I leave fuel on unlimited otherwise its impossible to do 75% or so within the parameters. I got so fed up to have to abandon patrols. And, if a Task Force is ahead of you, you cant catch it by doing an 'end around attack' otherwise no go home baby!!!

draw a straight line from pearl to tokyo and from tokyo to taiwan
those are the airplane highways filled with non stop planes in both directions.

simply stay to one side and you will hardly have plans bother you unless you make enemy contact that reports you.

i have a simple little mod that also shuts down the overly stupid large numbers of planes to a more semi realistic traffic

surely Pearl to Tokyo is well out of range? Thats why Doolittle in 42 bombed Tokyo and carried into nationalist china to land, he could not have done a return trip.

By the way, after putting in your suggested folder replacements, I am sitting NW of Midway right now waiting for the Jap fleet, its almost 1st June and reports should be coming in soon. If I dont find them, you're sunk!!!! :haha:

September 1942, Phillippines, and these all these aircraft are making the game unplayable. I can't go 30 minutes without a contact.

I'm running stock with hacks from Sniper, et al, which enabled the 1945 Balao with Mk 16s, fore-and-aft 5" guns, the latest radars, etc, along with removing the crew rank limits.

Would GFO work in this situation or must I wipe everything, install GFO, and then the hacks?

Mods will sometimes overwrite previously applied mods, but the amount of change would vary, and it is tough to say what is compatible with what. It might just be that you end up with a CTD. The biggest problem with applying mods is the Save game folder. Anytime changes are made to the game with a mod, the Save folder should either be deleted, or use MultiSH4 to create a new one of a different name. If you don't get a "clean" Save folder, then the old Save contaminates the new mod activation, resulting in at least a weird mess, but oftentimes results in continuous CTD problems.

The big things with airplanes, especially in the Philippines, is just the sheer numbers available. Lots of places for them to come from. Second of all, the first one that "sees" you, tells all of his "buddies" that there is a submarine in the area, and since a submarine has a rather restricted speed, they can draw a circle on their "maps", and search within a smaller box and find you easier the second time. If you maintain course and speed, they'll find you even easier the third time. Next thing you know, they're parked on top of your location, just waiting on you to surface. Each time you are "seen", it confirms your location, and brings more planes. Maybe even a DD or two... The "secret" is to not be seen - by anything - until you are ready to strike. Much easier said than done, of course. One mod you should be able to put on top of what you have, without too much trouble, would be Webster's Better Air Patrols for v1.4 and v1.5, which he alluded to above. Decreases the frequency, but it does up the accuracy of what you do get, so you do have to be careful with that...

The thing to do to "shake" the planes, is to stay submerged for a while staying below 100 foot, but change your heading drastically. Come back up at night, and under cover of darkness, high-tail it out of the area, then resume "normal operations". :salute:

aircraft frequency: the easy way is to go into data/cfg/airstrike and amend ranges, airfields etc then save.

Thanks for the feedback, gentlemen. I'd cut the range to 200km and stay undetected but Uncle Charlie insists on sending us to the Filipino coasts, especially the entrance to Manila Bay. I'll try installing Webster's fix and hope for the best.

Mios, the game may give you a patrol point to go to, but you dont have to; there are no penalties for going off on your own. The only penalty as such is if you come home without any successes.

Good point. I usually try to complete one or two assignments before going completely off the reservation. In a previous career, GFO instead of stock, I noticed that the game often rewarded us with unreported fleet contacts when in compliance.



This career not so much.

There is one reason we think there are too many airplanes in SH4. That's time compression. Turn time compression off and play 24 hours for a few days and you'll see that air attacks are not too common.

Nobody will ever do that. But remember that at 1000x time compression, each minute is 16 hours and 40 minutes game time. Now crank it up to 8192x and do the math. Time compression ruins our interpretation of reality.:D

Day 1, Palawan Passage northbound
Aircraft contacts: 2 in the morning; 8 in the afternoon.

Day 2, off Manila Bay to Ormoc
Aircraft contacts: 20 dawn-to-dusk

I noted each contact time, then dived for 10+ min; aircraft that were still transiting when I resurfaced were not counted again. Multiple bogies counted as one contact.

Day 2 was especially annoying, but I'm glad I ran the trial. Transiting up from the Celebes Sea, I stumbled on a CV task force which quickly became a CL task force.

Results in the Luzon Strait have been similar. I realize these are heavily patrolled areas historically, but this was far beyond what I would have expected.

As mentioned though, they see you, they stick with you. Also, as mentioned there are a lot of airbases nearby for them to generate from. And, you encountered a CV group - those are airfields also and do generate airplanes that come after you. Sometimes, a carrier that has 30 or 40 some-odd planes, will send all of them at you at one time - all of them, then turn around and do it all over again at the spawn cycle time, whether the other planes would have been back yet, fueled and re-loaded or not... The game can be strange like that. But in real life, they would have kept sending airplanes out to a reported sub site, if they had the assets available. :salute:

The CV group was in the Sulu Sea days before and I wasn't spotted off Luzon. As soon as a contact came in, I noted the time and dived for 10 min plus. I understand it's a well-patrolled area but twenty game interruptions in less than ten hours seems excessive.

I know some of us are die hard accuracy fans, but it is only a game. Make the adjustments to whatever, and enjoy :yeah:

If you mean me, that post was in response to the assertion in #25, not a renewed complaint.

Of course, if accuracy were truly an issue, I wouldn't have chosen the name Mios, as that base in SH4 is over a thousand km west/NW of where it really was. It's very convenient though, as long as you realize the subchaser patrolling just offshore isn't there for your benefit.