Keep working for the full deal!!! That would be awesome. Thanks in advance!

Supply ships! Rock on :rock:

It would be nice to have the slot and Tokyo Express more "authentic" appearing (within the limits of the game) but I'm willing to wait for solid news on 1.3 patch so a modder's time isn't wasted in case a new patch impacted the effort. For me, the area between E Australia and the Philippines is the most interesting part of the war where subs played a major role. It's an area of mystique, legend and great, prolonged struggle.

Perhaps it would make a great "War Patrol" to have a lengthy adventure in that area during the height of the Solomons battles.

Guadalcanal, Papua, Rabaul, Lae, Bougainville are places and stories that easily captured my young imagination reading about them as a kid.
-Pv-

Return when ready?
 

Depot ships I have used but I have never gotten a message to "return when ready" I send a report back that I am out of torps and its always silence, Squadron Ops Officer must not like me.

I'm surprised so many people didn't see the anchors. They're big on my nav map and the first time I pulled into PH I got the Refit, End Mission, Postpone popup box. I picked refit and checked my sub. Damage = Gone, Torps = Full, etc...so I was like phuck it. Lets go do some more hunting. Two things I would mention. 1. I got a message saying that Manila was not to be used as home port anymore 'cause of airstrikes, but I went there first because it was so much closer and voila they still refitted me. 2. If you plot a course with waypoints and have your sub auto follow the course in close to the dock make sure you slow the game speed down when you approach the dock. When the refit/End Patrol/Postpone window pops up your sub will continue straight ahead, at the same speed, with the same time progression. I found this out the hard way as I was sitting back running at around 2000x regular time at flank speed up along a preplotted course fairly close to the harbor. I was watching tv and just glancing over occasionally at my comp when suddenly my crew started screaming their heads off and alarms started blaring. Apparently the little window had popped up, but my boat continued at flank speed directly into the harbor where it proceeded to plow into a docked American battleship. Long story is we both sank. I did try to reverse out of the ship but my front end was stuck inside the battleship. Now I approach the last bit slowly.

Only messages I get are if A. Completed my objective for my mission(For example dropped off my spy just offshore of Japan) then send a status report, I will get a new mission or a return home. or B. If I report a contact sometimes I get a "Good find. Break contact and RTB at discretion".

I trigger this message by finding a convoy and reporting in. Let your men spot three ships in the convoy, radio in and usually the return message is Nice Find we will send other assets to intercept, return at your descretion.

By June 23rd, 1943 Honaria has become an American base in the career game. I just went in there and found evidence of AVG's turkeyshoot (a couple of American flagged cargo ships and a merchant's buttend sticking straight up in the shallows). But, to point out the spawning power of game, on the way back up the slot to a new patrol area I ran smack into 2 Japanese flagged Large Modern Tankers headed toward the "liberated" port. Both ran into TIS problems and are probably respawning as we speak.

There are several places where I have seen bizarre patterns of japanese merchants. Many of the layers are a bit screwy. Only solution is to fix 'em.

For the Slot stuff, open the convoy and merchant layers by year, and simply delete the ones that go into the Slot. Of course the problem is that then there will be ZERO traffice there since they didn't make a Tokyo Express layer.

Rabaul is also pretty ugly. One, there are not nearly enough ships there a lot of the time, and two, there is a huge port facility object there. Simpson Harbor was again, mostly an anchorage. The port facilities were almost nonexistant. By late 1943 (?) one of the largest "docks" was a ship sunk next to a wooden pier. They cut the hull down where needed, and decked it over, and the ship became the largest quay/dock/whatever in the whole harbor. In game... looks like NYC.

They likely spent a fair amount of time making some port objects out of a library of buildings, etc. They would have been better served to follow a "less is more" strategy, at least for some of the Pacific. The two "very small pacific" objects are neither very small, nor terribly pacific looking.

Odd that they didn't make some very simple "finger piers" for submarines instead of the giant concrete fingers suitable for CVs, since a sub dock is the most likely such facility you'd ever see.

tater