Newbie question--recommended realism options

[Twohundertseventy]

Hey guys--

I'm new here, I saw there's an introduction forum, but I don't have terribly much to say. I just downloaded SH3 today. I love history games (I'm a huge fan of Paradox's grand strategy games) and I'm excited to learn this game, but I'm completely new to the entire simulation genre, be it subs, planes, tanks or whatever.

I just finished the tutorials (Naval Academy) and I'm eager to dive into a career.

My main question is whether you would recommend just jumping into the cold water and making everything as realistic as possible and turning all the more arcade-y computer aid off, or whether it might make more sense to leave them on, gain my bearings a bit and become comfortable with all the interfaces, shortcuts and the like before turning towards manual calculations of everything.

My intuition is that with a game that probably has a steep learning curve as-is (especially if you're not used to other simulations) it might be better to get a handle on things first and then tune the difficulty up later, but I'm open to suggestions.

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!

First off, what they call "realism" we tend to call "difficulty". "Full realism" is actually somewhat unrealistic. "Realistic" for the captain would be to spend months at various schools learning the trade, then more months as a junior officer working his way up to XO. By the time he was ready to take his own command he would be fully ready for everything his new boat demanded of him.

"Realism" would better be described as "Difficulty", and in some cases the real-life operations were actually easier than in the game, not harder. There are "Realism" options I still don't use after nine years of playing the game.

I would recommend just playing it on the easy level for a few Single Missions or patrols, then looking at some of the options and asking a lot of questions. After that you'll find that some of the supermods make things much more realistic, and not that much more difficult. The beauty of SH3 is that it can be adjusted and modified to provide a great experience for just about everybody.

[Aktungbby]

[u crank]

Welcome to SubSim Twohundertseventy.

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim

[DrZaiusDrZaius]

Originally Posted by Twohundertseventy

Hey guys--

I'm new here, I saw there's an introduction forum, but I don't have terribly much to say. I just downloaded SH3 today. I love history games (I'm a huge fan of Paradox's grand strategy games) and I'm excited to learn this game, but I'm completely new to the entire simulation genre, be it subs, planes, tanks or whatever.

I just finished the tutorials (Naval Academy) and I'm eager to dive into a career.

My main question is whether you would recommend just jumping into the cold water and making everything as realistic as possible and turning all the more arcade-y computer aid off, or whether it might make more sense to leave them on, gain my bearings a bit and become comfortable with all the interfaces, shortcuts and the like before turning towards manual calculations of everything.

My intuition is that with a game that probably has a steep learning curve as-is (especially if you're not used to other simulations) it might be better to get a handle on things first and then tune the difficulty up later, but I'm open to suggestions.

To answer your question directly, I tend to play at 94% Realism. Basically, everything checked except for "WO Assistance". WO Assistance actually significantly reduces the difficulty of the game, since he is able to plot perfect firing solutions every time, instantly, as well as accurately identify ship types (but not their nationality). You still need to maneuver the boat to an advantaged position to make the shot, however. Some people consider this cheating, but hey, I didn't want to make him feel left out

If I were just starting off, I would probably uncheck the things that help my situational awareness the most. So, Map updates, External Camera, Event Camera, etc. It was handy when I was first starting out to watch the Event camera and see where my torpedoes were missing.

I've never really found unlimited ammo / fuel necessary; or realistic reload times; we do have time compression, after all.

Welcome aboard!

[maillemaker]

I have been playing for many years now. I currently play on 100% realism (difficulty), and I play "Dead is Dead", meaning if I die I start over in 1939 again.

I have survived the war once, but not at 100% difficulty. My goal now is to survive at 100%.

I started off with a relatively low difficulty level. The biggest thing to overcome is developing a good sense of Situational Awareness. It is difficult on a 2D computer screen to get a sense in your mind of which way the boat is pointing, where targets are, and where they are heading relative to your own heading.

For this reason, I recommend running the game with Map Contacts turned On. This will give you a "God's Eye" view of the battlefield showing any ships that have been sighted by the bridge crew or that are within visible range (or locked ) in a scope view. This lets you go to the map or attack view and instantly get a perspective of where you are relative to targets, and where they are going. It also allows you to get dead-precise speeds of targets by drawing a point on the map where they are now, waiting 3 minutes 15 seconds, and drawing another point on the map and drawing a line between them. The length of the line is the speed in knots.

