Bitter And Twisted
 

I make no excuses. This is a post written in deep and abiding bitterness and bad temper from the plummeting wreckage of yet another sunken submarine.

It's not the tedium of having to embark on yet another campaign just to get smacked down on the first encounter (lesson: save regularly).

It's not the annoyance of the omniscient destroyers (if you can see them, no matter how deep and slow you're travelling, or how dark it is, they can see you).

It's not the nuclear depth charges these people are using, just one of which will deal you mortal damage from miles away.

No, it's none of these things. It's that, once you get yourself into trouble and you know there's nothing to be done, you know that your crew is already dead. That they're still moving around, doing stuff and talking doesn't make a difference.

I know the crew are just simulated and so don't really matter. And I know Jim Kirk would save the day. But really: couldn't they have included an 'abandon ship' command?

:nope:

PS - Actually, it is partially those bloody destroyers. I mean, I'm in the smallest boat the USN issues, dived and sitting still; it's the middle of the night - I mean seriously the middle of the night: I couldn't see a damn thing... They STILL locked onto me from miles away and ran a beeline straight for me at full speed - smashed me to pieces in minutes. How do they DO that when I'm only barely able to detect them and the damn great liner they're transporting?

Im not sure what 'middle of the night' has to do with being spotted if your submerged :hmm:

Have a look at this: http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/ai.htm


RDP

Absolutely nothing. But the rest of it didn't help, so I thought I'd mention that that didn't either. :cool:

Good article and interesting. Thanks. For what it's worth I knew about aspect angle, but fouled up elsewhere. And, I have to admit, the whole 'sit and wait for them to come to you' bit is one of my great failings, since I'm painfully aware how slow my boat is in comparison to the convoy I'm trying to hit. So, I tend to rush in where angels only go mob-handed with knuckledusters, rather than stand off and wait for the escorts to rush past. That said, I do recall wreaking very entertaining havoc on an eight-ship, two-column formation once by sitting horizontally between the columns and launching torps bow and stern as each pair went by. I didn't live to escape, sadly, but even so, good fun for a short while...!

That right there makes me so unhappy i would be banned from the forums for stating just how unhappy it makes me.

The fact that you cant make surface attacks at night is a bit of a pain too i must admit. but the depth charge thing is a real killer.

Hmmmmmmm...
 

I wonder why this is so different from my experience? Please don't think I'm just bragging here. Let's start out by asking whether you're running with the 1.3 patch, and then with what mods? That might be part of it. Then I'm afraid we're going to have to start paying as much attention to strategy and mechanics here at Subsim as we do to modifications.

OK, let's talk about long distance approach and strategy first. When you first detect ships it should be on radar. Attempt to identify what kind of ships you are dealing with. Specifically, we're trying to identify escort behavior. While the merchants will keep position the escorts will be buzzing around like little bees, changing heading and speed. When they are within sonar range, descend to periscope depth, take personal control of your hydrophone and count the escorts. Good. Now you know what the opposition is. Keep in mind that the sound of further escorts can be masked by merchants.

Now evaluate the sonar conditions. Smooth seas? No temperature layer down there? Less than 200' of water? Clear air with unlimited visibility? This is no time to tangle with destroyers. Stay away!

Are you in 3000 ft of water? Fog? Darkness? Rough seas? Nice thermal layer? The more of these there are, the more advantages you have.

Rules of engagement:

1. You want to be detected first by the sight of one of their fat, juicy merchants being blown to bits by a couple torpedoes.

2. When within 3000 yards of a hunting destroyer, you remain at periscope depth, engines at 100 rpm or less. You're stalking merchants, not destroyers. Keep track of them but realize your chances of torpedoing a fully alert destroyer are small. Believe it or not you're harder to find at periscope depth and you retain the offensive position.

3. Point your bow or stern to the nearest destroyer to display the smallest cross section.

4. Better to sink one ship than damage 3. Two or three torpedoes per target. If playing without Trigger Maru you can reduce that by 1 shoot 2 per target. Figure you'll have to hit 'em twice to sink 'em. Sometimes you will need more than that.

5. Don't fire til you see the whites of their eyes. Maximum range for a legitimate shot is 1000 yards. 500 or 600 is what you're looking for. Nothing less fun than risking your neck to miss your target. If you're gonna die, go with lots of company.

