Spoiler alert - KOBE
 

Don't say I didn't warn you, little cheat to rack up scores in career mode, Kobe harbor. Best done with a Porpoise or Sargo class, later fleet boats tend to bottom out at periscope depth in the shallows.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/341/42659811u.jpg

Little bay with the label "Osaka" is where you want to go.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/5521/48042329.jpg

Orange lines are surface track, blue is submerged - I generally use the compass to draw a 5 mile circle around probable shore battery locations, creep past those underwater. The dark blue inside the bay is deeper water where you can sit on the bottom to hide during the day.

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/8761/50585949.jpg

Lot of shipping in various harbors, but Kobe is the jackpot;

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/6154/31332784.jpg

Couple of heavy cruisers, 2 or 3 carriers, and;

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/109/24293594.jpg

Almost always at least 1 or 2 battlewagons. Since they're all stationary you can forget range and speed with realistic targeting on, aim at the forward or aft turrets and you sometimes get lucky and set off one of the main magazines - hit the sweet spot you can destroy even a Yamato class with 1 or 2 Mark 10s.

:arrgh!:

Is this in the stock game or with one of the supermods?

I ask because in real life there is no way any submarine would get inside any Japanese naval base.

Stock except for whatever that early realism mod was that reduced the ridiculous number of patrol aircraft. The original game had more Japanese airplanes all over the Pacific than existed in the entire world at the time.

It's still not completely realistic, for example if you get tired of dodging all the ASW patrol craft you can sink them and they not only fail to go ballistic trying to find you after losing one, they don't even replace it. With the mods I have they will occasionally send out a plane after I sink an ASW craft (often something ludicrous like a zero at night) but rarely any regular air patrols - which is realistic, they simply didn't have that many airplanes or fuel to spare.

It goes the other way too, those ridiculous little gunboats that you often see where they have no business to be have no depth charges but they do have psychic detection gear which will find you even when sitting on the bottom if they pass close enough. I also suspect there would be nets and minefields, which the stock game doesn't do. On full realism it takes some patience and caution to penetrate harbors and inland seas, but it can be done.

Just for fun a demo of the sweet spot I found for battleships, under the second turret.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiTR1LLTxgE

That is one of the great understatements. The stock game in any permutation is not even close. If you want to raid Japanese naval bases then you should do it with TMO. That mod has been accused of making things more difficult than they really were, but in this case it's probably still far too easy.

I like a challenge, but I also like blowing stuff up instead of spending two years listening to repeated clunks with dud torpedoes, so I always turn that off and historical realism be damned. Never tried RFB, TMO, or RSRD mainly because the damage and repair model sucks but also because it's a game - in real life there were many patrols where they never sunk any ships, what fun is that?

The one bit of realism I'd really like to see is the daily trim dives with flooding, emptying, and transferring ballast in various trim tanks to try to get as close to neutral buoyancy as possible, with options to blow different tanks to overcome negative buoyancy when compartments are flooding from damage. The way it is now it's all or nothing, blow main ballast and get positive buoyancy that can't stop the ascent with diving planes, stop motors and hover at periscope depth at zero speed with no rise, fall, or pitching? Ridiculous that a simulation of submersible vehicles wouldn't at least attempt SOME simulation of buoyancy and balance.

That's more than fair. We all have to do what suits us best. :sunny:

I've been playing subisms for more than a quarter-century, starting with Silent Service in 1987. I played Aces Of The Deep and Silent Hunter 1, and still do. I played SH2 and hated it, except for the adversarial multiplayer with Destroyer Command. I still play SH3, and I play it as realistically as I can, except for manual targetting, because my math skills stop at what I would generously describe as "basic". When I'm assigned a patrol grid I go there and I stay there for at least two weeks, after which I may or may not move to a new grid, depending on a die-roll system I came up with myself. I have had several patrols in which I've never even seen an enemy ship, let alone sunk one, and I have a lot of fun. I don't play video games at all, unless they represent some historical subject I like, and then I enjoy taking the bad with the good.

