Safety on the surface
 

On two or three recent occasions I was cruising on the surface in the S-boat, at night, using time compression, and was suddenly shelled by undetected warships.

TMO/RSRDC, visibility clear.

Inexperienced crew is partially responsible, but is there a way around this? It's more than annoying --- basically trading hull damage for the right to use time compression. Does it matter whether observation scope is up?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts, hints, etc.

When patrolling, stay at about 1024, that way stuff like that shouldnt happen. Though sometimes its possible the warship just spots you and begins firing before you spot it, and that never ends well.

How high was your time compression? More likely than not, regardless of mods, getting jumped by phantom warships is due to time compression issues. A good rule of thumb is to never exceed x128 compression outside known friendly waters.

x1024 is too high in enemy waters. A LOT of things can go wrong in the ~18 minutes that transpire in the one second of real time that passes.

I think I was at x256. I'll scale back. These "ambushes" occurred north of Luzon and north of Lingayen Gulf in Dec '41. Should have expected some trouble but I was impatient ....

x256 wouldn't have been that bad were it not for the fact that you were in IJN's front yard. :ping: If you are that far in enemy waters, I wouldn't want to go over x64.

Whenever using time compression, you should have the stopwatch on the screen. When ships or planes spawn, the stopwatch will either pause, or start to lag as it ticks. Be ready to hit the backspace key to drop to normal time.

Go to either your hydrophones or radar, they will tell you what's going on. I use 1024 TC all the time, in friendly as well as Empire waters, but the old trick of using the stopwatch, is a sure bet for knowing something is happening.

With newer versions of TMO the enemy has much better visuals and gun range, I've been shot at over 5nms.

Sounds like your bigger issue is lack of surface radar, once I get that I time compress away. Without it the japs visuals are much better than yours. Probably would help to increase friendly visuals, cuz the jap AI's visuals are much better than the subs AI.

The lag trick works really well, moreso the larger the group. Fairly easy to see the slowdown, when the PC lags, go to sonar and get a bearing. It's better to back out by going to a stations than beating on the minus key. You can hit one button and be at normal speed, I see lag, I hit F2 and in the control room at normal speed.

Ah, thanks Armistead --- I think you hit the nail on the head re: AI in newer TMO.

Hylander, I'll convert to the stopwatch. Thanks!

That's weird if it's warships, i say its those land batteries, stay away from shore at around 15 nm. If you get hit near land and you see nothing, then are the land defenses.

Yes, I learned my lesson about shore batteries in the Sunda Strait (between Java and Sumatra) in an earlier career.

These were warships. I got a good look at them during the 9 months it takes for the S-boat to crash dive. ;)

Well, I can't say for sure, haven't looked in the files, I would think with his highly increased gun ranges for the enemy he would also have to increase enemy AI visuals, if they can't see you, what good is gun range. I don't know that just changing the gun range values alone gives the range. Obvious many other factors come into play, fog, etc..

I'll look at it, maybe in fairness to increase your subs AI visuals and gun ranges.

RE:Safety on the surface
 

Try this:

your docs\SH4\data\cfg\main.cfg

[TIME COMPRESSION]
EnemyDetected=8

change to

EnemyDetected=1

Aircraft:

AirEnemyDetected=1 (should be already like this). Good Luck. Indy:)

Yes, changing that too is a must. Whenever I re-install the game, I do that with the cfg file before I even start the game. And to make sure nothing changes it, do it after adding any mods, like supermods.

The subject here being shoreguns, almost always they spot you before you spot them, moreso with TMO, so adjusting TC settings down doesn't help you much there, in order for that to work, you have to get sensor cue....often you don't.

Yea, it can help some, I adjust mine down, but still easy to get blasted by shoreguns or escorts in TMO if you don't have surface radar.....

I love the high visuals of TMO2.2, although I think he toned them down some in 2.5, hadn't played it....