Tactics & Tips
 

ok so ... lost my first boat with all hands. long story short, my chief engineer contracted tuberculosis about 2 days into the patrol. the idea is to treat him using an officer with medical skill set and a first aid kit and let him recover in a bunk and hope like hell it doesnt spread.

well... it didnt, but i found a bug. The items that were in my chief engineers que when he contracted the illness - stuck - in his control so any time i needed someone else to manipulate the bilge pump or ballast valve (in this case) i got the message "this is already in use by another crew member" or something similar to that.

well, we were submerged at the time to do a hydrophone check. went to surface... well... nobody could use the ballast tank!

eventually it unstuck and we got to the surface, right under what i assume was a sunderland. we were strafed with machine gun fire and one of the watch crew was injured.

he took to one of the bunks in the forward compartment, one crewman stood beside him and seemed quite exasperated... another sat on the bunk and tried to calm the wounded man.

next we took a near direct bomb hit to the forward compartment (bad luck that guy) sprung a few leaks, damage to the bulkhead, several light bulbs busted out, electrical system completely shorted, everything forward of the control room plunged into darkness and taking water.

equipped one of my officers with breathing apparatus and spare parts, and sent him to work. ordered the compartment evacuated.

and one of the crewmen grabbed the wounded sailor, and dragged him out of the evacuated compartment and took him to an open bunk where he died of his wounds.

meanwhile, two of my mechanically inclined crewmen are working frantically to get the leaks stopped.

the boat was sinking at this point. it was a race against the clock.

next order of business was get the lights back on. again, they grabbed spare parts and eventually got the lights on. things were starting to look better!

ok, leaks stopped, lights on, now i have to get as many people as possible bailing water to the bilge to get it out of the boat. getting very deep now, depth gauge almost pegged :o creaking - groaning

BAM

previous repair to a hatch gave out... there was no saving it now. lost due to implosion.

now for the tips

1. Make sure you have an officer with maintenance skill set, its going to come in handy

2. As early as possible get the sixth officer upgrade, one extra officer comes in super handy

3. Make sure you have someone with medical skill... going to go figure out how to make that happen, but it appears without medical skills - you cant treat sick or wounded sailors :/\\!!

4. Check your torpedo load out before you head to sea, you probably wont start with a full load of fish

6. get plenty of food

7. always have an officer at the navigator station, and when he is low on energy, swap him out... you willget lost at sea if nobody is manning that station and you can get found by assigning someone to it. but it takes several minutes to get found

thats all for now

Tips and Tricks
 

I have around 20 hours in the game now and would like to go over some tips I've discovered or have picked up over time.

• Hold TAB: Great for quickly assigning crew to positions without zooming around the sub trying to find them. Works in any view, as well.
• Right Click: Right click on stations to get more options. For example have a crew member selected and right click on the light next to the pump. It'll show you all available colors to select from.
• Tactical Map mode: When in the map and nothing else is selected you'll have three buttons at the bottom left. The farthest right one is a tactical map which is great for getting a good overview of the area you're in. Sadly no map tools work in this mode. The regular map can zoom in just as much as the tactical mode though so you can use map tools there.
• Don't set off the alarm: When you need to dive but it's not urgent, drop to periscope depth first. Anything past that will set off the alarm lowering morale. After at periscope depth slowly drop your depth. It seems dropping huge increments always set off the alarm (really hope they fix this)
• Target three ships at once: You can auto-calculate on three ships at once with a crew member in each the attack, observe periscopes and the hydrophone. Select the position, select a ship, and open target positions on that ship. Do the same for the other ships/positions. You can also triple up on one ship for a faster solution. I like putting three on the first ship, moving 2 to the next ship once the first ship is calculated, and moving the last one to the last ship. Once I fire the first fish at the first ship, I take its targeting crew and move him to the second ship, and so on. It's best to start at the farthest away ship so that your torps have time to reach targets without scattering the rest.
• Checkpoints: See those dots on the map? Travel to them to turn them green and make them fast travel points. Great for skipping 15 minutes of mindless travel across the sea.
• More O2 and better Morale under water: There are a couple of things you can do to make staying beneath the sea more bearable for your men. First is blue light to indicate silent running. This lowers O2 usage. Second is Ventilation. This extends O2 supply but at the cost of battery.
• Red Light at Night: Having the red light on during the night will extend your UZO's crew sight line.

