[Gildor]

You, as the Captain, have full command of your boat during the patrol. You can do whatever you want, go whatever route you want to complete your orders.

Your sub has a limited amount of fuel, therefore, use your discretion while on patrol to figure out what your can accomplish. Just make sure you have enough fuel to get back to port, or to get to a friendly port to refit.

The patrol doesnt end until you get back to your home port and chose "end patrol".

The TC is "chugging" at 8000x becasue even though time is sped up, the game still has to calculate all the position data for ships, etc. I red somehwere in these forums that using 1024 TC is faster than anything higher so I would recomend that you only use 1024 MAX.

As to mission types, you as the Captain, can determine if you have the resources to complete the mission safely for your boat and crew. The renown you do not get for not completing a mission is not that great. However, you can get better renown sinking ships. It is better to abandon a mission to chase a convoy than it is to sit around and wait for 48 hours in a sector to get 200 renown.

Patrol: Reach within aprox 55nm of icon and patrol for 48 hrs.
Search: Reach within aprox 55nm of icon then search for shipping and sink a certain amount of tonnage.
Supplies: Reach a certain distance of icon and stop engines. Drop of supplies.
Agent: Reach a certain distance of icon and stop engines. Drop off agent.
Photo: Reach a certain distance of target and take a certain number of photos.
Guard: Reach a certain distance of icon and rescue a specified number of survivors.

Send a status report at least every day. A status report is what determines the completion of missions and allows for additonal missions to be received.

My first patrol had 2 patrol area missions, a drop off supply mission, and a phot harbour mission before I returned back to base due to low fuel.

You are the Captain. The patrol is what you make it.

Not much I can add other than the fact that patrols were boring. When a contact did turn up the adrenalin would build. That is the facination with a submarine sim. This is the reason people play it with full realisim. Nothing is more rewarding than chasing a radar contact to find out what it is, lining up to shoot and sinking it. On the other side. spending all that time to find out it is a allied fishing boat is disapointing.