You may wish to start off with an auto TDC setting. This gives you basically a point-and-shoot torpedo firing capability. You can shoot at any target from any angle and your torpedo will hit the target. Angle matters only for getting a good detonation probability (high impact angles often will make the torpedo skip off the hull without detonating) unless you run magnetic torps under their hull in which case angle does not matter.

Changing to manual TDC entry is one of the first goals I would shoot for. Without this, the game is pretty much an arcade. A big part of the satisfaction of the game is maneuvering into a good firing position and manually using the TDC to make hits on ships.

Here are the available options and my suggestions.
http://www.subsim.com/ssr/sh3_rc1/sc...h3review27.jpg

Limited Batteries
Might as well go with this turned on from the start. Learn to drive your sub within its natural limits.

Limited Compressed Air
Same with this. Run with it on from the start. You aren't likely to ever run out of this anyway. If you use so much of this that you are running low odds are your sub is soon to be destroyed anyway.

Limited O2
Run with this on from the start also. Again, not likely to ever be a real problem. If you have not escaped a depth charge attack before the air runs out you probably will not be escaping from it.

Limited Fuel
Run with this on from the start also. As long as you drive around at 2/3 speed you will run out of ammunition long before fuel most of the time.

Realistic Vulnerability
May as well run with this on also.

Realistic Repair Time
I'm kind of ambivalent on this one. I think you should run with it on. If you die from a damaged sub, just reload the game from your last save and move on. You need to develop a sense of what your boat can take and how long it takes to fix things. You should strive to get qualified repair petty officers and a repair qualified officer as soon as possible to max out your repair capabilities.

Realistic Ship Sinking Time
Sure, run with this on also. It will mean you will probably put two fish into every ship to make sure they go down in a reasonable amount of time. This is my usual budget.

Manual Targeting System
I'd run with this off for several patrols, but this is the first thing I would strive to master. Using manual TDC with 90-degree attacks is not difficult if you know the target's speed.

No Map Contact Update
Keep this off for sure. This is the hardest setting to turn on. Once you turn this on, nothing shows on your maps. Everything is in your head from what you see from the bridge or scope and what you hear from the hydrophone. Once you turn this on, from there on out everything about your target is a best guess. Expect more torpedo misses.

Realistic Sensors
Sure, turn this on.

Dud Torpedoes
You may want to run with this off for a while. You need to get feedback as to whether you are hitting things or not with your torpedoes. You can actually see duds on the attack map (they stop when they hit things), but you will need the satisfaction of explosions. However, nothing really detrimental to you happens if you get a dud, so you may turn it on from the start if you want.

Realistic Reload
Turn it on. Learn how to make proper attacks.

No Event Camera
Do not turn this on. This is a huge learning aid. Plus the eye candy is fun. Whenever your torpedo runs near a target, depth charges are coming near you, or a ship sinks, you get a nice little view of the action. It's fun.

No External View
Do not turn this on, either. This is a huge, huge eye candy thing and lots of people keep this on no matter how good they are. Frankly the game gets boring with this off. I'm only doing it to beat the challenge of making it through the war without being able to fly around and see things I should not be able to see.

But it is very nice to fly over convoys and get a feel for where they are and where they are going, where the juicy targets are, and where the escorts are, and what kinds of escorts there are.

It's fun and instructive to watch your torpedoes home in and explode (or miss or dud). It's fun to watch ships blow up and sink. It's fun and useful to watch escorts and depth charges rain down on you so you can learn how to evade.

This setting makes up for the inherent lack of situational awareness.

No Stabilize View
Turn it on. Might as well learn to deal with periscopes and binoculars pitching in a rough sea from the start.

No Noise Meter
Leave it off. You will want your noise meter as you learn how close you can get to escorts and under what conditions to avoid detection.

That's what I have for now.

Steve

[Twohundertseventy]

Thank you for the warm welcome, all.

I'm running with something close to the options recommended by Steve, except with limited fuel off, for the first patrol. I might turn it on for the future.

A first couple of newbie question-- On my first patrol, I was assigned a sector in the Atlantic west-southwest of Cornwall.

1) On my way there, I received several radio messages from HQ telling me to "be more aggressive". What was I doing wrong? I was running full speed ahead on the shortest route possible.

2) On my way through the Skagerrak and near the coast of Norway I encountered a couple of Scandinavian merchant ships. There's no easier way to identify them other than to get within visible range of the flag, right?

3) Then I encountered an English C2-Cargo ship heading into the Waddenzee. I followed it and put nearly all of my torpedoes into it, sequentially. I wasn't doing a great job, but four of them hit. Ship's burning all over, but it didn't sink. I circled it for 6-8 hours, nothing. During the Naval Academy courses, ships sank basically after one torpedo hit, at *worst* needing a second one to finish them off. Is this normal? How many torpedoes should I even budget for a ship? It's clear that this was a misuse of my budget of torpedoes. I couldn't man my deck gun because of "rough weather".

Also, should I have engaged the ship at all or just ignored it and headed to my target sector?

4) After I had fired my first 5+1 torpedoes, I could not get a good angle at the ship with the reloaded torpedoes. I circled the ship a bunch of times and approached it from all angles, but the arrow on the periscope was always red.

I was lying 600 meters away from the ship in a position like the below a few times, which if I understand correctly is the perfect attack position (90 degrees). Red arrow on the periscope, and all torpedoes came out the front of the ship but then veered off in random directions when I followed them on the tactical map.

C2
|
| Sub: bow <------- stern
|


Having lost all my torpedoes, I knew I couldn't really do anything anymore and was still far away from my target sector I just drove into the English channel and got sunk, semi-suicidal, since starting the mission from scratch and starting a new career is basically the same anyway when you're just on your first patrol.

So, yeah-- is it normal to waste 4 torpedoes on a C2-Cargo ship without it sinking or was I just incredibly unlucky? If so, is it even worth attacking it or should I just go for merchant ships? Also, what was wrong with my positioning/the automatic targeting system?


5) I noticed that when driving normally for 36 hours or so the crew on the stations gets very tired, there's a red exclamation mark next to them. Do I have to manually switch out everyone into the quarters every few hours? If so, how often? The Naval Academy didn't mention anything about that. That seems incredibly tedious.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Twohundertseventy

1) On my way there, I received several radio messages from HQ telling me to "be more aggressive". What was I doing wrong? I was running full speed ahead on the shortest route possible.

Are you playing the stock game, or using a supermod? I can't remember where "Be More Aggressive" comes from in the first place, but its purpose is to tell you that you haven't sunk enough ships. On the other hand it doesn't really have any effect on the game - it's just there for fun.

2) On my way through the Skagerrak and near the coast of Norway I encountered a couple of Scandinavian merchant ships. There's no easier way to identify them other than to get within visible range of the flag, right?

Right. Unless of course you're running external view, which while great for taking screenshots does make it a little too easy to identify ships and set them up for the kill.

3) Then I encountered an English C2-Cargo ship heading into the Waddenzee. I followed it and put nearly all of my torpedoes into it, sequentially. I wasn't doing a great job, but four of them hit. Ship's burning all over, but it didn't sink. I circled it for 6-8 hours, nothing. During the Naval Academy courses, ships sank basically after one torpedo hit, at *worst* needing a second one to finish them off. Is this normal? How many torpedoes should I even budget for a ship? It's clear that this was a misuse of my budget of torpedoes. I couldn't man my deck gun because of "rough weather".

It does sound like you're playing the stock game. As I recall C-2s were impossibly tough that way. GWX and NYGM both fix this, and I believe the other big mods do as well.

Also, should I have engaged the ship at all or just ignored it and headed to my target sector?

It doesn't matter. The Stock game gives you extra renown for going to your assigned grid and for staying there for 24 hours, but any ship you sink is another enemy out of the way, so you should attack everything that looks worthwhile to you.

4) After I had fired my first 5+1 torpedoes, I could not get a good angle at the ship with the reloaded torpedoes. I circled the ship a bunch of times and approached it from all angles, but the arrow on the periscope was always red.

Was the last shot you took from the stern tube? If so the TDC may still be set up for a stern shot, and no forward angle is going to show up as a good one. If the stern tube is green, click one of the forward ones.

5) I noticed that when driving normally for 36 hours or so the crew on the stations gets very tired, there's a red exclamation mark next to them. Do I have to manually switch out everyone into the quarters every few hours? If so, how often? The Naval Academy didn't mention anything about that. That seems incredibly tedious.

Yes, you need to switch them out every eight hours or so. You can switch an entire compartment with one click, but the best thing you can do is get SH3 Commander. It's an external tool which allows you to change many parameters with a single click. With SH3C you can change the crew management to 'No Fatigue', which isn't exactly accurate but is a lot better than babysitting all the time.

