Contact reports with SH 5 and Real navigation

[phil82]

I've recently (about a week ago) moved up from silent hunter 4 to SH5, I've always played with map contacts on but when I switched I figured I'd make the jump to maximum realism. I also found out about real navigation and decided to give it a try.

I understand dead reckoning and I'm using Trevally's excellent script pack so I can navigate pretty well. I'm learning how to chase contacts and although I miss alot more than I used to I'm slowly getting the hang of it. But the enemy keeps sneaking up on me.

By the time the deck watch tell me that they've spotted a plane I'm already getting shot in the face. Or they'll only spot a frieghter when It's approx 7km away even though by then I'd have been able to see it for ages if I was on deck. It seems like they aren't reporting contacts as well as they do with map contacts on.

So I'm wondering, is this just a feature of SH 5, is it a feature of Real navigation, is it something to do with time compression (I don't go above 512x) or is it just my imagination?

Also a few more questions:

Can the crew still spot contacts through the periscope like in sh 4?

It seems like the game doesn't always auto drop to 1x when a contacts spotted, is there away to adjust this? I'm quite happy to dig through files if someone can point me in the right direction.

In SH 4 You'd get a big warning message saying plane/ship spotted, has this been removed by a mod or is it just not a thing anymore?

Any other tips on how not to get snuck up on would be welcome.

I'm enjoying the game though and I wanted to share one of my adventures. Last night I was sat at periscope depth in heavy fog, I had no contacts and I was getting bored so I decided to raid one of the ports on the Tyne. So I surfaced and went ahead full figuring I'd be able to get nice and close before I had to dive again...Next thing I know I've run head first into a task force. A massive boat (no idea what) appeared out of the fog about 500m away and started lobbing shells at me. I called out dive and nothing happened, then I realised I was still on deck so I legged it down stairs and reordered the dive. By this point most of the crew were injured and every compartment was starting to flood. We got to periscope depth and then kept on going, I ordered surface and we kept sinking, I ordered blow ballast and we kept sinking, the sub ended up imploding at about 40m which shows how badly damaged we were. Still, I wasn't bored anymore though

Cheers.