Survival to war's end, and the Mods needed.

[Stiebler]

I've completed three full campaigns of SH3 now at fairly high accuracy with no "god's-eye view" (87%), but my main aim (like that of the original U-boat skippers) has been to survive the war rather than to sink shipping. This has turned up some interesting problems with SH3, of which some have already been reported (and forgotten), while some have not.

Using Silent Hunter European DVD version, with patch 1.4 installed. No other patches applied, except where listed under "fixes" below.

When you plan to survive the whole war, you need to follow orders (like going to the allocated grid patrol zone, or you'll be shot on return to base); you need to avoid undue risks; but mainly you need your equipment to be working properly.

There follows below a list of *unexpected* "survival-problems" that I encountered. The fixes are listed underneath the list of problems, for easier readability.

SURVIVAL PROBLEMS:
I soon found that your watch-crew never tells you when you're sailing on the surface in fog so thick that they can't actually see anything. So you have to keep checking the weather. Maybe one day Ubisoft will supply a little weather indicator on the screen, like the Detection Indicator; green when visibility is good, red when it isn't and all shades inbetween.

I soon found that, when you surface and send your WO to the conning tower, he won't report a visible ship even if it is less than 1000 metres away. Embarassing, if the ship is an armed enemy.

I found only recently that, if you turn radar off when not in use, reloading a saved game turns it back on again. The consequence was my boat was twice sunk in late 1944 by surprise attack by a destroyer. The really interesting thing was that although the destroyer could home-in on my radar emissions, without using its own radar (so no radar detection received), my radar never actually detected it as it got close. I'd spotted this error in earlier patrols. It must be a program bug - has anyone else seen it?

I found out that time compression of 1024 often dumps the U-boat into the same square as an enemy before the crew can detect it. So now surfaced travel proceeds at 512x.

I found out that night attacks by aircraft are unrealistically over-accurate, and must be avoided, but:
i) the radar detectors have unrealistically short range - once when surprised on the surface by aircraft in broad daylight, I noticed that the radar detector subsequently gave a warning only when it was perhaps 2000 metres from the aircraft! That is its range!;
ii) the flak won't operate except in the calmest seas. This is historically inaccurate;
iii) the schnorchel *should* mount a radar detector, but doesn't (I don't know of any work-around for this problem).

I found out that I can't send radio messages at periscope depth (which you could in "real-life"), so that I had to keep dangerously surfacing to send messages when I would have preferred to remain at schnorchel depth.

I kept accidentally pressing letter 'D' (= 'Dive') at high time compression, and promptly sinking myself. Or pressing "Enter" and accidentally firing a torpedo.

I've learned that the "detection indicator" must always be retained (as one of the realism options at the start of the campaign) as partial substitute for the failures of crew and equipment reported above. When it goes red, you know your crew should have told you something.

I discovered that the neutral Portuguese, cunningly disguised as Americans, were attacking me with bombers in early 1943 from their air-base in the Azores. (The Azores became an Allied air base from October 1943; a major air-base from 1944).

And finally I learned that you need an excuse to avoid convoys later in the war. That excuse is to go on remote missions to South Africa with the IX-D2 U-boat. But then I found all the problems with the IX-D2 boat previously reported in this forum. A fresh problem was in trying to get remote patrol areas for the IX-D2 after late 1944, when most patrols are around Britain. I haven't seen it reported before, but if you get an unwanted patrol grid, return to the last "In Base after mission", reassign all the promotions that you made previously, re-equip as previously, and then click on the office map for a new patrol. This seems to re-assign the patrol grids randomly. However, asking for a new grid by clicking on "In Base before Mission" always seems to give the same patrol grid.

FIXES:
Below are the fixes that I'm using. Some have been reported in this forum before, but they're hard to find and keep reappearing as new queries, especially about the IX-D2 bugs. (In fact, they're so hard to find, that I can't attribute them to their original discoverers; sorry about that.) The others are my own discoveries (sometimes also discovered independently by other people).

1. Keyboard Commands:
Like many fans of the old 'Aces of the Deep', I still instinctively use some of their keyboard commands. For example, pressing 'Enter' was used to slow time compression to 1, and pressing 'D' brought you to schnorchel depth.
To prevent the irritating firing of a torpedo every time you accidentally press the "Enter" key, go to Data\cfg\Commands_en.cfg.
Replace:
[Cmd313]
Name=Fire_torpedo
Ctxt=1
Key0=0x0D,,"Enter"

with:
[Cmd313]
Name=Fire_torpedo
Ctxt=1
Key0=0x0D,c,"Enter"

You can still use CTRL-ENTER to fire the torpedoes.

Pressing 'D' in SH3 is disastrous at high time compression, because it forces an instant dive to critical depth (which sinks you if the hull is already damaged)!
To prevent this, Replace:
[Cmd192]
Name=Dive
Ctxt=1
Str=1030
Key0=0x44,C,"D"

with:
[Cmd192]
Name=Snorkel_depth
Ctxt=1
Str=1033
Key0=0x44,C,"D"

2. To prevent appearance of sudden merchant ships on the map, for those playing with "god's-eye view" turned off, go to Data\cfg\contacts.cfg.
Change:
Display Range To Opportunity Radio Contacts=300 ;[>0] kilometers
To:
Display Range To Opportunity Radio Contacts=10 ;[>0] kilometers

3. To fix the problem of the woefully inadequate radar detection range, go to Data\cfg\sensors.cfg.
Change:
Radar Warning range factor=1 ;[>=0]
To:
Radar Warning range factor=2 ;[>=0]
Then use Jungman's 'RF_Detect Mod' Silent Hunter III patch to modify sensors.dat (it is almost impossible to convey in text how to alter selected numbers in a data file.)

4. Use of Flak in heavy weather:
Many forum contributors have mentioned the inability to fire U-boat flak in moderate seas. Actual U-boat war diaries show that it was so rare not to be able fire flak, that it got a mention when they couldn't fire. So I've set the storm fire values much higher than default. Go to Data\submarines\NSS_Uboat2A\NSS_Uboat2A.cfg.
Change:
StormConditions=7,0.1;max wind speed [m/s], max rain intensity [0,1]
To:
StormConditions=14,0.1;max wind speed [m/s], max rain intensity [0,1]
Now you can fire flak about as often as in reality.
Repeat this for all the other U-boats in the 'submarines' folder.
[Note - you can now also fire the deck gun up to wind speed 14. Be honest; don't allow use of the deck gun above wind-speed 7, as previously.]

5. Air strikes at night are far too accurate. To provide a sort of fix (it actually reduces the number of strikes, not their accuracy), go to Data\cfg\airstrike.cfg .
Change:
Night Modifier=0.5 ;[>0] Modifier on strike probability at night

To:
Night Modifier=0.3 ;[>0] Modifier on strike probability at night

6. IX-D2 Bordeaux problem.
[Solution originally reported in this forum in August 2005.] To fix the problem of the IX-D2 U-boat being stuck in its base at Bordeaux, go to Data\Campaigns\Campaign\Campaign_LND.mis, locate the 12th Flotilla at Bordeaux, and replace:
[Unit 36]
Name=Bordeaux
...
Long=-103547.000000
Lat=5447197.000000
Heading=0.000000

with:
Long=-103695.000000
Lat=5447206.000000
Heading=0.000000

7. IX-D2 problem with flickering torpedo reload screen.
As pointed out several times in this forum, the problem derives from there being too many external torpedoes for the program engine (a program bug). The easy solution is this:
Go to Data\cfg\basic.cfg.
Locate [submarine_Ammo9] for type IXD2.
Change:
ForeResExtern=8
To:
ForeResExtern=6

Place a semi-colon ( before every occurrence of ForeResExtern?6=? and ForeResExtern?7=?, where '?' = 0,1,2 or 3.
For example:
;ForeResExtern16=3
;ForeResExtern17=3

8. IX-D2 Range problem.
This is easily fixed with the "SH3 Crush Depth V2" mod by "Timetraveller" which, despite its name, also allows the user to alter data values for submarine ranges.

9. Azores Air Base opens too early.
Go to Data\Land\Campaign_Lnd.mis
Locate "[Unit 25]"
Change:
GameEntryDate=19430101

To (at earliest):
GameEntryDate=19431001

In Conclusion:
With these fixes in place, I've found that finally I can survive the whole war at a level of high realism.