Welcome aboard. Yes if you enabled everything you have some conflicting mods that will change your experience significantly from what it should be.

That's what the manual is for. Give it a read so you know what mod in the GWX2.1 pack does what and which ones work together.

If you've added other mods on top of that then there may be other incompatibilities. They should all come with read mes to let you knwo what they do. If not I don't install them.

@meduza

You should not get a bearing at 0 degrees.

@dalton74

If you have the merged campaign file enabled, there is no need to enable the Indian Ocean or Black Sea mods.

Home at last
 

I have made it back from the 1st patrol in one piece. It is helpful that nobody was shooting at me. :)

On the way back I made several ship contacts. As some of these were made at a distance I tried tracking them down. I lost 2 of these ships before it dawned on me that the compass heading and bearing of the ship are 2 seperate things. :cry: I have a feeling that I'll have a slow start when the war begins. The tutorials set up a couple shooting at fish in a bowl scenarios; when the true to life type situations occur it will be very challenging.

On my way back it finally rained for the 1st time, and as a matter of fact it never stopped. Early on I thought the game didn't model rain because the thunder and lightning didn't include rain.

Perhaps I didn't do something correctly but on my way in the Kiel canal I chose the "Kiel Canal In" option and it layed out a pattern that most of the flags were not in the water in the canal. I thought that the button was going to be an automatic to the dock button. I ended up deleting all the waypoints and manually set them up.

When I arrived at Kiel it was past midnight and raining. The brass band earned their money as they played on while I fumbled around in confusion. I'm surprised they didn't A) get tired waiting and go home B) Stop playing and roll on the ground laughing C) Head for cover every band member for themself. I managed to get most of the compartments damaged and needing repairs. I don't know how close to sinking the U-boat I was but I played a considerable amount of bumper pool.

I just didn't know what I was supposed to do when I got there. I tried parking by another submarine. I tried docking at the far and near side of the dock. I tried manuevering my U-boat on top of the Kiel on the map. I didn't see a lit up motel like sign that said park it here. I finally stumbled on my way out of the situation as I was in the process of saving and exiting.

On to the next exciting adventure!

If you don't click exactly on the centre of the "Kiel Canal In" point, it can give you a run-aground course. Same when you're leaving the dock going the other way, plot the course before you even start the engines. Remember that German beer is quite strong...

OK, so if my U-boat is exactly on the correct marked in or out point the plotted course should be good to go.

I'll keep the german beer under lock and key until we clear the canal the next time.

I played a while with the mods in JSGME. Now I have traffic in the harbours. And the sees are not empty anymore. Thx!

An other question: how about the colours of the ships later on in the game. Are they included with gwx 2.1 ? So ships are more camouflage to U boats? Or the mislett them.

Can you use external torpedeos only by good wetter? I tried to load them to my tubes. But they won't move. Maybe to slipy to move the torpedos?;)

You can access the external reserves in any weather (which was not possible in real life), but you can't directly load them into the tubes. You have to move them to the internal reserves first (the slots below the sub in the weapon management screen).

Sonar specialist...
 

One thing to consider if you sense a lack of obvious sonar contacts is the personell presently at job at the the sonar/radio stations. If these are tired, or not specialists, they might not give you a feedback at all. Even when you request it specifically. It is a good thing to designate special sonar operators. My priority for these designations (only one additional per performed mission) is torpedo (reloading time), machinist (to move at all) and sonar. You get better performance if you let the officers qualify first. Of course, in SH3 Commander you can get around this by adding such specialities freely to the whole crew. Which some might find a little "cheety".....:oops:

Also, to designate repair specialists can be very rewarding. It makes wonders when you get hit to have a good repair crew. Has saved me a lot of times.....

Also remember that Officers can have 3 qualifications, Petty Officers 1 (giving any more will make no difference) and crew get no benefit at all from qualifications.

Thank you for the advice concerning specialists. There were many times that I had the sonar position filled by a crew member with no experience. When I docked I gave out the machinist qualification to one of my crew. Hopefully this will minimize the go and stop situations.

Another note. This time out of the Kiel I used the preset Out of Kiel icon and I didn't have a course that ran aground. The starting spot was definately critical.

I had a bad surprize when I saved the game after the Kiel Canal. I discovered that the date was well beyond the start of WWII. So much for getting set ahead of time for hunting. I did not factor in the amount of time that gets added when at dock.

No, it is under "Time Compression". Just click on "Particle rendering" and "When in 3d views", set both of them to 256, and voilà! :up:

Yup, add your course and the hydrophone/periscope bearing together and subtract 360 degrees if over 360 degrees, that is the course ("true bearing") towards the contact. But you want to lead that direction a bit (trial and error) as he moves sideways. Increase your lead until he appears to stay on the same true bearing. That means you must do "sprint-listen-adjust course" every 15 min/halve hour or longer.

Also, you DON'T want to intercept him submerged, your electric engines are far to slow. Surface and flank or better "all ahead" (almost as fast but better mileage).

As for the Kiel canal, I remember somebody said to place a waypoint on the Kiel inbound point (before pressing the "Kiel inbound" order) instead of physically moving over it. Haven't tried it yet though.

[quote=Pisces]I have a question about the kiel Canal. When I go through I cannot set time compression, because there is so many traffic. Due to that the trip through the canal takes hours! (real ours). What do I wrong?

The trick to speedrunning the Kiel Canal (and other places too) is to set the "when near land" TC setting in sh3 commander to 128 or 256x.

I think GWX does this without sh3 commander too, but it has happened to me repeatedly with the first time I run a newly installed game that this doesn't work..

The second time, and after that ,work as intended.

It pays to start up and run a quick test patrol then exit the game completely before beginning a for real campaign. just to let the game get all the config settings right

I don't think his problem isn't 'When Near Land', it's being kicked back to 1x because of sighting ships over and over. Dalton74, I have the same problem. I was told to remove the Watch Officer. If he can't call out "Ship Spotted!" then it won't slow down. For some reason I still get knocked back to 1x. Good think I like taking my time.

Maybe it will work for you, though.

Based on Steve's post above....has anyone tried the obvious and tweaked the 'ship sighted' value in Commander :hmm:

Like some other people I've made it a rule (self-imposed) not to load external torpedos in wind speeds above 6 & to load them with decks awash (setting the u-boat's depth to 6-7 meters). This self-imposed rule can cost some tonnage if I get nothing but rough seas during a patrol but I think that it adds some realism.

I set it to 4x. It's a bit pain in the port, but adds a few precious seconds when you most need them.

I was thinking you might raise it to x64 or whatever, then change it back to your preferred setting when you exit the canal.

Only drop to 8x for ship spotted
1x for aircraft
Take WO out and still drop to 8 just no shout

Not tried lifting TC for ship spotted as at high tc might be problem when it enemy warship :hmm: