Harper
04-19-13, 08:59 PM
Well I have played the silent hunter games before but it has been a long time and did not even know that SH5 was out. Saw it on steam for 10 bucks and got it.
Started a new campaign and it was on whatever realism, I don't even know. But it was like an easy point and shoot then head to the base to get my mission for the first patrol. While in base, I just happened to change the realism setting to 100% and finding out later that you have to be docked to changed the realism settings during the campaign, so that worked out well.
So I head out to do the mission off the East coast of Britain. I cruised out there at half speed with no real idea how to play this game yet. Punching some buttons on the keyboard on the way out and familiarizing myself with the game a bit and seeing what the buttons do (found the F1 key). I have played Silent Hunter before so surely I would get the hang of it. By the way, has anyone else had the same German merchant just outside your 2nd main base that literally tries to run over you? That ship has literally like 3 times acted like he wanted to collide, throwing it in reverse twice and nearly hitting me.
Anyway, so I show up to the coast and decide I will just kill the engine and just hang out until I get a convoy report or my listener picks up some sounds.
And NOTHING, for a long time, finally I get a convoy report and I get a good heading off and come at them from the side, I first fired 3 torpedoes and a Liberty Merchant and quickly getting a fix on another ship and firing my 4th and I get one hit on the liberty merchant and missed with the other 3 torpedoes. I am just thinking darn!. So this liberty merchant just shuts down and sets there floating and on fire. So I get reloaded and fire again and my torpedo just went way off the wrong way. At this point I realize that the hit that I did get was just lucky and I have no Idea what I am doing since I just missed a merchant ship at a dead stop at around 500 meters broad sided. At this point of my SH5 experience I get to see my ship and the torpedoes on my map with the u-modded v1.2 game (I download Darkwraith's mod later).
So basically it takes all the torpedoes I got left to get this thing down and it is back to home for me to get some more torps. I will not cover the next 4 patrols but let me say I had a hard time finding ships out there but I had something really funny happen. While out tossing torpedoes in random directions not having a clue what I am doing, I fired 3 torpedoes at 1 ship, 1 torpedo at another, missed the 2 I was aiming at, and while kicking myself and trying to regroup and stay in position for the next shots, like a while later, I get a message. Torpedo impact! I am like Wha? I spin the periscope around and sure enough there is a merchant way in the back on fire. I was shocked. Well once I had overcame the shock I am trying to regroup again and another message. Torpedo impact! I am thinking "no way" at this point and spin the scope around and now there is a 2nd merchant on fire off on the other far corner of the convoy.
At this point it is just facepalm. But really how cool was that. I can't hit what I am aiming at but at least I am getting hits.
Anyway, I finally get frustrated at watching wounded merchants floating off. So I had just arrived at Britain to start a patrol and bam, there is a loan liberty merchant. I line up and fire away all 4 torpedoes at a spread and nothing. GRR, surface the boat! So I get on top of the water and the deck gun (after a bit of googling to figure out how to get that going) puts her on the ocean floor. Not my idea of being a sub captain but hey, it getting me some ships.
BTW, at this point my torpedo hit rate is about 1 in 4. And I am getting in close for them.
So now that I have found out about this amazing deck gun that makes torpedos look like a Molotov cocktail to mark targets with so that you can see them good when firing at them with the deck gun, I head back with another set of torpedos and almost instantly run into a big nice merchant convoy.
So I fire off all my torpedos and I end up with 1 hit, on a troop transport. So I surface the boat nearly in the middle of them with the troop transport I hit up ahead, it got away a little bit because I was trying to shoot some of the ships in the back. So I pop out of the water and start shooting the liberty merchants with the deck gun. 2 Liberty merchants down, and now I am thinking that I really want to get that high tonnage troop transport down before I am out of deck gun ammo and I have no torpedoes left. So I steam at the troop transport, nearly getting run over by a kamikaze liberty merchant.
Finally I am getting caught up to the troop transport on fire and I let the deck gun open up, thinking I should get up beside her so the gun does miss much.
SUDDENLY tracer rounds are whizzing all over the place and everything goes blurry. I didn't know whether to crash dive, turn, hit reverse, or jump overboard. I guess I was having too much fun to think that they would ever want to shoot at me, it never crossed my mind after all of the other ships not firing back. I ended up going with full reverse after seeing that the bullets didn't do much to us in the long time it took me to come out of shock and come up with a plan.
I fired deck guns out of her range until I was out of ammo and did get the ship so I headed home.
Anyway to wrap up this long post of nonsense that no one will probably read, I got Darkwraiths mod which I saw in a Youtube video (not to mention the nightmare of getting it to work) And it is a whole new mess. Like starting the game out from day one. But 1 patrol down with the new mod, loving it, and I haven't been sunk yet.
This patrol is to go to North shore of Britain to take down a carrier. I fear this will not end well and I am not yet too confident with my torpedo skills.
Sorry this story was a jumbled mess. So much has happened. I should've wrote it down to keep the story straight. Will keep track of what happens in my hunt for a carrier if anyone is interested and will replay with it here.
Started a new campaign and it was on whatever realism, I don't even know. But it was like an easy point and shoot then head to the base to get my mission for the first patrol. While in base, I just happened to change the realism setting to 100% and finding out later that you have to be docked to changed the realism settings during the campaign, so that worked out well.
So I head out to do the mission off the East coast of Britain. I cruised out there at half speed with no real idea how to play this game yet. Punching some buttons on the keyboard on the way out and familiarizing myself with the game a bit and seeing what the buttons do (found the F1 key). I have played Silent Hunter before so surely I would get the hang of it. By the way, has anyone else had the same German merchant just outside your 2nd main base that literally tries to run over you? That ship has literally like 3 times acted like he wanted to collide, throwing it in reverse twice and nearly hitting me.
Anyway, so I show up to the coast and decide I will just kill the engine and just hang out until I get a convoy report or my listener picks up some sounds.
And NOTHING, for a long time, finally I get a convoy report and I get a good heading off and come at them from the side, I first fired 3 torpedoes and a Liberty Merchant and quickly getting a fix on another ship and firing my 4th and I get one hit on the liberty merchant and missed with the other 3 torpedoes. I am just thinking darn!. So this liberty merchant just shuts down and sets there floating and on fire. So I get reloaded and fire again and my torpedo just went way off the wrong way. At this point I realize that the hit that I did get was just lucky and I have no Idea what I am doing since I just missed a merchant ship at a dead stop at around 500 meters broad sided. At this point of my SH5 experience I get to see my ship and the torpedoes on my map with the u-modded v1.2 game (I download Darkwraith's mod later).
So basically it takes all the torpedoes I got left to get this thing down and it is back to home for me to get some more torps. I will not cover the next 4 patrols but let me say I had a hard time finding ships out there but I had something really funny happen. While out tossing torpedoes in random directions not having a clue what I am doing, I fired 3 torpedoes at 1 ship, 1 torpedo at another, missed the 2 I was aiming at, and while kicking myself and trying to regroup and stay in position for the next shots, like a while later, I get a message. Torpedo impact! I am like Wha? I spin the periscope around and sure enough there is a merchant way in the back on fire. I was shocked. Well once I had overcame the shock I am trying to regroup again and another message. Torpedo impact! I am thinking "no way" at this point and spin the scope around and now there is a 2nd merchant on fire off on the other far corner of the convoy.
At this point it is just facepalm. But really how cool was that. I can't hit what I am aiming at but at least I am getting hits.
Anyway, I finally get frustrated at watching wounded merchants floating off. So I had just arrived at Britain to start a patrol and bam, there is a loan liberty merchant. I line up and fire away all 4 torpedoes at a spread and nothing. GRR, surface the boat! So I get on top of the water and the deck gun (after a bit of googling to figure out how to get that going) puts her on the ocean floor. Not my idea of being a sub captain but hey, it getting me some ships.
BTW, at this point my torpedo hit rate is about 1 in 4. And I am getting in close for them.
So now that I have found out about this amazing deck gun that makes torpedos look like a Molotov cocktail to mark targets with so that you can see them good when firing at them with the deck gun, I head back with another set of torpedos and almost instantly run into a big nice merchant convoy.
So I fire off all my torpedos and I end up with 1 hit, on a troop transport. So I surface the boat nearly in the middle of them with the troop transport I hit up ahead, it got away a little bit because I was trying to shoot some of the ships in the back. So I pop out of the water and start shooting the liberty merchants with the deck gun. 2 Liberty merchants down, and now I am thinking that I really want to get that high tonnage troop transport down before I am out of deck gun ammo and I have no torpedoes left. So I steam at the troop transport, nearly getting run over by a kamikaze liberty merchant.
Finally I am getting caught up to the troop transport on fire and I let the deck gun open up, thinking I should get up beside her so the gun does miss much.
SUDDENLY tracer rounds are whizzing all over the place and everything goes blurry. I didn't know whether to crash dive, turn, hit reverse, or jump overboard. I guess I was having too much fun to think that they would ever want to shoot at me, it never crossed my mind after all of the other ships not firing back. I ended up going with full reverse after seeing that the bullets didn't do much to us in the long time it took me to come out of shock and come up with a plan.
I fired deck guns out of her range until I was out of ammo and did get the ship so I headed home.
Anyway to wrap up this long post of nonsense that no one will probably read, I got Darkwraiths mod which I saw in a Youtube video (not to mention the nightmare of getting it to work) And it is a whole new mess. Like starting the game out from day one. But 1 patrol down with the new mod, loving it, and I haven't been sunk yet.
This patrol is to go to North shore of Britain to take down a carrier. I fear this will not end well and I am not yet too confident with my torpedo skills.
Sorry this story was a jumbled mess. So much has happened. I should've wrote it down to keep the story straight. Will keep track of what happens in my hunt for a carrier if anyone is interested and will replay with it here.