Kapt. Casey Smith and the U-19

So I just got SH3 Commander installed a while ago and figured some basics so I figured Id make this thread and give reports as I go along in my patrols and see if any of you all experienced skippers out there could lend me some knowledge as to what ive done wrong and what not.

First Patrol- Sep 9, 1940, Starting out of (not sure where XD but its close to Hamburg) My orders are to arrive at AM41 and patrol

Clear sailing on the surface all the way until I get to the bottom of England, ship spotted! I take the oppurtunity to get a small tonnage as it is a merchant ship. Long story short, it was my first actual ship and took me 4 torps to hit it right (yes even with auto targeting)but I got her!

So I continue onto Am41, enroute I meet a C 3 Cargo and a Small Merchant, but they are moving fast in a direction away from AM41 and I wanted to spend my fuel patrolling so I continued onward.

About halfway through the grid below AM41 (not sure what the name was) I hit a huge storm, and am currently sitting right in the middle of my patrol grid in this storm, I wonder if its going to let up and maybe Ill get a nice juicy target or two to hit before I leave home? If not my seconday plan is to go to a hostile port nearest and see if I cant score a few hits.

So far so good, Ill update later.

[Jimbuna]

If your in a heavy storm it would be adviseable to submerge occasionally and listen for surface vessel screws with the hydrophones.

Occasionally as in how long of intervals??

UPDATE:

So I saw nothing on my patrol. AM41 was EMPTY lol but started heading back to Laintere or however you spell it and on the way back I get spotted by a corvette. I dove deep and and running silent on 1 knot he missed the first round of depth charges but is making another pass. How do you launch decoys again ??I seem to remember reading about it somewhere

[K-61]

At the engineer's station there is a popup graphic with emergency orders. If decoys are available you can click on that icon to release one. However, they are not available from the start of the war. Unavailable items are grayed out. Various upgrades to the boat are made available over the course of the war. I suggest you start playing in the earlier part of the war, 39 to 41, and learn your hunting and evasion skills under less pressure. Decoys are nice, but even better are solid evasion skills. Decoys will not save you if you don't know how to evade escorts. Decoys also require a certain level of skill to use properly and using them incorrectly can draw more heat onto you. Hang out in this forum, do lots of reading and in time you will definitely learn what you need to know. It seems to be an overwhelming learning curve to some players, but it will come. If you haven't already, I suggest watching Das Boot as that film is very accurate in its depiction of U-boat warfare. At all costs to avoid eye damage and mental defects, avoid watching that horrid piece of trash known as U-571, unless you're a chick with a crush on Matthew McConnaghie or however you spell his name.

ahh alright. thank you

UPDATE: what I did worked. He came pretty close with his first pass (not close enough to graze me) but I kept at my depth 145 meters and one knot and got some distance and he kept DCing the same spot so i figured I was far enough out and kicked it up to 8 knots he still hasnt turned to come hit me so I think ill be good once I get out of his range. It isnt storming but the seas are real choppy and there is fog. lots of it

on a side note. i know GWX does damage improvements but what else does it do? environmentals. what about ship ai improvements?

[K-61]

GWX improves the damage model over the stock game so that you must sink a ship by flooding it, and that is accomplished through making holes in the hull. The orginal damage model of the game is FUBAR, using an arcadish damage model of hit points. You could sink a ship by repeatedly pounding the upper structure of the ship with your deck gun and when the magic number was reached she is destroyed. You could even hit the same exact spot repeatedly and get the same result. Very similar with torpedo damage: hit the same spot predictably and you get the snap in half thing over and over again ad nauseum. GWX requires you to sink ships by giving them negative buoyancy. Every ship can hold a certain amount of water without sinking, but flood a certain number of compartments and down she goes. Think of the Titanic and the illustration of an ice cube tray. GWX also adds a tremendous amount of uncertainty to ship sinkings. A ship can take many hours or even days to sink, or may take on a lethal seeming list but still sail on. You can never predictably calculate the number of torpedoes to sink any given ship. Last night I put two torpedoes into a 2000 ton ship and she sailed on; I assume she reached her destination as I was not going to waste any more torpedoes on it. In an earlier patrol, I had torpedoed a freighter for several hours and fired one more. As I watched the torpedo approach, the watch officer informed me she was sinking. Aaarrgghh! It happens and the uncertaintly will add what I call pucker factor to your game.

