Type VIIB or Type VIIC?

[Zajcev]

Is Type VIIC worth getting? I'm playing my first campaign in stock SH3 1.4. Right now it's July 1941. According to spec, VIIC doesn't have any advantage over VIIB. VIIB is faster and lighter. They have the same torpedo load.

If I get IXC, will it have more torpedoes at least?

I have noticed a serious bug with dud torpedoes when they are enabled. It's not actually dud torpedoes but indestructible ships. I saw a C3 300m away, fired 2 torpedoes using magnetic detonators running at different depth (about 1m under keel) but neither did explode. I reloaded and tried about 3 times with different depths and aimed for different parts of the ship, but those 2 torpedoes never exploded. Then I tried a couple of times contact detonation - setting torpedoes at zero depth, or ~3m, but they didn't explode either even after a couple of reloads. Then I reloaded, waited for the indestructible C3 to sail away and targeted a T3 behind it ~800m away with magnetic detonator and 1 torpedo sank it. Then I used the 2nd torpedo to sink another C2 which was behind the C3. Torpedo worked again, and damaged the ship. It seems only that particular C3 was buggy, since I sank other C3s a couple of times.

I would say dud torpedo setting in stock SH3 is unplayable. I would expect that either detonation is random (so after reload torpedo could detonate) or that a torpedo is marked as "bad" and will never explode even after reload even if you target a different ship. But that's not the case. It seems on some ships torpedoes never explode, no matter what settings you use. So if your first torpedo doesn't explode, don't waste another one.

The worst situation is during a storm, when magnetic detonators don't seem to work (regardless of depth), deck gun cannot be used and contact detonators never work.

For some reason, in 1941 contact detonators only work in perhaps 10% of the cases regardless of angle, speed, type of torpedo, weather when dud torpedoes are enabled. I noticed this problem with both pre war torpedo and the electric torpedo. But I prefer to use steam torpedo due to its speed as I tend to attack destroyers or merchants from under ~400m. On the other hand, magnetic detonators seem to be 90% reliable if depth is set correctly. The rest is those indestructible ships.