Im in the process of seeing how real life sonar/hydro/radar ranges pans out.

Ive been doing a lot of research and the sonar, both active and passive in the game are far over the mark for their real life range.

I wish I could increase the visual range to about 30km. :)

I have done this so far with the 16x visual mod. Increasing their range while reducing their accuracy. For Sonar and Hydro im using real numbers, but Radar at the moment is still about 50% of what it could be.

visual range x2
hydro range x3
Radar range x4
Sonar range:
Active x0.75
Passive x040 (Even that is higher than it apparently was during war time)

At the moment I have left most weapons at the stock ranges, as they are fairly accurate, and the big guns are now only limited to the visual range of the horizon.

Destroyers seem to can do everything you can do.
- they have far more speed,
- they always have more manouverability.
- they can always hit you,
- they have more armour, unless you can launch a torpedo, (your deckgun is useless)
there is only one point they can't: DIVE.
just DIVE. make sharp turns at the right moment and dive deep.
they always come with convoys.
and unless you take your realism to -50% they will never manage to get THROUGH a merchant. so dive under merchants.
this is for several reasons:
1) the engines of the merchant will cover your own engines, the destoyers hydrophones will be useless.
2) destroyers can't get through a merchant, so depht charges will be less accurate since they won't destroy their own merchants.
3) you can escape by going excatly the right way. when a destroyer is on the right side of the merchant, you should escape at the left side, and make sure you are under the merchant till you passed him. then make the turn. the destroyer will stop and wait for the merchant to pass by. and then speed up to flank and try to ran him out or hide somewhere at the seabottom
Good Luck!

heh, I've done that. I unloaded all 4 tubes, aiming for engine hits on 3 boats and scored on 2, disabling them. Then, to give my boys time to load, sneak under a merchant and follow underneath it for an hour or so. Tense times, keeping the heading proper and still avoiding the DDs while following a zigzag merchant. I can only wonder what those merchant marines would think when they look over the side and see a periscope. Good thing they don't have grenades!

I witness a player in multiplayer once surface and take on a Battleship and survive! :o It completly floored me. There we were 6 uboats edging our way to the convoy that had two battleships and a carrier with it. were all at persicope depth sending messages to each other on our great plan on how to attack, when all of a sudden one guy who must of thought we're wasting our time planning our attack and i'll show you guys how its done, Surfaced! mans his deckgun and runs his boat in a wide circle while fireing at the battleship he never sunk it but he was on the surface for a good 15min and his boat was getting hit but he survived. He only submerged cos he ran out of ammo. We were all stunned with silence while watching this brave and Mad fellow take on a BB. The server host realism was on normal, either it is a bug or just plain bad shooting by the enemy. :hmm:

A homing torp takes care of them without a problem!

:arrgh!: :arrgh!: :arrgh!: :arrgh!:

Any hints on how to hit a DD that is circling around you with a single torpedo (non homing)? :shifty:

Everytime that I've hit a DD with a torpedo that was hunting me was after I lost him. My advice is to slip away from him using any of the tactics outlined in this thread. Once you do SLOWLY come to periscope depth in order to prepare a firing solution. Since you're going to fire on the DD with a torpedo after you've lost him I like to use my stern tube because I try to put as much space between myself on the destroyer. Granted I'm moving at about 1-2 knots so I must be patient. I usually wait until I'm about 400-500m away and he's between about 120-220 off your stern. At this distance he won't have much room if any to evade and he'll be still in a slow orbiting pattern trying to pick you up based off the last position he heard you in.

I'm still in late 1939 in my most played campaign so I have no homing torpedos. I have a campaign set for Decemeber 1943, but it's for my Wolves at War patrols.

EDIT: ALWAYS check your recognition manual when you're preparing to fire upon a destroyer (if you're using assisted targeting sometimes you may be tempted to not check it for depth information). Destroyers have very shallow drafts, a lot of them higher than what your eels are normally set at. I'm sure you check and change their running depth regularly, but it's just a reminder as I've forgotten to do this in critical times and missed because of it. DD's should only take one eel, regardles if you use an impact or magnetic pistol.