GWX also adds more ships and planes, environmental [eye candy] and sound [ear candy] effects, weapons and increases the deadliness of enemy ships and planes. [The modding community has also added a slew of mods to make GWX even better, as if that were even possible!] At the same time, the AI is not 100% deadly all the time. Depth charges do not have as large a damage radius as they did in the stock game, but at the same time the escorts have been tweaked to overcome some of the silliness of stock game. There are certain parameters that cannot be changed because of the hard coding of the game and Ubi has not released the game's source code, so that modders can only work on those aspects that are not locked, but still, they have vastly reworked the game. Some original bugs remain; you can work around these and they are not deal breakers.

Don't be intimidated by the 600+ page manual. Much of that is detailed specifications for just about everything. You can skim through it but read the pertinent parts in detail as there is much wisdom in there. And post questions; this is a great community and will help you. There really isn't a stupid question and we have all likely asked them at some point.

Wilkommen, Herr Kaleun!

Ive seen U 571. however I didnt enjoy it nearly as much as Das Boot which still stands to be one of my all time favorite war movies .

but I have been doing much reading even before I got the game. Im really excited to learn manual targeting and all. as of right now Im cheating using the Free cam but thats fine with me since i still have a learning curve to go through. Ive found some pretty good guides on here and bookmarked them and all that jaz and am in the proccess of getting GWX 3.0 right now. Any other good mods you could reccomend?? id also like to know how to get an emblem on the conning tower because I really want my U-boat to somehow stand out and feel special(er) to me :P

but all kidding aside. new update

UPDATE: I did sneak away from the corvette, I just stayed deep and ran silent until my batteries almost ran out then he was way to far out of visual range so I surfaced and headed home. Just now am pulling into port now so eh my first patrol Im not hyped up about it but I did at least get one ship so its a start. Can anyone direct me to maybe a map that shows some real nice shipping lanes and stuff I can hunt? Id like to find a nice 'poaching ground' for myself to rack up some tonnage

Ill post again when I start a new patrol which will probably be in a few minutes. This is an addicting game.. err i mean simulation

[K-61]

There are a number of sub emblems included in the stock and GWX versions. As well, there are some mods and even a tutorial somewhere to show you how to make your own. Yes, this is an addictive simulation. When I got my most recent system I stayed up for 28 straight hours playing it. My poor wife! She's a very tolerant gal and knows that I love this game so she just lets me be and eventually I get down to more reasonable playing time.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

Occasionally as in how long of intervals??

Assuming your batteries are fully charged.....submerge and go to slaow ahead, listening until you battery level drops to 25% then surface, recharge and repeat for the duration of the storm.

Alright thanks for the help both of you

Unfortunately, as I had the game minimized and had my course plotted I ran into land and killed my whole crew :O

So Im starting a new career in 42 in the 10 flotilla just to try things out at a lter date and see what happens. lol Ill let you guys know how my first patrol goes

So after my last campaign got screwed by my plotting or what not (my U boat ran ashore and killed everyone :O)

I started a new one beginning in September of 1942, with a type IXC U boat out of Lorient. My first orders are to patrol CF97, on my way there I met a lone C2 Merchant and figured it would be a good time to practice my intercept/ positioning. I fired two torpedoes and hit her then surfaced and had a deck gun battle. Bad Idea, 2 crew members were killed but I ended up sending the ship to the bottom 1000meters below the surface Now on to my patrol grid

Nothin yet in my patrol grid except crappy crappy weather, Im plan on patrolling here under water of course using hydrophones and then maybe heading to Gibraltor since its so close and seeing if I cant pick up some shipping there.

Suggestions on where any good spots nearby would be??

[CherryHarbey]

yes, there is a lot of traffic that has to go through the bottleneck of the straights. Not sure what the air coverage is like at that time of the war though.

and you're not alone with running into land.

I once lost a boat in Kiel harbour due to plotting stupidity, by the time I came back from making a cup of tea, everyone was dead.
Shortest career ever.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by CherryHarbey

Shortest career ever.

No, there have been shorter.

Well 3 of the shortest carreers ever. I must be making a record

I had to start the campaign over from scratch again. so I got the same orders to patrol down by africa so I began heading that way. my luck finally is in for me because a huge fat convoy comes sailing in almost a perfect 90 to my heading. and Im at least 2 km ahead of them. so I sit and wait at a 90. when one C2 cargo came into view, 3 torps right in his side. another C2 came into view, another 3 torps . I was doing great, they hadnt found me because I was using electric, but then I decided to get greedy, there was a fat tanker sitting right in the middle, a bit far out of my reach, or so I thought, so I went full speed ahead for him, thats when the escorts found me, and they pulled a pincer move. one coming from north one from south and a bit behind. I tried my best to avoid but in the end. I caught DC's to my kaulens face Oh well fun while it lasted Again I say!

[K-61]

You should really get SH3 Commander. It is compatible with any mod and what I think you would love about it is that you can use it to assign yourself any patrol zone you desire.