Okay, finally gave in and started a DiD career

[Trav_R]

After discussing some of my initial problems that I had with DiD with some of the people on the board, I decided it was the best way to go. I still don't have any DD evasion experience, nor any real experience dealing with airplanes, or any other experience outside of manually aiming my torpedoes, but screw it I'm ready to play for keeps. I was already getting bored by my 7th patrol because I would just reload whenever I made a dumb mistake. When I sank ships, even though I did it with manual targeting, I didn't feel all that triumphant.

Now, though, even sinking a coastal merchant brings me quite a bit of enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. On my first patrol in a IIA, I got a BdU report of a single merchant a few dozen km away. I calculated a rough intercept point and went there and submerged, and picked him up on my hydrophone coming in my general direction. Once he was in visual range, I began doing my usual turning the boat/moving forward or back as needed/setting up torpedoes and TDC. The ship was a British coastal merchant, and I had gotten myself into a perfect position for a 90 AOB shot at about 700 m. I set my first torp for a 3m impact detonation. I calculated AOB by using the recognition manual for a 20 degree offset, because at exactly 20 degrees the ship's forward mast is nearly in line with the port bridge wing, and if you leave the scope on that bearing when you input that into your TDC, you'll have an almost perfect AOB calculated for the rest of the run as long as he doesn't change course (and you don't either).

Then I calculated speed. I've learned several methods for this, and haven't completely settled on my favorite. Plotting two points and calculating distance and time from it is certainly accurate, but it's a lot of work. I counted his RPM and looked it up, and it said 8 knots, but I thought I'd try another method that should work fine. I know the length of a coastal merchant is 75m (or something like that) and if I start the stopwatch when the ship's bow crosses my vertical crosshair, and then stop it again when the stern crosses my crosshair, I should be able to get m/s out of that, and then multiply by 2 to get knots. Quick and simple, and it should be pretty damn accurate. The only inaccuracy introduced is since you are probably doing this when AOB is around 30 and not 90, it's a little difficult to determine the exact forward-most and aft-most points on the ship, but I figure the error can't be more than 10m at worst.

That's where I made my mistake. I've used this method before, and while I haven't thoroughly tested it it works well most of the time. For some reason, this time it was about 2 knots faster than what the target was actually moving. I aimed my torpedo just forward of the bridge, where the fuel bunker should be, and fired when the calculated gyro angle was 000. The torpedo impacted very far forward, and I knew that wasn't going to cut it. Naturally the ship flooded forward a bit, and its bow dug into the waves, but it just kept motoring on. I knew it was about to start changing course, so I fired another one, this one set for magnetic impact under the keel, and I adjusted the speed down a few knots to hopefully compensate for his wounded nature, but he zagged out of the way.

Now I was getting pissed. Two eels already and still hadn't killed a coastal merchant! I've got one eel left in the tubes while I'm waiting on the others to reload, and it's an electric one too so it ain't gonna be in any kind of a hurry, which is what I needed. I was getting impatient and flustered, so I set the TDC speed to zero and just tried to John Wayne it but naturally, by this time it had begun to gain some distance and since it was zigging and zagging I missed. For the fourth shot, since I had to wait a while anyway for the tube to reload and I knew my impatience wasn't getting me anywhere, I hit flank speed (I was submerged, so couldn't move too fast) and ordered a roughly parallel course while waiting for the tubes to reload.

By the time they were both reloaded, I had pulled ahead of the target about 200 m, and we were still running fairly parallel at a distance of about 1000m. Almost perfect for a broadside, so I turned sharply into him and began setting up my TDC. By the time I was finished with my turn and had ordered all stop, the range was about 500m, I'm thinking I can't miss at this point. Yep, I can. Merchants are apparently really really hard to hit once they know you're around and start zigzagging. I'd noticed this before, but when I got tired of chasing them around and wasting torps on them I would just reload my game and make sure I tore him up good on my first eel, but now I didn't have that option and I was down to my last eel

I decided that the most accurately calculated TDC solution in the world and the perfect setup just didn't make a crap when trying to hit a zigzagging merchant, so with my last fish I decided to minimize his little zigzagging advantage by pulling in close to him and right on his stern, and have my torpedo set for a magnetic detonation. I got set up and ready, and I waited till he had just finished a zig and the AOB was 180. I then waited to see which way he was going to take his next zag, and once I saw him begin to turn starboard I put my crosshair a few meters to the right of his bow, figuring he'd either sail right into it or not have enough time to reverse course and hit it anyway. Well, he spotted it (hell he probably knew where I was at that point with my scope sticking out of the water 300 m off his stern and moving at 7 knots) and began to try to reverse his course and turn back to port.

