Tips/refreshers for a returning player
 

Hi folks,

I bought SH 4 ages ago and had a great time playing as the US but I never really got into U-Boats. I'm giving them another go but I've got some questions.

1. What's a safe mimimum range from hostile ships when on the surface, both at night and in the day? (i.e how close can I get without being spotted?)

2. How many Km/h is a knot?

3. Do German subs ever get active sonar or surface radar?

4. How accurate do plots have to be to make succesful attacks? I want to make the switch to no map contacts but I don't want to keep missing because I got the speed wrong by a knot.

I'm Using Operation Monsun if it makes a difference (congrats to the mod authors it seems fantastic so far).

Cheers for the help guys.

To answer #2, a knot is around 1.85km/h

For 1 :I tend to stay atleast 5 nm from any ship, day or night. Better safe than sorry with battleships :P
For 3 : Yes they do.
For 4:

It really depends on the range. for example at close range you can be off by 4-5 knots (close being around 500-600 yards)

If your firing at the max range of your torpedo, you will need some pretty damn accurate calculations. Have fun with that. D:

1 kt = 1.852 km/h

for rough estimations 1 kt=~2 km/h

.

Glad to hear that OM is worth it. Downloading it now after getting so sick of being washed out in the never ending storm in SH3

Plots should be reasonably accurate, but being off by a knot should not be too drastic. Determining the contact's course is more important than speed. If the calculated or assumed course is off, the difference will be in nautical miles and depending on your gear and crew, you will miss the contact. Calculation errors in speed are more influential in long range shooting solutions than plotting contacts.

As far as the calcs themselves, you can always calculate multiple intercept zones assuming a specific speed. Wherever the sighting is roughly determines the contact's speed. Whenever a contact is labeled as "slow" or medium" speed, I always assume the highest speed for that category in my plots, which is roughly 7 and 12 knots. Anything slower than that leaves you with time to plot a proposed intercept course and position the boat for as close an AOB 90 shot as you can get.

The worst situation I have encountered doing this is a C2 poking about at 1 knot. My calculations were perfect, but I did not feel like waiting 8 hours for him to cross my T so I advanced and broke his back. As long as you have a good initial contact and make good estimates of the contact's course, you should be fine.