[propbeanie]

Comments in "Orange":

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

Thanks for clarifying that; I'll default to 75 meters' depth.

Perhaps I should check some assumptions:

- if I can ID a plane, it has probably detected me at that point as well
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
- if I can't, it hasn't.
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
- if I happen to surface after one whose type is clear has passed over but who does not change direction, I haven't been spotted.
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
Airplanes are captives to their "Loadout". If they have bombs, they will attack if they see you. This would include having "fake" bombs, such that they turn and then attempt to strafe your boat. In either case, they do report your position etc. If they have no weapons to attack with, but do observe you, they do not turn, but they do still "fone home" and tell their buddies about your location and direction of travel. "Let's see... 10 knots, headed north, they'll be off of Rabaul in 16 hours..." Anything that gets within roughly 6.5nm will see you almost without fail, and of course, the faster you go, or if you happen to change direction and create a bigger rooster tail, they can see you much farther. Don't forget about the times where your deck crew doesn't "see" something until after you get the "We're under attack, sir! - We're taking damage, sir! - Medic!" Another little note on that is that a submarine sighting seems to be as important as a BB, so you will eventually have at least 7 airplanes "knocking on your door", if you are within range of an airbase. This does include carriers of any sort, including the float plane tenders.
Edit to add: restarting from a save point near a certain fleet anchorage, the torpedo magnet mentioned earlier, I ran three more patrols. On the one down the Makassar Strait, I eventually encountered a single convoy in the large shallows below Balikpapan. The other two, shadowing the merchant route 16 from Makassar to Palau, yielded no convoy traffic (one errant DD however), though I did find and sink the third Yamato class BB, all on this one patrol. Despite almost 200k tons sunk, there was no commendation.

Is there any chance this convoy drought will continue on the next patrol?

There should be no Yamato anywhere near Makassar or Balikpapan, if that's where you were for that. Brunei and Tawi Tawi... As a note on that, the Yamato and Musashi are not "Random" in the game. Those are "scripted" events, reflecting some semblance of historical journeys, as was requested by quite a few players. The game however, will not take them off of the Roster until the date of their actual demise, which would be the Battle for Leyte Gulf (Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, 24 October, 1944) for the Musashi and for the Yamato with Operation 10-Go 7 April, 1945. Even at that, the game would probably over-run any attempts at controlling an RGG with them by date... so the possibility exists that they would show up on September 1, 1945 if allowed to... If you find all of the instances of their travels, you could sink they a hundred times, and the game would keep re-producing them. It is the nature of the game, and is not easily controllable in SH4. As for "awards", the game is set to lower awards for sinkings. While important, doing the assignment is more so.