Usually U-Boat captains were firing salvos to compencate for inacuracies in the solution and the changes of the ship's course. Usually big ships took a couple of torpedoes to go down and smaller ones only one or even a few rounds from the deck gun. In the book 'Iron Coffins' they talk about 1-2 torpedoes per target depending on how big it was. Usually the salvo was between 2-4 torpedoes depending on the distance from the target and the target's speed. Generaly speaking though GWX has a quite ballanced damage model.

Maybe you're right, but how come then the big tonnage sank? :)

Maybe now it's the AI that should be improved significantly? For example the merchants shold alter their course immediately and start running away when they spot an u-boot. What they actually do is just aiming the lights on you and zig-zagink, and that is, from my experience, much to little to make the Kaleun nervous.

As far as setting the depth at 15-16 meters, this I think is one of the biggest flaws I've heard from GWX players. If the boat rises at all at slow speeds, it should keep on rising, not just a couple of meters. the point is not to use silent running at periscope depth.

In this respect NYGM's 'Anti-Hummingbird Mod' is much more realistic.

@ von mummet not much else a merchant could do tbh. even at full speed a little ol merchant couldnt outrun a u-boat

True, but keeping his stern to you makes you have to work harder for the shot. That was very frustrating (and a lot of fun) in SHI.

Who said that U-Boats were scoring huge tonnage? Kapitan zur See Wolfgang Luth scored 226,671 tons in 16 patrols which gives an average of 14000 tons per patrol, and we're talking about the second best U-Boat Captain of the war. Early in the war where most of the high tonnage was achieved loads of ships were sunk by gun fire as well. In general though the amount of tonnage we score in SH3/GWX is totally unrealistic as any commander would not score 40, 50 or even 60000 tons in each patrol, and I am not talking about sharing targets in convoys, targets that got damaged but not destroyed, unsuccesfull attacks etc.

Also on the question of how many torpedoes they were firing on large ships, this is what I found in uboat.net:
Empress of Britain
Steam passenger ship 42.348 tons
On 28 October, two of three torpedoes fired by U-32, which followed the convoy for almost 24 hours, struck the Empress of Britain and sank her northwest of Bloody Foreland, Co. Donegal. 25 crew members and 20 passengers were lost.

Strathallan
Troop transport 23.722 tons
At 02.23 hours on 21 Dec, 1942, U-562 fired a spread of four torpedoes at the convoy KMF-5 about 40 miles north of Oran and heard two detonations after 65 seconds and another after 5 minutes 50 seconds. However, only the ship of the convoy commodore, the Strathallan (Master John Henry Biggs CBE), was hit by one torpedo which struck on port side in the engine room. The explosion killed two engineer officers and two Indian crewmen on watch below, damaged the bulkhead separating the engine and boiler rooms and fractured a tank causing oil to enter the boiler room. The ship immediately developed a 15° list to port and the master ordered the nurses and troops to abandon ship in calm seas in the four motor boats, 16 lifeboats and rafts. All got away, except one lifeboat that had been damaged by the explosion and another that could not be launched due to the list. After it became clear that the ship would not sink fast, the evacuation was stopped and the troops ordered to the starboard side to help the stability. The about 1300 survivors in the boats and on rafts were picked up in the morning by HMS Verity (D 63) (Lt J.C. Rushbrooke DSC) and taken to Oran.

Orcades
Troop transport 23.456 tons
At 10.28 hours on 10 Oct, 1942, the unescorted Orcades (Master Charles Fox) was torpedoed by U-172 about 280 miles northwest of Capetown. The U-boat had to fire five more torpedoes at 10.45, 10.54 (a dud), 12.49, 12.50 and 12.54 hours until the ship sank at 13.00 hours. 28 crew members, two gunners and 18 passengers were lost. The master, 289 crew members, 34 gunners and 693 passengers were picked up by the Polish merchant Narwik (Master Zawarda) and landed at Capetown on 12 October.

Terje Viken
Whale factory ship 20.638 tons
At 05.05 hours on 7 Mar, 1941, Terje Viken (Master O. Borchgrevink) in convoy OB-293 was hit by two torpedoes southeast of Iceland. This must have been U-47 (Prien), which is reported missing since this attack. At 05.50 hours, the ship was missed by a spread of three torpedoes from U-70 (Matz), but at the same time U-99 fired a torpedo that hit on the port side and the crew abandoned ship. Later a part of the crew reboarded the ship and tried to save her, but she capsized at 18.55 hours. On 14 March, the wreck was scuttled by gunfire of a British salvage tug. Two crew members were lost. The master, 99 crew members and five gunners were picked up by HMS Hurricane (H 06) (LtCdr H.C. Simms) and landed at Greenock. At the time of her loss, the Terje Viken had been the largest whaling factory ship in the world.