I'll leave it right here for someone else to jump in with more ideas. He needs pointers on periscope use, turning off manual targeting until he can run his sub and evasion tactics after the shooting is over. I bet I've left some things out too. Take it guys!:up:

Edit: Ducimus is the expert here. Check out his post in another thread: #7

Ok, this is fairly standard on the different convoys I have been involved with
lately. June 1943 near Rabaul: A big passenger liner with 3 of Japans best
escorts guarding it. It is midday in good weather and I am surfaced runing
towards them after getting the 4 contacts on the hydrophones. Suddenly
an escort comes into view, it is at maxium distance so I think I have more time
to close on the surface. WRONG !! Another excort pops into view and both are
coming straight for me at 35 kts. I dive to PD bow on to them. At PD, I watch
them through the scope and now see 3 DDs coming for me, 1 back aways from
the other 2. I have been running at standard but when the lead DD gets to 4000
yds., I do a dive to 200 feet. As soon as I pass the thermal (140), I go to silent
and turn 90 deg. to port. 2 of them pass very near me & keep going. 1 is still
coming and as he approaches directly towards me, I turn 90 deg. to starboard.
He passes with no indication of detection and goes to join the other 2. Now they
are all milling around behind me. I wait till the liner draws near doing the zig-zag
bit. At the last possible moment, I come to PD, raise scope, put 2 fish into it,
drop scope and decend back to 200 feet moving directly away from the DDs.
They search and search but never came that close to me. And yes, they did
drop a few DC patterns making some mighty big holes in the water. I have done
this so many times it's getting boring. In all my testing, NO destroyer has ever
detected me below the thermal running silent. (well, Bungo Pete did but he was
the one rare DD that could) I rarely take damage unless I am testing something
and do the foolish thing like stayin on the surface during an air attack...

JIM

My observation also
 

Nice maneuvers,there FAdmiral :up: works for me. I must agree ,IJN visual detection is extrema! At night IJN infrared eye balls are just as extreme.This is some what of a game dampener,and a night surface attack is not possible. These sailors need Redwine's lethal radius fix for DC blast effect,it helps.

Well at least it makes a difference from before, when they were absolutely useless :yep:

Check this out:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...53&postcount=6

It was confirmed that pre-1.3 that Japanese destroyers were using their air-search radar to detect you on the surface, thus you had charging destroyers even before you saw them. I think they're still doing this in 1.3.

This happens to me also. Patience X2 is needed in this game. I often want to rush in with torps blazing instead of waiting for the most opportune time to send out the fish. Hurry up and wait as it were. Sometimes I need someone standing behind me saying, "wait for it, wait for it..." This is the hardest part for me anyway.

[quote=Seaman_Hornsby]

Check this out:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...53&postcount=6 [quote]

Looks as though Jace11 Has the problem pegged,wonder if [REL] S3D - Silent 3ditor (alpha) ,can be used to modify INJ.visual sensors. Thxs.,Seaman_Hornsby good find !

Something I have observed occasionally, but have no proof of, is that if I am stopped with no headway at all, the DDs seem to be able to fine me better than if I am running at 1 or 2kts. I have always thought that the variable of sub speed is from 0.01 to 3kts is quiet but they forgot to code in 0.00 and the game views it as outside the "quiet" parameters and hears you.

I have noticed that the people that say they always get caught seem to say somewhere they are completely stopped. Perhaps there is something to my theory after all?

Chuck

Being stopped at PD or somewhere below (still above thermal) running silent
should keep you from being heard vs. hydrophones but the sonar will bounce
off you and give a detection signal to the enemy. If you click on the approaching
DD, you will see 3 circles, the largest is a 360 deg. visual, the next is a circle with
the aft missing (passive hydrophones) and the 3rd is the sonar half circle in front
of the DD. This gives you an indication of basically where those sensors are for
that certain DD. But there may be other factors involved too. Crew experience,
ship speed and possible some random issues. I'd like to think that the game AI
would NOT make all those detection methods too standard. I like the random so
that you will not always know just where & when you will be detected...

JIM

It could also be a moving target adds to the ambiguity of the solution.