The sickener factor.....

[in_vino_vomitus]

Just spent longer than I care to admit, tracking a convoy of six merchants and three escorts. It was my first patrol out in a brand new Balao. Anyway I had this convoy nailed pretty much. I knew its zig zag pattern and I knew the escorts routine. Using Lurker's radar approach method I'd positioned myself ahead of them and ten degrees off the base course track, gone to radar depth and laid an intercept course. Everything was going perfectly......

Interestingly enough, at radar depth I got visual contact before a radar return. I went to periscope depth with no radar plots because I didn't know how visible the antenna is to escorts, but I was able to check out the omnimeter, that I made, and it seems to work pretty well - I'd thought that radar might have made it redundant, but I ID'd a Kiturin Maru at extreme range, and though I had to guess where the waterline was, since it was over the horizon, It gave me a figure that fit well with where I expected it to be.

Picture the scene. The convoy is dead ahead heading roughly NxW I know that shortly they're going to come to a heading of about 275/285. I have an escort maybe 4500 yards off my starboard bow. I'm turning to port to present my stern to him. I've started the PK and entered in the first rough data, I've got plenty of time to refine my solution and unless they do something completely unexpected, they're going to be turning my way for a ten-minute run any moment now. I wonder what the escort's up to. I don't want to put my scope up so I ask the sonar guy for a report.....

Except I didn't. I have no idea what I was thinking, but I managed to press CTRL+ENTER instead of SHIFT+N and That was the end of my good times.......

Long story short. My aft torpedo room is full of water, I have two escorts above me that don't seem to have any problems locating me, even at 650 feet and I'm making three knots at flank speed - And it was going so well.....

One thing though. For some reason I can't seem to engage silent running. I went to flank speed when the first pattern was dropped, and for some reason, after that, the silent running icon refuses to appear - anyone know what's going on there?

[TorpX]

"Silent running" is meaningless if you are going at any significant speed. Most of the noise your boat makes is due to the screw noises. To be very quiet, you must be going slower than "ahead slow"; say about 50 rpm's on the tachometer. Also, things like damage repair, and torpedo reloading cannot be done in silent mode. If you have any significant flooding, silent running would likely not be possible.

[U505995]

Sadly I don't know what to tell you. I would offer help but i'm more of a U-boat guy. I never commanded a fleet boat for more than 2 years before I was killed off or given a desk job.

[Stealhead]

What was the reasoning for pointing your stern at the escort?:hmmm: Did you want to aid his sound guys in finding you?

I would point my bow at an escort if I wanted to lower my profile pre attack.As has already been said you want to go to silent running and stay at or below 50 RPM(the tachometers are in the control room to the right of the knots gauge and the engine telegraph.

Really to be very quiet Elmer J. Fudd style you want to go to the knots gauge and set it to below 1 knot.You should go to silent running before you begin your attack a well say when you think that the nearest escort is around 8,000yds away or so.

Once you have suffered serious damage silent running is simply impossible in real life they would be able to hear the water rushing in or you damaged motors or pumps.After serious damage occurs you goal is to repair damage not be silent.The game disables silent running once serious damage occurs if I recall.

If you have one room fully flooded it is pretty much curtains because either you will sink sooner or later once the batteries die or once the flooding spreads.

Also going to the hydrophone stations is your friend that way you will not get a shock.If you have played with it ay you should know the sound difference between a patrolling DD and a charging one.Also do not blind yourself with the fear of getting spotted as you can see in this case it cost you dearly.So what if the DD saw your scope if you'd have seen him charging you could had time to react maybe even have given him a down the throat.It sounds to me like he was already charging you anyway.

[in_vino_vomitus]

I suspect it was the inadvertent firing of the torpedo that got their attention:nope:

I'd often wondered about pointing my stern at an escort, but I figured it counted as presenting my smallest profile. One thing about spending more time on here is that I'm starting to comprehend the vastness of my ignorance.

The silent running issue started before I took damage, and it's happened before - I suspect it's a similar thing to the CO2 bug that hits you when surfaced. I should have saved and reloaded the game and seen if that worked, but I didn't. I wasn't sure if I was in SR with no icon showing - I guess I know now......

I'm pretty happy at the sonar station, but I tend to only go there when I need to get a really precise bearing when I'm doing TMA pre-radar, or to get to know the target a bit better. I'm no expert, but I'm getting better at recognising sound signatures - I can tell a patrolling escort from a charging one, but to be honest, it's as easy to call for a sonar report for something like that. Any radical departure from what he's been doing is likely to be due to my presence, and for all my ineptitude at the controls, I'm pretty situationally aware. It's my tactics that suck :)

Like many people on here I've done time in the military, and what I love about this game is solving tactical problems. Trouble is I was an Infantryman and it's becoming very apparent that I need to stop thinking like one to make this game work for me:hmm2: The method I'd evolved to intercept targets worked, but after reading Lurker's radar intercept tutorial for MOBO, it was like trading in a longbow for a sniper rifle - That's what made this so funny - in an infuriating way. It was the best approach I've done so far - the only thing that could have ruined it was something spectacularly stupid on my part, and sure enough......

I would have got tired of the stock game in pretty short order, so it completely blows me away that people have put so much of themselves into making it what it is - That's a topic for a different post though :)

[Bubblehead1980]

I suspect it was the inadvertent firing of the torpedo that got their attention:nope:

I'd often wondered about pointing my stern at an escort, but I figured it counted as presenting my smallest profile. One thing about spending more time on here is that I'm starting to comprehend the vastness of my ignorance.

The silent running issue started before I took damage, and it's happened before - I suspect it's a similar thing to the CO2 bug that hits you when surfaced. I should have saved and reloaded the game and seen if that worked, but I didn't. I wasn't sure if I was in SR with no icon showing - I guess I know now......

I'm pretty happy at the sonar station, but I tend to only go there when I need to get a really precise bearing when I'm doing TMA pre-radar, or to get to know the target a bit better. I'm no expert, but I'm getting better at recognising sound signatures - I can tell a patrolling escort from a charging one, but to be honest, it's as easy to call for a sonar report for something like that. Any radical departure from what he's been doing is likely to be due to my presence, and for all my ineptitude at the controls, I'm pretty situationally aware. It's my tactics that suck :)

Like many people on here I've done time in the military, and what I love about this game is solving tactical problems. Trouble is I was an Infantryman and it's becoming very apparent that I need to stop thinking like one to make this game work for me:hmm2: The method I'd evolved to intercept targets worked, but after reading Lurker's radar intercept tutorial for MOBO, it was like trading in a longbow for a sniper rifle - That's what made this so funny - in an infuriating way. It was the best approach I've done so far - the only thing that could have ruined it was something spectacularly stupid on my part, and sure enough......

I would have got tired of the stock game in pretty short order, so it completely blows me away that people have put so much of themselves into making it what it is - That's a topic for a different post though :)


I think the major problem was the inadvertent firing of the torpedo, I point my stern at them often(times must make a stern shot) and if on silent running or even without, just running at 50-100 rpm's and at least 1000(1200 to be safe) yards away they usually won't detect you. Before the mods changed firing torpedos from "Enter" to "Ctrl+Enter" I may have fired a few torpedoes on accident in my noob days, ruined some good set ups, it happens.