Convoy hunting = frustrating!

[Raven Morpheus]

Hey there

I've been playing SH4 the last few days, I've got the Game Fixes Only mod installed (and that's the only mod I've got installed) and I'm finding convoy hunting frustrating.

It's my first mission and I've been assigned the Honshu area mission.

So far I've managed to find 2 convoys.

However neither of them seemed to travel in a straight line!

I've tried getting closer to a ship, so the line turns into a red marker on the nav map, and then following it with a little time compression on and it seems they move away from me all the time, curving their routes around all over the place.

When I save and re-load a game however and go to the nav map I can briefly see before the red markers disappear that all the ships in a convoy appear to be as you expect - in a line moving in one direction. So I try to mark their predicted course (you'd expect them to move in a straight line forwards) by marking a corridor with 2 lines either side of the convoy going in the rough direction they're pointing, but they never follow that path! They always seem to turn away from that route and then seem to start moving all over the place!

The convoys I've found also seem to have very large gaps between each ship (far larger than convoys on SH5, something like 2000 yards or more) and they're escorted by destroyers, which so far have managed to find me every single time even though it looks like there is fog and I'm at periscope depth, not moving and on silent running!

I'd just love to find a convoy that follows a straight path with no deviations so I can intercept it!

Any tips on following convoys like the one's I've mentioned above that I've encountered?

TIA