XXI Elektrobrick

[Choronzon]

Greetings all,

I started a GWX 2.0 career in mid '44 to check out the XXI. I must say this is a nice boat with great submerged speed and handles nicely too except for a fatal flaw: it sinks like a brick at low speeds.

North of Scapa Flow, I ran into a convoy coming straight for me so I set myself up in attack position and took out an ore carrier and a large tanker before the escorts starting wetting themselves.

With 1000+ meters below my keel, I'd ordered a depth of 100 meters and silent run while I start to egress through the rear of the convoy at 1 knot. The escorts are falling further behind and I've made good my escape...until the crew starts crying about approaching critical depth and the gauge is hovering around the 160 meter mark.

Ok, fair enough, I must have slipped and accidently went a little deeper. Maintain depth and continue my escape. Nope, not happening. I'm still drifting deeper. Increase speed to 2 knots (the escorts are still close, so I don't want to attract their attention). Nope, still dropping and closing in on 300 meters now. I'm impressed with the depth capabilities of this boat, but I'm also getting close to needing a change of underwear.

Increase to 3 knots...damn, the escorts found me and I'm still dropping. Give it a quick boost to 5 knots, deploy a bold, and I start to rise a little but now the escorts are really getting excited, so back down to 2 knots. I've lost the little bit I gained and then some...getting close to 350 meters now and taking some hull damage. I'm entertaining notions of jettisoning the crew to lighten the load or surfacing at flank speed and running like Hell.

360 meters, more hull damage, change of underwear and still sinking...

I made it to 370 meters before the boat crumpled like so much aluminum foil. Pretty impressive depth, I must say, but a nasty way to die. Is it normal for the XXI to plummet at low speeds? I've never experienced this with the VII or IX boats.

Chor

By any chance did you load the game using SH3Commander? And, if so, did you have either malfunction or malfunction/sabotage enabled?

[Choronzon]

Yes, I did load the game through SH3Commander, but I don't have the sabotage/malfunction option enabled. Could it be something to do with thermal layers?

In hindsight, I spent a good amount of time at periscope depth either at 1 knot or stopped while I worked to get into attack position. No problems maintaining depth there. It seemed to happen when I went deep to avoid the escort cover, although I did that fairly slowly. No crash dive since they hadn't manage to find me yet.

Even leaving Bergen and travelling across to English territory, I had no problem maintaining periscope or snorkel depth.

Any other ideas?

Chor

[Heibges]

I noticed this sometimes in the stock game.

Did you hit crash dive then order silent running, before reaching the crash dive depth?

I have noticed that in any boat, if you change the depth manually before reaching desired depth, that the boat will slowly sink.

[Choronzon]

No, I never crash dived at all. There was never any need to since the escorts were well behind me when I was escaping. It wasn't until I started ramping up the speed to raise my depth that they even got close to me. Even after they found me, they weren't really that close; they were depth charging behind me. I'm pretty confident that if I could have stopped sinking I could have gotten away to thumb my nose at them from a safe distance.

Chor

[difool2]

A known issue, dunno if the GWX guys will be working on it.