Photo Mission Advice
 

Hello all,

I was wondering if you could give me advice on how to successfully complete a mission where u sneak into a Japanese port and photo a ship without being killed in the process.

As of right now im 0-4 and a little frustrated. Thanks
Durk.

Silent running, keep your speed to 1 or 2 knots, and watch out for the sub nets. Try to make your entry and exit during the night as it will prevent the harbor patrols from spotting you at long range. Resist the urge to use the active sonar to get a max depth reading, as it will give you away. I find the external cam (F12) to be very useful for spotting sub nets and getting a rough idea of how shallow the harbor is.

Unfortunately the only good way to get past a sub net is to surface, but if you surface, go over the net, and drop back down right away, you should be okay, provided you do it at night. Keep a wide berth from the destroyers and harbor patrollers. It may help to stick close to a merchant to disguise your propeller noise.

Only raise your scope if you absolutely have to. When you get in range to take the pictures, lock your scope onto the nearest photo target (usually a carrier), take the picture, and take your scope back down. One photo has done it so far for me, although I've heard around the boards that it can be up to five photos of five different ships.

You MUST resist the urge to start blowing things up. Most of the time the carriers you have to photograph are stationary sitting targets, but if you fall into the temptation to launch torpedoes at them, the harbor patrols will be on you like white on rice.

I've had the misfortune to get the same photo op mission in the same port twice in a row, and using everything I've listed above, I've made it in and out with no problems. (except for hitting the damn anti-sub nets like five times in a row before I figured out what the heck was destroying my sub)

Vatek givs some good advice.

Also heres a good thread for you http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=111509

Pay heed though some of these recon missions are suicdal.

i'm about a day outside Osaka for a photo recon in very bad weather. your best bet is wait till nightfall and if it's stormy, then so much the better cuz the DDs sonar, if they have it then, will be less effective. the drawback is you'll have to get much closer to get your shots

Much closer = point blank. As in you literally have to bump into (read: RAM into) the fricking ship to get it into visual range for a photo.


On a side note, anyone know how to detect sub nets? Without using external camera that is. Same goes for mines. I'm guessing there's no way to detect them but doesn't that mean that some missions are impossible to complete without wild guesses (aka. the subnet should be here *puts finger on random point near port*)?

Other than wild guesses or manually finding it (read: crashing into it), then reloading a save, there is no way that I can figure out to detect sub nets. If the water is shallow enough you MIGHT be able to see them from the surface, and you might also be able to see them when the periscope is on its way up but not out of the water yet, if you're close enough.

I was wondering the same thing, myself. It seems like we shouldn't have to 'cheat' by using the external camera.

I haven't run in to any sub nets as of yet, but then again I haven't completed any recon missions so far either... :P

nomad_delta

As I said some of these missions are suicide.

Then others are ... well absurd.

Ive seen reports of people assigned missions to photograph there home port :rotfl:

Use good judgment. If you "think" its impossible theres a darn good chance it is or at least next to it.

The others give solid advice. Move in at night at "creep" speed (2 knots) keep the scope down untill your in position.

you could try this. manually raise your scope so it's just above the housing and look around. you should be able to see reasonable well:ping: . attack scope keys are insert/delete

Sounds like the keys from SH3, not that the layout changed much. I s'pose one could just go slightly below periscope depth to keep the scope head underwater even at max extent.

However, realistically, what are the odds of seeing a subnet like that? I find it rather retarded to be unable to complete some goals because the game feels like puting up an invisible wall in my path.

Back on the realism issue, how did these sub nets behaved in reality?

Well the nets were more of a detection device, they were set up underwater (natch) and had bouys on top of them so when a Sub went into one the bouys disappeared underwater letting anyone watching that there might be a sub about. In reality if a sub got caught in a net it had to surface, no way around it.