Torpedo Tips...
 

Newbie on deck :-) So apologies if you've heard it a hundred times before...
An probably won't be the last question I ask either...

I'm playing SH3 with GWX 3.0 and most of the realism options on (no manual targeting yet...I'm at 84%) so I don't learn any bad habits...

I'm training myself up by playing the convoy attack and torpedo training missions...

One thing I'm struggling with is the number of hits I need to obtain to sink a ship...
Medium Cargo for example normally takes 3 fish...a Small Tanker 2 or 3...

I'm going for under the keel hits at draught + 0.5M in calm seas and hitting under the smoke stacks...

Is it right that I need multiple hits...or is there something I should be doing to break the backs of these merchants?

Many Thanks!

All the ship models have what are called 'sweet' areas.....ammo, fuel bunker etc.

Pull this shipchart down and all should be explained:

http://www.filefront.com/13792872/shipchart.pdf

Also if you have "realistic sinking times" checked in your realism options, it will take longer for ships to sink (and for you to get confirmation of same). Sometimes it's not a matter of putting additional eels into them, but of having the patience to wait and see if the hits you already got did in fact do enough damage.

I've gotten impatient a few times and lined up a second or third shot on a ship only to get the "She's going down" message just as I hit the Fire button. :damn:

In the torpedo training mission I eventually got into the habit of putting one well-placed eel into each ship (or two at most for bigger ships) and then moving on to the next target. Lots of times the ships I'd already hit once would sink while I was busy lining up to attack the others. If not, I'd at least done enough damage to slow them down or leave them dead in the water and then if necessary I could go back and finish them off at my leisure.

In the convoy mission you can do this as well and then finish them off with the guns if you run out of eels.

GWX seems to have stouter ships than stock SH3.

I'd say it's about 50/50 odds sinking a ship with one torpedo.

Most seem to take 2.

Steve

That's because most of them have different damage models Steve.

It is still possible to sink most if not all provided you hit the right 'sweet' spot. :DL

Frau Kaleun is correct about that. It's not uncommon (for me, anyway :O:) to hit a larger ship with one torpedo and have it finally sink anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours later.

:yep:

I followed an ore carrier for 2 hours once waiting for it to sink. I put my last torpedo into her, a nice shot right into her bow section in some really heavy seas. Had the weather not been so rough I don't think I would've bothered trying to take her out with one eel, but I'd seen some pretty big ships go down after one well-placed hit in bad weather. I wasn't using All-Weather Guns so I couldn't finish her off that way either.

Also had to play footsie with an ASW trawler that came nosing around while I waited... I just stayed submerged and ran silent while I followed the ore carrier out of the area. The trawler stayed in the vicinity of the attack and we slowly but surely left it behind.

Took a while, even when I was able to bump up the TC a bit - but it was totally worth it. :up:

Freighters tend to sink being hit by one torpedo opening two (freight-) compartments. Often masts indicate the seperation section. Aim for the first or second forward mast and they sink more than often after a single hit. Additionally the forward drift seems to help drive them under.

Another good spot is the area around the fuel/coal bunk and the adjacent freight compartment. Well - again open two compartments.

Some freighters layout is slightly different and some seem to be well constructed. The tiny freight- and passenger ship is hard to sink for me.

I don't try and hit different parts of the ship. I generally aim for dead-center. With manual targeting I would rather hit the target than miss it completely. In theory you can pick and choose where to strike a ship with manual targeting, but if you are off with your speed you will be off where you hit.

Steve

10-15k ton ships should take just 2 torpedoes. they may not sink for over an hour, but they will sink.
anything below 10k tons i use just one torp.
anything above 15k i may use up to 4.

always try to spread out your torpedo hits, you do not get any 'bonus' for hitting the same spot twice. it is also far more difficult for damage control to stop the flooding if there are two areas being flooded.

in addition to those 'sweespots' mentioned in posts above, its always good to get a hit on the bow of a ship, as the ships movement will supposedly push more water in, and cause it to dig its nose into the water, slowing it down quickly.

never use impact torpedoes on battleships. battleships have torpedo belts which are basically an extra layer of armor below the waterline to detonate torpedoes before they hit the hull, resulting in no damage to the battleship. torpedo belts are already filled with water, so its not like they can be flooded. always use magnetic pistol, and do it in good weather so that you can get at least 3 torpedoes under the BB, which should guarantee a kill.

many escort carriers are actually converted merchant ships, for example the bogue class carrier is a C2 merchant. so treat them not as a warship when choosing where to hit, but actually as a merchant.

Hitting them in the engine room (under the smokestacks) is fine, hitting them under the fuel bunker is even better. That's usually just in front of the engine room; a notable exception is the passenger liner (just aft of the aft funnel).

If you can't line up a critical hit... asymetrical flooding works nicely on freighters. One in the bow (rough weather) or the stern (calm weather) is usually enough but it may take some time.

In my meagre experience of GWX3 (ahoy there, fellow deck-swab! :salute: ) I have to say that the flooding resulting from hits looks about right, but does take a heck of a long time! My two ships sunk in GWX3 were in very rough seas (5-10m waves) yet still took around 1-2 hours to sink.

The first was a Med Cargo hit with an impact torp running at 2m, just aft of the middle of her starbord side. She started listing to starboard almost immediately, but after about 30 minutes of doing ~4 knots like this in these heavy seas, without going down, I decided to put another torp into her, again on the starboard side, a little further forward than the last hit. After that she rolled over and sank after about 10 minutes.

The second was a Passanger/Cargo, again in very rough seas. I fired a spread of two torps, again impact and surface running because of the weather. One hit her right in the bow, the other missed -- too wide a spread! She ploughed on for almost 2 hours, the crew putting out the deck fire in the lashing rain, only to have it start up again several times. Eventually she came to a dead stop and nose-dived to the bottom -- it was only about 40m deep where we were, so she ended up sticking out of the water with her stern in the air, props spinning, explosions going off in her after compartments! After 10 minutes of that she broke up and sank beneath the waves :woot:

So, yeah -- it seems to take a long while in GWX3. Especially given the weather, I was expecting my targets to fall apart like wet cardboard :DL

May i have some information about the colours of the sweet areas please
e.g what goes whith red; yellow blue etc

thnx...

I've found that many ships hit with one torpedo will sink - eventually. The problem is, especially with convoy attacks, that you really can't wait around and see if it did the job. Too often it takes 30 minutes or more for a ship to sink, and by then you should be at depth leaving the area. The ship might sink, but then again it might just sail off with the convoy.

A sunk ship is better than a damaged ship. Two hits will put down just about any ship. I pick the high-value assets and give each one 2 eels.

Steve

Here's the chart:

http://www.filefront.com/13792872/shipchart.pdf

Green = Propulsion
Purple = Magazine
Yellow = Machinery
Red = Fuel
Blue = Keel/Bunker

IIRC :hmmm: