The Things We Do For Realism
 

We all tend to have our own ideas of what makes Silent Hunter III 'realistic', all falling short of actually building a time machine and going back to join the Kriegsmarine in 1938.

For some of us, that includes making mods for the community (shout out to you guys for your time and effort, especially the boys over at GWX and NYGM :salute:)

For me, a 'hardcore' captain by the results of the quiz nearly everyone has taken, that includes cranking up the realism, leaving nothing but the map contacts (c'mon, the captain would get constant updates anyway), external and ships cameras on (for the eye candy), using the crew transfer feature provided in SH3 Commander as well as the sabotage/malfunction possibility, and putting in numerous mods along with GWX such as the no uniforms, lifeboat&debris, Q-ships, and more (Also, isn't there one where you have to keep an eye on food/water supply as well?)

So, that said, what do you chaps do for realism?

I go to my assigned grid and I stay there. If I haven't seen an enemy ship after one week on station I roll a 6-sided die. On a roll of 6 BdU has okayed my request to move to another grid. I then roll again to get the direction of the move and roll a third time: 1-3 means I move one square in that direction, 4-6 it's two squares. If the initial roll was anything other than 6 I spend another week in that grid, and roll again. This time I can move on a 5-6. After another week it's 4-6.

This is of course at the beginning of the war. When I get some tonnage under my belt I'll allow myself more leeway. Of course this means I occasionally have an empty patrol. I've been playing subsims for almost thirty years. I can live with that.

I sit in a bath tub but do not wash for three months!

If you turn off map contacts, it really changes the game. You will find that instead of playing the game from the map screen, you will start playing it from the bridge or the periscope. Additionally, you will develop a much keener sense of angular perception relative to your boat. Unless you have time to ID ships and do a good fixed-wire speed check, you will also find yourself guessing at speeds a lot more.

I think these qualities were paramount in real uboat commanders' minds.

Everyone should try at least a patrol with no map contacts.

Steve

Mail maker, do you mean map contacts on the attack map? I use radio contacts on the nav map. That's it. I use weapons officer for id for merchant fleet mod.

Absolutely - the first time I played at 100% I was genuinely scared! It's a totally different game and kept me off the map-screen.

Yes, it is a very good idea, i should try that. But first i have to learn how to calculate a torpedo course ! :timeout:

I use Observer's Assisted Plotting Mod. You leave Map Contacts turned on, but nothing appears on the screen unless you pass the cursor over it, then it only shows up as "Unknown". Once the ship is identified you can click on it and it will show up correctly.

I suck at math, so I use WE Assistance to do the plotting for me. I used to feel guilty about this, but now with H.sie's mod he sometimes gets it wrong and always gives general rather than specific numbers.

I also use H.sie's Hull Integrity mod, which gives generalities as well. It's color-coded to give a rough idea of how well the pressure hull is doing, but nothing specific.

That sounds like something to try. I have a bag of dice left over from my RPG days, so I have multiple ways of making random rolls. That said, I usually just go rogue. Shut the radio off, so to speak, and do whatever I feel like. I leave unlimited fuel on (I want fun and running out of gas is not), and then I can lay in a course to wherever. Maybe I sink a lot of lone merchants along the way, maybe I find a convoy (or two), maybe I raid a harbour. If I didn't use the exterior cams, though, then there is *no* way I would attempt a harbour raid. I use ext view to avoid mines and nets, I wouldn't even think of it otherwise. I will come back with my tonnage and/or aircraft kills and report the business at that time. Or I will not come back at all, and the Kriegsmarine/BdU will be spared the embarrassment of my failure, so, no harm there. I hate how much I love this game.

To be honest, I love earning medals in games. Call that the old high score pac man days where I love to see my progress. So I have been collecting some of the medals we can earn in the game so I can have a physical tangible item to be proud of. These are very good replicas but the uboat war badge is actually authentic! I love this piece. I even have the wound badge. I place them in the display case as I earn them. That's my realism.

P. S. The front clasp is on the way!

Very nice! I am jelly...

I'm going to try that on my next patrol.

How's this for realism?
 

I'm going to try one helluva a challenge this next time around. With a few exceptions as needed, I will do an entire patrol with all of the HUD turned off. I can Understand my German well enough to get by with it on, but I think it will make the game as realistic as possible. I'm switching on all of those boxes for realism, and am expecting to come back from this empty-handed, as it is still early in the war. I will post regular updates.

Instances for using the HUD: Turn on for those silent reports, such as the watch officer's ' Range to Nearest Contact', and the Navigator's different reports. Turn 'em off when I'm done.

I use no map contacts update. I even erased my sub marker from map (Hide my sub mod) and later manually erased marker of sunk ship (as this revealed my position too). I navigate using tools avalaible in SH, drawing lines and circles, with TC 4 to 16, adjusting course from time to time. When night sky is clear I click right mouse button on map to check my position because I think my navigator should be able to fix boat's position using stars. I saw that someone wrote lately about using the same method.

