I stick around my zone and, if nothing shows up for a while, adjacent grids. If a convoy or task force pops up nearby I'll go after it (if it's less than 7-8 hours travel to intercept it) before returning to my grid. Usually I'll use most of my VIIB's torps in one or two runs against a convoy though, so often I'll just set course for home after that.

If nothing at all shows up for a week or three, on the way home I'll drop by somewhere I can expect ships. Wouldn't want the men to come home empty handed. :arrgh!:

I tend to do my travelling as close to known trade routes as possible. If I'm based in Lorient or St Nazaire and I'm assigned let's say west of Freetown, I'll head out west from base and then turn south in line with the convoy/merchant routes heading north/south. I travel mainly surfaced but dive down to 40m at ahead slow 2 hours before sunrise or sunset and surface again 2 hours after, most of my contacts are by sight though if I'm honest. I sometimes don't even make it to my grid if I find a juicy convoy to harass but if I do, I'll stay there for 3 days travelling a zig zag pattern to cover the whole grid, staying submerged for the majority of time during the day and surfacing to recharge at night.

If it's fruitful, I'll maybe stay another 3 days and see what happens, otherwise I'll line up on another trade route and start heading north again towards home. In my VIIC this was normally enough to make my patrols last around 4 weeks to a month but as low as 7 days occasionally if I hit a large convoy west of France (only happened twice though..).

Now I'm in my shiny new IXC in January 1942 and finished my first patrol just west of the Gibralter Strait, out of the air threat and used the same strategy as before for travelling there and back. I didn't find one convoy and had to make do with small to medium single merchants including a darn Passenger Cargo that took 3 eels because I couldn't be bothered to wait around..lol.

When I next head out, I'll probably be setting myself up for my part in Operation Drumbeat so I'll be travelling along the trade routes to and from New York until I hit my grid off the coast. Looking forward to finding some unescorted tankers and other big tonnage belonging to those unsuspecting yanks. My planned patrol time will be around 6 weeks with the bigger boot. I just hope my first patrol wasn't a sign of things to come....

WELCOME ABOARD!:sunny:

Well yesterday i sailed for my patrol grid, right infront of the coast of Miami, with my type IXC i got there after about 23 days sailing at a speed of 9knots. ( i was trying to save alot of fuel so i could stay there long )
After that i patroled around there for a bit i mean only 1/3 of my fuel was gone, so i could use another 3th of it to stay there, i sunk 5 tankers with 6 torps, i usualy don't waste more then 1 on a small one and 2 on a large target. After that my fuel was running out so i sailed back taking me another 23 days to get back. In total i stayed out for about 76 days wich is ( for me ) a long patrol :p

If nothing shows up after 2 days of a race track run...I start drinking.

In first line of course looking after Ships in my ordered Patrol Grid.:DL
But when i'm on my way to the PQ** i love it to hear Gramophone and read a book.
Mostly with 512 TC.
When i've nothing to read 1024 TC, or get something to eat.
When i play an Patrol, then i play the whole Patrol!
Sometimes i sit 4-6 hours in front of my screen, but it's worth it.:cool:

Yup, books, food, and Jimbuna's gramophone tracks :up:

all intersting replies .. thanks. I now like to patrol a lot longer but i think the mediteranean is a bit boring , i got a lot miore action in the atlantic . I seem to be forever attacking just merchants .
Transfer time i think...

Try hiting the straits of Gibralter, it seems every time I go down there I don't have to wait long for a convoy to show up. As for your target availability, merchants are likely to be your most common target as there were vastly more merchant and freight ships than war ships in the seas then; still is that way now. On top of that you are more likely to sink a non-war ship beacouse they aren't biult to take abuse like a war ship is.

I'm on my second patrol with my 1940 career. I patrolled a grid northwest of Lisbon for 24 hours on my first patrol – no contacts – then tried to follow a convoy that must have kept zig-zagging – no contacts again.

