Wave height determination
 

Hi guys, I am playing SH3 V1.6(Hsie's version) with GWX and Commander, and some questions arise:

1.How the wave height is determined in SH3? I guess it is one fourth of the wind speed,but in heavy seas with a wind speed 15m/s, I can even see the bottom of the smaller ships bouncing out of water.

2.As an feature of Version 1.6, torpedoes with a depth less than the one fourth of the wind speed is considered as surface runner and thus has a 95% failure rate, as a result, I set the torpedo depth to at least 3.5m in heavy weather. At such depth, torpedoes sometimes goes below the target and miss.Does that mean attacking low draft ships is a waste of torpedoes in such condition?

3.What's your guys' choice when attacking ships (like coastal merchants) in heavy seas?

Many thanks!:salute:

Somewhere there is a pdf file to the V16B1 that states exactly how it works. They chose to work wtih two depths - D1 = 0.25*Windspeed (Nearly 4 meters at 15 wind) Torpedoes above D1 have a 98% failure rate. D2 = 0.4*Windspeed (6 meters at 15 wind) Water below D2 is considered clam, torpedoes there have "normal" failure rates. Between D1 and D2 it is linear - closer to D1, better chance to fail.

Small merchant in heavy seas? I just don't. The ship is bouncing a lot and my eels have to travel pretty deep. I used to try this - usually I could hit 1800 tons merchant with the third eel. Not good enough.

Low draft ships are certainly harder to hit for the reasons you mentioned there, but not impossible.

I don't know how the game calculates wave height, but when I'm recording sea state for my war diary, one way is to watch your Pappenberg in the control room (the 25m depth guage). Since on the surface your depth is about 6m, observe the maximum depth you drop to. The difference between the two (ie, you running between the average surface depth and the trough of the wave), is half the max wave height. Hang on:

Wave height = (max depth - 6) x 2

That does me fine. Alternatively, you can use real-world Beaufort Scale charts, which give a good indication of windspeed and wave heights. But not swell.

As for depth settings:

You're right for surface runners. But given that in the roughest seas (in SH world) have 8-10m waves, in order to guarantee that an impact torpedo will be, say, 2m below the surface, you'd have to set it for 12m. That would obviously eliminate the majority of low-draft ships.

I usually set torpedoes to magnetic, and set them to strike 1m above the keel. That way, if they run too high, they will still detonate (albeit less effectively), or it will run too deep, pass under the keel, and get you a perfect magnetic detonation and break its back.

Basically, magnetic eels are less dependent on striking a specific portion of the hull compared to impact. They can go anywhere and still be detonated in close proximity to the hull.

Of course, this has to be set against the realism settings - with torpedo failures on, in the early war you can fail with 75% of eels in 1940. Hope this helps!

I guess I'm the sicko here. First, the wave vs wind in SH3 and later has nothing to do with reality. I keep the Wave Height adjuster in Commander set to 'Seasonal' and record that in my daily log. After I quit the game I bring up my trusty Beaufort Chart and compute what the actual Beaufort state would be, adjusting the real wind speed accordingly. Then I write down what the actual wave height would be for that Beaufort level. Then I have an idea of what should really be going on, weather-wise.

As for launching torpedoes? If my periscope is dipping under the waves at full extension, I don't waste my time or torpedoes. I just wait it out.

Yep.

I was shadowing a small-draft cargo ship in rough seas (wind 14kts), hoping the wind would die down enough to set up a firing solution. Shadowed it for a day and a half, and then came across a juicy Whaling Factory Ship (still at 14kts wind speed) with a 9.8m draft. Set up a shot on it, torp depth 8.5 and hit it with salvo of two. It went down. :up:

Speed course back to the other ship I was tracking, got back and shadowed for another day or so...winds never died down so I let it go. :down: