Harbour Raiding
 

How many people here have taken to harbour raids to make things more interesting??

In the Medd. I got tons of warships this way, many were cruisers. In one campaign I got 12 cruisers alone.

Grant

Can't say I'm a fan of that tactic - too easy to get caught in shallow water. I've done it in single missions, but never in the campaign.

Ive done it once or twice but im not really in to it.It seems too easy and unreal.

Lots of stuff to take care of...but yeah sometimes it's worthy, Gibraltar likes to have Heavy Battleships on it in mid 40, but you need to check for mines and submarine nets, even when you hit them at 2 knts the will make you flood, also don't forget the shore batteries and any destroyer that is at dock will go after you if they notice you + you need a easy way out before the entire fleet is on you, also depend on your realism settings, im playing at 7X% and having to wait 7 minutes for a torpedo to load & If I fail to sink the destroyer that is DC me....its just to risky

He He He.......

Funny you mention this now. I found my self in a port in Norway the day before the invasion. I just dove to periscope depth and waited for a few hours before all the good guys became bad guys and sank about six mechants that were stationary.

I know...cheating...but... I know the future..so...why not use it a little?

Well, see you guys latter "I've gotta get Back in Time"

harbours
 

I think it's Algiers. But you are always get a Fiji and a Dido there.

As for the patrols I usually take a day sitting off and watching while plotting them, then when they are right I go in.

But that is only with the easy harbours some like Malta I will not touch, I think I have been sunk to many times trying.

Grant

Dodgy old buisness Harbour Raiding,sometimes theres lots to be had and then others theres nothing at all.Recently in St Helena i got 2 Cruisers and several Destroyers and sundry vessels,but took quite a bit of damage in the process.Plenty of pickings in the area of the Straits of Gib.

I used to harbor raid in my earlier careers, back in the days when I didnt have 100% realism so I could "cheat" with the external cam and find the subnets and mines. Now that I'm playing 100%, I dont dare go anywhere near a harbor that isn't friendly. I dont want to be caught up in a subnet with a pack of destroyers at angle zero going flank speed:damn:

Also alot of times you can, for example sink a BB in a given harbour then go and end your patrol. If you return to the harbor before a set date in the campaign files then the ship you just sank will be there again. They are set to spawn at that harbor between two set dates. Ending your patrol resets the spawns I believe. In the Pacific on SH4 I had 5 Yamato Class BBs in one career... not too realistic....

For that reason the tactic felt kinda cheap and easy so I avoid it now... unless I am almost out of fuel and haven't found anything good to shoot at! (Doesn't take long in a Type II ;))

Back when I was last sailing a type 2 in 1939 almost every patrol ended up with a trip into hartlepool to blow up the T2 oil tanker that was almost invariably there. It seems insane that no one noticed my boat was showing up roughly once every 3 weeks and blowing up an oil tanker in the same spot every time! I carried on doing this until our flotilla switched bases and I moved up to a type VIIC.

That's because most simulations have no strategic sense, just a tactical one. The AI doesn't care that it's losing a tanker every three weeks, because all it's prior cargo and warship losses are constantly being regenerated every time you start a new patrol. If the AI had only a finite pool of warships and cargo vessels and was programmed to worry about long-term losses, the game sure would play more realistic.

I used to do harbor raids alot, cause I love sinking ships to get alot of renown..but now I am being realistic and I'd rather patrol the grid I am suppose to like they did in WWII...have to be realistic about everything nowadays!

I showed us once in Loch Ewe expecting a couple aof battleships but they weren't there. I blame it on Goering's flyboys and no long believe their intel.

BP

Raid Freetown,go on i dare you!:haha::har:

Mmm heard Freetown's a tough raid,havent continued my last patrol for a few days(issues)but am currently raiding scapa flow in a Type IX in '39 I have a saved my game and if memory serves correctly am busy lining up a battleship,had a few near misses getting into the harbour too,nearly got discovered by a patrolling DD and had to run decks awash through high seas at some points where my boat would have torn her guts out on the sea bed. Hopefully this will be my 1st succesful Scapa Flow raid

I don't do it for the simple reason that the game makes it too easy and it wasn't done in real life. Well, once, of course, but that was the only one.

That was one of the things we discussed in Houston with Dan. While talking about a truly dynamic campaign we were arguing how much influence one submarine could have on the outcome of the war, when someone suggested that it would be nice if once you caused enough havock for the enemy they started rerouting convoys away from your area and started actively looking for you. Dan said he would look into the feasibility of doing that in "some future unnamed subsim".

Proper AI response to individual attacks and to ongoing warmaking is one of the main things still lacking in the game.

:timeout: Could it be!? Sailor "Walking Naval Encylopedia" Steve is wrong!? :03:

Prien wasn't the only harbor raider. Albrect Achilles in U-161 raided Port of Spain in 1942:

http://books.google.com/books?id=YOO...+of+spain+raid

On a Dare, Balz went into Southampton. Didn't see any worthy targets, took pictures and left undetected. (GWX 2.1).

More often than you may think.

Good find. But the principle still stands. Going into an unprotected Caribbean port is not what people are talking about in these threads. Loch Ewe gets mentioned a lot.