[Jean Led]

Awesome, refreshing and challenging were my first impression of the game.
I started my campaign in 1942 in Bergen aboard u-606 tracking Arctic convoy supplying the soviet union.

I was impressed by the graphics and the crew management. The map was intuitive and the missions simple yet bringing a lot of novelty to the genre.



Communication with bdu was nice to have, reporting when you reach a patrol objective or when you spot convoys, or sink a ship. However I did not encounter drawback from using the radio, such as airplane dashing to my location.



Now I barely encountered anything in the arctic, but bdu informed me of a convoy leaving east england, going north. With a ship containing crucial cargo that had to be sunk. I plotted an intercept, finding the gps tracking of the convoy almost exact location ( 17km circle) a turn off. I made my interception North of Scotland. Not realizing immediately that depth was as low as 60 meters.
I managed to slip by the two frontal escort at a depth of 40 meters going ahead 1/3 ( 3kts in this game, note on this later) and found myself in the middle of the convoy. Once there I started a carnage, aimed at the best angled furthest ship with one torpedo, and put two in the closest one, which was my target from bdu. Keeping one tube in front for a large tanker, and firing my stern tube at an escort. All torpedoes impacted with the target ship sinking immediately and the furthest one fighting a fire. Tanker was now in range and escorts hot on my tail. I now had two tubes ready in the bow and fired at the tanker, immediately crashing diving to 80 meters.

Here is where I encountered my error in planning, I scrapped the bottom at 60 meters, and escorts still behind me. I went flank speed in a sharp turn to the north, were there was more depth. The first depth charges missed me. I went completely silent beside for ahead 1/3 to try to get away towards deeper water.

I thought the escorts lost me, I heard a pattern being dropped and wasnt worried about it, no way they knew my exact course and location after all these explosions and me going silent, not being pinged...

Welp.. That pattern went straight on me, and I noticed it too late, I was at 65 meters and I had a bit more depth to play with now, I went flank speed ahead and ordered deeper.. too late, the rear of my ship got hit by several depth charges, massive hole in the stern torpedo room, filled up almost immediately, sailors in there unconscious from the impact and drowned instantly. I had big leaks in the engine compartment and the galley, escape hatch letting in a lot of water. My injured crews there were able to get evacuated, but causing flooding to other part of the ship while opening hatches. If I had been slower to react entire ship would have been hit though, I got some crucial depth and depth charges exploded too high.

But my ship quickly sank and layed on the bottom at 82 meters. I was now thankful for the low depth of the water.
But my situation was not good:
-7 crew injured
-some crew dead in the stern torpedo room, flooded too fast to see how many.
-Stern torpedo room completely flooded
-Engine room and galley almost completely flooded, with big leaks filling it up

-Crew bunks flooded halfway but no way to open the hatch from engine room due to pressure.
-ballast valve destroyed
-depth keeping valve destroyed
-pump damaged
-one leak in the control room.
-2 escorts above me

And on my way to intercept the convoy I intercepted transmission of a damaged uboat requiring parts. I helped him out, and now was short on parts..
I had 3 parts and had to think fast. I sent an engineer to repair the leak in the engine room, and another to fix the pump.
While I was micromanaging the repairs and trying to get access to the rear bunks, my 7 injured crew member died of their wounds. Oh well we are going to need all the air we can get.
Leak was controlled when water was thigh high in the control room. Pump was now repaired and running. I had one last part.. it had to go to repair the ballast valve in hope to restore buoyancy..
The escorts above were still circling above but lost our trace.

Pump got rid of the water in the control room after some time. There was minor flooding in the forward compartments but I had to pump it out trying to surface to give me the best chance.. And with the escorts lurking we couldn't blow ballast now anyways.

The pump was too slow for forward compartments so I ordered two officers with two men each to grab buckets and get the water from the forward compartments into the control room to speed up the process.

This helped, and while this was going on, somehow I could now open the hatch to the stern bunks. Maybe some water managed to get through the hatch and the pressure 'equalized' enough. I opened it and the water spread to the control room. Great, now we could pump all that water out and we might end up surviving this..
While all this water was pumped out of u-606 the escorts left, probably thought they sank us good and went to rejoin the convoy.

Compressed air 82 percent.. From firing torpedoes and decreased slightly overtime. We have to blow now before it decreases further.
I got the buoyancy from -90 percent to -70 percent by removing water already

I wish I could get the engine running to give us some thrust upwards.. but no access to them.

If I make it up the plan is to get rid of the water in the stern compartments by residual flooding overtime and pump it out now that we are above water and not taking anymore water there. Radio bdu for spare parts and hopefully a uboat nearby supplies us with some parts to repairs our engines and leaks.

The order is given, full blow, buoyancy slowly increases ,-60, -50,-40, but almost out of compressed air... -30 aaaand thats it, no more air. Not even the nose of the sub raised up. We are doomed to die out of carbon dioxide poisoning. U-606 at a depth of 80 meters, north of Scotland, sank with all hands..


THIS was my best sub game experience, having played the silent hunter series for 7 years. I felt like I was in the movie das boat, getting my crew together while sitting at the bottom of the sea,repairing damage while light goes out in the back and floods completely, close hatches an doom crew at the back, manage your air, compressed air, repair parts..


BUT now having played some more, I find that its replayability is low.

The different kind of missions are original, but become dull fast and not enough variety.

I now barely ever take damage and its now mid 1943, why? Because if you go ahead flank somehow the escorts struggle to catch up while you do 10 knots underwater. Once you are where you want, aka under ships in the convoy, let them drop on you by slowing down. Then ahead flank again, drop decoy when the depth charges explode and build as much distance and depth from it. Now go completly silent and escort wont find you. Even with an occasional ping.. Worked on a dozen convoy or so.

Also not sure if there radar works, or if they have any, I managed to close on the surface easily.

And an annoying this is you cant go 1 or 2 knots underwater like in sh, 3 knots seem to get you detected quite often although 55 rpm. If you are ahead of an escort trying to get in a convoy it will detect you everytime. Even at 90 meters completely silent.
Complete view of ships underwater if you have hydro, need feature to disable that on the map.

If attacking a convoy more than once, escorts will not retake position, either tracking behind the convoy or detached from it..



This game as so much potential but very few mods out there. I wonder if this will change, it doesnt seem to get as much love from the subsim community, or maybe they are waiting for full release not to interfer with updates. I think this might be the best subsim with proper mods. ( no clue of this game is as moddable though)