Chaulk one up to Muprhy

[Ducimus]

Mr Murphy,.. You know the guy the who wrote that damniable law? I think he just took command of my latest career game.


Got bored with being in 40/41 so i started a new career in march 42, U-517, IXC, 2nd flot, with a patrol grid of DC12. I planned from the start that this would be a long cruise, so from the get go, as soon as i cleared the shelf in biscay bay i started running submerged to save fuel and avoid aircraft, surfacing only long enough to charge batteries. I kept this routine tell i exited biscay bay 5 days or so later.

After about 20 days in game, i started coming up to the US east coast. Hadn't quite reached burmuda yet but was getting close to it. I resumed my routiine of maximum submerged running to save fuel while enroute, surfacing at about 2100 local time and submerging at 0500. I did this for about three days.

After taking a week to clear biscay bay, another 20 crossing the atlantic and another 3 creeping up to the US east coast (but not having reached it yet) disaster struck. At 2100 hours i went to periscope depth, scanned the skies. Partially cloudy, partial moon, calm ocean. Surfaced. Not even three mins later my WO is panicked and calls " Aircraft spotted medium range!" . Medium range my ass, that plane was about 1400 to 2000 meters off our starboard bow. Too late to dive, to late to man the guns, i ordered flank speed and hard port rudder. U-517 lurched ahead with aggonizing sluggishness in a bid to be a hard to hit moving target.

One second later. KABOOOM. I hear an explosion and secondary explosion, vision on the deck is blurred and i see a man go down, and a HUGE water gieser on the starboard side.. Getting a quick damage report one of the batteries is desroyed, several wounded men, moderate flooding in the bow torpedo room and crew quarters, port rudder destroyed, the fuel bunkers are ripped open, but only minor hull integrity loss. At this point i had to make a decision, stay on the surface or risk diving. Not want to give up, Gambling that the flooding was controllable and considering the hull was nearly fully intact, i decided to risk a crash dive and to 70 50 meters and get the flooding stopped rather the bomp there like a cork for the planes.

Only the flooding didnt stop, and neither did the boat. U-517 nosed down at a steep angle, and decended into the depths all too quickly. The flooding in the bow compartment had increased and was out of control. Looking more closely at the damage, the bow planes were destoryed, the boat was completly out of control. On top of this both fore and aft batteries were destroyed.

I couldn't stop her decent.

[Payoff]

Heart pounding tale there Ducimus.
Ive always used the smaller boats, so no real long voyages yet. Does that battery travel pay dividends in the long run?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Payoff

Does that battery travel pay dividends in the long run?

In the long run yes it does. You have to run on the presumption of running your diesals as little as possible. That means surfacing/snorekeling at 0 hour, and diving at around 0500. Gives you around 4 to 5 hours to charge your batteries.

An example would be having to patrol grid GR89 near capetown in 1944. I was barely out of Lorient when I plotted the entire course round trip and arrived at the conclusion that i would be a bit short of fuel coming back. Simply put, not enough fuel, and no resupply. This also meant i had no fuel for any end around attacks, or any sort of pursuit. At that point i ran mostly submerged the entire trip. Turned out to be around a 130 day patrol, and i had enough fuel to return to lorient. The longer you stay submerged the more gains you'll make in fuel, but it takes awhle.

[Respenus]

It's never too late too man the flak guns

[Ducimus]

You don't know my game settings, trust me, it was too late .

[Respenus]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

You don't know my game settings, trust me, it was too late .

Wanna explain? Does your "Long range Mod" make it so hard?

Well there is always time for "AAALLLLLLLLAAAAARRRRRMMMMMMM!!!!!"

[Dantenoc]

No disrespect to you or anybody else who uses this technique to conserve fuel, it's a well known trick used by almost all the "old salts" of this game, but I find it terrible annoying that SHIII completely ignores the laws of thermodynamics on this one... it is one of the game's weakest points and shows that Ubisoft didn't really do as much research for the game as they should have.

As for your story: I feel for you. Going all that way just to be blindsided by a bird... that's gotta be hard to take

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Respenus

Wanna explain? Does your "Long range Mod" make it so hard?

