Thanks for the info, Pete. Some I knew, some I did not.
I have just returned from my first war patrol in a VIIB out of Kiel. Made the transit in and out of the canal. Thanks for the tip on the sluice. I found that it was best to stop the boat [which takes some farting about with the telegpraph!] and wait for it to open. Same exiting the sluice.
I do enjoy the eye candy once in a while, but after all the time you spend loading and tweaking the game, I'd rather not spend so much time close to land and just want to be free of it. I am going to try installing the mod that shuts up the frequent "ship sighted" reports and see how it works in the game. I've never used it before, but now with all the gorgeous eye candy and the numerous ships [I even saw, once in port and once at sea a side wheeler; did the South rise again?] it is exasperating trying to get out on time compression. I am happy with 128 or even 256, with a carefully plotted course.
Note that this is not a complaint, just an observation. What I like is you can play this game any way you like.
Another mod I think I might have and want to try is the "all weather guns." Not for cheating, but so that I might use my flak gun up in the wintergarden. We know this is all tied to the game engine, but I have seen conditions when you could man the flak gun even though the lower deck is awash. As Kaleun, I wish to have final say, not the weather man.
Oh, patrol report, almost forgot. I am finding torpedo attacks in stormy weather just about not worth even trying, at least at the beginning of the war [yes, I know about the modeling of the torpedo scandal, and agree with the mod made to reflect it] with just about every one of my torpedoes running too deep. I managed to sink two ships with torpedoes, but almost every torpedo fired in rough weather was a deep runner.
I eventually hauled off from the Hartlepool grid and sailed up west of the Shetlands before I had calm enough weather to get to my externals. It was late afternoon and I was waiting for it to get darker when a Tribal class destroyer hove into view from astern. She was really booking it and I had to dive away. Then I heard more warship screws and came up for a look. A three battleship task force! And there I was with only one steam fish in a bow tube and one steam torp in the stern tube. Not worth messing with that pack of dogs; I let them run.
A couple of times I ran into those small unescorted convoys [thank you, modders, not every convoy had an escort in the early years] and in the old days it would have been a massacre, but the new game mods make that very unlikely. Nice to see some historical reality. On the way back, I had one steamer in my stern tube and found two lake freighters sailing alone. I took out one with the last fish, and deck gunned the other. And then one last deck gun engagement with a four ton freighter, which sank. I let the crew manage the deck gun but I did have a bit of strafing fun with the flak gun.
Five ships for 19965 tons in my new Kaleun's maiden patrol.
I had one glitch which caused me to have to task-manager my way out of a lock-up that was induced by pressing Ctrl+F11 to take a screenshot. Totally froze up and no way out but task manager. It's been so many years I can't even remember if Ctrl+F11 is the combo for a screenshot.
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