View Full Version : I died. Now what
Gunnarr
04-15-15, 04:15 AM
I started a new career , with grey wolves, and the commander mod too. First day out, I assumed war was started, since it was past the declaration of war in real life of September 3rd.
but it seemed that, I was supposed to wait for the radio to tell me that war was declared... so my sinking of two british merchants and one french merchant was met with german fire on my ship when returning to base...
next patrol , decleration is declared, and a british destroyed finds me and sinks me. oops. Guess it is karma
Anyway, I feel like I want to continue the game, but with a new person. But I want it to be left off where I died. That is, it is like I am in control of a different uboat now, in the same war. I don't want to start a new career and have to go through the declaration again, I want to avenge my dead self and destroy that ship that sunk me! (But with a different crew and boat!) Even though it will never happen
So, is there any way to continue the "war" with the commander mod, or gray wolf? Or will I have to start a new campaign?
BTW, any quick tips on not getting killed by destroyers? I went silent running and 40 meters depth, but didn't know what else to do.
Gunnarr
04-15-15, 04:31 AM
oh and another thing, is it possible to meet the SS Athenia before the other u boats?
I mean is that ship modeled in?
I don't intend to SINK her or anything... no... trust me... just want to look at it
banryu79
04-15-15, 05:23 AM
So, is there any way to continue the "war" with the commander mod, or gray wolf? Or will I have to start a new campaign?
Yes, create a new carrer and choose the start year and mouth date to be the same as when you died.
BTW, any quick tips on not getting killed by destroyers? I went silent running and 40 meters depth, but didn't know what else to do.
40 meters is really a shallow depth to hide from ASW enemy ships that are actively hunting you. I alway try to go down (fast) to a minimum of 160-180 meters, possibly to 200 meters.
Only then you start "silent running" to creep away when appropriate VS going ahead flank and steering the boat when appropriate (escort just starting its depth charge run on you).
Gunnarr
04-15-15, 07:41 AM
Yes, create a new carrer and choose the start year and mouth date to be the same as when you died.
40 meters is really a shallow depth to hide from ASW enemy ships that are actively hunting you. I alway try to go down (fast) to a minimum of 160-180 meters, possibly to 200 meters.
Only then you start "silent running" to creep away when appropriate VS going ahead flank and steering the boat when appropriate (escort just starting its depth charge run on you).
Oh good idea! I will do that, I think i can start a few days before I died. I will try that
I went to 40, because I didn't think I could go much lower, I was near the english channel. It seems it gets even shallower there too!
Should I just avoid going through the english channel? Maybe should go around the northern route??
As for moving around, I feel like I should be changing direction after I dive, to try to get away and to confuse them which way I am going. But I don't understand what speed I should be moving. hmmm
Okay lets try this, just say a destroyer was spotted and heading towards you fast, from the North. You are currently heading East, and at surface. Depth can be 200 meters. What are your orders, step by step.
Another question, should I be submerged during the day time or should I just submerge when things are spotted? Trying to get through the english channel, taking days, I felt a need to simply stop moving and surface in the day to recharge the battery, afraid to move because might increase chance of contacts
Sailor Steve
04-15-15, 08:24 AM
I don't want to start a new career and have to go through the declaration again, I want to avenge my dead self and destroy that ship that sunk me! (But with a different crew and boat!) Even though it will never happen
With GWX (and I think other supermods) you can start a new career any month of the war.
So, is there any way to continue the "war" with the commander mod, or gray wolf? Or will I have to start a new campaign?
SH3 Commander will let you pick up a career with a new captain in the same U-boat, but only if you were retired. If you died Commander assumes your boat died with you.
Should I just avoid going through the english channel? Maybe should go around the northern route??
Even before the war BdU ordered that no U-boat should go through the Channel. After the war starts? Well, there's a reason they call it the ENGLISH Channel.
Okay lets try this, just say a destroyer was spotted and heading towards you fast, from the North. You are currently heading East, and at surface. Depth can be 200 meters. What are your orders, step by step.
I order a crash dive, which automatically takes me to Flank Speed and 70 meters. As soon as I'm submerged I order Left Full Rudder (You specified that I was heading east and he's coming from the north. I believe the rule for fighter pilots also applies to submarines: "Always turn into [towards] your enemy." This will give him a worse shot.) Once I get to 70 meters I stay there but order the rudder centered. I try to keep him behind me at this point in the hope of escaping his sonar. If it works, great. If not, I don't change anything until he makes an attack run. Once I can hear his propellers through the hull I go to Flank Speed, turn into him and drop 20 meters. That way he's already committed to his drop points and I should be able to be where the depth charges aren't. I then stay at 90 meters and do it again. When I get as deep as I dare go I come back up to 70 meters or thereabouts and do it all again.
