Time compression question
 

I was reading an amazing silent hunter 3 story on another forum and it stated that setting the game at full time compression is not as realistic because planes can miss you. Is this true and would this happen with mines too. I.e the game cannot compress them quick enough.

It's not worth the risk, if you did hit one it'd all be catastrophic in an instant.

Above TC x128 there is the possibility that you will miss contacts. At TC x128 and lower you miss nothing.

Nemo

It seems strange though to have a compression where you can miss contacts. Its almost like a cheat.

At higher TCs there is also the good possibility that even when you don't miss a contact, so much "game time" will have elapsed in the split second of real time that it takes to drop out of TC and react that an armed enemy contact will not only have spotted you but will be in full attack mode.

Especially dicey later in the war when Allied radar may give them your position when they are still out of your contact range... by the time they are close enough for you to see them they may already be making full speed right at you with their claws out. :dead:

Nothing is rendered in your 'SH3 world' beyond a range of approximately 40/50km around you therefore any tc above x128 would mean that the distance travelled by a high speed airborne object would not/cannot be rendered accurately by the game engine and certainly far too quickly for the human senses to react.

i understand. So it seems best to actually play at x128. I think im gonna start doing that now. Is this how you guys play?

That's about my max, yeah.

Earlier in the war I will go higher if I'm close enough to home (i.e., a German harbor) at a time when I'm pretty sure there will not be any enemy units lurking about the area, and I know where the mines are laid in our own waters and stay well away from them so that's not a concern.

But I'm up to 1941 now and sailing out of Lorient in my current career, and I don't think I'd risk anything higher in the Bay of Biscay. Anyway if I'm close enough to any base to be within contact range of all the friendly units there, I keep dropping out of TC anyway so there's not much point in trying to go too much higher.

Its aug 1940 in my game and im sailing from lorient although my base has only just been changed because of the recent fall of france. Ive got CG85 and every time i start going down a convoy appears and i have to end up going back up to intercept it burning valuable fuel. I guess best tactic is to just sit their and wait for the convoys to appear. Just another question on compression though. Im using the GWX mod and whenever a big convoy is close to my sub the compression slows drastically. Does that happen to you guys?

Unless you've edited the default settings for how TC works, whenever you spot a convoy (or any other vessel) it should automatically drop out of a higher TC and back to real time or at least a much lower TC.

So, yeah, if you are running at 128 (or higher TC) and a convoy comes within range, you should drop back to a lower TC. That's not to be confused with the "lag" that sometimes happens when a lot of activity is going on and there are many units being rendered in a small area, like a convoy appearing in range or when you're in a crowded harbor area going to and from base. Things can get a little laggy or choppy then, it sometimes happens to me especially when I attack a convoy and all hell breaks loose.

My first time sailing into Lorient the lag got so bad that the screen completely froze up several times - no CTD and I was able to dock OK but I was really nervous. I start patrols from sea now, the French bases may be a little more than my system can handle without killing the framerate.

Tis quite normal unless you have a high spec machine/system.

Yes, I seem to be constantly fighting the temptation to change my behaviour when the frame rate drops.
Realism tells me that my dip for a hydrophone listen isn't due for an hour, the bad voices try to tell me to dip now and find a big convoy.
Have to keep telling myself that I would only be cheating myself.

In GWX, fuel is almost a throwaway thing. In the VII classes, you have 32K+ of range at 8 knts, enough for more than 150 days at sea. If you stick to 8knts for everything but intercepts, and work out your convoy intercept plots accurately, fuel is the last thing you will run out of.

If you are using SH3 Commander, you have different TC settings, depending on what's happening around you. You may want to adjust those.

However, remember the math... at 128TC, you are pretty much giving the AI a 20 minute head start. That's one reason new players complain about their watch officers -- the watch officer sees a ship at 9000, but by the time you get to the bridge, the target may be already abeam at 3000.

I must admit, though, that I freely go around at 256TC (though at 8 knots) quite often in the early war, especially on the homeward bound, which I route outside (most) air cover. By late '40, though, 128 is my limit.

I do the same, but I've always got my finger on the Crash dive hotkey.

I got caught off-guard a while back, I left the game on by mistake:oops:
next thing I know a Task force appears and opens fire on me luckily I had the sound on.

I fire a salvo off and crash dive, they all hit but 2 were duds and the third one missed every ship in the task force and hit a fishing boat about 10km away:haha:, sucked to be that guy.

But the lag was horrible even the sound was sticking

Crash dive using TC - it'll catch you out one day! :cry: