Are There Friendlies/Neutrals Out There ?
 

I recently was patroling in bad weather, very poor visibilty, and at night. I managed to put down a contact by sonar only and afterwards, when I looked at the nav map, the ship symbol was grey. It made we wonder if I just sunk a friendly. Then I wondered some more. I've never come across a friendly/neutral boat, other than near base. Are there any out there ? Has anyone else seen one? I once came accross a friendly sub, but if I remember correctly, I was on my way back to Midway and while I was not within sight of Midway, (after thinking on ot) it was probably within a certain circumference the game uses for friendy shipping. Can anybody answer this definitively? BTW, I'm running TMO & RSRDC.

Yes there are. In fact, later in the war you need to make sure you are not making an attack approach on a U.S. task force, as there are many of them.

Pull into port on high TC and you'll wonder how they can be called friendlies as your game goes crazy instantly trying to track all the "friendly" traffic it suddenly encounters and disables your keyboard as SH4 goes into gridlock. Woooooo Hooooo!

I play stock, 1.4.

Don't the Japanese ships show up in grey and stay that way until you actually see them? That's the way it seems to me. The grey maybe was there because he had picked them up on sonar/radar only. If you sink them without actually having a visual contact would't they remain grey?

As to friendy vessels I seem to get blue right away regardless of actually seeing them or not. A bit of a giveaway really as you don't have to ID them as to attack or not as you would have had to do in RL.

I'm not going to spoil the ......... there are friendly units & ships in (most) 99.9% every mod and stock.

However even in the stock game I have positively ID'd a target, sunk it, watched it sink through the periscope, and still saw the gray ship sunk graphic on the chart/map.... so it is a stock issue - not a mod - unless the individual modder changed all ships sunk to the gray graphic of course... lol

- My crew says "Target Destroyed Sir" not friendly, neutral, or enemy but that has nothing to do with the graphic. I don't know what's up with the graphic... I get the correct credit on the "clipboard" and when I RTB.

Happy Hunting!

Art

Edit - My mistake - until you get a visual in stock the contact will be gray. Some mods don't change color to red or blue and will remain gray.

I'm still on this patrol and the weather and visibility is very poor. I have now put under 3 or 4 boats using sonar only and every one of them is greyed out. I now tend to believe they are grey because of being unidentified visually.

I believe in the stock game you are right. If you got credit, they were enemy. If not they were not and they cost you renown. Sink 'em all and let the game sort 'em out!:arrgh!:

In reference to color:

On page 59 of the SH IV manual.

Enemy: Red

Allied: Blue

Neutral: Green

Unknown: Gray

Player: Black

So I guess the manual was not totaly useless;)

I once stalked and sank a contact using only sonar. When I checked the map, I was horrified to see that the shipwreck icon of the target I'd just torpedoed was blue, not red. I try to get a visual I.D. now.