Of course if there are more than one escort it gets more complicated.
Another question, should I be submerged during the day time or should I just submerge when things are spotted? Trying to get through the english channel, taking days, I felt a need to simply stop moving and surface in the day to recharge the battery, afraid to move because might increase chance of contacts
I try to always stay on the surface. But that's just me. :sunny:
banryu79
04-15-15, 11:22 AM
As Sailor Steve said.
Try running on the surface even in the day, generally, in case of contact with the enemy, if we are speaking about others ships, you should spot him before he has a chance to spot you and that means you could steer the boat away or submerge in time.
Your U-boat and you
*A new Captain's guide*
So, You've decided to become a U-boat Captain...
Congratulations! You are about to embark on a rewarding (life threatening) career.
Fortunately for you, I, Kapitanleutnant Johan Konig, have put together this little survival guide, which hopefully will help you survive the war.
Your boat.
Is obsolete, even when brand new. It has not made many advances since the end of 1918. Primarily must travel on the surface in order to make any gains. Speed, without any improvements to the engines, is rarely faster than 17 knots. Multiply knots by 1.4 to get kilometers per hour, which is about 23.8 in this case. Now compare 24 km distance to the vastness of the Atlantic and you can instantly see what kind of a disadvantage this is. Now lets' try the underwater speed. 7 kts = 9.8 km per hour. We have golf carts that go faster than this. Your bicycle can go faster than this, hell, even a dog sledding team running the Itadtrod race can go faster.
One of the big problems became that the merchant ships themselves were able to make faster speeds, slower when the weather was bad, but, the U-boats became too slow versus the ships they were intended to hunt. The prey got leaner and the U-boat (lion) got fatter, to put in another parlance.
To start with, stay on the surface whenever possible. Fight on the surface, whenever possible. Take advantage of your higher diesel output. If your target can't shoot back, and conditions favor it, attack with the surface weapons (they cost less per shot than a torpedo, and war is expensive, even to a dictatorship).
Only dive to keep the element of surprise. Experience will teach when is the best time to keep stealth. Usually after the target spots you, it will start taking zig-zag actions. Unless or until they spot you, they should go on sailing innocently.
Later in the war, as aircraft and radar sets become more plentiful and efficient, you will have to spend most of your time in transit underwater. If you'll refer back to the pitiful maximum of 10km per hour, you can see how convoys can get away with ease.
You come up only to recharge your batteries. Man the AA guns any chance you get, they may be the only thing that can buy you enough time to crash dive.
If possible, turn your boat into the windward side of the attacking aircraft. The plane gets too much wind on the wing as it banks, and it's forced outward. Doesn't make that much difference, but the U-boat needs every inch of space it can get. Literally.
If forced to dive in proximity of destroyers, evasion will depend on several factors.
Firstly, the shallow waters of the English channel will provide adequate protection from ASDIC detection or passive listening systems, like the hydrophones, due to the fast currents that flow through there. Anything up to 12 knots. All that rushing water disturbs the sensors and makes them inaccurate. Sweep wires or drag lines will probably be used at that point, and those should still work just fine. Too bad. The North sea is a little bit different. Because the water and ocean currents are more diffuse, and not being forced through a channel, ASDIC and hydrophones work well enough.
There, often times, a U-boat's best defense (if they could not run away), was to sit on the ocean floor, turn off all non-essential machines and electrical equipment, and stay as quiet as possible, in the hopes that the Tommies above will lose interest and leave, or mistake the U-boat for an unusual rock formation, or maybe a sunken trawler, but either way, biding time and hoping for them to 'go away' is a last resort.
And if they *do* score a hit, it could break open a fuel bunker (those saddle tanks on the sides), releasing their contents back to the surface. And an oil slick is unmistakable evidence of a direct hit. If that happens, they will never go away until your air runs out. If that happens you have only two options. Choke to death on carbon dioxide poisoning, or, alles ausblassen, and blow ballast to emergency surface. If they did things correctly, you *may* get a chance to surrender, before they blow you to pieces with their naval artillery, as they were just sitting there, waiting for you. It's not cool to be *that* popular.
If you are fighting in deep water, at the beginning, you have the advantage of depth. In 1939 to about 1942, like Jan. 1942, the greatest depth a wasserbom could drop to was about 498 feet. By staying under that, the U-boat was relatively safe. The surface attackers can hear you, they can ping you, but they can't *reach* you. It was like in the Pacific. The Japanese could rarely hit US submarines because they simply did not set their charges deeply enough. One careless comment from a US politician changed all that though...
In any case, by 1942, do not think that depth will protect you. Only not being in the area of depth charges will be effective at 'not getting sunk'.
Going to silent running only works on the passive systems, if they hit you with the active systems, there pretty much is nothing you can do about it.
Tricks there include changing depth, going deeper, or shallower, hit full speed when you hear the splashes, try to jink left or right, depending (here I like to use exterior view). Hit silent running again after the first few charges go off because those underwater blasts cause big bursts of static in the earphones. Their own weapons provide the cover for you to hide behind.
If you are being attacked by more than one destroyer, the odds are very much not in your favor. If the Hunter-Killer group contains more than 3, the odds are very much that you will not get away. When using depth charges, the attacking destroyer must move quickly, or else they will get hit by the water column when the charge goes off. Going over 13 knots messes up most ASDIC sets, so the attack run makes a blind spot for you to hide in. Unfortunately, when more ships are attacking, the others go just fast enough to ping you, and radio that information back to the attacking ship. They draw a net around you that you simply cannot out run.
To further reduce the U-boat's chances, the Allies developed the 'hedgehog', a device for throwing depth charges in a forward, eliptical pattern, ahead of the attacking ship. This served two purposes. Firstly, it cut off any dash to the left or right, once the attack run had begun, and secondly, the charges only detonated when they made contact with the hull, which meant, fewer blind spots to hide in. Contact was not lost when explosions were heard. Which thirdly made the U-boat easier to kill. Because they know exactly where you are. You think you are hiding, but, you are not.
Nowhere else is the axiom "speed is life" more applicable than in the U-boat war. The boats simply were not fast enough. Some attempt was made to correct this defect, what with the Type-21s and 23s , but it was too little too late.
Above all, try to keep going. The only times you should be 'all stopped' are when you are conducting a search and destruction of contraband, when you are on the bottom, hoping against all hope that your attackers will go away, or when you are dockside, being repaired or fitted out.
Enjoy your new career, and your spiffy white U-boat command cap option, and rest assured, that 8 out of every 10 U-boats failed to return from patrol...
Schroeder
04-15-15, 01:59 PM
1 knot = 1.852 km ;)
1 knot = 1.852 km ;)
:arrgh!:
1 knot = 1.852 km ;)... per hour! :know:
... per hour! :know:
:salute:
Schroeder
04-15-15, 03:48 PM
... per hour! :know:
Hey, I'm the smartass here!:stare:
Schroeder
04-15-15, 04:16 PM
Knot this time. :O:
:wah::wah:
:D
"Be more aggressive!" -BdU
Gunnarr
04-16-15, 01:14 AM
Hello !
Thank you all for your replies, this will help a TON !
Time to hunt :arrgh!:
and avoid the english channel :haha:
Gunnarr
04-16-15, 01:36 AM
Oh I forgot a question that came up while reading these replies:
When I try to get a person on the AA gun or more often the Deck Gun, it does not allow me to have people on the watch. Why is this??
Like, when I try to put people on all those places it does not let me
Also, one of my officers doesnt seem to want to go to the watch, he always sits in the quarters. I have to manually move him to the watch every time I surface, even though he has watchman qualification. (By the way is there any easier way to move the crew besides dragging every one of them? Takes forever to fill a repair team that way)
Another thing, I notice my mouse is very sensitive when in the 3D world, making controlling AA gun impossible. Is it just the problem of the resolution, or is there any way to make this better? On the map it is okay, but even on the periscope, it is easy to do a 360 faster than a human could turn around ....
oh another question! Is there any way to see what kind of cargo was being held or how many people were on a ship that you sunk? I mean, I know it is impossible for someone to realistically know, but is there anything in the Commander mod or anything that will just make things up for you ?
I can answer some of those...
It will not let you man the AA or deck guns and the watch crew to prevent unnecessary casualties, i.e., the less crew on deck when shells are flying, the better.
The lazy watch officer is a bug. You pretty much have to keep dragging him up there every time.
To move crew quickly, double click on the empty compartment, and it will instantly fill with as many as it takes to be efficient. you can also left click on the destination compartment, and right click on the compartment you want to take them from, and it will fill up that way too.
I'm not sure how to slow your graphics to a more manageable level.
Gunnarr
04-16-15, 03:24 AM
ahh!! thank you! that is all helpful
banryu79
04-16-15, 04:42 AM
About your "mouse speed issue" in the 3D environment, I do not know the cause. But you better know this: if you keep the CTRL key pressed while you move the mouse around then the 'camera view' will move slower and if you instead keep the SHIFT key pressed the 'camera view' will move faster (I imagine you do not need the latter).
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