The thought of having that boat early-war, is tempting.
But I never tried...and why should I? I'm in my 3rd XXI-patrol in July'44, and I get immeadiat action once I leave the relatively safe Norwegian Fjords.
Sure, I have an awesome weapon under my command....but the battlefield is equally dangerous.
Take this one...just after I left the Bergen-fjord, I get 2 contact-reports: one friendly convoy, and one enemy taskforce. And they are heading towards each other, just off the coast.
I put our XXI in front of our convoy heading S, and play the forward-observer role for a while.
Our convoy is small, and escorted by 2 Flottenbegleiters...and then my watch calls 5 Brittisch DD's steaming up.
This is the moment we brake radio-silence, and send a contact-report - intended for BdU to send air-support, but also for the convoy behind me (something I just assume, roleplaying-wise).
What then happened, was just awesome: the warships started firing from long-range...and we submerged, and setup an attack-position E of the enemy.
We are one of the 1st XXI's coming into action, and on sea-trials...but still with a mix of trusted and advanced torpedoes at our disposal.
And before I know it, I'm in some very tence action...warships pounding the enemy, planes coming in from both sides, and we are in the middle - firing an acoustic everytime a DD comes our way.
In the end, our 2 brave Flottenbegleiter were sunk....but a certain XXI made sure no-one could tell.
Not without damage, though...we got
some hull-damage, and a couple of wounded...but our convoy was alive and sailing!
So we send a patrol-report (which I pretend to be a RtB, and a request for escort for the convoy), and head back for Bergen, for the wounded crew and repairs.
Nope, it wasn't over yet...on our way to RtB, we got attacked by several aircrafts...but thx to our experienced flak-team, we busted a couple. Jawohl, Wir sind sehr zufrieden über die Kanone!!
Just pick the XXI when it gets available, imo.
You need a tough enemy, if you want to get the most out of this Uboat.
And if you're afraid your career won't be long anyway (war ends in May'45), then use SH3-Commander, to set the days-spend-in-base at 1.
This way, you can still have plenty of patrols if you are lucky.
And there's one great upgrade to look forward to: a schnorkel-mounted RWR!...comes in store in Jan'45 I think.
This time of the war is hard, but pure gamebalance-wise, it's great to fight the enemy with equally advanced weapons as they have, just for once lol.
Btw, this running patrol will have total radio-silence, and a stealth-test...not like the brutal force-display from earlier on...there was so much noise everywhere, that we didn't bother for any silent-running:
