RANGE - Can't Make It There and Back
 

It's early 1944 and I'm in a Type IX-D. I'm based in Lorient and my assigned patrol grid is GR58 - the southern tip of Africa.
I spent an eternity travelling there at the slowest speed possible. I passed up several potential intercepts on the way to remain fuel efficient, went to flank only briefly, twice (once to present my flak gunners with a target and once to crash dive), I remained basically motionless in the patrol zone, and I STILL don't have enough fuel to make it home. For the life of me, I can't think of anything I could've done differently. Has anyone else experienced this annoying phenomena and if so, any suggestions?
What a wate of game time!
:shifty:

Re: RANGE - Can't Make It There and Back
 

What do you mean? 1/3?

you have to find out on which speed ypur sub is most effective. for that, use the navigator and ask for maxiumum range at current speed. for my actual sub (IXC with MAN Diesel) its exactly 9kts.

9 knots seems to be the optimal speed in every sub I've tested. At the beginning of the career, 9 knots is Ahead 1/3 on a VIIB. Later, as I got better engines, my range went down at the same throttle setting. When I manually selected 9 knots as the speed, my range went back up. I've checked all three engine possiblities on the VIIB, two on the VIIC, and the engine on the XXI. I forgot to check it on the IIA, and I've never used any variant of the type IX so I can't say.

As slow as it gets w/o going backwards
 

I mean "ahead slow" - the slowest speed you can possibly make and still be moving forward; the lowest forward setting on the engine telegraph. I'm always careful to use my navigator to plot course and range, and I get reports from him frequently.

After doing some more research here, it appears it is a known issue with the IX-D that mods have been made to address.

I'm surprised that Ubisoft didn't fix it in the latest patch.

It's a pretty grave problem, putiing a player in a situation where he'll run out of diesel no matter what he does.

Did you toggle between your diesels on surface and electrics below on your trip down to Africa?

If not, that was your mistake. :-?

You need the IXD2 Range Mod installed.If you don't have it the range is the same as a IXC. Check out this link.
http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=48560 :up:

I'm not sure what you mean; if you're on the surface, you're running diesel. If you're submerged, you're on electrics. The game does this for you automatically. The only exception is when you are using the snorkel, which allows use of diesels while submerged.
This was my 30th patrol; it's been awhile since I was a n00b. I don't think I made any navigation errors. I used the slowest speed available, regardless of propulsion.

As Ping Jockey said, there is a problem with the range of the Type IXd2 in the standard (un-modded) game.

You have been remarkably skilled, and patient, in conserving fuel down to South Africa and you deserve better. There are many major mods that fix this problem, such as the latest NYGM Tonnage War and the older RUb, as well as several dedicated fixes.

However, it is likely that you will need to start again at base to avoid confusing the system after installing any mod. Definitely you will have to restart at base after installing the NYGM Tonnage War or RUb (or any other major mod).

Stiebler.

I'll check those out, Stiebler.
Thanks!

And thanks to all who responded. The Subsim community remains one of the greatest.

Yeah, the mods should take care of most of your problem. However, you still need to re-think your approach. The most fuel efficient speed is NOT the slowest one, but rather the second slowest one on the telegraph. True, there are ways to micromanage it even better (the allways popular 9 knots setting) but ahead 1/3 is good enough.

I don't know why this topic keeps coming up... it's just like driving your car... nobody would ever think that the most fuel efficient setting for your car would be to travel at 1 mile per hour... sure, the fuel would last longer but you'd get nowhere. :)

wait...U CAN SWITCH BETWEEN DIESELS AND ELECTRIC MANUALLY?!?! Omg?! i didnt know that! I thought it was automated, surface diesles, and sbmerged electric. Now after a surface attack on a convoy i can slip away with the electric motors silently. woohoo!!!! How do i go about doing this?! :rock:

I don't think that you can manualy change between electric and diesel, although I'd be VERY interested in it if possible :yep: .

Not according to your navigator. If you ask for a report on maximum range at current speed, the larger number will be at ahead slow, not ahead one-third. If you use the lowest speed, the fuel lasts the longest. We can debate the real-world accuracy of that, but in game terms, that's just how it works.

you can. by default it is the 'P' and 'S' keys.

Couple of thoughts from someone who's running pretty much the stock game:

1. Don't trust your navigator to give you accurate ranges. He pulls figures out of a hat. To test this, try asking him your range at current speed, then doing the same again and again, without changing speed. His estimates will (in my experience, anyway) go down literally by the second. In the IXB I had in my previous career, I learned to be a lot more optimistic than the navigator, and in the end to ignore his estimates. Definitely a bug in there somewhere.

2. If you do want to manage fuel carefully, spend most of your time submerged, surfacing only to charge batteries. That does wonders for your range, and is the nearest you'll get to the realistic situation whereby fuel-saving crews would run on electric motors (on the surface, which is not modelled in SH3) most of the time, using the diesels mainly as generators.

Mods, of course, may alter all this - I'm just commenting on the stock game.