Rough Seas at night

[robj250]

I've never had this happen before in all my missions.
The seas are rough, no skyline as it is pitch black out, and I mean black out.
It is October 3 '43 at 3 AM and I'm in the middle of a convoy and can't see a darn thing with my periscope up. On the TDC screen I can see all the lines and at a magnification of 250M I could see a ship, so I went back to my periscope, it was a small merchant 157 m from me. I made a slow turn 360° with the periscope and saw no other ships, BUT I was right in the middle of the convoy and I can hear the ships; BUT could not see them in the periscope. There was no moon and if there was it wouldn't show because of the dark clouds. It was pissing down rain, yep, a really bad weather condition, the worse I've ever seen.
Anyone ever have this happen before?

Rob

[Uncle Goose]

Yep, had the same things happening. Real bitch if you stumble on a convoy because you can fire torpedo's but can't see any results. Best thing is to follow them and hope for better weather.

[Sailor Steve]

That's why we have night surfaced attacks. In weather that bad a real periscope would show nothing at all. Just black.

[Brag]

Fog, rain at night, it is almost impossible to do an attack. And the blasted bad weather lasts for ages. I once followed a convoy for 5 days until weather cleared

[Jimbuna]

There's also a good chance there was some fog about Rob :hmm:

[robj250]

Thanks for your replies everyone. It is daylight now, but still the same type of weather and I have a convoy close to me, so I'm gonna take a crack at it.

Rob

[Capt. Shark Bait]

what you could do in situations like that is run with the deck awash enuff to use the bridge targeting

[robj250]

Originally Posted by Capt. Shark Bait

what you could do in situations like that is run with the deck awash enuff to use the bridge targeting

Are you referring to the attempted night attack or the upcoming daylight attack.

In the night convoy there were 20 merchants and 6 warships, so I'm guessing this one should be about the same and my attack angle will be about 90° to the convoy's course meaning my bow pointed directly at them. I should come across the centre of them about 10:30 AM.

If there is a troop transport, should I take it out, or concentrate on tankers and of course the warships that are going to come after me. I want to get as many as I can before I have to dive to max depth in my IXB. BTW, what is my max depth in an IXB as depth charges can go as deep as 300 m.

Rob

[Pisces]

Does your watch officer or crew spot them? If so, I'd tweak my gamma/brightness/contrast settings of videocard or monitor to match it. To me it seems I won't be cheating if they can see them too. You can argue about the crew's appearant super-dupper-nightvision all night long, but you need to set a standard somewhere. I did when I had a screenshot of Raduz' hydrophone tutorial mission with night-time and heavy fog when the crew couldn't see the target (300/400 meters or so). So I turned down contrast (to dimm the still bright 'rig for red'-interface) and upped brigthness then down until the target's silhouet (sp??) was not visible anymore. Gamma helps too but distorts color too much for me, and wasn't really needed anyway.

Also, turning all the (bright) lightsources in the room off really helps. I went as far as covering a hallway window, and the 'on' LEDs of my computer, monitor, keyboard and speakers. As the average human eye is most sensitive to green it really spoiled my ability to see in the dark. If you give your eyes a bit of time to adjust it's even better. But that may not be a practical solution. Avoid the map screen, crew roster, and captain log as much as possible. It hurt my eyes.

[Capt. Shark Bait]

Originally Posted by robj250

Are you referring to the attempted night attack or the upcoming daylight attack.
Rob

you might get away with it in daylight, but i'ld say you're better off at night

[Reece]

It's just as bad when it's raining & fog is in, by the time you see the ship it is either too close ... too late ... too fast! when fog is reall bad I go to periscope depth and use the hydraphones for an educated guess, fire and hit the ship probably 90% of the time, the only problem is that you can't see it to get an identification, I just gamble that it is an enemy ship!