Because the Ghost ship icon can't be seen until you get a visual contact... :arrgh!: :-j

It will, you have to be real close to get the reports you got in the training sessions. A lot of things will depend on this, day/night, fog, surface/unsurfaced, crew experiance etc.

The line thing is a sighting by your crew but it's a faint sightning. It just gives you bearing, speed, and aprox location. you will need to decide if you want to go after it, for example if it's moving away and at fast speed then ignore it completely - you'll never get close. Just be patient (use time compression) and wait for something moving at you at a slow speed (merchant or cargo ship).

On a clear day you should see things once they get around 3,500 Meters of you. On a foggy night there are times you almost have to run into it to see it. I once was hanging out on the surface, no speed, but was time compressing from the navigation map. Well it was so dark and foggy that my crew never say the big cargo ship until a wave pushed me in it's side. All of a sudden i hear "We are taking damage sir" and i go to the deck and there is a monster cargo ship right in front of me. I had to back up to 350 M and then i sank that puppy. Lucky for me i ran into it and not vise versa.

Keep with it buddy, you'll figure it out.

also the training thing is nice because it tells you how to run the boat and gives you basic ideas, it only scratches the surface (no pun :D ) on how the game will react and the tools at your disposal.

For example, i've not used my FLAK gun once in three weeks. I see a plane and i dive and move. Also, it's near impossible (without modding - i guess) to find good enough weather to use your deck gun.

Yeah i've definitely learned that the training area is nothing more than very basic training. Just introduces you to things and then your off on your own. It's my only complaint with this game that I feel like without these forums, certain things would just be impossible to learn on my own. I thought that training should have been a bit more detailed. But it's a great game anyway. My machine is a little too slow to handle bad weather so ill be upgrading it soon.

Ok I just read this in the Gamespot review.

"There are still a few kinks to work out--we've loaded saved games where every ship in the ocean was frozen in place, forcing us to end a patrol early, for example. "

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=48026

Read this post its just what will help you intercept and sink those ships. :ping:

I know how to intercept them. But I wasn't tryin to because I thought they were frozen. I thought that by the time I got to the point of contact, they would not be there. But it sounds like they aren't frozen. I guess they are just sightings made by someone else and they are actually moving, but I am only seeing the point of the sighting on my map. So next time I see this, I will try and intercept it and see if it's actually there. I'll try tonight or tomorrow.

That is exactly what is happening. It's like a plane flying overhead. It sees the ship, can give you basic information and you have to use that information to try and intercept it somewhere else. But the plane moves away so it no longer sees the contact. They are definately NOT frozen, and they do exist.

Remember don't go after everyone. Some of them are to far away for you to catch up with. But the close ones are possible to get. Just figure out where it will be, and if you can be at that spot before it gets there. If you think you can, then go hunting.

Yeah - those icons popping up are supposed to represent a variety of types of sightings (friendly planes or ships, other u-boats, even your own radio operator intercepting radio transmissions, etc.) - the devs apparently decided not to clog up your radio log by actually recording each of these types of signings as a separate radio message - they generally save the actual radio messages you get for "important" sightings like convoys, task forces, enemy warships, etc. And those long-range type sighting icons do not update/move on the nav map in real time, though you sometimes will get a subsequent sighting of the same ship fairly near the first one a few hours later.

Depending on how you have set your realism settings (particularly the one about "no map updates"), you will get these ship icons on your nav map that do actually move on the nav map in real time, but I believe that only happens if you're close enough to the target to visually see it - and that range will vary depending upon what mods you have installed and what the weather/visibility range is at the time. With the IUB mod I'm running now, I can spot ships (or at least their smoke) in daylight with good weather out to around 14-15,000m or so, but that can drop to as little as 400m or so in heavy rain/mist/fog, with various stages in between depending upon the visibility/weather.

Good luck and good hunting!

I have seen ships dead in the water but only in heavy seas ,and in close proximity to another ship but I haven't seen this yet in 1.4b HT1.47

You do not receive "radio message" for those "opportunity contacts." (so called, if I'm correct) They just appear on the map, that's it. You get radio message (which you can see via 'M' key press) for convoy, task force etc. Those radio messages are broadcasted by BdU in SH3.

Icons get fade when the information about it (lone ship or convoy or whatever) becomes obsolete. I often "mark" the icon before it's gone to plot an intercept course.

Yeah, there should be radio messages for those opportunity contacts as well, since it indeed is radioed information. It's not the case of current game, unfortunately.