For the love of..... LEAVE ME ALONE!
 

Just encountered my first dd i couldnt shake. Kudos to my repair team.

But my god this is stressful. (ARRRRGGG F5 refreshes the browser window! grrrrrr)

I work a very low, then very high stress job, being a paramedic. But, I couldn't do this.

No way.

The boredom and stress of nothing but rough seas, then pingpingping.... not knowing when your death would come.

My god.... these poor men......

LOL! I TOTALLY prefer the persistent DD's to calls like the the symptomatic second degree type two heart block I ran on the other day!!! :shucks:

Feb. 1941

There is a nasty, sneaky, treacherous DD.

Spotted a small, unescorted convoy of three ships. On submerged approach at high speed to what should have been a satisfying massacre, a DD appeared astern. We were at only 26 meters deep when this fiend kaboomboomed us with a shower of wasserbomben.

It caused light damage and we were able to sneak away.
The surprise was a nasty, unfair ambush to a sumbie going about its business. :down:

Kill them !
 

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/5206/dddeath.png

good luck. dont give up!

Yeah, 3.5 hours of real time evasion.

Tried scooting away after he made a run at me.... but with only 40 m of water.... it's easy to catch up....

Tried playing dead, laying on the bottom. Yeah, that just made it easier to DC me.

Eventually, a few hours later, I finally got upset. Eventually got him with a close range torp, but not before he blew off my observation scope (targeting scope was stuck from DC'ing).

Ingame, it went from dusk till dawn before I could limp away.....

I can certainly relate to your opening post. Last time I spent that long (in real time) trying to evade escorts, by the time I dropped of the continental shelf NW of Ireland into deeper waters and away, I was completely exhausted. Hate to think what it would have been like for real.

You've probably read many of the threads about evasion, but a few tips that seem to prolong the lives of many kaleuns.

• 40 m gives you little or none of the tactical advantage of being a u-boat. Hard to slp under their sensors and no thermal layer.
• While playing dead and "merging with the bottom" might work in real life, it doesn't work in SH3.
• "Silent running" is not silent enough... you need to step your RPMs down to around 60-75.
• Long, slow curves, alternating between port and starboard, at 15-25 degrees seem to work better than a straight line route of escape.
• If he is sticking with you, you are giving yourself away somehow. Recheck the RPMs, and get as much depth as possible.
• (Unrealistic, but....) The AI escorts cannot hear you "ping" the bottom to find depth.

You probably got saddled with an escort with elite skills (though your being able to sink it, which usually requires 600 m of distance, indicates you may have been been in a better position to escape).

BE MORE AGGRESSIVE!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

I've read about changing RPM's but I have not been able to find the controls? Where are these?

The final exchange took place when he made a DC run at me, I charged right at him with flank speed, which wasn't great at 10%-20% battery life, but it was something. I popped up to peri depth and cranked off a stern shot at him as he turned to reacquire, had about 350m separation at that point.


I'll try that longer slower S's. Was doing sharper ones.

Prick your CE on the shoulder by left-clicking [EDIT: right-clicking? I am not in the game, so suddenly I cannot remember] on him in the control room. You will then get his "eyes."

If you turn to the bulkhead over the two planesmen, you will see dials representing port and starboard RPMs. At "Silent Running," these will be around 90-100.

90-100 rpms is a shade too high for silent (so I am told by many older salts and my own experience). So you use your speed setting dial (lower right corner) to dial down your rpms to 60-70. You cannot change the RPM dials directly, but you will see the RPMs drop as you reduce you speed manually.

Ahhh tyvm. Makes sense

Boom
 

I've been there...all afternoon and evening under attack.

I usually keep turning 5-10 degrees and alternate when he is on either a distant turn around or after he has just passed close. It takes your sub time to swing over and in that time you are going straight.

I have tried varying speed from stop to slow thinking that the game math formulas might get confused. Didn't work.

Three times it happened. First time I evenually sank the bastard. Next two got me.

But it does work. Long, slow curves, at 60-75 RPMs, at maximum depth increase my chances of getting away by at least 50%.

That's not to say I shall get away. At 60 meters bottom, with 3 veteran DDs on me, my chance of getting away by running a straight line at "standard" silent running might be 20%. By stepping down my RPMs and doing the slow "snake," I might buy myself to 30%.

Why?

Once the escorts cannot find you, and have to "reset" to your last detection point, your odds go way up. The AI seems to assume you will be going in a straight line, or thereabouts, and if you are bearing off, and going truly silent, you have bought yourself some room.

I can relate. My first real patrol in SH3 I attacked a convoy that had the HMS Nelson in the middle. Crippled the Nelson with 3 eels, got a freighter with the 4th. Had an A&B class on me like flies on feces with only 100m of water to work with.

I learnt my lessons of evasion after that. I never attack convoys in shallow water now. I want 300m+ under my keel when I attack so I have higher evasion chances.

I think it is the change in direction that is the key rather than the slow curves as I seem to do ok with sharp turns and straight lines between turns. That said, putting the boat into a shallow turn is very easy to do and other than not clearing your last known position (from escort point of view) at quite the maximum rate for a given speed, I can't think of any drawbacks - I'll give it a go.

As far as I remember, the reason for long slow turns is that sharp turns at such low speed pretty much bring you to a standstill. But, yes, it is the change of direction that matters.

Like in the filme Das Boot...pressure is every where! :D

Rudder controls
 

Damn, I did wonder why I was having so much trouble with some destroyers - thanks everyone :DL

I am a long-time SH2 player and moving up to SH3 was a bit of an eye opener anyway with the changed commands system - I really missed the old [=5 degrees port rudder, ]=5 degrees starboard rudder way of steering the boat...guess now I have a reason to start using the alternative view of the rudder controls rather than the compass :up:

PS: Can you tell I prefer keyboard commands over using the mouse?

When doing shallow water combat/evasion it changes all the rules. Its easier to get rid of a DD with only 30 m of water than it 100m. Inexperienced or cleverly manipulated ships in water < 20m can be frequently made to blow themselves up from their own dc's. They will fail to accelerate after dropping their charges or if you maneuverd them right will be boxed in/hit another ship making them unable to accelarate after dropping.

Once they finally become available I love the homing torpedoes. Sure the fox tails were the perfect detterent irl; ingame even the first ones you get can be almost 100% lethal. Wait for the moment the DD hits the 300m mark and fire away. It'll try to maneuver out of the way but being so close it's never enough to shake of a homing torpedo once it locks onto the DD's tail.

You can also fire them from high gyro angles. You dont have to worry about the accuracy of the shot, as their homing, as long as they get close, they'll acquire. So you can be 250m, possibly even less, perfectly abeam of each other, and still fire. The extra run time required to make that turn will allow it to arm, and if it misses, it will make another pass, allowing for more time. But just don't sink yourself :damn:. make sure your very very quiet when you fire these.