Start a career in 43.

42 it starts getting a little tougher. by 43 it can get pretty tough sometimes.

Theres a reason why i dont start any career before 42. SH3 before '42 or '43, is nothing more then a interactive screensaver .

From 43 onwards it's sheer hell just to get back home is a challenge. And 44 and 45 Just start praying.

Sounds intense! I hope you survive the war!

Kb

Werner never made any claim of a confirmed kill as Kaleun of his own boat.
I am referring to how he makes it sound in the boat and the intensity of the interaction with the escorts. That is where I am trying to get a similar feel. We sink ships far easier than they did particularly in 1943-45 after May 43 when getting home alive with nothing sunk was a victory.

Still, there are still too many things that do not work right no matter what. The escorts lock on too easy and can't lose you in thermal layers or if you go deep while you desend the cans go off at what ever depth you are at when they can not always guess right but do. Without other boats in a pack the escorts can leave the convoy unprotected and all come for you and never let up. tec.
We know all that so this is trying to curve the difficulty to be challenging without being impossible and as it goes later force you to change tactics to survive (like launching from outside the convot with FATs and not expecting a bunch of kills every time you fire.

I did find something I want to change in my RND. I have made the warships like cruisers and escort carriers "escort true" instead of "false" which puts them outside the convoy. SH3 has an order to where these are placed and they are always in the left front of the convoy with no A/S vessel so become prime easy kills even late. I have sunk 2 cruisers and 2 escort carriers this career and that will not be repeated.
What would be a big ralism jump would be to make hunter killer groups that follow the convoys so the carrier is well protected and any cruiser as well. That would mean a new group on the same route and speed as the convoy but about 10 miles a stern matching its turns. In the war they kept one in between convoys so they could move where needed but ours would have to be prearranged to one to work.
Still I am playing conservative hoping to end the war with this career. Then I will redo it the convoys so there are no easy warship kills and try again.

Wulfmann

In Werners book he does mention he slammed a torp into a ship near ireland i believe. But yes escorts should be farther from the convoys, and convoys should be more spread out like in real life. This is all totally possible with a work with IC, but who knows. Sometimes i do see warships get pretty far away from convoys when they do their screenings which is awesome and gives me a chance to run in. I'd still like to try your RND layer tho wulfman, perhaps since you know the RND layer pretty well you could add something to IC by adding certain task forces following convoys like Artic convoys and wut not. But i have read a lot of accounts 1939-1941 of submarines getting away from escorts when they were detected, especially in bad weather going against the waves. That' d be nice too, but we cant have everything we want.

Maybe it has something to do with the different capabilities of the English and Japaneese navy?

The german subs had it easy the first couple of years - thats a fact, so I dont think its unrealistic for you to be able to get easy kills.
Just wait till later in the war!

The U-Boats did not have it easy early. They were well trained and used their Boats very effectively. That is why they succeeded, not because it was easy.

It should be easy for you if you act properly but you should be sunk when you do not.
Many U-Boats were sunk in the "easy" time but in later times it was a nightmare.

There are ceratinly things we can not do because of the games limitations. We are still seen too easily at night on the surface. We should be better able to hide in rough water from asdic at peri depth. we should be able to dive below the DCes. DCes should not always be going off at the depth we happen to be at even if we change while they are decending. The snorkle should not make us as visible as we are when we are surfaced (what is the point to snorkle?) There are many little things not right so we continue to labor and pick away as best we can to make a better closer to real experience.

Those that have my RND file know as I do. the sound of the asdic cuts you like a knife because with this RND it often means death and you know you must zig and not zag and must know where the excorts are, where they are going and when they drop their cans you know you must be somewhere else and you know you can not make any serious mistake or you will be starting over (for us 100% guys that play once dead, dead!)

But, after 10 days in a career where I am aggresive but careful and I do make that mistake I trully wonder if I have made it just a little too hard.
I have played with my super escort numbers for about a year, almost every day.
I have yet to finsih one career!

Wulfmann

Nightmare situation, and yes, this happened to me.

August of 1944

Was attacked by 2 Fletcher DD's and 2 Black Swans.

I played hide and seek with them for an hour, before I got DC'ed by both Black Swans at the same time. No flooding, no nothing, just an instant "Man down on the deck!" "Hull Damaged!" and then the death screen.

