Am I TOO good a skipper?
 

Well, I know I'm not the best, but I'm just wondering if I'm sinking too many ships? Granted, I play on full realism minus the manual TDC, but I still think my sinkings are far too high.

I'm on patrol 4 I believe, and each cruise I rack up about 40-50k tons. I look at the log board back at Pearl and I've got something like 124k tons to my name, the next highest has about 30k. I'm running Trigger Maru and that's really it for gameplay enhancements. Is it because there are too many ships?

In SH3 I used manual targetting, but I would use the weapons office to calculate a solution for me, I didn't see that option in SH4? Or am I missing something? I'd like to go back to this setup.

Thanks,

Use the manual targeting. Your tonnage WILL go down.

As far as I know, the weapons officer solution function isn't present in SH4

I was sort of dreading that answer, as I thought the Officer option struck a good balance. I'll have to run some training missions and see how I do.

Btw, your tagline, awesome

Yes, it is partly because you encounter way too many ships. If it was truly realistic, a lot of people would never buy it.

It is after all a game.

I think tater's improved campaign layers are a godsend. I really enjoy the reduced and smaller contacts. It makes sinking the big ones so much more rewarding.

If you see an unescorted huge european liner every day, it becomes no big deal. If you see one maybe once or twice a career and everytime, it's escorted by 3 DD's, your heart starts pounding a little faster when you move in for the kill. :arrgh!:

Maybe you should try that mod, jbt. It can be found here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116283

Tonnage per cruise
 

In my experience running manual targeting, cruise tonnage of 30-50 kilotons is difficult to avoid. I do not reload and double-dip a cruise. This is a defect in the simulation in my judgment, but it does nothing to lessen my enjoyment of the game.

Taking US war averages of 1 ship sunk for every 6 torpedoes expended, your load of 24 torpedoes should sink 4 ships x 5,000 tons for a decent sized merchant = 20k tons. It's easy to see that we're overachievers here from the average.

That's because we can get close to one ship for every 3 torpedoes. But it is a game and gameplay must sometimes take precedence over realism or we wouldn't have players. Every once in awhile I like to do a mission with super torpedoes and play a little Quake just to have some excessive fun.

Something else to look into is mods that make it more challenging. For instance the Natural Sinking Mechanics mod.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118005

It makes it more challenging to sink a ship. Read the thread to see why.

I believe the NSM is actually part of Trigger Maru, and I've had some issues with it in the past where ships would just refuse to sink.

As another poster said, I think the amount of shipping is way too high, and should it be lessened, sinking the larger stuff would be much more of a "deal" rather than seeing them on every cruise.

Look at Taters mod and look at Run Silent Run Deep which I believe incorporates Taters mod. Much more realistic shipping and ship types.

RSRD is different, but we share a few things in both directions (imagine that, "competing" mods sharing stuff!).

He used a few of my initial files as baselines, I've taken a few idea from lurker, along with a lot of help with my DCs, etc. I'm taking Momi, too for my next version :D

The two share many basic concepts, however, and are very similar in many ways. We both use the same tool to zig-zag, and in fact, lurker helped me with much of my scripting work until I got a better feel for it myself. We share a similar outlook on traffic volumes, etc. The real differences are that while I am starting to TROM base the heavy units, his TF/battle layers are mostly TROM based (all large units, basically).

I think that the TROM model has a ton of potential, my only concern about it is really replayability. Where possible some alternate paths for TROM groups can mitigate many of the concerns, however. Of course if a RL TF took X days to go from A to B, there is not a huge amount of variability possible in many cases to get there in time.

tater

The NSM compatible hard core torpedo mod will help also. Warning, it does get rather frustrating watching all those fish running around in circles and diving to ridiculous depths under the vessel you are aiming for. It's available at http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=122205

Well sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.

I've been playing fairly regularly since release, and have always bemoaned the overabundance of targets and the ease of sinking them. Now of course, we have NSM, Taters layers and the hardcore torpedoes mod which are absolutely essential for any degree of realistic tonnage in this sim. And so in all this time I have never sunk anything larger than a heavy cruiser, and that only once.

Until last night...in the East China Sea, I came across 2 Hiryu CVs, and 2 Atagos escorted by around 6-10 destroyers and a CL. It was a fairly easy approach in heavy seas, and all the while I remember thinking, you've waited eight months for this, that Hiryu is yours! Thanks to the mods mentioned, I felt no guilt at yet another easy kill, more infalted tonnage, just anticipation at my long-awaited reward! I took my time, set my fish to run slow and at 20-30 degrees gyro to minimize duds and launched four fish at a range of 3200 yards. All four hit and the Hiryu went dead in the water and listed heavily to starboard.

I went deep and was immediately pounced on by the cans. And waited for the Hiryu to sink.

And wouldn't you know it, the damn thing never did.

Grab a type IID boat.
Unless you sink a ship with every one of the 6 torpedoes and every and ship you sink is 10000 pounds, your score should go down...lol..

BTW, the DC mod I released (still kinda beta) can be used to mitigate TM's AI a little since the escorts will have fewer ashcans to drop on you.

tater