.

[alexradu89]

Believe it or not you can hear them alot further than you can see them.
:oI did not know that!:shifty:

[karamazovnew]

:oI did not know that!:shifty:

Wait.. you can DIVE under the sea? :o But how will you sink the targets? The deck gun doesn't seem to work underwater. Please help! :wah:

:D But enough fun.

Without Map Contacts you can't see the Hydro Lines. Which is just stupid... I wish there were a separate option for those. Anyway...
1. Use Map Contacts, that way the blind-deaf crew will no longer be an issue.
2. If you did make the mistake of upgrading the hydrophone you won't be able to use it on the surface. So yeah... it's better to dive from time to time, but mind the battery drain at high TC.
3. Plot a circle with the compass tool, centered on the patrol area point. Make it 200km in radius. Then try to stay inside that area. Any ship you sink outside it will not count for completing the patrol. Since finding a ship is a crapshoot, you can choose to stay in one place submerged for most of the day, or wander around like crazy burning fuel. Your choice.. I usually place myself along strategic lines, near shore or near harbors. The narrow Straits can be a gold mine too.

[kylania]

40km seems to be the limit in which ships "exist" around you. I passed a destroyer then shortly thereafter a German steamer heading back the way I came. I switched to external camera, set it to 32x TC and followed the steamer to see if the destroyer would attack it. After a while the ship simply disappeared! No where to be found, the camera was 40km away from the sub at that point. So... either it's a game limit or a camera limit? Not sure.

[SabreHawk]

Ya know I always wondered about the fact that the upgraded hydrophone thing they went with, and why they didnt just have both types onboard instead of one or the other. I know the sumberged only one was more robust with full 360 deg detection and a longer range, but still it seemed to me that having both would have been better.

Now as to using the upgraded one in SH5, I've found that in heavy seas where the bow spends a great deal of time under water I got contacts while on the surface. Thats how I found that convoy off the eastern coast, was just tooling along diving through the waves and as I checked the map I saw a sound contact line extending out ahead to port. Wow I thought, a sound contact while surfaced? That hadn't happened before, cause I had made other attacks and always lost the sound once we surfaced. But the sea was quite rough, and I could see that the forward half of the sub and sometimes the tower too was under water. So it must have been this that allowed the sound contact to show up.

[mcarlsonus]

In the stormy north (!) North Atlantic especially, the hydrophones ALWAYS work better - and at longer range - than visual. From experience, set your submerged speed at Run 1 (Dead Slow) and go down to at LEAST 20m/60ft. Do this on a regular basis, alternating between surface observation - primarily to recharge the batteries - and dived. In any case, targets ARE hard to find! There's nothing YOU'RE doing wrong!

[SabreHawk]

Yes it is hard, and for sure was hard for the real ones. Many of them sailed around out there for weeks and never found or spotted a thing, its a big place.............the ocean is.

As has been the case in the past, I'll listen for myself with motors off and have heard ships from wayyyyy off, barely audible. This is the one thing that the SH series has done well. Simulate the hydrophone operation.

Now if while listening you do find something, listen for a few minutes and see where you have to move the pointer to follow it. Then leave the station and call up the map and a sound contact line should appear. Now place a marker right at the tip of that line, and then watch it for a bit and note where the tip goes. then once the tip has moved some distance, place another marker at the tip and then you can with the ruler draw a line between them and have a very good idea of the course the contact is on and if headed away or closing or some other direction.
Hopefully it's closing towards you. But if not, you may still be able to get to it if it's not traveling fast. Surface and set course to close the distance. Then after some time, submerge again to check on it. then repeat and eventually get close enough to get it spotted and then an attack can be planned.