Weather Questions

[Nukesub]

Ahoy kaleuns,

Question about weather here. I wanted to get opinions and experiences from the vets.

For reference, I am in a Type VIIB.

How do you go about dealing with it? Lately I have found it frustrating if I am stalking a vessel and the swells are quite large, enough to make it so that if I am on the surface my boat gets switched in and out of diesel because of the wildly varying depth (from the large swells)

How do you cope with this? Is it best to just not hunt in this weather? Submerge and wait it out only to surface for air? Just diverge off in a direction and hope to move out of it?

What makes it worse is that my prey often out paces my under water speed, making it much more difficult to set up my shot.

How often did weather effect real U boat captains? How do you think they dealt with it?

Thanks in advance o7

[Zosimus]

I've also been frustrated by adverse weather situations. I don't often kill my target with a single torpedo, so I rely on the deck gun to give it the last little shove into its watery grave. Setting up the shot isn't normally a problem, but what do you do if your shot brings the boat to a standstill and you are sitting there off its port bow waiting for hours/days to see if it will sink? As far as I understand you can't use the deck gun when winds are above a certain speed. I guess you just get the best torpedo solution you can and hope to sink it on the first shot. If it doesn't go under then wait(hope) for the weather to clear up so you can finish him.

Personally I'm using NGT's variable weather fix found at http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=177507 so the weather can change more often. Otherwise you might be sitting there for weeks waiting for the weather to clear up enough to sink the bad guy.

[Schöneboom]

Guten Tag,

The GWX supermod includes a weather fix, which should reduce stormy weather to days instead of weeks. My sense is that it's more effective if one stays in the game rather than saving, exiting, and reloading.

Re what to do when there's a ship or convoy and the weather's absolutely rotten, as in RL sometimes all you can do is report the contact (using h.sie's hardcode mod, this can have consequences):

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=174225

I recall at least once shadowing the contact until the weather improved. But one has to be careful with TC; if visibility improves a lot, the enemy could spot you, too. A surface attack during a storm is sometimes feasible -- the danger there is that the ship might only become targetable when it's practically running over you. IRL kaluens tended to refrain from attacking in fog, and if they sank even a few ships on a patrol, they counted themselves lucky.

Gute Jagd!

[Nukesub]

Setting up the shot isn't normally a problem

For me it is. I am still practicing with the 90 degree method and if I don't get it setup right that first time and the boat passes me, it will be a massive pain to over take it and reposition. The main reason being is because to get any kind of speed over the target (which is almost always greater than my submerged speed) I have to be surfaced. Problem is, the swells are so big in a storm my u boat shuts off the diesel every time I come down off a wave ><

Guess I will get better at manual targeting beyond the 90 degree method :P

As a side note, does GWX contain lightening as weather by default?

[Nukesub]

Another note, please, if anyone can weigh in.

Is there something about inclement weather and magnetic torps?

It was very windy and i tried two different 3km shots with magnetic pistols and the torps don't even make it to the target before exploding??

I would greatly appreciate any insight into this.

For reference, I am using magnetic because the swells are so large I don't want the torpedo to breach, figured that would make it explode prematurely.

[les green01]

depends on the year your playing as in the case with the us navy subs the u-boats also had problems with the mag pistons so i stick with contact pistons

[Schöneboom]

Hi again,

In SH3 don't worry about breaching as a cause of premature detonation with impact pistols. In really rough seas, when you can't use the deck gun, the impact pistols are the only kind you can rely on. That holds true even after they fix the magnetic pistol problem. Re rough ocean & magnetics, the assumption seems to be that the target ship's pitching up and down changes the actual gap under keel enough to result in either non-detonation or striking the keel (a dud). Whether that was historically correct, I'm not sure about.

You can read more about it here (http://uboat.net/history/torpedo_crisis.htm).

The trick is getting a good depth setting, deep enough for serious damage, but not so deep that the eel bounces off the curved hull. That's where the recognition manual helps. For ex., say you have a freighter with an 8 meter draft. With an impact pistol, 4 meters is a safe setting; 5 might be pushing it unless the sea's calm.

Without getting too elaborate, the target's AOB (angle on the bow, or Lagenwinkel in German) is more crucial with impact pistols. That is, the closer to 90 degrees (when torpedo meets hull), the better your odds.

Hope that helps.