I stay at periscope depth for as long as I can, reloading tubes and knocking off Merchants and tankers till either they're all sunk or the escorts come after me and I need to be else where!:arrgh!:

My usual plan is to go to PD and watch. I dont like going after escorts, as I have a habit of my eels bouncing off the hulls (and this is with auto-plotting :huh: ), which usually ends up with me being depth charged.

If the escort will pass by me without noticing, I'll look for targets and plan accordingly. If I'll need to take it out, I try using magnetic triggers, as I've had more success with them recently. If I'm detected, I see if there's any good targets I can shoot at before diving (and cry a little when I see large tankers and other big tonnage ships outside a good gyro angle).

"Good gyro-angle." Isn't any angle good for magnetic torps? I have better success with them at "bad" gryo angles than "good" ones.

I agree with Sasquatch on this one in magnetic shooting a longditudinal
shot is much more effective than a perpendicular one seemingly because
the momentum in a perpendicular shot seems to carry the blast effect
out from under the ship a little where in longditudinal shots all the blast
is centered. or so it seems in testing.
M

depends alot on the time of day/night...weather conditions, fog, rain? all of these I take into consideration....
calm seas at sunup...im taking a shot at one of the escorts on the corner while I head a course through the convoy, bobbing up and down from 25-13m spending 1 tube on any one ship...ill come back to finish em off later...seems to work for me

now rainy and whitecaps...gota be carefull...Ive had a Black Swan park on my ars and 5 sailors knock on the hatch before I new what was going on....

at night its anyones ballgame...cause I cant see sheyot so I put my walking stick out tube one and just feel around till I hit something :huh:

I am a quiet, cowardly, silent skulker of the deep. :|\\

Mush is right. A magnetic perpendicular may go past the target and exploding on the opposite side. whereas a torpedo arriving at an angle will habe more time under the keel for the pistol to activate. I have often aimed forward of the bridge and had the torp explode under the engine room, causing catastrophic damage. :know:

Check out magnetic torpedo article on my webbie.

Say Brag where does JSB weigh in on this question..........?
as if I need ask
M

Lt.z.S. Otto Kalb writes:

Captain Balz approaches convoys at PD and gets inside the convoy. He picks three large targets, usually two for front tubes and one for stern. By the time torpedoes begin to explode, we are at thirty or so meters deep and doing Brag's wiggle-waggle.

By the time escorts arrive, we are deep and silent, softly humming the Hoochie-woochie.

Capt. Balz saves his bravado for the officers' club.

Hmm, interesting. I guess that's why the tanker rolled away from me when I shot it :hmm:

Thanks for the heads up in any case, maybe I'll increase my tonnage per patrol now :up:

i selected go deep and go quiet.

i know in the end its just a game, and one great thing about SH3 is that the realism can be tailored to meet the play style of each individual player.

personally, i like a challenge, and i like to follow historical u-boat doctrine as closely as possible within the constraints of SH3.

this includes (on my realism campaigns) manual target data gathering and manual solutions.

anyone who plays the game on higher realism settings or - any u-boat commander in real life - who tried to tough it out at periscope depth grappling with 3 or 4 or more destroyers would be fish food. :nope:

but if you have arcade firing solutions and no dud torpedos and unlimited batteris and unlimited oxygen selected ON then grappling with anything at periscope depth is going to be a piece of cake... no contest.

Not nessicarily. I play this way cause I just havent gotten good enough yet, but its still difficult to sink ships at times. Just because the computer does everything for me doesnt mean I automatically sink everything in my path. I cant even count the number of torpedoes I've had bounce off the hulls of ships, and others just plain miss (often times leading to me getting attacked).

we all learn to play the game that way... and like i said... its a good thing about SH3 that it allows such a wide range of realism settings.

and dont get me wrong, im not ripping on any particular play style... im just saying that from a realism standpoint it would be pretty unlikely for a u-boat commander to duke it out at periscope depth against an armada of destroyers.

I stay at pariscope depth and attack them by simply pivoting the boat around as needed. Draw them in close, about 500 meters, then use a fast torpedo on them... works everytime. If there are too many I'll attack everyone I can then go deep and escape. :)

My primary task is to interrupt the supply routes to the european theater.
Secondary task is to neutralize enemy battle assets.

That secondary task can be fulfilled either by inflicting damage to high profile target like carriers or battleships, or by threatening primary targets, so valuable destroyers are bound to defend my primary targets.

To fullfill these tasks I need to close in on my targets. That means passing the outer screen....
If I have a good position and good target solution (to a convoy) I go deep and silent to break UNDER the screen but TOWARDS my targets.
If my posrion is not favorable or I'm still missing data about my target I need to stay on at least PD. Even if this means to fight my way THROUGH the escort screen. :rock: