I’m glad to see someone actively interested in this - you and I are of a mind I think with our approach to this game!

I based my SOPs on the KM diving regs for U-boats (at uboatarchive.net) but tailored to the “crew” in WP. We don’t have a Zentralemaat (control room petty officer) as in RL to do the control room work.

One thing to note is Radio would need to be at his post in the radio shack while on the surface. This puts him close to the fwd MBT vent and the planes to quickly open vents and set planes for dive then get back to hydro to get that prepared and get out of the way.

Diving officer mans aft MBT so he can report to Commander that both are open. I have Helm hanging back in the tower so as to keep out of the way in Control room until the dust settles.

Diving officer uses the gap starboard of the scope well going aft to stay out of Nav’s way and comes back port of the well to again avoid Nav who is by then at negative. He should already be aft by the time Nav gets to negative. After Nav blows negative Nav moves aft to MBT in the starboard gap as well.

All should be clear of one another but we really need a group to try and refine these ideas in practice.:yep:

So who else is in?

Hmmm, I'll think more about what you've just written, but re: Radio Officer.

Everyone hears the morse saying a message is coming in, and unless you're in a Wolfpack (at the moment of course) then waiting for a radio message to come in that may never come is boring for the poor guy - so better to have their eyes up top looking for contacts.

Maybe when the DF and aircraft come in, then there's more of a need for keeping them downstairs...

Mmmm lots to consider... I LOVE that!

I tried setting up a group this evening to practice drills and SOP's but I couldn't get more than 3.

Maybe we can try and plan and schedule an hour to so to try all this out?

Thanks for pointing that out about messages, didn’t realize that Radio didn’t need to be down there! That changes things so I need to revisit our ideas in that light later tonight. Some edits to OP to come.....

My concern when I originally wrote it was that the bridge crew wouldn’t be down in time for the flood order, but now I’m wondering if that truly is the case. So I wanted two Crewmembers below to start with, but with the slide down the ladder feature to the control room, that might just work to just keep the diving officer below. In which case I’d have radio go to the forward vents since he has to go forward anyway and Nav to the aft vents then to negative (moving starboard of scope well). He would have to take his depth sounding after flooding though, but at this point shallow depth isn’t much of a concern.

That's where the SOP I posted came from: uboatarchive.net

I just modified them for the game.


Been thinking about communicating with other U-boats in a game, via the wireless, and some way to send position info.


Proposed: Zoom in until the grid square your boat is in fills most of the map.

Then measure from the left side, and then from the bottom. Round up to the nearest hectometer, then combine with the grid square using an x to separate.

In this case, we're in grid AF 5149, 8321m from the left, 2295m from the bottom. Round up/down, this would be the message:

POSxAF5149x83x23

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pict...ictureid=10289

NICE! :Kaleun_Salute:

Great idea.

I've joined a discord group that's also setting up SOP's and one set is the radio comms.

This is much better than I've seen anywhere else. Only problem is we can't send numbers.

The other group suggested just using the first two letters of each number i.e.
1 = on
2 = tw

etc

My only suggestion is that we should also add course and speed on too.

So in your example given course of 310 and speed 18

POSxAFxFIONFONIXEITHXTWTHXTHONZEXONEIZE

Unless of course, numbers are being added as recognised characters and then all is good. :)

That is a great idea Neal. This kind of brainstorming I feel really makes the game rich. I need to get more familiar with the radio. I’m hoping in upcoming sessions we get enough to man a couple boats again so we can refine this aspect too.

love to help
 

Yes, I am in provided you guys are in my time-zone.


Be aware, I only bought the game yesterday and getting to grips with it now.


:Kaleun_Cheers:

Yeah, forgot to mention, the new patch will add numbers to the wireless.:Kaleun_Wink:

I like Neal's coordinate system. On the Wolfpack discord some suggested angles from the 2 bottom edge corners. And then use a digit-to-letter key tot translate the angles for enigma encryption and short message. But this should be a bit shorter. Especially since number-morse is (becoming) a thing.

One could just further subdivide the KM grids, but that doesn't converge fast enough to pin-point location.

@Stosstrupp: You have a point about time if crew was manning the deckgun. They need to 'secure' it first. Rotating it to bow and running back up the bridge takes a while.

I like to keep the radioman at the forward vent, instead of the aft. Going through the hatch takes a bit of time. While the navigator could go to the aft in the same time. And punch the Atlas-Echolot on the way (back).

I edited the SOPs based on helpful suggestions (thanks Elphaba!).

Primarily, I’ve got Radio on the bridge now with just Diving Officer below. Radio and Nav are to man the flood vents. This is predicated on the assumption that Radio and Nav can get down to the vents in time for the flood order. I think they can with the “slide down the ladder” trick but it would need testing. To the regulars (or irregulars) who play with me - all we need is 4 to test this assumption.

I also added suggestions for sectors for the bridge watch, in such a way that would facilitate Radio and Nav getting through the hatch first followed by Helm then the Commander.

As always please let me know thoughts and who would like to devote a session or two to test out. I will then post a session in the WP League just for this.

I’d like to sail with you if you’ll have me. Steam: Captain Summers

On the subject of SoPs and best practices, it seems very few captains that I've been watching on live streams have any conception of periscope discipline. All the actual manuals from the era repeatedly stress the shortest possible exposures, at low speed, to collect the data you need calcuate/check/update a solution.

I get it, because it's fun to see what the heck is going on, but it's a product of the fact that nobody is actually going to die if your scope gets spotted.

You are right - with the fixed-eye attack scope the skipper could keep the scope head right at the waterline at all times constantly moving it, which was probably the #1 advantage of that scope (along with the binocular view of course).

Side note - apparently the range estimation advantage of having binocular optics in there outweighed the disadvantage of having to sacrifice stadimeter/RAOBF to install it! Too bad we are looking through a “monocular” computer monitor!