Then I got assigned to AM34 for my second patrol out of St. Nazaire, so naturally I opted to head through the Irish Seas and past the Hebrides. Just east of Dublin, I got notification of a convoy and successfully plotted an intercept course by use of the compass and speed estimation (pretty exciting for me, since I've only been playing the game for two days). So I guess you could say I'm one of those who won't pass up a convoy if it comes right to him.

I nailed a merchant vessel on the far side of the convoy and dove to 94 metres, depth under keel 10. Spent two hours evading destroyers, but took no damage and made my way northwards running silent and bolting at 45 degree angles every time I heard splashes.

This game is amazing. The first day I played I was using the external view, but now I've gotten so good at visualizing the movements of the destroyers based on the hydrophone operator's reports that I don't bother. I stick to the command room view, and occasionally peek over my navigator's shoulder.

This makes me wonder something though – in terms of simulating being a Kaleun (not simulating every operation of a sub) – would you say it's more or less realistic to have the weapons officer plot the solution based on information you give him from the notepad than it is for you, the Kaleun, to go and do all the TDC stuff manually?

I'm of two minds on this – for one, the notepad system is a bit unrealistic, but then if you were to measure range without the stadimeter, the game has no way for you to pass that independently-gathered info on to the weapons officer. I want to learn how to do all this stuff myself, and I've read Wazoo's page about charting and solutions, but at the moment, I'm happy to just be the Kaleun (though sometimes the desire to blast a patrol boat to bits with the 88 is too great to resist, I admit).

What do you guys like to do with regards to being the Kaleun / being every officer? How do you divide it up? I personally love passing information on to my capable crew and directing the approach, escape, and target selection. That feels nice and Kaleun-like to me, but I suspect I'm in the minority as most here are a bit more hardcore. I'm just a newb, though. Give it a week or two and I'm sure I'll be screwing up firing solutions myself again.

Sorry for the wall of text. I'm just new and excited as all hell about this game!

I'm lazy; I use the Weps to give me the info. Some folks will tell you it's more realistic, as the captain didn't do everything by himself. This is true, but he did focus the periscope and give the info to his team.

The biggest problem is that the WE in the game is perfect. He gives all the information instantly and he never makes a mistake. I offset that in my head by risking being seen - I make a new observation every minute or two even though he'll give me what I need right when I need it.

So of course the final answer is yes and no.:dead:

I offset the weapons officer by being bad at eyeballing angle on bow (often off by as much as 10-15 degrees)! :)

This is already one of my top 10 games of all time. I doubt my system will run SH5, which is a shame.

I like to sink stuff

Not sure I would pin it down to any one thing but alchohol is usually involved.

...i like to make tea or drink a coffee. sometimes i go to the loo or do the vacuuming. on the last patrol i changed the bed sheets and pillow slips - then remembered i needed jam, so got on my bike and cycled to the local shop, while my crew slept it off at 50 meters: ALL STOP. everyone available at rest; it had been very bad weather in the north sea and i didnt see the point in letting the watch crew bash it out up top in the middle of the night, so we dropped to 25 meters and listened for two hours at 1 KNOT circling round...nothing, so sod-it, we stoped and slept. got the Smutje to cook up something good that involved potato's and a lot of bread. everybody was relaxed - no problems.

..then i went cleaning my front windows, straightened the chair cover and folded my towels away, managed to get some washing done too - all my smalls hung up across the front. nobody said anything. then we all had another coffee and sang some songs: Willy Hauer can not play guitar, he got angry when Josef Nekam took the p*** throwing potato's at him as he played his instrument. Nekam said " i hope you play your instrument better for your girlfriend.." Hauer lost it, storming off.

when the windows were done i washed up after dinner - joined Smutje and lent him a hand, dont get chance to speak to him much or many of the crew; but tonight as they filter past my quarters i have a quick chat ask about their families and girlfreinds - may as well, i may not see them much longer.

now i'll shave and then get some sleep - peace, not much out here tonight as things go. but tomorrow we will surface and then roll it all out again.