Yeah, 2 hours is just totally random really. It's enough time make some progress but not too long to feel like I missed something.

Btw, I always disliked the IX boats. TOO BIG! :) Give me the sleek and sexy VIIs any day.

Armed Merchant Cruiser, I found one earlier, but it wasn't easy.

Couldn't find any aircraft carriers either so i went to Plymouth and sunk one there, it didn't count :)

I hear ya - the VII's are much more manoeuvrable - the IX's carry so much more fuel and ammo though:03:

The AMC's show up as warships on the hydrophone , but look like passenger liners when you eyeball them.

I believe they spawn around the Loch Ewe area and head up to Iceland.

I found my hydrophone can pick up single merchants at 40 km.... ( i have to use it myself as my hydrophone operator is useless and says "No contacts". But i can hear a very faint noise).
I found the the visual range (depending on weather and if its day or night) is at best 7 - 10 km.

The way i play the game:-

Set engine speed to ahead slow, until out of sub pen.
Set speed to ahead standard and use rudder to steer.
Steer boat out to sea. until i cant see any other ships. i keep time compression at x1 for this.

Set speed to Ahead full and then I go to map and set coarse to my mission objective, set time compression to x256. And ocasionaly i'll set time compression to x1, then dive to 20 meters to make a hydrophone sweep. I do this where i think i might find ships (eg. Polish ships in the Baltic Sea (Ost see)). Then surface and advance time compression to x256 again.

When i get to my mission objective I'll set up a search pattern and use time compression max of x64. and every 1hrs ill set TC to x1 and dive to 20 meters to listen with hydrophone.

Once i find a target with hydropnones, ill then use time compression no higher than x32 and take reading every 15mins to plot its corse and speed etc.

When im in possion to fire torps, ill keep time compression at x1, until im away from any ASW ships

I play at 100% realism and found this to be the best method (I like playing this way).

Good Hunting :salute:

provided that shes merchant ship. DD/DE dont count..:nope:

Don't you run out of fuel?

You're in a u-boat. You're not supposed to sink warships, you're supposed to evade them. :DL

Ah I see. That explains all that tracer fire I saw from a large merchant ship when I surfaced to finish it off with my deck gun. In the end I decided to manoeuvre myself aft of the ship to finish her off, that seemed to lessen the enemy fire coming at me.

Luckily, no one on my boat was injured :)

My Sonarman appears to be a waste of space. Despite having upgraded his passive abilities that improve detection almost to max, I very rarely get a contact reported by him. Can I not just get rid of him and turn his cubicle into a multimedia room with a 30-inch plasma TV, Playstation and Xbox360? That should keep the crew morale high all the time ;)

Yeah i found that out the hard way, although i really should have read my orders properly. It DID say to sink "Merchant" shipping :D

I'm only up to 11 september 1939, and my mission is British Coastal Waters, so fuel isnt an issue (fuel down to 80% when i reached my patrol zone). When i start patroling the atlantic, then fuel may become an issue, so a lower speed may be needed to conserve fuel.

I'm concerned about my own watch crew's visual detection capabilities.

It seems like when I'm in time compression, ships aren't sighted until they're literally on top of me, usually somewhere around 7-8km. It's a pain in the butt because I don't have the time to get into a perfect firing position ahead of time and always seem to have to chase them down.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this normal? Is it because of time compression?

I may be wrong but could this be due to the game not switching down to time compression 1 immediately upon visual contact? I suspect there's a slight delay that results in the contact being far closer than you'd want it to be once you've dropped out of TC.

That's what I'm wondering. If that's the case, it kinda sucks because I'm not going to traverse the entire Atlantic at 32x. I don't have that kind of time. :DL

By default if you get a hydrophone contact you'll drop to 32x, if you visually spot something you'll drop to 8x or 1x.

The main thing with time compression is to not go above 1024x if you can help it. Anything faster and you will miss things since by the time you've detected something it's well past you.