Early War Detection
 

I just finished playing through a full war campaign with RSRD and TMO. I've learned a lot of tips reading through this forum throughout the war. Since I'm starting again in an S boat my question to all the vets out there is how to best detect ships, convoys without surface radar? Do you go to a favorite location, choke point, harbor or area and sit submerged waiting for something to sail by?

It wasn't until about half way through my last campaign that I learned that you have to be submerged to detect anything. I missed all the ships coming through the Solomons because I stayed on the surface. I just started my second patrol so any tips would sure help.

BTW - interesting thing just happened, coming upon a convoy and knowing how long it takes the S boat to dive, I hit crash dive. Just before the tower went under water, I hit periscope depth to slow the dive but instead the boat popped straight to the surface. I was watching from the outside view when it happened.

Sounds like you're having fun in an S-boat.

With RSRD, to be honest, most of us learn to find traffic by knowing or studying history. RSRD is fairly historic, so using numerous maps, it's fairly easy to get close to the action most the time. It's always good to set up ambushes at choke points

The S boat is the only boat that I know that requires you to be dived for sonar to work. Another tool most of us use is the lag "cheat". Anytime a group comes within your contact zone, your PC will work, causing a lil lag. When this happens, you know something is near, so dive and check sonar.

The Solomons is a busy area in 42, not to mention several large battles take place, such as Santa Cruz, Eastern Solomons, etc.. RSRD will give you flash messages concerning some of these, but it takes some luck to find them. Other battles take place in the slot, if you just hang near Savo, you'll get ran over by all the ships, November is a good month.

Check this link out.

http://combinedfleet.com/battles/

Not sure about why the boat popped up. Maybe you hit periscope depth before the boat got under and it slowed the dive. If you got under, I can think of no reason why it would happen except player error, as I've never seen or heard that problem.

That link is great and I've printed out all of them to help get me near the action. Only problem is I found it near the end of my campaign. The first time around I was all over the Solomon's and around Savo and didn't find one ship. Going back to the forums and reading about all the action around there I was wondering how could that be. It was'nt until later I read where you had to be under for the sonar to pick up anything. I've picked up some great tips this next time around.

I've read quite a few sub books where some of the early boats had ballast issues when there were times the crew had to all run forward to help get the nose down during a dive. Next time i'll order them to do that. I use the keys for most of my commands like C for crash dive and P for pariscope depth. After hitting C the decks were awash but the conning tower was still showing and when I hit P the boat popped right up like a cork. Maybe it was a fluke or error on my part but I'm going with it being a realistic perk of the game that makes it that much better.

Well, you can't order your crew to run forward in the game. Just remember the S boats diving planes are much higher up, so it takes more time for ballast to get your planes into the water. With newer boats your planes are lower and basically hit the water when extended. Sometimes it pays to carry a heavy ballast when stalking, simply dive to 21 feet or so, if you have to dive fast, you can get under quicker.

You should be able to catch some nice surface battles, fun to watch the ships duke it out. You can also save torps by waiting until after the battle and finish off damaged ships. During the day you can get help from US planes to help.

I've had the diving issue also. It seems if you change commands before the boat is under water, it'll resurface, then go to the next command. I solved this by waiting until the boat is underwater.

That, or they will steal the credit for sinking the Yamato right after you send 10 torpedos her way!

Never did like those fly boys... completly over powered in my opinion :nope:


Though I gotta be honest, they did save me from some extra nasty destroyers before. So Ill let them be.

Hehe, back in my noob days I was hiding under a Kongo that I had stopped dead on the water, why 5 escorts circled around throwing charges. US planes made many runs on the Kongo scoring hits. Finally a turrent blew up, didn't sink it, but the explosion all but sunk my sub. I knew I had to leave and just in time, next run it blew and they sunk it. The escorts jumped me, not much I could do, but luckly US planes sunk two as they were making runs over me.

What's funnier is when jap planes are dropping on your sub and hit their own escorts as they make a run over you.

Watching a battle other Then the one you cause has got to be great fun to watch. It makes it seem like its not you against the whole jap navy. I've only seen one battle where two US planes attacked a convoy of about 20 ships and were just blasted from the sky.

I'm kind of bumed because I just missed the Coral Sea battle by a couple days. I was making the transit to Brisbain when I got the news flash.

You really don't see a lot of it, cept the larger battles.