[TorpX]

Originally Posted by pdiddy

Would you share your house rules please?

Sure.

First, I have all the realism options enabled, except the external cam, and I never use it to cheat. For me, it's more of a boredom combating device. Much of sub patrols are a waiting game.

1. Dead is Dead.

2. Orders are orders. When I get a mission to patrol area X, I go there and stay for at least a week, and maybe two. If historically, it was a tactical deployment (i.e. the defense of the Philippine Is.), I consider one week enough, if it is in the nature of a strategic deployment (i.e. commerce raiding), I'll consider it to be a 2 week order. Some discretion is needed here, as the game missions may not always make sense in your situation. For example, if I were to get orders that were suicidal (recon of major enemy base), or just plain stupid (go far away, where you won't have enough fuel to do squat), I ignore/modify them.

3. I limit myself to TC of 32x on surface, 64x submerged. The reason I keep to a lower value of 32x on the surface is that the wave mechanics are mostly negated above 32x, so speeds change a lot between 32x and 64x+, when waves are large. Because the weather was "stuck" for so long on this patrol, I was going to 64x for part of the nightly recharge; otherwise I couldn't get anywhere. I hated to do that, but I had 16 consecutive days of wind speed 15, and it was far worse than anything I had in tests of ISP.


4. I don't use the TDC in an S-boat. That is apart from using it to set a fixed gyro-angle. Manual calculation substitutes for mechanical wizardry here. On this patrol it didn't really matter, as I have yet to see a single contact.

5. I am using a mechanical reliability rule scheme, sort of like the Ted Healy system, but somewhat more detailed and elaborate. It is still a work in progress, though. The only issue I rolled up in this, so far, is a potential gun jam, but again, since I haven't fired a single shell, it doesn't really matter on this patrol.

6. The patrol is limited to a reasonable time. I figured I loaded 45 days of food at the start. I had planned to go back to Manila to top off my tanks, and replenish, but as events transpired, the storms prevented my from getting back before the Navy destroyed the fuel stocks. Bad for me!