If anyone provides anymore I'll add them to end of this post with credit.


Tips and Tricks from Subsim Members
Deepseadiver:

• Oxygen: Potassium cartridges in the ventilator.
• Morale/discipline: Good selection of food in the galley(veg, fruit, meat, canned fish, cheeses, canned meat, potatoes)
• Morale/discipline: Select radioman to cook
• Morale/discipline:Play music, release from duty, if idle release also.
• Decoys in the rear torpedo room.
• Scrap metal: Get mechanic to make more spare parts at workbench

GoldenRivet:

• Control room light switch - Right click, it will allow you to then select what light you want on rather than cycling through them one at a time. Red light at night not only improves visibility through the UZO but also visibility of the naked eye slightly (most every click spot aboard the boat has this feature)
• Stuck officer work around - if you encounter an item such as the ballast valve that you are unable to operate because of the red text indicating that someone else is using the item, when clearly nobody is (bug) click the evacuate compartment icon in the bottom left of the compartment, everyone will leave the room and it will clear the que for that piece of equipment. then, un-check the evacuation box, and the item will now be usable.
• cant use hydrophones work around - sometimes you will find that you cannot make your radio operator switch to the hydrophones once you have gone under water. if this happens, hold TAB key and select the radio officer, on the list of available actions below his icon will be the hydrophones, select those and he will move to the hydrophone station!
• Torpedo solutions faster - assign the commander to the attack scope or UZO and assign him an assistant. the captain can calculate torpedo solution for one target, the assistant can calculate a solution on a second target at the same time and if you are submerged, the hydrophone operator can calculate solution on a third target giving you 3 solutions for the price of one!
• Faster Crash Dive -
• when an aircraft or warship etc is spotted and a quick crash dive is needed, it may take an agonizingly long time for your chief engineer to run from wherever he is to the ballast valves and operate them. so follow these steps instead of ordering a crash dive from the depth gauge.
• (1) press the space bar to pause the game
• (2) select whichever officer is standing at the navigation table
• (3) order that officer to operate the ballast valve
• (4) NOW order the crash dive.
• (5) set engine telegraph to fastest possible speed.
• (6) resume normal game speed
• You'll be under in a more reasonable 20-25 seconds

Salvadoreno:

• Diesel and Electric Engine Saving - if you have officers w/ crewman at the engine stations as well as navigation station, you will increase your battery/fuel life.
• Travel Mode - Conserve diesel by traveling @ 7 knots
• In Port - Have your torperdoman load the tubes, which gives you 4 spaces open for more torpedo's!

Oxygen: Potassium cartridges in the ventilator.

Morale/discipline: Good selection of food in the galley(veg, fruit, meat, canned fish, cheeses, canned meat, potatoes)

Morale/discipline: Select radioman to cook

Morale/discipline:Play music, release from duty, if idle release also.

Decoys in the rear torpedo room.

Scrap metal: Get mechanic to make more spare parts at workbench

Control room light switch - Right click, it will allow you to then select what light you want on rather than cycling through them one at a time. Red light at night not only improves visibility through the UZO but also visibility of the naked eye slightly (most every click spot aboard the boat has this feature)

Stuck officer work around - if you encounter an item such as the ballast valve that you are unable to operate because of the red text indicating that someone else is using the item, when clearly nobody is (bug) click the evacuate compartment icon in the bottom left of the compartment, everyone will leave the room and it will clear the que for that piece of equipment. then, un-check the evacuation box, and the item will now be usable.

cant use hydrophones work around - sometimes you will find that you cannot make your radio operator switch to the hydrophones once you have gone under water. if this happens, hold TAB key and select the radio officer, on the list of available actions below his icon will be the hydrophones, select those and he will move to the hydrophone station!

Torpedo solutions faster - assign the commander to the attack scope or UZO and assign him an assistant. the captain can calculate torpedo solution for one target, the assistant can calculate a solution on a second target at the same time and if you are submerged, the hydrophone operator can calculate solution on a third target giving you 3 solutions for the price of one!

Diesel and Electric Engine Saving - if you have officers w/ crewman at the engine stations as well as navigation station, you will increase your battery/fuel life.

Travel Mode - Conserve diesel by traveling @ 7 knots

In Port - Have your torperdoman load the tubes, which gives you 4 spaces open for more torpedo's!

I didn't see the decoy launcher in the aft torpedo room. What is it near?

Can't confirm but try right clicking on the Ventilation rear torpedo launcher

Faster Crash Dive - when an aircraft or warship etc is spotted and a quick crash dive is needed, it may take an agonizingly long time for your chief engineer to run from wherever he is to the ballast valves and operate them. so follow these steps instead of ordering a crash dive from the depth gauge.

(1) press the space bar to pause the game (2) select whichever officer is standing at the navigation table (3) order that officer to operate the ballast valve (4) NOW order the crash dive. (5) set engine telegraph to fastest possible speed. (6) resume normal game speed

You'll be under in a more reasonable 20-25 seconds

I figured it out. You have to have the decoys in your inventory for the launcher to show up.

BUG - Comparison chart showing crew members BUFFS & BONUSES
 

I created this comparison chart showing what happens when you assign additional crew members to various positions after assigning a leader to begin with..

Scroll down the image and you will see various buff and bonus descriptions except when a leader is assigned to the observation scope.. his rectangle for description is empy / no text.

{The attack scope description is shown working ok)



https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtHmw0Cbvn9ig1sN3JSjtxcWgQU8

Hold ALT to highlight all available action spots.
Hold CTRL and right click to queue toggle stuff on and off.

No sound underwater: Turn off gyrocompass and all pumps. Full stop engine. Switch steering to manual mode in depth steers station (right click and on radial menu choose manual steering)

Force officer to specific station (right click on the persiscope or hydrostation) so that they don`t go to sleep while calculating torpedo solution. If officer is already on the periscope, move him away for a moment then right click the periscope or use the tab menu (If forced the icon is marked with gold border).

Tips and Tricks
 

I don't know if this has been already covered here but here we go.

Two important aspect to keep in mind, first is that officers execute task either autonomously due to their role or because you told them to.


Task automatically executed by them will be interrupted by bed time. However task directly instructed won't be interrupted even when their energy bar reach 0. This is important to avoid officers leaving station in critical moments all you need to do is to issue them a task, even if it is already something related to their role.


Second aspect is in fact the role. Tutorial didn't make this clear enough, not only you can assign a role to an office but also there are others roles rather than the initial ones. If you properly use them you can cut micromanage by a lot. Of course there are still things that need to be directly issued (eg. lights) but a good use of roles alone can greatly improve the experience.


For example i had to constantly move the radio office between sonar and radio. Once i figured out that i could just assign the role specific to either radio or sonar all i had to do is change the role quickly and right click on the current task to cancel it thus trig him to move it the other station by itself. The more i play this game the more i like it. Sure it is a different beast from SH but surprisingly it is giving a lot of entertainment, more than cold wars for example. Seeing how active, and most important open mind, the devs are i believe that this product can only improve. I don't want it to follow SH because i prefer this concept, or at least something different, but definitely combat challenges can improve to an experience more closer to SH.

Tutorial walk through
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeQfh98In8g

I wish i knew what you guys are doing.I can't even get down the hatch! wish there was some instructions. I never played the 'sims'