Wow, fun game! Couple newbie questions....

[mwe1967]

Wow what a cool game. Would have bought it a lot sooner except it was only for sale in stores on a DVD ROM and I don't have one in the computer! But just happened to see it for sale on download a couple days ago. Reminds me of years ago with the old Silent Service game. I wish I didn't have to be the Germans though, would be nice to see this game re-created as an American sub hunting Japanese shipping.

Anyways couple of newibe questions, sorry if they have already been covered...

How am I detecting these ships that are so FAR away? Every now and then one will pop up on the navigation map. Can the guys really see that far?? I mean these things are thousands of meters away. I don't have any sound contact for them and I head for them and they sometimes they disappear but sometimes I see them again a little closer.

How can I tell the depth of the water I'm in? A couple times I tried to dive deeper to avoid an enemy ship and I start taking damage but I don't know if it was from scraping the bottom or from depth charges. I've seen when he says "depth charges in the water" but this time he didn't say anything.

I'm still playing on pretty low realism, not even going to try the manual targeting yet. I still can't hit the easy way hardly, heh....

[Sulikate]

How can I tell the depth of the water I'm in? A couple times I tried to dive deeper to avoid an enemy ship and I start taking damage but I don't know if it was from scraping the bottom or from depth charges. I've seen when he says "depth charges in the water" but this time he didn't say anything.

You can tell the depth by selecting the navigator, and "asking" him the depth. Beware that, as the navigator will send a ping to tell the depth, it may give away your position.

[Sulikate]

damn, what happened to my avatar? :cry:

[panthercules]

How am I detecting these ships that are so FAR away? Every now and then one will pop up on the navigation map. Can the guys really see that far?? I mean these things are thousands of meters away. I don't have any sound contact for them and I head for them and they sometimes they disappear but sometimes I see them again a little closer. ....

These are probably sightings based upon radio intercepts (your radio operator can sometimes detect transmissions from ships - merchant ships and even warships sometimes were often sloppy in radio discipline or just had to communicate with HQ for some reason or another), or sometimes they are radioed to you by other u-boats or by BdU - while you occasionally do get sighting reports that show up in your radio message log, these are usually reserved for major convoy or task force sighting reports - to keep from clogging up your radio message log these routine single ship sighting reports don't show up there but simply show up as icons on your nav map.


How can I tell the depth of the water I'm in? A couple times I tried to dive deeper to avoid an enemy ship and I start taking damage but I don't know if it was from scraping the bottom or from depth charges. I've seen when he says "depth charges in the water" but this time he didn't say anything.....

You can get a pretty good idea from the color shadings on the nav map, once you get some experience with it. If you're not clearly in deep water, you may want to ask for a depth report, which does cause a ping to go out that can be heard by nearby enemies. While pinging for your depth under keel may not be a good idea if you haven't already been detected and there might be enemy escorts around, there really isn't much problem doing it when already under attack - they know you're there and know roughly where you are, so it shouldn't really hurt to do it at that point and sure beats plowing into the bottom.

I always ping just after ordering a crash dive, to determine whether I have enough depth or have to quickly order the boat to level off at a shallower depth, plus any time I dive after any of my torpedos strike home, since I figure they're gonna figure out there's a sub around at that point.

Good luck and good hunting!

[Takeda Shingen]

These are probably sightings based upon radio intercepts (your radio operator can sometimes detect transmissions from ships - merchant ships and even warships sometimes were often sloppy in radio discipline or just had to communicate with HQ for some reason or another), or sometimes they are radioed to you by other u-boats or by BdU - while you occasionally do get sighting reports that show up in your radio message log, these are usually reserved for major convoy or task force sighting reports - to keep from clogging up your radio message log these routine single ship sighting reports don't show up there but simply show up as icons on your nav map.

Yes, Beobachtungs-Dienst (B-Dienst) was the German radio interception branch that dealt with tracking convoys and sailings at sea. The information attained by B-Dienst would be passed on the Uboats regularly.

[mwe1967]

Ok thanks for the help all! I have seen the navigation map shaded different colors although it's really hard to see. I suspected that might be depth related color shades. I didn't get much documentation with the download purchase, just a pdf file of the manual but it doesn't seem really in-depth.

Also I lost my first crewman! He was manning the AA gun and got hit by fighters. He turned red and I immediately moved him to quarters and I had one medic in quarters with him. Does he automatically try to heal him? A few minutes later I got a message that a man on deck was down or something like that. It didn't say he was dead so I was hoping he was being healed but after saving to quit I saw it said I lost one sailor. :(

[Kalach]

If they're completely red, they are dead. If they just have a red line around them they are wounded. Your medic is able to make a wounded sailor usable again, but they wont die if you dont have a medic. Also, if you heal them they don't get their wound badge.

[jasondef]

With the realism that you're using you can also just use your external view with the game paused if you want to get a look under the sub before you have to do a crash dive just to make sure you have enough depth to not hit bottom. I often use the crash dive command if I need to get off of the surface in a hurry, then hopefully have enough time to slow down and give the periscope depth command or whatever depth I require before I hit bottom if I'm in the shallows. This way you won't ping for depth and risk giving away your position. This is slightly a cheat I guess, but heck I'm still a newbie, still in 1940 in my first campaign, so I let myself get away with it for now.

And after reading many posts on the subject and from my own short experience, everyone mainly loses a crew member from being an AA flak gunner. After determining that shooting down planes was a real weak spot on my crew, I gave a promotion and several medals to my newly designated flak officer, only to lose him on the very next patrol at the first sighting of an aircraft, essentially wasting all that nice hardware and promotion that I could've used elsewhere. And I was sad he died, of course. Anyway, that's my first lesson, be careful making your flak gunner a superman, at least early on, because they sometimes seem to have short life spans! Of course I am still using the weak ass flak gun on a VII-B, though with the double barrel upgrade, yet my flak gunner specialists so far can barely hit anything it seems. Maybe with the nicer flak gun setups with the VII-C and beyond it gets a lot better and you can have a suped up flak specialist that will blow anything out of the sky before they get too close to harm him, but I'm not at that point yet.