Going deep vs. slugging it out on the surface
 

So I just finished expending all my torpedoes and half my deck gun ammo putting a convoy of 6 freighters and 4 DD's on the bottom of the Formosa Strait, and I started to head back to pearl. I get two pips on the radar, thinking it's two lonely freighters I go in to investigate, and I save the game. Soon after I find that it's the two lead escorts for another convoy and they start coming at me with a bone in their teeth (great expression from the era BTW) so I turn tail and run at flank speed. They keep coming and start to get a little close for comfort so I dive once I get out of the shallow area. I go silent and turn and they proceed to make their runs. I dodged the first couple salvos but the third one I take an ashcan right to the keester and flooding ensues in the aft torpedo room and engine room. I go all stop and set it on the floor at 200 feet and the DD's circle for a bit. They make a few passes missing each time, but then one gets really lucky and lands a kill shot. Catastrophic hull failure, posthumus medals and all that, so I reload the save game.

This time I still cant get away at flank speed, so I check my range on the periscope, make a few ranging shots with the 5"/25 before I get it dialed in and start scoring hits. I'm really laying it into him, and he's firing off in to the dark. At 3000 yards he turns and starts to fire broadsides, and I'm putting holes all up and down the side of the ship. He starts turning away and finally lands a couple good ones on me. I've got flooding and other damage but I'm still floating. Then I start into the second escort, he does the same number, turns broadside and then I poke lots of holes in him and then he starts to turn tail also, just as I'm nearly out of 5" rounds. So I didn't sink either of them, but I end up getting away as they limp back to the convoy and I skedaddle out of there. 70 percent hull damage, I'm still staying afloat. On the way back to pearl I get my men and boat patched up and top of for fuel at Midway. This time I pull into pearl, medals are presented, handshakes with admirals and most important, my sub and crew are alive.

so....

Dive and evade: 0
Slug it out on the surface: 1

What year was it? If it was early war i'm surprised you had that hard of a time escaping those DD's. Late war however is it's almost always a "never attack in water less then 300 feet unless it's a typhoon" situation.

One of the places where the game fails is in the sub vs destroyer gun battle. In real life a destroyer is designed to stay afloat, and he has several guns roughly the equal of yours, plus fairly sophisticated fire-control that allows him to fire all of his guns to a single solution. The submarine is designed to sink, and has no fire-control system at all beyond an iron sight on the gun. If he manages to put one hole in your pressure hull you have lost the only advantage you have, and are now a fairly slow torpedo boat deep in enemy territory. Winning a gun duel with a destroyer, let alone two or more, is about as unrealistic as you can get.

Depends on your mod setup. I use a tweak version of Travs mod and two hits from a DD deck gun can easily sink your sub. Not to mention, if you get flooding you'll sink even if you are surfaced.

If they were chasing you at a distance most likely they had radar. If you use a mod like TMO you can get APR radar detection and keep your distance.
If you are getting chased, dive when they're about 4000 yards away and keep flank until about 2000 yards, then go silent. You may be able to get out of there search circle.

I decided to have a gunfight with a torpedo boat one very dark moonless night. Started firing my machine guns off into the direction of his shots, couldn't see his boat at all, was just firing at the flashes and tracers of their MGs. They were lighting me up the whole time, and once I was able to see their wake I switched to the deck gun, and was able to nail 'em on my third shot, but not before the had my hull down to 22% integrity. I learned my lesson, now I go to scope depth and watch the patrols cruise on by.

This is mid 1943, I have APR and I didn't get any indication.

BTW running
TMO 2.5
TMO small patch
Snarf Digicamo
Snarf 40mm Twin
Snarf super cuties (only brought 4 with me on this patrol)

Unfortunately when you have to finish your 5 day patrol in the Formosa strait, you don't have the luxury of 300 feet of water. I would have gone under the layer if I had one, that is my normal method of evasion. The thing I like about TMO is that the DD's turn away when you've really put a hurt on them instead of continuing to charge in and ram like in stock.

I'm getting fairly familiar with tweaking the game. Care to share which file/ values I would need to modify to get harder hitting enemy deck guns? I've been hit a few times during this career and it seems the crew takes most of the punishment. (1 hit from a shore battery brought my entire engine compartment crew to 1/2 health, had to switch them with the fore torpedo room crew to go underway, surfaced to repair and the damn fore torpedo room got hit, killing everyone inside:woot:)

I myself always dive to evade DD's, you can lose them pretty easy in deep water, but the shallows usually takes a bit of time, or you lose.

I'll say, especially given the fact that Japanese DDs like the ASASHIO class were not mere tubs or rumrunners. These things packed a whallop with their twin-5's as opposed to a PORPOISE 3'' running on the surface and the DD could bring many more guns to bear. The biggest surface engagements I have had with anything that shoots back have been up against those swift subchaser jobs [ No -13s? ] with their own single deck gun.

Aye. I too, will take her down upon identifying a long-distance craft as a Japanese DD, of which I have only been running up against them while currently operating in the South China, in pairs, threes, and even a line of four followed by a subchaser heading to what looked like Saigon. While I have torpedoed several already, I will also whip out my ''discretion is the better part of valor'' card when needed and submerge and sneak away.

"I'm getting fairly familiar with tweaking the game. Care to share which file/ values I would need to modify to get harder hitting enemy deck guns?"

Data\Library\shells.zon to increase the power of shell explosions.

Data\Submarine\NSS_SubType\NSS_SubType.zon (replace SubType with whichever one you're actually modding, NSS_Gato.zon or NSS_Salmon.zon for example) you can reduce the overall armor and hit points of a sub.

Which is really unnecessary in the stock game, one of them silly little river gunboats has enough mojo to knock you into perdition in a very short time once they get the range. My policy is when the star shells fire, searchlights come on, or I see muzzle flashes and shell splashes the jig is up and it's time to pull the plug. Regardless how shallow the water is I got the advantage underneath because they can't submerge, they got the advantage on the surface because of more guns. The rare exceptions to that policy always involve rain / fog / extreme low visibility when the SJ radar gives me the advantage. Darkness ain't no help when the illumination starts.

Forgot to mention, as long as you're modding might as well fix the "going deep" part - stock SH4 programming shows that the developers read the wrong books, the diving time is realistic only for a new boat with a new crew who hasn't done any drilling on fast dives yet. Actual time to periscope depth for even a big fleet boat was 30-35 seconds, not 2-3 minutes.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...01373285_n.jpg

Find the ballast flood speeds in the sim files, make them about double then time standard "periscope depth" P key and "crash dive" C key from fully surfaced with the stopwatch, adjust as desired.

*correction* i'm in Mid '44 not '43

Thanks for that tidbit Sniper, and I always thought it was that clumsy tubby fellow who I put on watch up on the shears. 2-3 minutes is a lifetime when you're being shot at.

He's playing TMO, all those issues have been corrected.

He's talking about 2-3 minutes to get under, something uncorrected it, so I would advise checking. You never can tell which mods overwrite other mods modifications or who has mod soup. TMO version I have sets the Gato main ballast at 48000 and leaves the dive ballast at the default 9000, what I did was set main at 38000 (little less than double) and the dive at 18000 after a bit of trial and error. Oddly that gets the whole sub under in less time with P rather than C, since crash dive takes a steeper angle so the stern sticks up longer. Either way it's about 35-40 seconds from the klaxon to the periscope shears going under, faster than that would be too much like supersub. :shifty: Running decks awash (25 to 27 feet) it's about 15 seconds to periscope depth.