where is the action?

[She-Wolf]

Hello Subsimmers, have just finished 4th patrol in my current career and gathered a few more medals for my crew, and am now being sent off to Convoy College to wait for further orders - which is fine, except that I am getting a bit bored taking down single targets and would like to know where the action is in April 1942. I did have the link to a website which would point me to that sort of info, but can't locate it now. Could someone please give it again? Tanjooberrymutts.

[HowardMilner]

I guess it depends on mods, but I am playing in May '42 now and finding some nice convoy action off the west coast of Borneo. You have to get into the shallows close to the coast, not necessarily in sight of land, but in the 300 to 100 ft depth areas. Lightly guarded, good size merchants. This is in TMO 2.5 without RSRD.

I'd say from where you are just head south down the west side of Luzon and look for stuff coming north.

By the end of April you would want to be heading east for Coral Sea.

[She-Wolf]

That is very helpful Howard - all I could find was stuff about the Doolittle raid, which did not seem to be something I could get involved with. I shall follow your advice - thank you!:up:

[pabbi]

Take a look at this. http://combinedfleet.com/battles/

[She-Wolf]

pabbi that looks really helpful too - wot a nice lot you all are! Thank you:salute:

[Armistead]

What mods you running She Devil

[She-Wolf]

ummm....

TMO 2.5 plus patch, Maxoptics, SCAF... oh, and Stop the Shouting

'zat OK? :)

[Redmane]

Look, I really enjoy SH4, and the TMO mod, which it seems obvious you are using, but to be honest one thing that I've always found disappointing about the game was the brokenness of the campaign when it came to actually getting involved in the historical happenings of the war. I don't mean to throw cold water on your career, but even the basic TMO campaign can't overcome the fact that SH4 really has no dynamic campaign at all. That much being said, I have still managed to find quite a lot of action in many unexpected places, and I have yet to get into RSRDC (the Run Silent Run Deep Campaign), a mod which lurker hlb3 made specifically to address this problem. Here is what I've done: Tried to patrol in areas where it makes sense that convoys and TF's would show up. Along the southern coast of Honshu there are three areas which I have found to be good for this. The Bungo Strait, the Kii Strait, and the area surrounding the mouth of Tokyo Bay, which is actually called the Sagami-nada Sea. Now while not all of these areas will be productive hunting grounds all the time, they will yeild some action for you at some point. For these particular reasons these tend to be busy places: Bungo Strait allows access to the area near Hiroshima. There were IJN bases there near Hiroshima and Kure, as well as industrial centers. Kii Straits gives access to Osaka Bay, where one of the largest IJN bases was, at Kobe. Osaka is also an industrial center. I have run spec ops missions there and watched convoys come and go while I had to hide and remain undetected.:wah: Finally the mouth of Tokyo Bay leads to a very busy place. Yokosuka, Koto, and Chiba were principle IJN bases there, and again, numerous industrial centers line the coast in there. Also make sure you are not using time compression so much that you overrun radio reports about TFs and convoys. Always check these out, they may be close enough for you to run an intercept and bag some sweet tonnage. I usually patrol at no more than 1024 TC on open sea, and no more that 512 in high traffic areas, and I keep a finger on a station command or the backspace key so I can drop out of TC quickly if a report comes in. Also, check out Suruga Bay, which is just to the west side of the peninsula from Sagami-nada. The game shows only two principle towns there, Shizouka and Yaizu, but there were others and the traffic I have found there has always been productive, though usually more for single merchants than convoys. I was in there one night and made contact on a Hiryu class fleet carrier running with a small escort (2 DD's), but it was going so fast I couldn't catch it. And on one occasion recently a large convoy steamed into that bay, and I was able to take 3 ships out of it. Be careful there though, its not very large, the coasts are protected by shore batteries, and there are patrol craft in the bay. General rule of thumb on shore batteries: Stay a minimum of 5 miles out if you suspect there are any. Use your compass to draw threat circles of that radius along dangerous coasts to help you keep your distance.

[She-Wolf]

Redmane, you mentioned Yaizu and Shizouka. This is where I get most of my tonnage and excitement - and usually live to tell the tale, but as you say, this is mostly for single merchants. I have never seen anything more weighty in those waters. I am a bit skeered of penetrating into those areas which, like Bungo Straits, have large areas of shallow water. It seems fool-hardy and risky to put the boat and crew in such danger as there is nowhere to hide if you get found out, however, I will go visit some of the places you have mentioned, just to see if I dare.

I have played RSRDC, and liked it just as much as TMO. I had a problem with TMO in that my target would suddenly disappear, and night would turn into day, and the time would be out for the rest of the mission. I now know it was because I was writing over saves. This is a no-no! Now I make sure every save is a unique name, and no longer have that problem. That was why I went over to RSRDC ( which did not seem so pernickety about saves, but which had weather fixations which went on for days). Me not being that bothered about exactitude I do not mind there being no depth or historicity to TMO's campaign - just paddling around having fun does me. Thank you for your helpful post - I shall creep along and see if I am brave enough to follow your lead :D

[Redmane]

It isn't necessary to wade the shallows for targets, I don't do that myself, I stick to deep water whenever possible. What you can do is set up a zigzag patrol course parallel to the coast in these areas, though Sagami-nada isn't so good for that. I often draw two 5 mile circles at each end of the area i want to cover, east and west, then draw lines from one circle to the next, north and south sides, that makes my search or patrol corridor, then I plot a zigzag pattern between the lines, keeping the north or south points about eight or ten miles apart. Your sensors will do a thorough job covering the area that way. This will allow you to monitor any traffic heading into or out of these places, and when something juicy shows up, take your pick of prizes. Run these patterns just off the edge of the deepest shelf, or a little bit over the edge of it. The waters there run at a gradient from 800 or so feet to something like 300 by the time the lighter shade of reef shows up, so there's plenty of depth there to make an escape if you need to.

[She-Wolf]

Ok -thanks Redmane. I have just started a new patrol from Freemantle and am now supposed to go up tp Convoy College, which I will do via a detour to nose around Surabaya, and then, when I am free from orders at CC, I shall go for a wander up to Honshu area again and put your advice to good use and hope for some happy hunting :up:

[Armistead]

ummm....

TMO 2.5 plus patch, Maxoptics, SCAF... oh, and Stop the Shouting

'zat OK? :)


Many suggest TMO has more traffic than RSRD, not really, it's just RSRD's traffic stays in historic locations to almost perfection. TMO is about 50% historical and 50% random maddness for fun. TMO does have a lot in the shipping lanes, most the big battles, etc. TMO uses many generic and random percertanges, so it's difficult to learn traffic, why may be there one date, may not be back there the next time.

[She-Wolf]

well, whatever, I shall 'go with the flow' whatever mod I am playing - and I have some idea now on how to get a bit more of a challenge thanks to this forum. :)