A fair point. I have many complaints about all of them, but for now I'm stuck with what I've been given.

thats the forward magazine where explosives are stored, there is also another one aft as well and every warship has these explosives compartments in roughly the same position.

as to the bananza in the ports its all about the time and date that you go there, you just got lucky at the right time. i just checked it out and only found 6 gun boats and 2 merchant ships only.

if you go back there at that time and date then you will probably see a bunch of ships again but the game will likely have a random assortment so its not the same "every" time

Some ships they did a forward and after magazine, the ones with the middle turrets (Iso or Kongo, I forget which) don't seem to have one under the two midships turrets. Yamato is just a little behind the second forward turret or the forward edge of the after turret. Be nice if we had drawings showing the exact location of the main magazines for each ship type but I guess our spies weren't ambitious enough. :haha:

As for date, in a career (in stock game) there's always some capitol ships at Kobe for each patrol that I've tried it. Sometimes 3 carriers and 2 BBs, once I saw only 1 CV and no BBs but that's rare.

Math, I suck at that too, I decided in 1968 that women and algebra were too complicated for me to ever understand. US Navy electronics school was easy except for the math, I had to take extra classes to learn enough trig to pass those tests, then promptly forgot it all after I graduated. What I use for manual targeting is another cheat - select the mast height slider in the rangefinder, set it to max, hit the - key to set the periscope straight ahead, then send range and bearing to TDC for a zero gyro angle shot. After that I eyeball it in a sort of "angle off" method, set the crosshairs between 10 and 15 degrees (depending on estimated speed) left/right of zero and fire when the target is in the crosshair. With that method range doesn't matter, if it's 500 yards or 2000 yards the angle is the same. Obviously it requires a lot more fish than the stationary targets.

**I like a challenge, but I also like blowing stuff up instead of spending two years listening to repeated clunks with dud torpedoes**

You might like duke nukem then.

While I enjoy a good harbor raid once in a while, especially Truk, you'll find most on the forum enjoy the realism. Why? Because it takes a better captain to sink the ships. It does not take to much skill to hit the "L" and fire any tube you wish. That gets boring and presents no challenge to me.

You'll also find a much better selection of ships and scenarios when running TMO and RSRD. I run the latest versions of TMO and RSRD along with the Convoy Routes TMO + RSRD. Try finding the Yamato coming down out of the Bungo Suido with her escorts. She has also been spotted NW of Truk on her way to anchorage there. Things is though you wont find those scenarios in the stock game but you will find them in TMO and RSRD. The convoy traffic and ship movements are more historical which can be a lot of fun to play with.

Without risk, all rewards are hollow. Set the mind on edge and a cunning intellect will soon follow.:sunny:

A challenged mind is one that learns and increases in skill. An unchallenged mind leads to a lazy thought and falling asleep at the helm.:nope:


http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pict...pictureid=4969

That's the worst insult ever! :o

Not for me, I loved Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, Cosmo, Crystal Caves, all them other old DOS games. BTW I've also played all the flightsims and subsims starting with the 4 color CGA version of GATO, not to mention RPG and train simulator games (even tho you don't get to blow anything up in trainsims), assorted first person shooters including all versions of DOOM and QUAKE. My personal preferences for playing computer games might or might not match the majority of users, but there's no wrong way to play any game.

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...80389080_n.jpg

The NC battleship makes a great explosion and sinks like a brick. If you're just after fun, make a single mission and place a couple dozen tankers beside each other loaded with fuel, placing in a few NC battleships. Just hit one with a torp and they'll all blow up.....better have a decent video card.

Good for you bro! :salute:

I don't play the game "right" anyway, my latest career experiments involve taking a Sargo hacked for midwar conning tower and radar at the start of the war - then kicking out the entire crew over the rank of 3rd class PO so I got a whole bunch of seamen trying to run the boat. Mechanically that gives me a big advantage, but an entire crew of rookies makes for some interesting problems.

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/4555/48152245.jpg

I retain one officer and one chief, the rest are all PO-3 or below.
And no, I don't suffer from insanity - I completely enjoy my insanity.

:88)