Deck Awash
 

What's the best way to go deck awash? I've been manually taking it down to about 7 meters...any more than that and I lose my conning tower crew.

How effective is this technique in approaching enemy shipping?

Going manually to DA is tricky, I recommend WB's Decks Awash + Fuel Economy mod,you can find it in the downloads section.With this mod you can go to DA just pressing the ; key,but all is explained in the description of the mod.

How effective is it?
It depends on a situation (weather,visibility,sea state etc),but basically you can go a few hundred meters closer to your target.

Agreed http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

Fastest way to find out is to set your speed to 1 knot at periscope depth (if you're in a port it'll be much easier to do it quicker) and start to surface the boat manually setting the depth to 7 meters, 6 meters, 5 meters, etc. which at some point your crew will pop up onto the deck. As the sea conditions get rougher you'll need to adjust it up a meter or two to keep from submerging again. In conditions where the waves completely submerge you boat (while you're cruising on the surface) to the point that the sonar officer starts reporting contact (while you have not given the order to submerge) I seriously doubt you'll be able to keep the crew up there with decks awash.

Or simply install the all weather guns mod and do as similarly described above (for the purposes of keeping your watch crew on station).