My guess? 20 DC"s going off 20 feet from my hull turned my hull into an egg against the wall.

Was this the case in SH2? It's been a while, but I seem to recall this being one of my major tactics (if you can give such a flattering term to my meanderings!) i.e. As soon as I heard them coming I'd try to race the depth charges to my crush depth, so they'd detonate where I was, hopefully a long way above where I am. Seemed to work, but my memory is very faulty.[/quote]

so wulfman you going to let me use ur RND layer? I wanna try it out.

PM an email add and I will send it to you.

Wulfmann

I would also like to try it please.

Try the Following:

1.Go to Data\Cfg
2.Open "Sim.cfg" in notepad.
3.Set the "Sonar Detection time" to something from 15-5.
4.Set the "Hydrophone Noise factor" to 0.3
5.Save the Changes.

Finish!

Now you got you're "Expert Destroyers".

That goes for anyone. I am not uploading any mods but will send them to a few here. Trust me, this is not for those that are easily frustrated.

Wulfmann

did you try to send them wulfman??

I sent them to everyone that PMed me an email. I will resend it today.

Now I must confess. The ones I sent are not the toughest one. When I did this before months ago for RUB installs the only people that reported back said it was more real and they now see they did not want realism as much as they thought!! :rotfl:

I must also confess the 1944 career I just completed was also not the tough one, I wussed out! :oops:

Because I had failed so many times I had to lighten it up a little to be sure I could do it with something harder than the GW one but not as hard as what I know is right.
Convoys in 1943-45 did not have gaps to waltz in to. Sneaking in to a convoy in the last two years was virtual suicide yet we do it all the time.
So, I put my tough RND in and spent yesterday redoing a whole section of that super-GW RND.
What I did was remake all the English traffic.
I am sure you all know the multi-ship groups you run into on occasion. Well, what I did was make them into small convoys with 3-5 merchants and 2-4 escorts. !943-45 only. Local traffic was well protected by all books I have read and did not meander around alone. .
So, I started my first patrol and ran into the only 2 ships I did not modify. I then did a brilliant job of timing the sweeps of the escorts to a large convoy and snuck in. I hit a big tanker and a liberty but did it with long shots 2 and 3 columns form my position and I turned 90% long before they hit.
3 escorts converged on where I was.
I was so proud! They found nothing.
But, there were 5 DEs 1 Frigate and 2 corvettes. No matter I was sure I had out maneuvered them as well. I was almost out side the screen to the rear. I was so sure I switched to the map and hit TC.
It stopped at 8X.
I was being pinged. That one closest DE made a 90 and was heading for me. I have a T5 in the stern tube and he would feel it! I would survive this one alert tin can. I fired, the fish was running true and was on his course (I love listening to the merging noises in the hydro!).
I went back to peri to witness his demise and sure enough he was hit.
But, I noticed another DE in his wake coming hard. I turned a 360 peri view and the frigate was pouring on the smoke as was a corvette.
Alarm!!!!
I set for 240 meters. So far (2 hours) I have been a half step away from their accurate drops and I doubt I will survive as a fourth escort has joined the group.
I had planned an early day at the gun club this morn so saved this for later today.

I really can see why most would rather not do this.
Escaping is nearly impossible and once you have you feel like you may need counseling after ward and you must force your mouse onto to SHIII icon to open the game the next time.
Then when you hear the ping again you feel like some one stabbed you each time. You sweat, you get the feeling you are actually in the boat and god forbid you must go to the bathroom.
Putting it on hold can be a disaster as you must know where each escort is so you can plan your next turn. The slightest mistake could mean you turn into the exploding cans instead of away.
When the convoys has at least 2 escorts on each side and at the rear you can not use that homi to open a gap, shoot and flee.
In truth, I know this and had actually planned to be outside the screen and fire 4 fanned fish and hoped for a hit or two. But, as I set up the convoy for this I peried up and found it had turned and was rolling over me. I luckily had not been found by the lead escort but that may only have prevented the inevitable.

The real truth is, I prefer this impossible scene to the successful career. The challenge is riveting, intense, hard to breath OMG I am going to die almost for real!
But, only because this is a virtual U-Boat. In real life I would have happily spent 1939-41 at sea and the rest of the war training dead men diving in the Baltic.

Wulfmann