[gap]

I am sorry for the delayed answers

Originally Posted by keysersoze

Okay, I'll try to add this information whenever I can find it. For a lot of the operations, the U-boat sailed directly to its destination, dropped off a weather team (or laid mines, etc.), and then took up a regular patrol. I'll try to make it more explicit, though.

yes, in my opinion what is left to report is resuming in 3-4 words what this regular patrol consisted in...

Originally Posted by keysersoze

I know mines are not included in SH5... maybe this was just wishful thinking One thing that was striking when I read Clay Blair's Hitler's U-boat War was how often U-boats performed minelaying operations. I don't have the hard statistics nearby, but IIRC approximately 50% of U-boat patrols for 1939 were minelaying missions, not search-and-destroy grid patrols. Minelaying was so common, that we should probably refer to it as a normal patrol mission, rather than as a "special operation."

Yes, I noticed it too: especially during the first months of the conflict practically every U-boat carried out minelaying duties

Originally Posted by keysersoze

I'm sure implementing minelaying would be tricky. One objection that I've seen is that it would be impossible to credit tonnage sunk by mines to the U-boat that laid them, once that boat sailed away. Actually, I think the lack of credit would be perfectly historical: U-boat crews hated laying mines firstly because it was dangerous to get so close to enemy harbors, but also because they rarely got credit for a sinking unless B-Dienst could confirm it through wireless intercepts.

I've often wondered whether a script could check to see whether mines were placed at the correct depth. If they were, then there could be a random (but low) chance that we would be credited for sinking a random ship after returning to port. This would also remove the necessity of making the mines actually explode, since everything would be done through probabilities behind the scenes. It's not like a U-boat on a minelaying mission would stick around a harbor to watch the results anyway.

I like too the idea, and I am optimistic on the possibility to model mines which can be loaded in U-boat tubes, as if they were normal torpedoes. One problem could be making each tube to accept two to three mines, as it was in reality, but as I see it, the main issue would be making the game to recognize us for laying them (no matter if they explode or not).

Originally Posted by keysersoze

Sorry for my ramblings...I like to dream of these things, even if they're not possible right now

daydreaming is okay, as long as our guest, Trevally, won't ban us from his thread

Originally Posted by keysersoze

One other thing to keep in mind is that the frequency with which "special missions" were assigned depended greatly on the area of operation. Because the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe relied heavily on Arctic weather information to plan operations, it appears that the boats operating out of Norway constantly received orders to transport weather teams and set up weather stations. So for these boats, weather missions should be relatively common. Obviously, it would be less practical to have boats based out of France sail to Spitzbergen for the same mission.

I was struck too by the frequency of "weather missions" in the Arctic when I was collecting information on U-boat escort duties. This is especially true toward mid-late war, when U-bootwaffe turned again toward Arctic routes due to the increasing Allied control of mid Atlantic waters.
Unfortunately, many of these missions fall outside the timeframe of OH's Arctic Convoys (see my previous post on this topic, and my suggestion to add a new Arctic Campaign).

EDIT: in this post and in the following ones, Trevally posted a few charts showing the locations of OH's campaign/objectives. Useful for reasoning on which missions are compatible with which objectives, since I agree with you that assigning an U-boat based in France to a mission which will take place in the Arctic, won't make much sense