So, where's all the big ships?

[Excalibur Bane]

I've been playing SH3 on and off roughly since it's been released and I have yet to see anything beyond your average destroyer, torpedo boat or tug. Save the static Fiji cruiser in Scapa Flow.

How about you guys? What's the best you've seen? Where's the best hunting spot for juicy warship targets?

All these merchants are beginning to be boring. :zzz:


As much fun as it is to shoot unarmed targets, and all that jazz. :arrgh!:

Well, except the few merchants that do end up arming themselves with deckguns. Not that they are any good with them. They couldn't hit the broadside of a barn at 10 meters. Damned merchants! :damn:

[Cdre Gibs]

Well I find the quickest way to pick a fight is by taking a slow boat to china via the English Channel. Stay on the surface and take on all commer's. If that dont rock ya boat u need a new game!

:lol:

[rogerbo]

Also recomended is the passage from Scapa down to Liverpool, be sure you'r wearing the ruber pants if the timing is right you'll see from Revenge to fiji and Didos alot of action. Oh and switch on the turbo ;)

[Wolfram]

I have found on 2 out 6 patrols using RUb and IUB mods Cruisers in the middle of a convoy (they seem to hug the tankers :hulk: )


- just keep looking they are out there, recall it's a lot of water and limited intel....

:arrgh!:

[Excalibur Bane]

Well I find the quickest way to pick a fight is by taking a slow boat to china via the English Channel. Stay on the surface and take on all commer's. If that dont rock ya boat u need a new game!

:lol:



Heh, Heh.

Last time I tried that, was after I read all these posts of people taking on tugs and beating them with ease with the deckgun, so next patrol I get all cocky and surface in front of an Armed Trawler. Two shots blew my poor VIIB clean out of the water. :rotfl:

[Cdre Gibs]

Funny u should say that, I tend to find that the most accurate gunners always seem to be on those damned Armed Trawlers. Blasted sods never miss ! :lol:

[tluchem]

I've had the best luck finding battleships mostly Revenge between Scapa Flow and Loch Ewe from late '39 into early '40. The task forces seem to hug the coast at the turn to the south during the approach towards the Loch Ewe harbor entrance. This was with an unmodded game with the 1.4b patch.

Best of luck.

[tluchem]

I've had the best luck finding battleships mostly Revenge between Scapa Flow and Loch Ewe from late '39 into early '40. The task forces seem to hug the coast at the turn to the south during the approach towards the Loch Ewe harbor entrance. This was with an unmodded game with the 1.4b patch.

Best of luck.

[scrapser]

You can catch the big ones just outside Gibraltar in the deep water. I'm wrapping up a most excellent patrol right now in November, 1941. I sank a King George there after finishing my 24 hour assigned grid off Africa. I then steamed up to AM51 (I'm in a Type IXC, so I have the range). It was boring there so I headed back south and almost got run over by three Battleships in rough seas (a Revenge and two Nelsons) off the coast of Spain in CG43. I sank them, too.

Now I'm back at Gibraltar ready to ambush another King George and an Illustrious carrier.

scrapser

[kiwi_2005]

You can catch the big ones just outside Gibraltar in the deep water. I'm wrapping up a most excellent patrol right now in November, 1941. I sank a King George there after finishing my 24 hour assigned grid off Africa. I then steamed up to AM51 (I'm in a Type IXC, so I have the range). It was boring there so I headed back south and almost got run over by three Battleships in rough seas (a Revenge and two Nelsons) off the coast of Spain in CG43. I sank them, too.

Now I'm back at Gibraltar ready to ambush another King George and an Illustrious carrier.

Are you playing the stock game or RUB mod? Talk about luck! Ive once got a message of a enemy taskforce in the AM grids but was to far away to attack it. Another time in very rough seas and heavy fog, my sonar detects a ship, many times they turned out to be just small merchants so i couldn't be damned chasing it, plus it was going fast so i thought it must have a escort. i carried on in the opposite direction to search out bigger prey, but decided to use the flyby camera to go search for it and found instead a Carrier! to late, although i tried to chase it but she out did my VIIB at the time. :damn: :damn:

[U-104]

ouch. :nope:

[scrapser]

kiwi_2005,
I'm using the 1.4b patch and a few graphics mods like the nomograph, map icons, ship vulnerability, and improved moon and sky. Nothing that changes the stock games behavior as far as I know.

I'm on my second campaign now and I think my luck is due to knowing where the ships will likely appear and hang around those spots for a few days keeping my ear to the hydrophones. You have to act fast when something's detected naturally and what your initial positions are relative to each other makes a big difference in how much time you have to plan an attack.

The three ships off of Spain however was a complete surprise and since they were directly behind me, all I had to do was match their course. I fired two keel shots at the lead BB (blind in the fog) from my aft tubes, then kept alert to what course changes to make so I could get within visual range of the other two BB's as they passed me at 11 knots and fired keel shots at them from my bow tubes. I crippled two and sank one on the first go around, then finished them off later on.

The rough seas kept the escorts deaf and blind. At least twice one passed right across my bow at less then 200 meters.

scrapser

[Excalibur Bane]

At last, found myself my first capital ship! A Nelson Battleship! Woo hoo!

I snuck into Liverpool, and there was quite an assortment of veseels docked at the docks there. Two Nelson Battelships, 2 Tribal Destroyers, 1 V&W Destroyer and 2 Elco Torpedo Boats. Not a whole lot of room to manuver, given the 20 meter depth roughly.

I came in the entrance and got past the escorts, and was making my way to the first Nelson when the damned thing managed to sink by itself in calm weather, sea like glass in 15 meters of water? :doh:

Sure love to know what the hell happened there. I've seen Elco's and Tugs sink in bad weather with high waves, but never a BB with calm seas, and docked no less. Must have been another U-boat shadowing me. :arrgh!:

Anyway, I managed to crawl along the bottom of the harbor, until I got in a good firing position on the BB. Opened the tubes, let a spread of three T2's fly. Two are direct hits, minimal damage it seemed and the third one just up and vanished. Not quite sure what happened. It never detonated and I don't have duds, kinda hard to miss a stationary, so I doubt it missed.

So, two torpedos didn't really do too much, that's okay. I got plenty for this iron beast. The local escorts all take a cow and flip on their headlights but otherwise don't seem to care because they never come anywhere near the area of the BB and me. I guess the two torpedos must have alarmed the BB itself, a few seconds after I hit it, a starshell is farted out by one of it's aft guns but it otherwise doesn't bother to move. I guess he figured the starshell was enough to scare me off. :lol:

Tubes 1 & 2 are fired again, no spread, just a straight run. Both hit and detonate. First, again, seems to do minimal damage. No visible fires or signs that it's gonna keel over. Second one hit, and the whole thing starts burning. Odd, I thought to myself. :hmm:

So, he doesn't massively explode. He sinks all of 3 meters to the bottom of the harbor floor and I get the kill message. Heh. Oh, well. It's all the same to me. They'll probably raise it in and have ba ck in service in a few weeks, but who cares? BdU is happy, my tonnage is that much better and life goes on.

I make a quick exit from the harbor, apparently the actual sinking of said ship was more disturbing to the harbor patrol then the fact that I was only torpedoing it before. The place is like a shark feeding frenzy. And I'm the damn bait. So I got out of there in a hurry.

So, I've decided on a new mission, with my growing animosity for warships and the general passive nature of merchant vessels, I'm going to go rogue and spend the remainder of my career destroying exclusively warships. Destroyers, Battleships, Carriers, Tugboats, Hell even Elco's will feel my wrath if they get in my path. Hmm. That rhymes. Catchy :)

This is only my third patrol, but I've got upwards of 100,000 tonnage. Beware Destroyers! The hunter has now become the hunted. Muhahaha! :smug:

[GulfFulf]

Yep! :smug:

[capt_frank]

BE38 and BF15 and 13 have been good for task force action for me.