[maillemaker]

1) On my way there, I received several radio messages from HQ telling me to "be more aggressive". What was I doing wrong? I was running full speed ahead on the shortest route possible.

As I recall, if you send in status reports to BDU and you have not sunk anything/much you will get a canned response that says, "Be more aggressive!"

It doesn't matter how fast you were going to get to your patrol grid or what route you take. It's a canned response to how much you have sunk. If you've sunk stuff, it will say something like, "Keep up the good work as long as fuel and armament allows". It may be different in stock SH3 (I use GWX).

2) On my way through the Skagerrak and near the coast of Norway I encountered a couple of Scandinavian merchant ships. There's no easier way to identify them other than to get within visible range of the flag, right?

Yup. There are a couple of cheat ways, though. You will not be able to go to maximum time compression in the vicinity of an enemy ship. You will be limited to an even lower TC if you are spotted by an enemy ship. Again, details may vary as I use SH3 Commander and GWX, but I believe this will be true for stock SH3 also.

Of course once you shoot someone they will become hostile regardless of nationality.

3) Then I encountered an English C2-Cargo ship heading into the Waddenzee. I followed it and put nearly all of my torpedoes into it, sequentially. I wasn't doing a great job, but four of them hit. Ship's burning all over, but it didn't sink. I circled it for 6-8 hours, nothing. During the Naval Academy courses, ships sank basically after one torpedo hit, at *worst* needing a second one to finish them off. Is this normal? How many torpedoes should I even budget for a ship? It's clear that this was a misuse of my budget of torpedoes. I couldn't man my deck gun because of "rough weather".

Generally, two torpedoes will take down any merchant. However, it does happen that sometimes they linger on. I vaguely remember something about a bug where multiple damage hits on the same "compartment" don't register as increased damage. So try not to put all your torps into the same hole on the side of the ship.

Also, should I have engaged the ship at all or just ignored it and headed to my target sector?

Sink anything you come across that is a bad guy. You don't have to go to your patrol sector to sink bad guys. In fact you might not sink any bad guys in your patrol sector. I go to my patrol sector primarily to pick up the renown for doing so. GWX removes renown but I added it back.

4) After I had fired my first 5+1 torpedoes, I could not get a good angle at the ship with the reloaded torpedoes. I circled the ship a bunch of times and approached it from all angles, but the arrow on the periscope was always red.

Your best approach is always to point your submarine broadside to the enemy. This is called a "90 degree shot" and it is the optimal firing solution.

I was lying 600 meters away from the ship in a position like the below a few times, which if I understand correctly is the perfect attack position (90 degrees). Red arrow on the periscope, and all torpedoes came out the front of the ship but then veered off in random directions when I followed them on the tactical map.

C2
|
| Sub: bow <------- stern
|

Hmm. Sounds like you did not have your TDC set properly or something. Maybe you engaged manual TDC mode? If you go to the attack map (F6) you will see a line that indicates the estimated torpedo track for the current firing solution.

5) I noticed that when driving normally for 36 hours or so the crew on the stations gets very tired, there's a red exclamation mark next to them. Do I have to manually switch out everyone into the quarters every few hours? If so, how often? The Naval Academy didn't mention anything about that. That seems incredibly tedious.

Most people agree with you on the tedious part. It would not have been the captain's duty to create or enforce crew rotations.

But this is the way the game implements "crew management" and how you get rewarded for building up a good crew. After each mission you can train up one petty officer or officer with a new skill. The more skills they have the more efficiently (faster) tasks can be done. When a compartment is max on the green bar, it is working as fast as it can. So you want the most skilled people in those compartments.

Once your crewman earns the 3rd highest medal (I forget what it is), I think, they will no longer fatigue. They become supermen. So your goal is to have outstanding missions so you get to hand out medals and so build your invincible, tireless crew. It's not realistic, but it gives you a sense of investment in your boat and crew that you built up through successful patrols.

There are mods that disable fatigue. Also, fatigue does not happen (nor rest) at high time compression. Only below 32X TC does it apply, as I recall.

Steve

[Twohundertseventy]

Thanks for the answers. The shots I took were all from the bow torpedoes. I don't know what happened there. Thanks for the tips otherwise-- I didn't know that it's not *totally* necessary to head to the assigned patrol zone.