well that's to bad; hoping the smoke on the water would answer what 'i' am seeing.
first mission was to marshal islands. encountered patrolling enemy destroyers and Australian freighters, (which had heading track to MI). nothing was too odd, but a lot of the destroyers would head my direction. i would go deep, 0 speed and silent running; they would pass by. after time spent in area, headed to wake island; arriving day after it fell. half way there, ran into another freighter at night, bright moon, it also seemed on track to midway. approached it under water, raising scope at 1K yards. thought the flag was French; (red-white-blue bars). went back on course, but stayed underwater; (got distracted looking at something else). after several minutes, sonar man sang out contact 120', closing. closing? scope showed coming straight at me. dived to 80 feet and freighter came close; then tracked it, seemingly, freighter went back on track for MI. what the crap was that? couple of days at wake; and nothing. no activity. so went back to Marshals'. between the islands, ran into another freighter, this time, flagged rising sun. it was night, but moon shining so still approached underwater. i normally use sonar to get into firing position. i do not use the scope until firing, maybe sometimes for AoB check; then just pop the surface, until i can see the target, then less than 5-10 seconds, then down, that's my standard procedure. at the last second it turned into me, did snap shot and missed. it was a small freighter and appeared to not have any big guns. so surfaced and stood off from it, then sunk it with deck gun. this is where i saw the burning bushes that would float out from the target. didn't see or run into anything else, finally ran low on fuel and returned to MI.
next mission took me off southern japan. here i managed to sink 6 ships. understand, all of them came to me, i did not have to intercept them. other ships that were picked up, would turn to run away. on one, i surfaced to give chase and he had three big guns. tried several end-arounds, but always moved off before was in position. one interesting encounter; the contact, to the south east of my position, called out as slow speed, closing. pointed just ahead of them and ran at full speed. picked up smoke on the horizon and then another smoke trail. picked up masts, then funnel of leader and dove to periscope and set standard speed. after a few minutes, it became apparent they were heading east at 5 knots. made sense, their track was pointing at a port. after several minutes, sonar announced the target, he was following, went to mid speed. odd, so i followed every minute. unchanging direction. peek with periscope verified he was coming straight at me. turned ninety across his track and went to full speed. after couple of minutes, and still no direction change. again peeked with scope; yup, still face on. so turned into him, a went to 1/3, waiting for him and another close up sinking. tracked him couple of minutes, when direction change and sonar man was saying no longer closing. huh? turning? next couple of call outs, direction doesn't change again and call out was moving away. did a peek with scope; yup, looking at his stern. during this time 'i' had looked at what the other contact was doing. small changes showed roughly south. an attack to let the other get away? meanwhile, tracking showed first target is changing again. peeking at him showed turning west. tracking him, it went, moving away - neutral - closing. sonar plot showed moving west. this time thou, didn't appear charging again, but still closing and sunk him 1k yards. by this time, second contact was no longer on sonar. surfaced and went SSW at full speed. never found him, (i think), because i ran into 2 more, heading north. similar scenario occurred, but it was night and sunk both. one time, got visual call. but contact didn't show up on sonar, me or the sonar man. looked like an oiler. but just kept avoiding me, so gave up chasing it.
was down to 3 torps, also low on fuel; i moved west, towards those ports. decided i would sweep west then south-east untill fuel forced to MI or PH. mid morning a called out sonar contact; warship south, mid speed, closing. with tbd, looked that direction and sure enough, 'smoke on the horizon', (miss that visual call). wait, holy .... to left was another smoke trail and next to it, a very large one. smoke trail showed heading east. but, with the other contact, the direction was un-changing. so again dove to 100 feet, 0 speed and silent running. contact went from mid speed to slow, the direction, again was un-changing and always closing (search pattern?). after about half hour, finally got high speed, moving away call; figured trying to catch up with daddy. but, was waiting until it left max sonar range. meanwhile, while watching it leave, another contact appeared.
surfacing, closed until got smoke on the horizon. guessed, after watching, that they were moving north. went to 80 feet and closed at full speed, then it was called out closing at mid speed. slowed and watched for i while. appeared they were closing and went to periscope depth. finally was pinging them; (yes, one can ping, anytime, but i don't, because, although this might be a game, that is very unrealistic.) was closing on track at 10 knots when, around 3K, plot was not on track. quick ping and yup, turning away. did a quick peek and verified it. this start a real two hour chase, including an attempted end around. didn't mater, always running away. I had saved when i went to 80 feet, sooooo re-loaded and this time, started using long range sonar. would plot leaders' movements, which sometimes, i was either getting really bad ping or started picking up the other guy. this was a couple of start overs. they would always start moving away as i approached; sometimes at short range, sometimes farther away. the plot in the thumbnail is the last one i did. by now, i new they headed north, then turn west, again, seemed to align with the ports. i just moved to a point that was south of the track line. contact, moved north, then turn west and stayed on track. i was moving NE closing to track line when they turned into me; first time they did that. i turned towards them, then turned southernly. that's when they started to turn west again. i turned back into them and started my firing setup. fired last forward torp at 1500 yards. start down, flank and hard to port; figured the other one would be barreling down. got off a ping on him, 250 yards 110'. didn't here him go over head. back to periscope, can i get a spread off with last two torps in rear. no, 3K yards and looking at stern. on one of the replays' did a long range 'contact's range&bearing' and got a CTD. only one so far to occurred.
satisfied; what do i do now. gave up. as i wrote this offline; deleted saved files, download .81 and start a new. yes i have laa enabled, only mod and even went into win10 and raised sh4 priority to a higher setting. with .80, sometimes win10 would abort loading the game; bumping the priority seemed to cure that.
so off the coast of japan, 100 miles NE of Tokyo, got a report of 'ship, NNW, med', pop up on the nav map. there was no radio report of this. i thought this was being blocked from occurring? hmmm, sonar contact.
I played RSB 10 years ago. enjoyed it. work got in the way. now retired. back at it. bought a new machine and vive system. it would be interesting to see sh4 in VR. sight is not as good as it was. it would be helpful if gage could be larger, especially the watch.....
always thought this is the best forum on the net.
