Noobie questions
 

On the first mission of a new career, you are ordered to patrol a grid section...

The first three times that I played this, I received a radio message to "begin hostilities" against the British...

So I started shooting down everything that was "red" on my plotting course map page... I discovered that neutral merchant ships also show up as red targets, and are marked as "hostile", despite being considered neutral...

That however, is not exactly what my question is about...

So, I have started a new career... I'm out on my first patrol, and there are red targets everywhere... I could have sunk about 10 ships by now... but... I have not received any radio massages - no "orders" - to engage enemies, or begin hostilities... my 24 hours is up... and I'm supposed to return to base... without firing a shot... WTF?!?!?

Is my game bugged?... should I be shooting down everything? should I ignore the fact that my mission is officially complete, and just start blowing **** up?... What gives?

No the original game had a weird 24 hour patrol thing. In real life you may spend 2-4 weeks in a zone. As far as all targets being red, I am not sure but if you are looking for immersion.., don’t shoot neutral ships! Just ignore them.

Thank you for correcting me captain. I apologize for my ignorance of this site's blacklisted words... I'm sure that I really deserved being corrected. Particularly since I did not use any asterisks in my post, the forum did that itself,... and I did not know that the plain words for "blowing poo up" was considered by this forum to be "vulgarities, obscenities, hate speech, or foul language", as many of the webforums that I play games on, do not censor the plain word for "poo".

If you have such a rule against using asterisks in a post, however,... might I offer some advice, and suggest that instead of having your forum automatically use them in a person's post, to replace blacklisted words... since they are not allowed... and the forum itself, is breaking its own rules by using them,... that the "blacklisted words" simply be returned as "not allowed", rather than forcing members to violate the rules in a post, unknowingly, and then get "corrected", despite having done so unknowingly, even while trying to be polite.

Also, thank you for the very helpful advice to my actual question about the game... I'm sure that I will be able to put it to good... ... wait... you didn't offer any advice regarding my question, you only posted to "correct" my evil discourteous ways... ... well,... have a pleasant day anyway.

A little of the background of Silent Hunter III: The original SH was a game about American subs in the Pacific, and was rather free-form but with some quirks that made it interesting...and frustrating. SH II was more in line with a "shooter" game. You would have a mission that never altered. Die on the mission and you had to do it over again. Fail to sink the proper ships or tonnage and you would have to do it over again. Very frustrating. When they were leaking things about SH III they hinted that the "Campaign" would be like SH II's but more advanced. At that point there was a huge hue-and-cry here and on the UBIsoft forums about how we didn't want that; what we wanted was a fully random campaign like the one in Aces Of The Deep. Finally the Developers took a poll and then announced that the were going to do as we asked, though it would delay release by six months. We were fine with that and we finally got SH III. The "Patrol the grid area for 24 hours" thing was a holdover from the earlier plan. In the stock game you receive renown for staying there the whole day, but after that you are free to go do what you want. I always stick around for a week and then roll a die to see if I move to an adjacent grid or stick around for a second week. I also sometimes have empty patrols, but that's just me. You really are free to play pretty much any way you like.

When you say you discovered that neutral ships also show up as red, do you mean that when you sank them the game took renown away from you? Because that is what happens when you sink a neutral. Try sinking a ship marked in red and then check to see if you gain or lose renown. That will tell you for sure if the game thought it was neutral or enemy. Also there are ways to adjust what the game thinks about the ships you sink. More on that later if you're interested.

No, your game isn't bugged. That's the way SH III works. Yes, you can shoot anything you like. You won't be court-martialed or even reprimanded. The game isn't that sophisticated. It awards or removes renown depending on your actions, but that's about it. There are mods that alter enemy traffic to more realistic levels, and most of the supermods change it so the traffic is more limited to the areas actually covered in real life. There are dozens of ways to change the game to it's more realistic, or less, depending on what you like. A lot of players don't even bother to go to the assigned patrol area, figuring that they'll earn more renown by going straight to their favorite hunting grounds rather than hanging out for a day.

As for language, yes, SubSim does have some rather restrictive rules. The simplest thing at any forum is to go to the FAQ and Rules section linked at the top of every page. It should tell you anything you need to know. If you have any questions you can always ask myself or Jimbuna for a quick explanation.

A Warm Welcome To The Subsim Community > Sorakiba
Subsim <> Make A Donation <> See The Benefits <> Support The Community
SH3 – 4 - 5 Tutorials > Downloads > Other Useful Information > See Links in My Signature Below

Sailor Steve, thank you for the reply... that was informative, and kind of basically answered my question...

My initial concern was that I had not received orders to "engage hostilities with the British", like I did the other times I played the game...

As to the neutral "enemies"... when I am in the course plotting map, all merchant ships are red, and when I click on them, and the little circle forms around them, and tells me what kind of ship it is, it claims that they are hostile... In my last campaign, in the reports at the end, it tells you how many enemy ships, neutral ships, and friendly ships you sank...

Most of the merchant ships that I sink, even though they are red, and claim to be hostile, the end report says that they were neutral.

I've never checked to see if I was gaining or losing renown - I'll check that as I continue playing... but,... as an example... the mission that I just played, I sank 6 ships... two were destroyers, and four were merchant ships... the end report says that I destroyed 4 neutral ships, and two enemy ships... but on my course plotting map, and in the page with all of the manual firing controls, the all of the ships I sank were red, and said hostile.

That's something that I was curious about... but my bigger concern was whether or not I should start firing at enemies before receiving the orders to do so... which you basically answered... I should blow the poop out of everything red.

Although, I do have one more question... is there any point at all in sending out contact reports or status reports from your radio officer to the base? Does it do, or effect anything, or is it just for people who want to role-play?

Contact reports is only role play...
For GWX on this forum has mod "GWX-Contact color" . With this mod enabled, neutral ship is green, enemy red and alies blue, no mistake :03:

To me that's just weird. Neutral ships should show up as green. Doksas' information above is absolutely correct.

For years now I've used a mod that makes everything on the chart black, so all identification has to be done by eye. I've forgotten whether neutral ships were green in the stock game.

As of September 1 1939 Poland is an enemy. War was declared on Britain on September 3. After that I identify everything by its flag, not by what the chart says. France wavered back and forth for a week or so, and for awhile U-boats were told not to sink French ships. After that I use the flag and the chart that shows the status of each country by date. I think that chart is on-screen as a pull-down in GWX, but I'll have to check to be sure and I don't currently have the game loaded.

As Doksas says, it's just for immersion. It's also a pain because the game won't let you send the report unless the enemy ships are in sight, and common practice was to get out of visual range, then surface and send a report. I just ignore it.

I remember now, why I stopped playing this game in the first place...

My last mission, I sank 12 enemy ships, and downed 4 aircraft... all while patrolling, and moving... only one torpedo missed, and there was 1 dud, that just pinged off of the enemy hull. 14 torpedoes fired, 12 ships sank. Wonderful experience.

This time, I wanted to try being a sneaky little sot, and pulled into an enemy harbor... 4 merchant ships, two cargo freighters, and an enemy destroyer... all just sitting there, "parked" at the docks...

I pulled into the harbor, turned to face the warship first, and came to a complete stop... Then I followed all of the right steps... looked through the parascope, and locked on to the warship, used the book to find the depth of the ship, switched to the torpedo firing controls, adjusted the depth two meters above the bottom of the ship, so that the torpedoes do not skim underneath the ship, and then tried to adjust the speed of the torpedos - the game would not let me adjust the speed no matter what.. ??? okay, what-ever... everything else was fine... I opened fire... torpedo in the water...

I moved on to the target the next ship... repeated the above steps, and opened fire from tube two...

Moved on to the next, then the next, then the next... targeted a total of five different ships... the other two ships were over two kilometers away, so I didn't bother firing at them.

I fired a total 12 torpedoes... at 5 different ships, all parked... sitting, docked at the harbor... Every single shot I fired at them missed. 5 ships, all less than 1 kilometer away, all sitting still, none of them moving... not one was hit.... so I figured I'd try something a little different... I surfaced the submarine, thinking that I'd use my cannon real quick...

I surfaced, and ordered the deck guns be manned - I then ordered them to open fire... nothing happened, and the crew claimed that we have been spotted... time is running out, I need to f

I check the crew page... and click on surface battle... there are men at the deck cannon station, so I click on the cannon station to manually man the station... the reticule doesn't move... when I press space, to fire - it claims that I do not have enough crew to fire the deck cannon... !!! ?!? !!! ...

This is why I stopped playing so long ago... the whole game is buggy, or something.

The contact report I use in NYGM. I have the Wolfpack mod and it is used to send a convoy report every hour. In that time I get messages from BDU on other U-Boats in the area and how close they are. Really cool stuff!

Some harbours have nets to catch the torpedo's. Kind of like shark nets on swimming beaches. That's why you couldn't hit them. Also some of the torpedo's don't have speed settings. They are just set speed.

The report at the end of the patrol...
The lines don't exactly "line up", so the numbers on the right are "off".


Kind of like.............................................. .............................
.................................................. .........................................this.

So while it should be................................................ .............here,
.................................................. ......................................it's actually here.


I had to look really close, as the first time I played, I was using a 42" TV for a Monitor.
So I was thinking "there is no way I got THAT ma..... Ohh, it's off".



No, and Yes.
No, there won't be any other U-Boats forming a wolf pack to gang up on a convoy.

Yes, there is an in-game response.
Planes will be sent (from one or both sides), either to help you, or because they are looking for the source of the radio signal.


So that's why when I first got it, it felt like "an 'eye candy' version of Aces of the Deep".

I might try again to get AOD working in WINE.
(Well it worked, but it needs 256 colors or the display is weird, just like in Windows.)

I miss the ability to sit on the bottom.


Barracuda

Aktungbby, has probably never violated any forum rules anywhere. He's intellectually special. Welcome, Sorakiba I didn't know about the asterisk either. " WTF" Welcome to Subsim:up:

Aktungbby has helped make hundreds of new posters feel welcome at SubSim. He has been recognized twice as a Best of SubSim Award recipient, in 2014 and 2018. He is known in this community as a valued contributor and he respects the standards established by Neal Stevens, the owner of this site.

Who are you?