Albrecht Von Hesse

I don't see how you manage to do that. I cannot depress my gun elevation below 500 meters, and if I'm 700 meters or closer I never hit the waterline. I've always needed to be at least 700 - 800 meters out before my fire hits waterline.

My method of 'deck-gun-ology' is using it to engage either crippled merchant ships (4 knots or less) or small merchant ships (tugs, trawlers, fishing boats, etc). Forget warships of any class or type (although once I did engage an armed trawler on the surface, having surprised it and closed to 900 meters). I realize that the game does (potentially) enable successfully engaging warships with a deck gun (quite a few posts have bragged about just that) but that just doesn't seem realistic to me and so I don't do it.

I manuever to position myself between 30 - 150 AoB (optimally 60 - 120) and around 1,200 meters out, with my boat parallel to them at dead stop. I avoid bow-on as much as possible, as it seems to make a less stable gun platform that way. Distance is adjusted based upon circumstances, primarily weather (and thus wave height and intensity) and armed condition of the merchant. The more intense the waves, the closer I'll manuever; in calm water I might even begin engaging at 2,500 meters. If the merchant is armed, I'll manuever to block the majority of their weapons from engaging me, then fire to knock out the engaging platform.

I do the firing manually. I do not, and will not, have my crew fire. Forgive my language, but my deck gun crews have always been drunk, blind retards that couldn't hit a duck stuck down the barrel (inbred cousins of Bernard perhaps?)

With any wave action at all patience is required. I use high magnification, which means I can just barely see the tip of the barrel, and I pick a target point on the waterline, then wait and watch the rolling waves, timing them and waiting until the barrel settles down from any lift and/or rolling before firing. I have about a 70% - 80% on-target success that way.

(Tip: the sign of a good waterline shot is a subdued but noticable explosive flash followed by a plume of water rising up)

I start aiming at the bow (or stern) and 'walk' my way down the ship, avoiding targeting areas I've already torpedoed, then return the other way, continuing until I've Swiss-cheesed it enough to head to Davy Jones locker.