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Originally Posted by troopie
...surely the boat would be more top heavy the higher it is out of the water?
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When the tanks are empty the major weight involved is the keel, which is designed to keep the ship upright. With the ballast tanks full the boat now has more than 350 tons of water on board, most of it in outboard tanks level with the boat's normal waterline. Once submerged the center of gravity is balanced, but surfaced it looks like any serious ocean motion could possibly be catastrophic. I don't know if that's true or not, but now that I think about it I see how it could be possible.
http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/chap4.htm
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Personally though, I never use decks awash; feels like a cheat to me. Surely the increased drag travling that way would've been undesirable?
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Running all over the ocean with no penalty is certainly a cheat, since the game allows it to work when in real life fuel consumption would rise dramatically. The main idea would be to use it only to lower the profile in a night surfaced attack, and to facilitate diving quickly in the same situation. Also the game assumes you're surfaced, and since you have no control over which engines you use you are automatically running on diesels, when part of the point in a surfaced attack is not to be heard as well as not being seen you would certainly be running on batteries in that situation.
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Also, I'm unsure If any in-game advantage is gained, I mean, do other units register that you're sitting a little lower in the water, or simply that you're surfaced?
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I don't know that one either.