What's with people scoring 50k tons on one patrol?
 

Wasn't a sub lucky to score over 10k on a single patrol? yet we hear all these stories how 10 ship convoys enter, 1 sub leaves...:huh:

it's crazy!!!

Oh yes...

Especially on those photo recon missions.

Just got two in a row - same harbor (Hiroshima Harbor).

Both times, a carrier, few light cruisers and a battleship lying about.

Scored over 86,000t both times.

Not to mention a few ships sunk en route.

I think there's a bug with the torpedos as I've had very, very few duds (and I have duds selected in the realism).

Same with diesel fuel - I've yet to see mine drop off the full mark (and it's also selected in the realism panel).

I can cruise around at flank all patrol.

Like stock SH3 stock SHIV is a bit arcadish. It'll be all tweaked out once the modders get done with it, though.

But it's there in the game so the casual gamer can have a good time blowing stuff up left and right, up and down to keep him interested. The casual gamer isn't really interested in any historical value...he just wants to see torps go boom and ships sink.

Come to think of it.... :hmm:

dude i avg 75k Per patrol, hell last partol i got 110k, 1 hvy crusier, 2light cruser,1 yamato BB, 1 Huge Liner

Well, it IS easier than, say, GWX, but it's not half as arcadeish as stock SH3 I'd say.

The fuel thing is most probably a bug, as I've had both situations (fuel lasting for the whole patrol and fuel sinking to 50% before I even reach my deploy area from Pearl Harbor). As for duds (fish failing to go off), I haven't seen many, but what I have indeed seen are torpedoes exploding spontaneously after a few yards down their course, as well as torpedoes that do little or no visible damage (no hole in the hull, only slight listing after a direct impact). Very few cases of the instant brew-up I saw so often in unmodded SH3.

Also, the TDC bug doesn't help: I play wtih full manual TDC, and I got a lot of misses before I got the issue figured out (fish seem to lag behind the target for some reason, and you have to correct that manually).

Also, the insane air presence (they're bound to get you sooner or later) and the slightly better visibility DDs seem to have make the game tougher in some aspects.

If I'm 100% sincere with myself (full realism, no loading mid-patrol, fully manual TDC, etc) getting above 10k tons is sort of challenging. Not as difficult as it should have been, but *way* tougher than it was in SH3 (joining the 100k club was a simple issue of finding a large enough convoy and having enough fish, really).

- Tonnage on ships seems a bit high in some cases. (easily fixable)

- Few to no dudes (not fixable)

- Player getting too much info and knowing where to intercept alll the traffic from the constant contact reports (fixable)

I think you have to use the hard setting on the drop down list. This will auto check some boxes for you. At that point, check the others you want. You should see the fuel drop. Mine does. I see a lot of convoys and like the SH3 of old, they are attempting to satisfy a varity of people playing it. The casual player wants ships everywhere. The immersion guys want realistic amount of available targets.

I haven't seen a single dud yet to be honest. All my torpedos explode, even if some don't do a lot of damage. Most contact trigger torpedos do massive damage though. I think adding far more duds would make things a lot harder.

This is what I figured. Most of these ridiculous tonnages posts are coming from those not playing with 100% realism and perhaps even auto-targeting. *shrug*

my last two patrols i've sunk BB Yamamotos... and that's 86k tons right there. Both pats ended with around 150k tons. More than a little excessive, especially given how easy it is to intercept task forces, hit the juiciest target, and slide away undetected. Gratifying in one sense, but on the other hand, it seems too easy.

I think I'm going to "graduate" up to the harder escorts mod. Make those convoys a little more tense.

-m

And you play on 100% realism right now?

I'm playing with everything reaslistic except autol TDC and external camera (I like the eye candy... but i don't use it to my advantage). I haven't refit mid patrol. My high tonnages keep coming from finding exceedingly juicy targets like the Yamamotos, which you can sink in a salvo of 6-8 torps. Or huge ocean liners... etc. Assuming I used manual TDC and wasn't woefully incompetent at it, I still think I could rack up very large patrol tonnages. What's missing from the difficulty is effective escorts. I'm basically able to pick pocket convoys... plot my interecepts just right so i'm sitting stationary at periscope depth about 5000 feet away from the path of the biggest target. Pop my persicope up for a split second to update my position keeper... wait... wait... salvo, dive to 250 ft, and head out at 2knots.

If, god forbid, my salvo didn't sink the target, it's definitely gimped and the convoy/task force motors away leaving the lame ship undefended... i can return and finish the deal.

I think after rachetting up the escort difficulty, i'll see how i do. If I'm still having an easy time, I'll learn the manual TDC.

Oh, and one thing that makes all the difference for me is using impact ONLY, no magnetic detonators. I've found those things to be so unreliable that fewer than half of my torps hit or inflict damage. With impact only, I've had a nearly 100% trouble free torpedo experience. I also set the depth to be about 5 feet above the keel on targets (so a 30 ft draft means a 25ft depth on the torp). I don't know if that makes a difference, but i'd like to think it helps. As far as I can tell, it doesn't hurt.

-m

I got 207,501 GRT after tangling with a carrier task force. MOST of my tonnage was from right there, but on my way back to port I still had deck gun shells to expend so I lingered over a single ship lane (no convoys, just individual ships, mostly Large Composites) and got at least another 40k out of the deal to break the 200 mark.

I *BELIEVE* it makes a significant difference when you stack crew abilities in the Torpedo Rooms. Officer gives speed and the other 3 in the bow increased torp damage.
One shot, one kill for all but a handful in which case the torp took out the bow or the props and didn't do enough significant damage. But yeah, watching carriers burn after one strike just aft of midships is... interesting.

Manual torpedo solutions are one of the keys here in my opinion.

While with the US TDC (nifty piece of equipment if you ask me) and some experience (specially narrowing down the speed) it's not *that* difficult to hit something at close ranges, things start going the way of the pear beyond the 1000 / 1500 yards, specially when you're facing fast-moving targets (warships) at inconvenient angles.

In other words, with fully manual TDC and without the magic stop watch (I'm actually beginning to like the fact that it's not there) you can feel proud if you hit a destroyer at 1500 yards with an AoB different from 90 and with a single torpedo (salvo of 3 seems the minimum to be even remotely sure of hitting).

That crosses out all encounters that don't occur at near-perfect approaches (distance of 1000 yards, perpendicular to ship's course and engine stopped, slipping through the destroyer screen of convoys and task forces. What we could call a "textbook" approach). Ruling those out, getting 40k tons in a single patrol is certainly not easy.

My last patrol with a S-18 saw four ships down, but I was very lucky with the positioning in three cases and VERY lucky with the torpedo solution in one (I couldn't believe I managed to hit that). That was an average of three fish per ship, and two of them had to be finished with deck gun (thankfully, they didn't have deck guns of their own).

Not ulra-challenging? Ok. Arcadeish? Never.

Also, you've got a lot of people who played SH3 for a long time and had plenty of practice locating and sinking tonnage. When you get used to the realism mods in SH3 and play stock SH4, it's gonna be a cakewalk. :up: