Hydrophone hunting

[redsolo]

Im still playing around early -40s and most of my patrols go outside the east coast of britain, where I tend to never find any good fishes to catch. So when I arrive at my patrol area, I need a way to find the fishes.

Im curious if anyone has a better approach on finding the ships than what I do currently. That is to be on the surface for 2 hours, dive down to 20m below and use the hydrophone to find anyone. If I find anything I go back up to the surface, try to get a good course against the found target and drive for 20mins. Then I dive down to 20m again, and try to pinpoint it using the hydrophone, which I repeat until I either find it or lose it. Then I go back to the 2 hours shifts. Any ideas or suggetions would be nice, and perhaps an explaination on how they really did it!

BTW, how far away ships can I pick up with the hydrophone. Note Im still using the IIA with the default hydrophone, the darn BDU hasnt shipped me the new subs yet. I guess they must have found my records of joyriding the subs when going home. :(

[HEMISENT]

I believe the default max hydrophone distance is 34km but you've really got to be paying attention to begin to hear ship sounds at that distance.
All stop, Hydrophone volume turned up etc.

[jasondef]

From the wiki:

Hydrophones are, in essence, underwater microphones. They allow you to detect targets from approximately 20km away. In order to use the hydrophones, your sub must be submerged. Note that your hydrophone range is affected by several factors:

* Speed of the U-Boat - Ideally, you should be running at Ahead Slow or even All Stop to maximise your hydrophone range.
* Depth of the U-Boat - Ideally, you should be between periscope deep (11-12 meters) and 25 meters; but also you can obtain best results at 50 meters & 70 meters; maybe thermal layers?

Everyone complains about the lack of prey in the assigned patrol zones. Most will say to do your 24 hours in your assigned patrol zone, then go to one of the hunting grounds described in the wiki to use up the rest of your torps:

http://www.communitymanuals.com/shiii/index.php?title=Hunting_Grounds

Although this may not apply to the type II with its limited range, but a couple more patrols and the type VII will become available. Also transferring flotillas can open up new U-boats to upgrade to, different flotillas will accomodate different U-Boats.

[Heibges]

It really depends how you like to play the game.

If you are going for historical realism I would advise against overusing the hydrophones.

From the Uboat Commanders Handbook, and other first hand sources it seems that the uboats spotted the vast majority of their contacts.

Just doing soundchecks general at dawn and dusk, and remaining submerged in poor visibility will give you spot on realistic careers. Well realistic in that you can get results like the top 100 Aces, but not double Kretchmer's tonnage or anything. In 30% of your patrols, you may not see anything.

But certainly, if you just want to sink as many ships as possible, using the hydrophones is the key.

[Dantenoc]

Using the hydrophones in the way you describe is a good tactic, but really a pain in the butt to do. Specially since you have to manually put the watch-officer back on to his post every time you resurface. Even more so, doing the technique you describe yields realy good results only when you man the hydrophone yourself, which makes for a lot of micromanagement.

Best bet is to stay on the surface during day light hours and have your watch crew detect the enemy with their Mark I eye balls, and submerge ahead slow at night.

Or course, if you really want to bag A LOT of tonnage learn to take advantage of the radio contacts that your receive through the nav-map. Those are your real source of prey. To learn more of this, try the wiki, or try this link:
http://subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=47980&highlight=clarens+revised

[raymond6751]

Wouldn't it be great if they had taken one idea from an old game called Up Periscope? In that game you would get the remark from lookouts "Smoke on the horizon sir, bearing..."

That is realism!

So, without that, make sure your bridge crew are the best men, and keep a good one on those hydrophones. (Yourself, if you can stand it)

If you make notes about where the reported sightings are, and where you contacted ships. These locations probably are on a path used frequently - so go there often.

[Dantenoc]

Wouldn't it be great if they had taken one idea from an old game called Up Periscope? In that game you would get the remark from lookouts "Smoke on the horizon sir, bearing..."

Actually the "Ship detected" message is an all-catch frase meant to include such sightings as the one you describe. However, they're not very good at it, and in good weather you can personaly see a lot farther than they can.... however, at night they'll teach you a thing or two about visual detection :o

[redsolo]

Or course, if you really want to bag A LOT of tonnage learn to take advantage of the radio contacts that your receive through the nav-map. Those are your real source of prey. To learn more of this, try the wiki, or try this link:
http://subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=47980&highlight=clarens+revised

That is what I also do, but on my last two patrols outside east coast of england, I got 3 contacts. One of them was a c2 from germany (outside denmark), other than that it is way quiet on the eastern front.

So is the hydrophone not realistic? (If I listen in and give my overworked sonar-guy some slack). Is it too good?