You've hit bottom. Now what?
 

Had this happen in one of my first attempts at the sim. Water depth was about 30m and I had set 50 m. When I hit I went into damage control, and was busy handling that, but the compartments kept getting damaged, repair, damaged again. Everytime I gave a speed, fast or slow (even all stop), damage would re-occur. Is there a way off the deck like in Das Boot?

Don't order a speed setting. Your hull will scratch the rocky seabed and take damage again.

Order periscope depth, without starting your engines. Your LI will blow balast and your U-Boot will rise.

Cheers for that. Nice a simple too.:sunny:

It is a pity that we don't have a mod to limit low speed bottoming or collision damage. In my view the game makes it far too severe. In real life, I often hit the bottom with my boat, usually at low speed, and have not suffered damage as a consequence.

Meh, in WW2 they put the boat on the ground, so the enemy can't find them with ASDIC, in SH the boat is damaged :dead:

Why do you not use:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...do=file&id=957

Works just fine on GWX Gold.

@ Rconch - Yes I know what you mean with 'Das Boot' moments. It was even worse for me at the time with the das boot crew sounds for damage. Hearing them all running around the boat trying to repair it and me knowing that it was futile. I felt like letting them rig for silent running and return to their bunks, no use dying tired.

Thanks for that, I will have to give it a try . . .

This has happened to me on occasion, and on pretty much each one, I was directly responsible for the collision.
After reading books and watching films, building models and playing subsims, I learned what the "rudder heel" and "keel box" were for...
I did try to set down exactly on the bottom. I think it would only allow me 2 meters to go. Even to change depth using compressed air was not sinking the sub any lower. Try as I might, I could not set the boat down on the keel box and just sit there, waiting for my "friends" up above to go away...

Couple of points:

If the bottom is nice, soft, flat mud, an RL sub would give a nice, clear ASDIC return. Which is OK, because in SH3, sitting on the bottom does nothing to lower your chances of detection anyway. It always works in the movies, and it sometimes worked RL, but it doesn't work in SH3.

Use the depth finder to keep track of where the bottom is. The faster you are going, horizontally and vertically, the harder you are going to hit and the more damage your boat will get.

When you hit bottom, stop! Rise the boat a bit, and go ahead slowly. Fix the damage if you can. And go on with your life. Rarely does hitting bottom cause major, irreparable damage. Most annoying part is that it breaks the glass on some of the gauges and your lazy crew doesn't fix them for the rest of the cruise.

Some time ago, I found myself having serious problems with CTDs when I tried to load a saved game. The causes were multiple, most of them the result of poor software hygiene. But in the course of a six-week effort to fix the CTDs, I found that the Seabed Repair mod was one of a couple I had to remove. Not saying it is inherently flawed - It may have been some interaction unique to my setup. Others obviously use it successfully. YMMV. (BTW, the CTDs were not in any way related to the in-game situation when I saved the game.)

In that situation I would order all stop followed by blow ballast. If you are bottoming out due to an escorts presence then follow up quickly with a shallow depth setting otherwise you will be quickly put back to where you started but dead! You are best in sh3 to run deep and slow to evade escorts. Increase to flank if charges are dropped within a 100m radius. Movement is life in this sim. Ive tried bottoming out after attacking a convoy in 50m water (North Sea early war) and was quickly destroyed. Whether its rl or not ive learnt to play the game not emulate real tactics

Depending on the different layers in the water (very cold and very high salinity) the noise from ASDIC could be redirected directly to the bottom and then they destroyers would not be able to detect anything. But in this case there is no reason to go to the bottom.

There could be a surface duct, too. (Needs low waves and a lot of sunshine) All noise below this layer will be redirected to the bottom and all noise above this layer would bouncing between the layer and the surface - this can effect enorm ranges of detection for any sonar user inside the duct.

It´s a pitty, that in SH3 those effects aren´t simulated. But it´s complicated. I had to read and learn a lot of stuff about this in my second training in the navy. 3 month only hydroacoustics, noise detection and oceanography.

I've never used this mod but the detail states 'GWX 2.1 ONLY' so it works with Gold?

There is a Shallow Water ASDIC Mod in Stiebler4B_V16B1_Revised patcher. It simulates some of the conditions you mentioned in a more generic way. Would like to know your evaluation of it.

Jim, I think it means it. I found it was a contributor to my savegame corruption issue. It may work with some mod combinations and not play nice with others. I didn't do a thorough investigation. But it's a good mod otherwise, and could be worth the time to check it out. May work for you.