Heavy / medium fog torpedo attacks
 

Ok I just somewhat learned and started using the Dick O Kane -method. In a heavy fog I can't see the ship till very late but I use the sonar and map contacts to estimate speed, range, course and set myself into a 90 degree angle on the ships course, get a perfect solution. I use the sonar guy to report the ships bearing but due to the ships high speed, heavy fog and sonar report slowness, had to guesstimate when the ship is at the correct angle from the bow to launch torps without seeing it. The ship was maybe 400m away and couldn't still see it.

The travel distance for the Mk10 torpedoes to hit the target in this case was something a little over 300m. Both hit, don't detonate presumably due to not arming in time. Very frustrating.

Just wondering how others do it. Even light fog attacks are very hard with low visibility. Should I just give up the fog attacks completely? It seems silly because in this game there seems to be fog at least half of the time and it makes these attacks very hard if not impossible.

A bit larger standoff range when you fire would have solved the arming distance problem. But the US torpedoes were notorious for not keeping depth and failing detonators (dud torpedoes). So if that realism option is set you may just have been unlucky. There is little you can do to prevent it failing. Just consume them until you end up in a time period where they figured it out and produced improved batches. Maybe set a shallower depth for them is the best you can do to correct for wrong depth.

what Pisces posted is good advice.
others have edited the USTorpedos.sim file to adjust the arming distance to allow for close range attacks such as what you are experiencing.
your choice.
good luck!
:Kaleun_Salute:

welcome aboard!
 

Use your deck gun and 40's in heavy fog for merchants. Just trail behind about 1000 yards out of sight using radar or ask for sonar bearings. Usually they will start flashing lights which you can see or when you get a few hits and start a fire for an easier aiming point. Just be careful when the enemy gets radar cuz they'll come hunting, but you can watch on radar and dive up and down as needed, usually they just go back to duty when you vanish from radar.

Look up "3D TDC and Radar mod" or if using TMO, it is included. This was a redo of the radar which allows for "radar bearing" shots with some accuracy. There is a learning curve but it is a great tool for long range attacks at night or fog etc.

Prior to that, would use combination of sound and radar to put together a solution and fired a spread, could typically get 1-2 hits, depending the range. Would only do this on prime targets like task forces. Convoys can shadow until weather clears or just let them go, as subs had to do in real life sometimes. Shooting blind is often wasting torpedoes, should only be tried on special targets. However, once figure out the radar mod, can use it to great effect.

Thanks for all the answers. I indeed joined in 2014 but started contributing only recently. Played some GWX SH3 earlier as well (still think it's the best) and now some SH4 with TMO.

Also the Dick O Kane -method is quite good (it's all about vectors) but very inflexible against convoys since it relies on you being in a straight angle, and thus if the ships are in column you have to wait for the next ship in line to cross over which takes time (on the other hand the usual way of identifying and stadimeter takes time as well so pick your poison I guess!).

But at least in my game the weather is so bad so often that I pretty much have to use often only sonar to launch torpedoes. I guess it's possible, you just need to be very quick listening when the ship is on correct bearing. Once close enough the window to launch torps is very small.

I take it that the loudest sonar bearing will be directly from the engine room, i.e. from the very back of the ship so you need to shoot a little bit in front of the loudest sound?

Also I had a lot of problems with the game crashing periodically and found out it was due to insufficient memory allocation to the game. I digged up the forums and found this 4GB memory patch which I applied to sh4.exe. The game so far hasn't crashed once (fingers crossed)! And it doesn't lag either when the game loads up something. It can potentially make the game function better generally as well, helping keep track of all the stuff it has to spawn.

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

Ok another problem with fog attacks... apparently the game doesn't always give credit for sinkings when a ship isn't "spotted" in the fog... it won't even mention the "she's going down".

that's interesting.
never seen that before.
are you sure she went down? did you stay in the general area of the hit...because the game requires that you be in the general area at the time that your prey goes down.
:Kaleun_Salute:

Yes... the ship went down. I read that changing mods in the middle of a patrol can mess things up (added the harbor traffic/new harbors/minefields etc.). Then I had the same thing happen soon with another ship, it's like they were complete ghost ships that didn't exist.

Restarted the patrol with the mod change and such problem haven't occurred again so far.

Yes, the deck gun. I was stuck in heavy rain and fog and visibility was about 500 yards. I manned the gun with gunners mate's and they had the ship on fire after about 12 rounds. Fortunately, it was only a 4000 ton composite freighter. I did get the "she's taking on water" message.

ah...you neglected to say that in your first post.:k_confused:
not changing mods while on patrol is table-stakes.
if you make changes while on patrol...do NOT post your problem.:03:

Deleted; wrong thread.

Real life one of the things they started using in 1943 was single ping sonar ranges, tests showed there was a very low possibility of single pings being detected. Experiments in game convinced me they NEVER hear my active sonar, so I use it all the time in fog to get accurate range and bearing.