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Originally Posted by Annatar
I thought air attacks were pretty much turned off if you went above 256?
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That's why I never run on the surface with a TC greater than 32 in areas of enemy air operations.
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Originally Posted by Annatar
What TC is the best compromise between getting some good encounters with aircraft but without being at such a low compression that it takes days to finish a patrol?
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Depends mostly on the length (distance) of your patrol, and the proportion of time surfaced, I suppose. Assume an average speed of 11 knots surfaced, and 3 knots submerged, and 4 hours surfaced out of 24. That gives you about 190 km covered each day. An average air gap patrol for a Type VIIC is about 4,250km each way and another 1500km on station: about 10,000km in total. That's more than 50 days. If you want to complete this in less than one day of real time you will need to run an average TC of 64 or more. When you include time for low TC activities such as engagements, getting out of port, etc. you may need to average TC 128 for everything else, if you want to keep a patrol down to less than a day. You'll miss a number of aircraft encounters this way.
What I do is a bit different. Both my time surfaced and the TC I run at depend on whether I am in an area with enemy air coverage. In an area with enemy air coverage, I spend at least 20 hours submerged. I never run on the surface with a TC greater than 32, but I spend 12 hours of my submerged time running at TC 1024. Most of the rest of the sumerged time is at TC 32. This approach doesn't avoid many aircraft encounters, but does reduce the number of hydrophone contacts I make. I consider this a good outcome because there seems to be too many merchant ships in the game. This approach means a game day takes a little less than half an hour real time.
In an area with no enemy air coverage, I spend most of my time on the surface. I dive for periodic hydrophone checks. If I am just travelling to or from a patol area, my surfaced travel is at TC 1024. In a patrol area, I don't exceed TC 32.