Stupid STUPID game
 

I have just spent the last 40 minutes playing dodge with a destroyer before giving up. Its march 1943 and i'm down near Freetown.

Main problem: getting away from the destroyer wouldn't be seen as the problem.......its keeping my boat level at the effing depth ordered. The boat is in tip top shape, and i'm not modelling malfucntions and sabotage via SH3 Cmdr so there is no reason why the boat shouldn't keep its depth when i order it to.

In short, i coudn't escape from the bastard because i had to keep increasing my engins speed to rise the boat or to maintain depth, thus giving away my position. the boat ended up sinking to 272mtrs before the hull collapsed and the boat was crushed. Also....the destroyer wasn't even pinging for me....he just seemed to KNOW where i was. yeah...without using asdic and if i'm making along at 1 or 2 knots.....thats realistic.....NOT :@

I'm not accepting that however. i'm reloading the game to before i encountered the destroyer, and i'm going to get my boat home. This is not the first time this has happend during a game. Seems odd that the boat stays level when there are NO enemy ships around, and yet when you have destroyerts buzzing around, it suddenly can't hold its depth?? WTF is up with that??

sorry for the rant, but has anyone else encountered this? It HAS to be a bug surely?

No bug; that is what happened. It is difficult to survive past 1943.

I'm not complaining about the destroyer's effectivness as such, I understand it gets harder.

Its my boat suddenly not maintaining its depth. I loaded the game just now, ran into another destroyer, and it HELD its depth this time. It didn't sink out of control like before.

If the boat is in tip top shape as mine is, there is no reason why the boat shouldn't hold the depth you tell it to go to.

I enjoy the game of cat and mouse with the destroyers, I really do. But when the boat doesn't even hold its depth, it sucks the enjoyment out of the game really quickly, and just annoys the absolute s%it out of me!!. I had a look at the external cam during the whole problem, and the boat would level off, then the ass would begin to fall backwards, and pull the rest of the boat down with it!!!!

Now, if the boat was damaged in some way, diving planes, or ballast tanks, or out of compressed air or something, that might be cause for it and I could accept that....but in this case, there's just no reason for it, and it only serves to really annoy me as i say, and a sinking boat that shouldn't be sinking without reason i will not accept :) lol

This could be two things:

1) You need to keep moving to maintain depth. However good your crew is, they can't balance out the boat just with the ballast tanks. You need water passing the dive planes.
Just 1 knot is enough to keep your boat somewhat stable.

2) There is a bug in GWX (and stock(?)) which means that if you order a crash dive and
then order a different depth before the boat gets down to the 75m(?) that the crash
dive ends at your boat will become less stable at low speeds.

Wait until the boat leavels off after a crash dive before ordering a new depth.

Aha!

So thats what it is!


I too have had this same problem before, and it can be very frustrating.

I have survived by heading in the directly away from the convoy 180 degrees from it's heading, until the destroyer finally decides to go back to his sheep.

Now that I think of it, it must be when I order crash dives and change depth.

I frequently crash dive and then set the new depth to 220.

Thanks for this tip, I'll let it hit 70 at least before I make my next order

This is good to know. I crashdive a lot and then level off at 30 meters or something. I crash first when planes come around because I would rather smack the bottom then get smacked by a plane.

I would say that its number 2 point you raised. Quite often after a crash dive, once the boat is under, I order the planes into Dive mode to keep the boat going down.

[quote=Letum]
2) There is a bug in GWX (and stock(?))[ /quote]

Which means it's a problem with stock maybe?
Can you be a bit more difinitive?
Quite blameing GWX for every standard problem out there!!

Come on fellow Kaleun, there is hardly any point continuing if the boat wasnt holding its depth now is there??

Each time I increased speed to rise the boat, he located me. Believe me, there were plently of times he lost my scent. but each time, because I had to increase speed to maintain depth control, I kept giving my position away :(

Just as Venatore said, the force wasn't with you!:lol:

For that to occur you would first have to take depth charge damage.

It must have really sucked to be a real life U-boat commander... being depth charged for HOURS, with compressed air slowly bleeding away to maintain trim to fight negative bouyancy as the bilges get heavier bit by bit... drifting deeper and deeper... slowly... hull groaning louder and louder... and having to decide to run the electrics at a higher RPM to maintain depth.... knowing that the enemy above will likely hear him...

40 minutes you say? The other night it took me several hours real time to sneak away from an escort in very similar circumstances to yours during my third patrol in my current career.

Even if this is viewed as a bug... I don't see any motivation to 'fix' it.

If you can't get away from an escort in GWX... it is ultimately because you put yourself into an inescapable situation.

Now that's a bit unfair. Didn't sound like an "inescapable" situation to me (just one escort). When I've been bit by this bug (before I was enlightened about it), it would typically take 6+ knots to get her to rise again. Now the modeling (or lack thereof) of the things you mention is a different issue, and I wouldn't mind it if such (via the mythical SDK) was ever implemented, but having to go 6 knots just to save her from a horrible fate seems a bit much.

if a game frustrates you that much to have a rant like that you should perhaps take a break. :roll:

Rants have a way of omitting important details and exagerating the facts too.

Frustration has a semi-natural way of making small things seem huge.

Here's a trick of the trade: When the wabos explode, you have a brief window of opportunity to run your engines at full speed without the DDs hearing you. You can use that burst of speed to change depth & course to your advantage. The window closes about 30 sec. after the last explosion. Then you want to drop back to 1 knot (not just "ahead slow"; 1 knot = 50 rpm), selected on the alternate speed dial. Hope that helps!

Ciao,
Wayne

My rant was well justified. Now I know its a bug from altering depth straight after a crash dive order, it shouldn't happen again now i know how to avoid it. :)

On a much brighter note, I ran into a convoy in thick fog outside Gibralter on my way back to La Rochelle. Took a shot in the dark and fired at a 14000 ton Ceramic Ocean Liner from 2700 mtrs, with a 4 torpedo salvo. 3 out of 4 torpedos struck home sending it straight down.

Before I knew it I had THREE destroyers bearing down on me. I had to dive right down to 250mtrs, but even then they were still able to find me on their ASDIC. With the boat actually holding depth now, I was able to command the boat properly. I played cat and mouse for a while before I finally managed to give them the slip and they started to lose sight of me. Decoy's didn't seem to help much though unfortunatley when I used them. But that's what I'm talking about. Despite sustaining some minor damage to the flak guns from a few close cans, I loved every minute of that depth charge attack. :rock:

But it does make you wonder what the real guys went through. It must have been a terrifying ordeal. :shifty:

But, after leaving La Rochelle November 1942, U128 successfully made it back and docked back at base on April 9th 1943. Some 5 months at sea, what a cracking time it was. :)

Not sure about the VIIs (though I didn't have any great problems with them during my last Atlantic career either IIRC), but at least the series II in general seems to behave pretty well in this regard.

In a duck you can order 0 knots forward by putting the needle somewhere between the 0 and 1 marks and get some 50rpm off the electrics, which works fine in both being quiet _and_ maintaining depth - but ONLY IF you're not damaged! Have a leak or two and it all goes haywire, because then you'll need at least 2 knots if not more... plus the repair team binging and banging your boat back to shape, too :damn:

Yah, and thanks from me too for enlightening us about this particular bug :up: Haven't had this happen to me so far - far as I can remember at least - but still, one can't avoid what one doesn't know about, no?

S!

WOW good to know,I always thought it had something to do with going silent,it would sink while being hunted,not all the time tho:up: