AOD/SH1/SH2 - What do you do to maintain challenge level?

[The Old Man]

Mark,
Have you play the final year of AOD yet? You will be lucky to survive that is till you get the 21. Traviling through the med is tuff to but once you get there the patrolls are boring. I sank 1 ship in 3 patrols. I have also found the convoy battles in the later years tuff.

SH1 the only way for a challenge is leave the escorts alone unless they damage you. The traffic of this sim has always been overwhelming. I think they did this to keep it from getting boring?

SH3 I have found that unless I install a realistic mod "I forgot who made this but still have it" which make 100 of improvements to it it cheats big time. Aifcraft one shot one kill. Escorts one shot one kill.

Roy

[Hitman]

SH1 the only way for a challenge is leave the escorts alone unless they damage you. The traffic of this sim has always been overwhelming. I think they did this to keep it from getting boring?

My opinion is that this was done not only to keep it from getting boring for novice players, but also because the initial version of the game had time compression limited to 256x :o ... so it could get really boring unless you had lots of targets. And no, there is no mod I know about which reduces that traffic, sadly :( You can however self-impose you certain rules like: 1) Patrol submerged during the day, like real skippers did, and 2) Ignore contacts on map and attack only those you detect yourself (Stay away from the map and be at the control room while crossing around at high TC)

[MarkShot]

Roy,

For AOD, I am only upto the end of 1940. And I admit to reloading once from a save game to bring my sub back from the dead.

Recently, I have started playing the included/download scenarios for AOD and SH1. Originally, I skipped them, but I am learning a lot from them.

Also, I cycle through games and at the moment I am investing some time with SC and staring at BB and NB sonar tracks. :)

[aanker]

Regarding SH I:
... is about SH1 for those who had played it. The game play seems decent. Except for easy to kill escorts
In SH I (PTC) we don't shoot the Escorts due to our RoE's.

You could limit your contacts to every 5th one etc.

You could also try manual navigation and only use the 12 mile map. One of our members wrote the ENOPTC for manual navigation which can be found here:

http://www.subsowespac.org/downloads.shtml
"Current version of the ENOPTC" by Kim Ronhof

It is still in BETA

Art Anker

[PeriscopeDepth]

Or just don't camp out on a single convoy route in SHI. Hit a new one each time after an attack if practical.

[MadMike]

I keep a KTB or war patrol book that pretty much follows SOP for U-boats or US subs.
I believe CB's website had a blackout map download. I resorted to copying pages from an atlas and using that as the basis for navigation (using the coordinates on the map screen to plot movement, quite fun).
Since PA has some limitations, I skip "routining" torpedos every seven days (submerge to unload and then reload tubes simulating maintenance).
Another limitation is that you can't run at radar depth in Pacific Aces, so I cruise on battery power at 8 meters simulating this practice when running radar.
Of course, on Gato and Balao boats the passive sonar could be used while surfaced, although running at very slow speed. There is no ranging, so I don't even worry about it.
There is no PPI display in PA, what I do is zoom the map screen to scale with the sub centered when radar is active.
I haven't used auto TDC for several years, and never plan to. Manual TDC is quite challenging and once you learn it, it makes the game all the more realistic. My most recent patrol I managed to hit a battleship with one fish after firing all ten tubes at a task force (quite frustrating).
Just finished the patrol, sank two sampans with gunfire and hit an armed troopship with a Mk27 (I finished it off with my remaining two shots from deck gun and 40mm)- the deck gun set off a large secondary.
I average about 20,000 tons each patrol (if I'm lucky). My manual TDC skills need some refresher training (estimating target speed).
SH2 and PA are still a blast, I may pick up SH3 in the future (only if they have a US submarine campaign though!).

Yours, Mike

IYAAYAS!