Well there is always time for "AAALLLLLLLLAAAAARRRRRMMMMMMM!!!!!"

The thing is, in my game, the uboat is pretty fragile. Most of the hitpoints/armor for the sub compartments have been lowered. The result is in a normal depth charge attack, ill get lots of flooding and machinery damage from near hits. The AI's sensors arent as blind, which means their more likely to aquire a contact, so Depth charges s in that regard were reduced to a 12 meter max radius. The overall result is i get a much more compelling depth charge experience. 8 or 9 times out of 10, i wont surivve the U505 mission. Now the heckler in all of this is air dropped bombs. They have a radius of 40 meters. Which means normaly when i crash dive from aircraft, if i dont get below 40 meters, ill get some flooding in the boat because of the shockwave of the bomb. The closer you are to the explosion point, the more damage it does.

Those bombs goign of RIGHT NEXT to my boat at probably 4 or 5 meters away was just devastating.

[The_Blockade_Runner]

At least it was his first patrol,
I play DID and just lost a very experienced and highly decorated crew just due to a lucky depth chagre during a convoy attack. It flooded the stern quarters too badly to be reparied and I plummeted to crush depth. This crew also sank the Illustrious in Scapa Flow and I was very disappointed to lose that crew. But if I had reloaded a saved game I would have felt too guilty and the rest of the career would have had a taint on it

[Hartmann]

some times murphy is in the destroyers .

i was in the american coast after sink two merchants when america enters in the war (8-11-1941). but a depth charge attack in shallow waters destroy mi bow tubes with 20 torpedos left in my IX-B boat . the two torpedos expended are from the stern tubes.

i´m returning to base. the moral and fuel is too low.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Dantenoc

No disrespect to you or anybody else who uses this technique to conserve fuel, it's a well known trick used by almost all the "old salts" of this game, but I find it terrible annoying that SHIII completely ignores the laws of thermodynamics on this one... it is one of the game's weakest points and shows that Ubisoft didn't really do as much research for the game as they should have.

As for your story: I feel for you. Going all that way just to be blindsided by a bird... that's gotta be hard to take

Thank you for saying "almost". I too find this method to be distasteful, to say the least.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Thank you for saying "almost". I too find this method to be distasteful, to say the least.

I dont understand why its such a crime to run submerged to save fuel.

Phsyics wise theres ALOT that could be done and isn't. Ultimatly my take is that its a game. This isnt real life. I also know that some people will not be happy with this or any sub sim unless they could somehow smell the diesal room pale eminating from their monitor and feel condensation dripping down on their foreheads.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I dont understand why its such a crime to run submerged to save fuel.

Phsyics wise theres ALOT that could be done and isn't. Ultimatly my take is that its a game. This isnt real life. I also know that some people will not be happy with this or any sub sim unless they could somehow smell the diesal room pale eminating from their monitor and feel condensation dripping down on their foreheads.

It's not a crime at all. It's just one of those niggly little things that takes away from the immersion for some of us. Right up there with shooting down 25 Sunderlands before they finally get you.

The game lets you get away with a lot of cr...stuff that I find just plain wrong. If you don't, that's cool, but I still get to complain about it.

[Ducimus]

I think were lines cross is when it feels like its somehow insinuated that a player is being chastized because he did something you dont agree with.

Theres alot wrong with this game, or any other. I dont think any sim game will ever get it perfect. Theres alot you can do that you couldnt get away with in real life. Personnaly i do lots of things that i know i couldnt do, simply beacuse the game allows me to. For example, bringing a boat OUT of the med, the current simply wont allow it in RL.

Point being Im not going to limit how i play a game as its presetnted to me, even though i know certain aspects are not correct. I may choose to change aspects of the game to be more "realistic", but theres only so much you can do.

I say again, in the end, its a game. yeah sure its a sim, but where do you find sim's on the store shevles? thats right, in the computer game section. It's why one shouln't take every iota of detail about SH3 seriously.

[Dantenoc]

Errrr... a video is worth a thousand words *wink wink*