merchants to stay on course in sh3
 

in sh4, merchants perfectly stay on course, interdiction is easy, therefore, i can successfully play with 100%.

in sh3, merchants never stay on course. how to make merchants in sh3 to stay on course as perfectly as in sh4?

furthermore, how to manually add that, without mod-enabler?

Eternal Torpedo Academy practises is that part of the whole game you want =]

Hard coded into the game for realism purposes....when a ship becomes aware of an enemy in the area they automatically commence zig zagging just as they did in real life.

They will return back to their original course after they lose contact with the threat.

thanks for the replies. however, i am not referring to zig-zag.

i refer to vessels, that have not, repeat, not noticed me. it is simple to determine their course, move out of sight, move fast forward to a meeting point, only to find out, that those merchants appear one and a half kilometers or more away, they do not maintain course as in sh4.

Then it is drifting due to the currents (presuming your plotted course is accurate).

then why does that not occur in sh4?

Not played SH4 for a long time so don't recall if it does or not.

What I do remember though is that the greater/higher the magnification you use whilst plotting the greater the deviation you end up with after zooming in later.

Sh4 ships stay on course? That's news to me :hmmm:

SH4 has much better merchant behaviour, because they will actually sail away from threats that they detect, while also zig-zagging. SH3 they stay on the same general heading, but make regular zig-zags. They do not try to "run away" from you like in SH4.

What I think might be happening is that whatever mod/version of SH3 you're using has more "sensitive" merchants that see missed torpedoes (or your periscope) more easily than whatever version of SH4 that you used. Ships in both SH3 and SH4 will only start evading when they see the torpedoes (or you, or another enemy unit). Most mods have it configured so that they keep zig-zagging for about 15 minutes after last seeing a threat, then they go back to "normal". In SH3, they never change their general heading or speed (except to evade torpedoes that are actually coming at them); in SH4, they will turn back to their previous waypoint after the threat is gone (which sometimes causes them to sail right back towards you).

It could ofcourse also be the case that the SH3 campaign writer deliberately shortended the waypoint legs to simulate zigzagging, or other wise make tracking more difficult. It depends on where you are. Are you talking stock SH3, or GWX3? Either way, the mission editor would prove it one way or another.

That's cute, does this also mean you could literraly escort enemy vessel to friendly ports just by following the target ? :arrgh!:

Strange question... Yes from time to time ships change direction, just like they would do in real life, there is nothing you can do to this. Chasing and sinking ships is your job, if it's too difficult for you go back to ubootschule :D

In GWX3.0 the campaign-scr was altered to include random waypoint changes and indeed some convoy routes were changed a little bit.