All the while I have kept my crosshair on the same bearing that my torpedo went down, and while his bow had crossed this bearing, his reversal of course was bringing his bow back to the left: out of danger. Then BOOM, my torp must have just barely crossed under his keel before he was able to completely pull back out of its way, and I hit him right beneath the bow. While it was certainly a crappy shot, when combined with the earlier crappy shot it was enough to bring him down. Besides, I really don't know if there's a better tactic for dealing with a zigzagging merchant other than the deck gun, and I didn't have one.

Anyway, even though it took 5 fish and two crappy bow shots to bring down a measley coastal merchant, and not to mention about an hour's worth of my time, I felt like a champ, because I knew that I did it all without reloading, while dealing with my mistakes. I definetly screwed the pooch on that first "real" encounter, though. My miscalculation of the speed when I should have known better, and my following impatience and subsequent waste of torpedoes has helped tame me down a bit and made me a more careful captain. On my next patrol, I managed to intercept another coastal merchant in thick fog with 300 m visibility and take him out with 1 torpedo under the keel. The fog made that no picnic. That was a lot of hydrophone work, and a lot of scribbles on my map, but it made it all worth it to see him going down in one nice clean kill instead of 5 hurried shots!

So, thanks for all the DiD advice guys, so far I'm enjoying the hell out of it and I haven't even done anything "exciting" yet like a convoy or DD evasion.

[Keelbuster]

manual TDC- hardcore. I have given myself auto TDC/targetting. I don't know if I could stand to lose torpedoes to bad TDC. Also, I don't use duds - it's costs 5 realism percent (like a few percent of overall renown) but I figure it's I'll rack in at least that much in ships that would have been lost to duds.

As for DiD, I'm more into the evasion part. Escorts aren't much of a problem (never been to '43 though). The big problem for me is planes. Since my last post, I've lost 2 uboats to catalina attack - devastating.

I think the only option is to spend the days underwater. It takes vigilance.

Glad to hear you are getting deep into this.

KB

[JBClark]

Good luck man,

Who wants to live forever? :hmm:

I agree though. Just knowing that you will live or die with the decisions you make ratchets the intensity of this "game" up near infinity. And losing a crew that you loved like brothers, and not resurrecting them, will make your next career all the more nerve-wracking.

Good Hunting, Live Long,

JBC

[K-61]

Best wishes. If you can discipline yourself not to resort to reloads, you will indeed come to savour the danger in the game. You will learn to be conservative or suffer the frustration of many dead careers.

[Von Scheerbach]

Trav: I can't remember if you are running RuB or IuB (has RuB in it), but you won't want to try and shoot it out with planes on the surface anymore if you are! That will get you DiD real quick!

Good luck!

[Trav_R]

Thanks for the positive input guys, I was wondering if my little novella was a little too long. I know it was too long, but I ain't no Winston Churchill. It was him who said "I'm sorry if this letter is longer than usual, as I didn't have the time to make it short," right? Anyway, yeah it's been a good time. My second patrol was heavy fog the entire time, but I managed to have the TDC already set nearly perfectly by the time the ships came into visual range (about 400m) because of my hydrophone readings.

Due to the way I record my readings, I was able to estimate speed to within 1-2 knots, AOB to within 5 degrees, and course to within 5 degrees. By the time he came into view, I was 400m away, on a perpendicular course, with tubes open and set to 3m impact fuses, with speed, AOB and range alrleady input to within an acceptable degree. I was able to put two torps to within 5m of my aim point without even touching the TDC after sighting the ships. Of course, the ships that I nailed doing it by this method were so close that 5m worth of error isn't anything to brag about, but when they come out of the fog like that, you don't have time even to do the notepad method (flipping through the manual, inputting range, inputting AOB, waiting on the stopwatch for speed.)

Anyway, looks like if I don't stop right now, my momentum is gonna pick up and I'm gonna write another novel, and I'm not a good enough writer to warrant that, so thanks for the replies and I'll be sure not to tangle with any airplanes!

