current campaign
 

Was going to post this in the "Tell us what you are up to in your current campaign" thread but it won't open—maybe because there are so many replies, I dunno.

It's '41 and I'm off West Africa in a IXb. I've sunk two C2 freighters—my first attempts at manual targeting. Still having trouble getting it all set up quick enough and being able to adapt quickly to changes I didn't anticipate, but I'm getting better.

Missed one other ship, moving away and I decided not to engage in a chase. Missed two sightings in very bad weather—they just weren't where they should have been. Viz was down to about 200 yards.

Tracking another C2, still in heavy weather but I shall be patient and wait for it to improve.

Anybody got any tips for id-ing ships at night or in bad visibility?

Just opened for me with no problems.

As for your question, I'm a firm believer in realistic stupidity, so all I can say is "get real close and squint".

Or use one of the cheats that identifies the ship for you, or makes the nights brighter, or makes the flags more visible.

You don't necessarily need to id (if you are pretty sure it's an enemy ship), since estimating the ship's approximate size class is often enough at close ranges. Almost all of the destroyers for example are about the same size. Most of the 1600 - 2000 GRT merchants are about the same size. Carnavaro's document collection has ship recognition tables you can use. Those table classify ships by size and type. You just feed some ship to the notepad, that you think is about the same size that you are seeing.

Another way of shooting at something you don't recognize: Use the torpedo bearing table in Carnavaro's document collection. Using this method you do have to guess the speed of the ship accurately, though.

Carnavaro's must have collection of neat SH3 stuff is found here:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1487

IXB eh?
Here's a tip that especialy applies to IX drivers.

If you come on a tanker running 14+ knots, it's almost guaranteed to be US flagged.
(If USA is still "neutral" save your fuel and time).

Operating farther from England than the VII drivers, means you have to spend more time ensuring that you don't sink lone neutrals.

Even today's sub drivers are constantly changing mast head height of a potential target, much to the annoyance of their fire control tracking party.

Just put your best guess in there initially to give yourself a baseline, then refine the targetting solution as the target gets bigger in the scope.

No need for a mod to do this. If you use TC and your watch officer announces ship spotted and your TC drops to x1 then it's an enemy ship. If your TC drops to x8 it's either neutral or an Axis ship. Also, if it's enemy you shouldn't be able to increase TC above x32 (unless he has spotted you in which case you can't go above x8), if it's neutral or an Axis ship you can incease TC above x32. A shame really as I would much prefer that all ships were treated the same i.e. TC drops to x1. That way you would have to identify the ship before launching an attack or risk negative renown. If anyone knows a cure to this issue, please let me know.

Nemo

Iirc, all those values are adjustable with SH3 Commander. There must be a .cfg or .dat file to adjust those values manually.

I use SH3 Commander and if I'm not mistaken you can only alter the detection TC values for enemy ships and planes. Neutrals are not listed. Whether detection TC values for neutrals can be modified another way I'm not sure.

Nemo

Poor weather is a major double edged sword, ships sink faster but are in return harder to hit. In the poorest visibility sometimes you don't see the ship until your 500m away from it. Something that close (after you slam engines into reverse) just aim using your boat and fire the eels at 45 kts at 4 or 5 meters. If it doesn't sink it'll slow it down enough for you to get into a good firing position even with its zigzag.

My TC drops to 1 for any ship spotted (enemy, friendly, or neutral).

That is odd then. I wonder why my installation is different? It's not a major issue but it does give me advanced knowledge of whether a ship is enemy, neutral or friendly, which I'd rather it didn't.

Nemo