Who plays AFK...
 

Just curious. How many people play the game semi AFK, letting the autocrew crew and crew audio reports clue you in to when something is happening. I have to admit I do it fairly regularly now... setting a course to the launch point/target/etc and then going to do busy work until the sonar crew chimes in. In a way its more immersive, just like a captain that retires to his bunk until the XO/COW calls for his attention.

Anyone else do this?

In an MP game where I'm transiting above washout speed for a time, I might turn on the news or something like that.

I'm especially bad for this. At least three times while hosting MP games I've gotten up, laid on my bed to watch TV, and fallen asleep. I usually wake up three hours later and rejoin the game.

Given the generally slow pace of naval simulations, it's almost essential that you be able to get up and walk away from it while it runs or else make extensive use of time acceleration. It's also a good thing to save the game and pick it up later. In real life, the CO of a warship would be all over the place aboard a ship, doing all kinds of things that really don't fit well into a video game. In this sense, it's probably more realistic that you make use of pause, time acceleration, as well as letting it run while you do something else, as well as playing missions in multiple sittings.

Back when I was with the seawolves, I once killed another player while he was AFK. Of course, he didn't tell me that until after I killed him; I would have been happy to pause it for whatever reason. Well, I never asked that player for another match again.

I'm thinking about getting Wii so that I can play golf as the sub is prodding toward the next nav point.

Why? He has nobody to blame but himself. In general, given the nature of MP I wouldn't recommend going away for very long. The thing is, for single player scenarios, where the game, if played in real time, could easily be 18-24 hours long, especially for sub-v-sub. I know some people think time accelleration and doing anything other than staring intently at the sonar screen are terrible, but for a game like DW, most of the time you'll be fine and it doesn't really enhance your understanding of things to do otherwise. How long is a watch? I'd argue that's the most game time you should ever play in one sitting.

Because killing a pilotless sub is not fun, offends my sense of honor, and corrupts the scoreboard.

Going afk during an 18-24 hour match is completely different. SW matches typically lasted 45 min to 1.5 hours, and detection and/or engagement could occur at any time.

I agree with sea queen, with out time accelleration your going to spend hours looking at a blank sonar readout.

Ive often thought of turning on sonar auto crew, so I can read whilst transiting or during another dull moment.

Question is I dont trust the autocrew, I know Autocrew TMA cheats, is this true for the sonar?

Sonar AC does not cheat, at least I don't know about it. It can miss weak contact and it is very bad at identification. On the other hand it handles target rich environment better and faster.

I think ill give it a go then, really all im after is a heads up that theres a contact out there. At that point ill switch to manual and process the signal