P.S. To Keelbuster - It's not really that hard-core going with manual targeting, depending on the method you use. After checking out Wazoo's tutorial and trying out all those methods, I realized that that degree of accuracy isn't really necessary as long as you're in a good position (close range, perpendicular course.) Once in position and waiting for the target to cross your bow, you don't have to stress about doing a bunch of math, you have plenty of time to estimate the TDC inputs to a good enough degree that you'll always hit your target. It gives me something to do while waiting on the target to approach, keeps things interesting. Not to mention that it feels good when I hit that fuel bunker manually

[don1reed]

...just a thought...

Since this is a "game" in which we players seem to take a lot undue risk in situations as we know there isn't any consequence to our actions. Like no lives are really in your hands. Like trying to "balls" our way into enemy harbors, chock full of tangle-foot. Unless you're specifically ordered to enter through the gates of Hoelle (not), the chances of survival increase...I know what you're thinking--"where's the fun in that?"

The main premise of this Sim, for me is survival to war's end. (I've got this big book deal for my memoirs ) It's ok to gather accolades where you may early in the war, however, in the latter stages, kameraden, you'll be more concerned with CYA than tonnage.

[toodrunk]

Originally Posted by don1reed

...just a thought...

Since this is a "game" in which we players seem to take a lot undue risk in situations as we know there isn't any consequence to our actions. Like no lives are really in your hands. Like trying to "balls" our way into enemy harbors, chock full of tangle-foot. Unless you're specifically ordered to enter through the gates of Hoelle (not), the chances of survival increase...I know what you're thinking--"where's the fun in that?"

The main premise of this Sim, for me is survival to war's end. (I've got this big book deal for my memoirs ) It's ok to gather accolades where you may early in the war, however, in the latter stages, kameraden, you'll be more concerned with CYA than tonnage.

LoL, I guess I'm prime example of this. My first GWX Wartime patrol and I'm trying to penetrate a harbor. Either going to be Southend or Dover, not sure which yet. But, it's only Sept. 1939. So, I should be all right.

I think I'm going to move on to the North Atlantic fairly soon. Sounds promising out there.


EDIT: Holy crap, talk about thread necroing. Sorry about that fellas. Thought I was in another thread.....

[Brag]

To make your DID carreer more real, invent yourself a punishment should you die. Example: 30 days without SH3. Or 30 days without beer

Good luck!

[Immelman]

I have no problem with immersion at all. If anything I am a bit too much into it. I get attached to my boat and crew and don't want to lose either. I tend to play as if this was real and I take no stupid risks.

Hells the last weekend that I had to myself (no one around to ruin my immersion. "Hun can you take out the trash" ) I didn't even bother showering I ate only what we had on board, a smoked ham leg, bananas and oranges, made myself a U-boat special coctail (just like in the movie) and slept in my computer room (drooling on my keyboard), turned up the volume, at TC 128 unpaused, waking up every time something happened i.e. Aircraft spotted!

ALAAAARM!!

[KL-alfman]

must give this a try next weekend!

[schlechter pfennig]

Originally Posted by don1reed

...just a thought...

Since this is a "game" in which we players seem to take a lot undue risk in situations as we know there isn't any consequence to our actions. Like no lives are really in your hands. Like trying to "balls" our way into enemy harbors, chock full of tangle-foot. Unless you're specifically ordered to enter through the gates of Hoelle (not), the chances of survival increase...I know what you're thinking--"where's the fun in that?"

The main premise of this Sim, for me is survival to war's end. (I've got this big book deal for my memoirs ) It's ok to gather accolades where you may early in the war, however, in the latter stages, kameraden, you'll be more concerned with CYA than tonnage.

When I first started playing SHIII the vanilla flavor ) I did a lot of silly, risky things. But within a very short period of time I found myself starting to think along the lines of 'What was this really like?' and 'Would I really so something this risky/silly/idiotic if, should I fail, I, and my crew, would die?'

Once I started thinking like that, I found playing SHIII to be a lot more thrilling and exciting and, at time, sphincter-puckering

And thank Gott I did because, once I loaded up GWX 1, you sure as heck learn the hard way that there may be bold and brash Kaleuns, and there may be old Kaluens, but there sure ain't no bold, brash and old Kaluens!

[IanC]

Originally Posted by Brag

To make your DID carreer more real, invent yourself a punishment should you die. Example: 30 days without SH3. Or 30 days without beer

Good luck!

That's just cruel... talking about the beer part of course.