I write patrol log, similarly to the ones published in forum by Sailor Steve (kudos!). Well, mine are quite boring most of the time. "AN2646 | Wind X m/s NW. Course XXX. Speed Y." and so on ;-)

I have decided on Hitman's GUI. While it has no targeting circle around scope present in OLC's GUI/MaGUI, the description provided by Hitman and the fact IIRC that he studied real optics preserved in museums as well as his brief historical info on targeting made by real kaleuns, have convinced me to use it.

I use external camera to check my torpedoes' trails as I'm still learning to target manually. But I don't use ext camera to gather any information that kaleun should not have. I don't use it to plot my fire solution, nor to look at depth charging destroyers. Camera helps a lot in learning e.g. I see that my eel went a bit behind the stern or right under keel but didn't exploded, and I may correct my targeting next time.

i play with no map contacts and also with Real navigation this one that's the true fun of playing sh3 :D no map contact no way points plotting tools using only the protractor to see which heading i must go :D and all is set to realism 100%

I have map contacts turned off. This means you don't see any ships in visual/sonar range on any map. I don't remember if you get radio contacts or not. I think so.

Manual TDC is very easy if you make 90 degree shots, which is all I do. I don't even know how to make shots at other angles.

If you approach your target at 90 degrees to its course, here is what you do:

1) Point your scope/uzo at 0 degree heading.
2) Turn on the TDC and dial in the target speed. In SH3 if you can't do a fixed-wire method of timing the ship movement stem to stern and using this against the known ship length, just plug in 7 knots. In SH3 most ships are traveling beetween 5-9 knots. If you fire from within 1000 meters you'll probably get a hit anyway.
3) If your sub is 90 degrees to the right of the target's course, set the AoB to 90 degrees starboard. If your sub is 90 degrees to the left of the target's course, set the AoB to 90 degrees port.
4) Turn the TDC off.
5) Move the scope to the left or right until the Gyro Angle reads 0. You should be turning the periscope towards your target. In other words, if the target is approaching your nose from the left, you should have to turn your scope to the left to get to zero gyro. If this is happening backwards, you have your AoB set to the wrong direction.
6) Open your torpedo outer doors.
7) As the target crosses your vertical reticule, fire torpedo(s) at the points on the target you want to hit. When in doubt of target speed, fire at dead-center to increase your chances of a hit without missing ahead of or behind the target.

Range does not matter when firing using this method. The longer range you try to fire, the more important an accurate target speed measurement is.

This may sound tricky but in practice you can dial in the TDC in about 3 seconds. You just dial the speed and then set the AoB 90 degrees left or right. Turn the scope to 0 gyro and wait for the targets to cross your line of death.

With no map contacts, you will have to eyeball your target and plot an intercept "by eye". In SH3 there is a "heading to view" command (= key, I believe) that says, "Drive the sub thattaway!". You will use that a lot. You eyeball the ship from the bridge (or scope), and then turn your head (or scope) in an approximate intercept and say, "Go thattaway!". No more carefully drawing lines on your map that precisely set up a 90 degree set of tracks.


The one thing that holds no interest to me at all is manual navigation. I have no desire to manually navigate the boat. In fact I don't want to be bothered about the sub operation/navigation until the lookouts or sonar spot a contact. I'm just here for the combat and escape/evasion.

And the medals. The sweet, sweet medals. :)

Steve

Nice description on the TDC. I'm just the opposite. I've had my share of shoot-em-ups and I'm in it because I miss the sea. Real navigation is something I'll be picking up soon.

Mailmaker, have u tried maGUI F? It gives you speed lines on your stop watch just for fixed wire speed estimates. You just have to be moving slow(2knots). Works for me. That method you just described, I use for a convoy I'm about to attack. Great for getting out multiple eels in a short time.

Manual TDC is very easy if you can get close enough. The measurement errors stay small when you're firing from 500m. I rarely miss when attacking unescorted merchants.

I think it's time now
 

I originally started playing Silent Hunter 5 with the intent to have it as real as possible. Two things caused me to lower the realism under 100%.

1) Manual targeting was not even possible since I was unable to calculate distance to target properly using stadometer, which was broken at the time, or binoculars. I allowed map contacts so that I could measure distances, and it worked perfectly. Perhaps too perfectly though. I felt myself longing for that fog to mean something. Struggling to make visual contact through weather conditions, or manually spotting a target is terribly missed. An immersive factor that I sacrificed to measure distances.

2) External view was something that I could not bear to give up. Having committed to all this hardware so that I could meet the latest graphical demands, it just wouldn't make sense, if you're not going to enjoy all that eye candy Silent Hunter 5 offers. And so I allowed external views, promising myself that I'd only use it asthetically, during uneventful patrol periods, but not tactically, to spot targets and identify course, or true bearing. I broke my promise pretty early on, and again, I paid the price with an immersion breaker. Attacks were too easy even on hardest settings. It just wasn't challenging enough.

So to sum that up.
"Allow external view" and "allow map contact updates", were the two reasons I lowered my realism settings, taking it off of 100% realism, to 82% or something like that.

So now I've returned after a fair while and there have been updates to several mods. I noted Sobers mega mod and figured that's my best bet. With all these mods, is it possible for me to go 100%? Does stadimeter work and uzo work for measuring distance with Sobers mod list?


I think it's time now.

Training rudders are comming off, as soon as I get the last of Sobers list.

:)