Tactics and Capabilities Questions

[MinskMariner]

Hey guys,

Last year, I wrote (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=176819) on this forum that I had just purchased SH4. Well, I've been playing it on and off since then and only this week have downloaded and installed my first mod, TMO.

Some questions that have come up while I've been playing (I'm sure you've seen this dozens of times from n00bs like me, but your help would be much appreciated!):

1. The detection capabilities of my enemy are a mystery to me. When I'm on a photo recon mission, for instance, do they have any coastal sonar installations that would give my sub away if my engine was running too loudly?

2. Do merchants have any sonar/radar capabilities?

3. At what point in the war should I start worrying about the enemy's surface ships using radar?

4. How well can the enemy ships see at night?

5. Finally, I'm going to upgrade hardware soon, but currently I'm running SH4 on a relatively old laptop (it barely scrapes by on the absolute lowest resolution and graphics settings; even then, I need to avoid animation-intense screens such as the control room :DL). Anything I can do to tweak and improve performance?

Thanks!

[Armistead]

1. No

2. Not that I'm aware, cept maybe one in TMO, seems TMO use to have a merchant Q-ship, know it has guns, seems it had Y guns, so it may have sonar.

3. Well, Ducimas would know for sure, seems like it was in the Doc. support file with TMO, but mainly capital ships and some escorts around 43ish. With TMO you will eventually get APR-1, which detects enemy radar, you will see a flashing line directly to a ship, so get it and you'll figure out which ships in the group have it. My guess is 43 and gets worse through the war, but read the Doc file.

4. Pretty good, obvious other values come into play, light, weather, fog. Also crew ratings can be different for each ship, so that comes into play. Just know now the enemy can shoot long distance with deckguns. I've been shot at around 10,000 yards during the day, around 6000 at night, so they see pretty well. Also keeping a narrow profile to a ship helps alot and other factors.

5. Not much, cut off all unneeded programs and services, defrag and all that crap, updated drivers, etc.. Some adjust windows visual performance, but don't see how that would effect the game visuals.

[Bubblehead1980]

Hey guys,

Last year, I wrote (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=176819) on this forum that I had just purchased SH4. Well, I've been playing it on and off since then and only this week have downloaded and installed my first mod, TMO.

Some questions that have come up while I've been playing (I'm sure you've seen this dozens of times from n00bs like me, but your help would be much appreciated!):

1. The detection capabilities of my enemy are a mystery to me. When I'm on a photo recon mission, for instance, do they have any coastal sonar installations that would give my sub away if my engine was running too loudly?

2. Do merchants have any sonar/radar capabilities?

3. At what point in the war should I start worrying about the enemy's surface ships using radar?

4. How well can the enemy ships see at night?

5. Finally, I'm going to upgrade hardware soon, but currently I'm running SH4 on a relatively old laptop (it barely scrapes by on the absolute lowest resolution and graphics settings; even then, I need to avoid animation-intense screens such as the control room :DL). Anything I can do to tweak and improve performance?

Thanks!


Some merchants starting in mid 43 or so have passive sonar.Usually the lone merchants, they will begin zig zagging if youre running above 2 knots or so in calm seas once you are about 3,000 yards or so.Still easy to hit, just get close and fire when they begin to zig towards you.Usually they are moving at 5 knots when zigging.

[Daniel Prates]

Some merchants starting in mid 43 or so have passive sonar.Usually the lone merchants, they will begin zig zagging if youre running above 2 knots or so in calm seas once you are about 3,000 yards or so.Still easy to hit, just get close and fire when they begin to zig towards you.Usually they are moving at 5 knots when zigging.

I know that historicaly this was a fact, but not all mods depict this, right?

[max-peck]

I know that historicaly this was a fact, but not all mods depict this, right?

I'm pretty sure that TMO does. :yep:

Can't comment on any others.

[Daniel Prates]

I'm pretty sure that TMO does. :yep:

Can't comment on any others.

Someone just commented on that here, a couple of weeks ago, but now I cant remember who. Yeah, TMO deals with that.

In any case it was pretty ineffective, i suppose. If the merchant is escorted, the escort's sonar is a bigger concearn. And if it isn't, you can go ahead the targed and wait there, at 1 knot of perhaps even stopped, so this sonar doesn't help a lot...

[MinskMariner]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I just finished my first career patrol in TMO but found out the hard way about merchants' armament. After expending almost all of my torpedoes in successful attacks and completing the photo recon objective, I ran across two merchants travelling separately but on an intersecting course.

It was nighttime off the Japanese coast and I had three torpedoes left, so naturally I decided to meet them at their point of near intersection and sink them both at once. I sunk the first merchant from 1000 yards away with two fish from my bow tubes and then swung my sub around to hit the other merchant from 2500 yards with my last remaining torpedo (in an aft tube).

I only damaged this second quarry and so decided to surface and take it out with my deck gun. As my crew began firing (quite inaccurately), the merchant began pelting my hull with what looked like machine gun fire. They were hitting their mark and, since the merchant was merely 2,500 tons, I decided it was not worth putting my crew and boat at risk by continuing the battle.

I submerged and beat it out of there, eventually sailing for Pearl. But man was I surprised to see the merchant firing back (this never happened to me in the stock version of the game)!

[magic452]

A lot of new things will start happening in TMO that didn't in stock.
If you think the merchants are bad wait till you get an airplane or two or some of Duci's evil DD's.

You might even get up close and personal with the sea floor. :damn:

Magic