Watch not seeing ships!

[jason210]

I've been on two patrols recently, both in bad weather, and on both occasions my watch didn't see ships coming at as. Both Destroyers. I had a full green bar on for watch crew, and fog was only medium, sea 15m.

Any ideas what's wrong?

Funnily enough this is 1941, and for the last three patrols I've had the worst weather continously during the patrols. I remember I had bad weather problems during this year on a previous patrol. Seems very odd.

1941 must be one of the dullest years in the game. No upgrades for the type VIIc, bad weather, and enemy is strong enough to be a nuisance and merchants have guns.

[The Avon Lady]

Which SH3 version are you running?

[_alphaBeta_]

From another post:
Sometimes the watch crew will spot contacts that you can barely see. Other times you wonder how they're missing the huge convoy heading right for you.

If the weather is good, the watch crew usually has an edge on you. If it's foggy with limited visibility, you can usually spot things first. If you tracking a target on the surface in bad weather, you may want to stay up there with them.

If you stop underwater with zero propulsion, you have a major edge on the hydropones.
I'm guessing in your case the weather was the determining factor. The watch crew handicap in fog seems a little too much.

[MSpencer]

Time compression will slaughter you. I've run at 256 and a destroyer nearly rammed me while my WO and the watch crew were on deck just looking around at the sights...

[_alphaBeta_]

Yeah, good point about TC. Make sure your frame rate doesn't sink too low with TC. That seems to be a good indication of reaction time.

Frame rate aside though, you still stand a better chance at a low TC.

[oRGy]

I think RuB fixes that. It's the fog (visual) setting in sensors.cfg I believe. Is 0.5, should be 1.0

[jason210]

Version is 1.4b

I was using TC.

Funny thing is I never noticed it before, and I've been playing SHIII for months.

[jason10mm]

In my younger dumber days several patrols before the one I'm on now (I figure a new captain gets pretty salty after 10 patrols :) I tried to infiltrate a convoy in heavy fog. Ships would be 300 meters away and I could not see them. Not just Coastal Merchants, mind you, but C2s and T2s! I could have fired blindly on a bearing, but I kept trying to get a visual and nearly got rammed several tiimes and never got off a shot. After that I stopped convoy hunting in the fog!

I wonder if a successful hit could have triggered panic zig-zags in the ships, leading to lots of collisions?

[_alphaBeta_]

In my younger dumber days several patrols before the one I'm on now (I figure a new captain gets pretty salty after 10 patrols :) I tried to infiltrate a convoy in heavy fog. Ships would be 300 meters away and I could not see them. Not just Coastal Merchants, mind you, but C2s and T2s! I could have fired blindly on a bearing, but I kept trying to get a visual and nearly got rammed several tiimes and never got off a shot. After that I stopped convoy hunting in the fog!

I wonder if a successful hit could have triggered panic zig-zags in the ships, leading to lots of collisions?
No, the ships magically know where they are in relation to one another. Additionally, ship collision is rather difficult the way they have the engine setup. Huge ships can stop on a dime and reverse course rather easily. It looks like they bent the laws of physics to address ships constantly crashing into on another whether there's fog or not.

[jason210]

Just started another patrol in 1941, possibly the last one since it's September. Weather started off ok for the first two days, but it wasn't long before then heavy fog and rough seas kicked in, and stayed with me for the rest of the patrol, making it almost impossible to find targets, and not so difficult for targets to find me. I've been chased by Elco torpedo boats in this - how is that possible? Did they carry sonar?
Also Corvettes and destroyers. Watch have never admitted there was ship there, even when being fired upon.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Respectfully...

I think RuB fixes that. It's the fog (visual) setting in sensors.cfg I believe. Is 0.5, should be 1.0

The "Fog Factor" in RUb is set at 2.0 and is supposed to influence the enemy's ability to spot... not your own crew.

The higher fog factor setting at 2.0 doubles the difficulty the enemy has to spot your sub.

[thasaint]

just got killed off of long island in '42 from a destroyer who wasn't spotted till it was right on top of me firing away, lost with all hands :(

sucks to spend all that time to sail across the atlantic to have this happen

i usually stay submerged if i'm going to use TC in heavy fog (without radar warning that is), but i hadn't realized the fog rolled in

you tend to get TC happy on those long trips across the atlantic to your patrol zone :(


using latest SH3 patch and latest RuB