Duchess of Atholl
Steam passenger ship 20.119 tons
At 08.19 hours on 10 Oct, 1942, the unescorted Duchess of Atholl (Master Arthur Henry Allinson Moore) was hit by one of two torpedoes fired by U-178 about 200 miles east-northeast of Ascension. At 08.37 hours, a second spread of two torpedoes were fired of which one hit. Another torpedo fired at 09.18 hours missed, but a coup de grâce fired three minutes later struck. The vessel sank slowly until finally disappearing at 11.25 hours.

I think it proves the point. The list is really huge but they all follow the same trend. A salvo was fired, some torpedoes missed and usually between 1-3 hits did the job.

Sorry, I was not precise enough. :) I meant:
Maybe you're right [that 1-2 torpedoes were enough for sinking a ship], but how come then the big tonnage sank [in the game by us, who try to imitate the Kaleuns, who were not this much successful]?

PS Now it seems to me that I made it even harder to understand. It was a response to "Generaly speaking though GWX has a quite ballanced damage model." Never mind my blabling, I think me myself don't know what I meant. Must go have a large slip... after I finish my patrol. :D

OK as far as the game in concerned my suggestion on high tonage is:
1. Fire only one torpedo on the merchant and follow it around. Wait and see if it sinks. If not surface and use your deck gun. Usually 10-15 rounds will do the trick.
2. Aim at critical areas (like ammo bunkers or engine rooms) if it doesn't work use your deck gun.
3. Be lucky enough to encounter big ships, as with tramp steamers and small merchants you need to sink about 20 to score just 24000 tons.

Obviously these suggestions depend on the particular situation you find yourself in. If you're attacking a heavily escorted convoy you cannot surface and use your deck gun, so you might want to use more torpedoes per target to make sure you get the kill. This is a double edged sword though. I had attacked a convoy and sunk 6 ships while firing 12 torpedoes without any misses. Some ships got more than one to go down (as I couldn't afford to wait) some just exploded with just one hit. On the other hand I have attacked a convoy, sunk 4 tankers with four torpedoes, but as I said before they were well aimed and lucky shots.

how do u know where the ammo bunkers are etc etc?

Usually ammo bunkers are below the gun turrets. Also if you fire at the engine rooms or the fuel tank you have a large chance of scoring a critical hit. You can use this chart http://files.filefront.com/shipchart.../fileinfo.html to guide you. Be careful though as this is accurate for the stock SH3 and not for GWX. If you use it as an indication and you experiment a bit you will identify the critical areas yourself, like a real captain would do;) . The only hint I can give you is to aim under the first set of masts (from the bow) when you see a Pyro ship, and under the front gun turret of the Auxiliary Cruiser. 9 times out of 10 you will see huge fireworks.

so to get a fish to go to a specific point on a ship dont use the lock key? just aim where you want it to go?

Yep that's the trick. Don't press L (lock the cross of your scope) and fire when the part of the ship you want passes in front of the cross. Basically what you need to do is:
1. Position your boat in the attack course.
2. Identify the target
3. Open torpedo tubes (very important)
4. Point your periscope to the path of the target and make sure the gyro angle is really small (around 0deg give or take 5deg max)
5. Calculate the solution
6. When the area of the ship you want to hit passes in front of the scope cross fire
7. Sit back and watch the fireworks;) :D :up:

calculate solution lol i dont use manual targeting i tried that the other day missed by a country mile:nope:
i use auto targeting. i cant even plot an intercept course, i have tried to copy what other people have been doing just cant do it.

My workaround for the buyoancy (who creates words like this one, duh :doh:) is like this:

In the data/submarines folder there are subfolders for each sub, in each is a cfg-file. Open it with wordpad and change the line

"PeriscopeDepth=12,5;meters" to

"PeriscopeDepth=14;meters".

This is high enough to let you see something through the scope at speeds higher than 2 knots and deep enough to float up only to 12m at speeds of 2 kn or lower, even standstill. Tested with types VII and IX and it works just fine.

When I mean identify the target and calculate the solution I meant either you do it manually or you ask your wepons officer to do it for you. i don't use manual targeting as well. Can't be bothered with all the calculations actually:oops: