VII skippers, two questions for ya
 

Who's your daddy and what does he do?
No.. just kidding.


The real question is,

Whats your average tonnage per patrol, and on the average how long is a typical patrol for you?

EDIT. THe above is assuming your using manual TDC, WO oassistance or not, doesnt matter, just as long as its manual TDC.

Manual TDC, eh?....

Guess I can't help then. :(

Reason i say manual is because of the "silver bullet" effect with auto TDC. You can sink every ship in the game (except large warships) with only 1 torpedo with autoTDC.

Average Tonnage per Patrol = 12k
Average Patrol Length = 56 days
Average Number of Ships Sunk = 2.3
Percentage of Patrols with No Successes = 33%

Manual TDC ( You can sink every ship with one torpedo in manual also it seems, except of course, for large warships)
No Watch Officer assistance.

Torpedo allocation rules from Uboat Commanders Handbook (15% tonnage reduction)
Hydrophone use rules from Uboat Commandres Handbook (50% tonnage reduction)

Re: VII skippers, two questions for ya
 

Hmm, I did not think anyone would consider the weapons officer solutions mode to be the same as manual targeting/manual TDC. In my opinion weapons officer is still auto targeting that only requires an extra mouse click.

Is it common that people say they are using manual TDC but mean they are using weapons officer mode?

Yes. That would be me. I'd forgotten about the actual manual mode. I did it once and found it more help than I needed.

I do the extra mouse click with the WO.

I'd love to do all auto, but it's just not within my ken.

Again, the whole issue with autoTDC is the silver bullet effect. So your going to get unrealistic tonnage vs your torpedo expendature. To the best of my knowledge, this silver bullet effect doesnt exist at all under manual TDC, regardless if you use the WO assitance or not. So if someone uses the WO, i really don't care, not my concern. My only intrest here is tonnage vs torpedo expenditure. Im trying to statistically figure out/verify if i reaching 1million tons is even remotely possible in an VII uboat in SH3.

Well I played a year with the stock game with no patches. So those numbrs were something like this by the end:

Tons Per Patrol - 30,000 to 60,000
20,000 or less a rarity.

I try to keep my patrols at three weeks if I can. Seldom two months.
But that don't tell you much because I used a lot of deck gun.

Really just started with the mods and stuff. And while I'm having good tonnage totals with 2 battleships and a carrier, my merchent totals are way down.

Sorry I can't be more help. But I have no extended careers with the updates.
Just thinking with some quick math, I doubt you could do it. Simply not enough eels.

Oh, you know what? I must be high. Sure you can do it.


10 patrols a year is possible.

20,000 tons per is possible.

So, 200,000 a year times five years = 1,000,000

YAY!

It's entirely possible. Even easy. Like I said before - I use manual targetting, no WO assistance (except for surface ranging, which is sort of a cheat), and otherwise 100% realism (except for external cam to watch dramatic sinkings). I started at the beginning, VIIB, still have her, Jan 1943 with 850k. If I don't do anything stupid (now I've got my radar detector), then 1mil should be a piece of cake. I'll tell you how far I get in order to give you a decent upper limit. My patrols have been averaging around 35k. I never came back empty handed.

Kb

Since I started modding the game, I haven't ever played through an entire career. The furthest I got was 1943 when I got my XXI. Shortly after my computer took a dump and I lost everything. In the career, though, I had 600,000+ tons, so I'm guessing you could make it. I used the type VIIC almost exclusively until I got the XXI. What you need to do I try and find a convoy on every patrol. Sink the T2's and T3's. The T3's are especially easy to sink as it usually only takes one shot (without the silver bullet AutoTDC). T2's are usually easy to sink, too. Send a few of those to the bottom on every patrol and you'll reach your goal in no time. I would find it hard not to come across a convoy on every patrol. Sometimes I advoid them just so I don't have to endure the lag. :88) Lately I have been averaging above 20,000+ tons a patrol in my VIIC. I recently scored 86,000+ tons in a patrol. I'm not sure how many game days my patrol lasts, but I try not to play more than 2 hours at a time seeing as I don't like to save unless something comes up.

With RUb 1.45:

Nb of patrols: 32 (two careers covering 9/1939 to 1/1943)
Nb of ships sunk: 117
Total tonnage sunk: 640k

Average Tonnage per Patrol: 20k
Average Patrol Length: 16 days
Average Number of Ships Sunk Per Patrol: 2.7
Percentage of Patrols with No Successes: 6%

Just started my third career in an VIIC...

Type VIIB - first patrol - 81K+.
Patrol duration - 6 weeks.

1Mill, easy as pie!

OK, gotcha, maybe say non-auto, instead of manual. Single-shot kills are still quite possible without the silver-bullet effect FWIW.

To answer your question, yes, one million is well within reach in a type VII. Here's a career I finished recently. 11 patrols in a VIIB, 13 in VIIC, final patrol in VIIC/42. Sunk in March of '44 attacking a KG battleship. We stopped it with a four-shot salvo, and made the mistake of having our periscope spotted as we maneuvered to get the stern fish off. Sunk after a vicious depth charging lasting about an hour. This career played at 88% (MCU enabled), manual TDC. I twist the dials to operate the TDC, no external views, always return to base. I let the crew shoot the gun too :)

http://home.comcast.net/~dbond41/jpopplog.jpg

That's an average of 44,740 tons per patrol. Average patrol duration on this career was 27.84 days, though I'd say my average overall in type VII is closer to 35 days, just happened to have some short patrols in this career. My longest patrol in a type VII is 108 days (no milkcow)

Well one thing I can say is, with auto targetting not every ship sinks with just one torp. At least that's been my experience with T2 and T3s. One I encountered limped on after three hits.