Chaulk one up to Muprhy

[Ducimus]

Mr Murphy,.. You know the guy the who wrote that damniable law? I think he just took command of my latest career game.


Got bored with being in 40/41 so i started a new career in march 42, U-517, IXC, 2nd flot, with a patrol grid of DC12. I planned from the start that this would be a long cruise, so from the get go, as soon as i cleared the shelf in biscay bay i started running submerged to save fuel and avoid aircraft, surfacing only long enough to charge batteries. I kept this routine tell i exited biscay bay 5 days or so later.

After about 20 days in game, i started coming up to the US east coast. Hadn't quite reached burmuda yet but was getting close to it. I resumed my routiine of maximum submerged running to save fuel while enroute, surfacing at about 2100 local time and submerging at 0500. I did this for about three days.

After taking a week to clear biscay bay, another 20 crossing the atlantic and another 3 creeping up to the US east coast (but not having reached it yet) disaster struck. At 2100 hours i went to periscope depth, scanned the skies. Partially cloudy, partial moon, calm ocean. Surfaced. Not even three mins later my WO is panicked and calls " Aircraft spotted medium range!" . Medium range my ass, that plane was about 1400 to 2000 meters off our starboard bow. Too late to dive, to late to man the guns, i ordered flank speed and hard port rudder. U-517 lurched ahead with aggonizing sluggishness in a bid to be a hard to hit moving target.

One second later. KABOOOM. I hear an explosion and secondary explosion, vision on the deck is blurred and i see a man go down, and a HUGE water gieser on the starboard side.. Getting a quick damage report one of the batteries is desroyed, several wounded men, moderate flooding in the bow torpedo room and crew quarters, port rudder destroyed, the fuel bunkers are ripped open, but only minor hull integrity loss. At this point i had to make a decision, stay on the surface or risk diving. Not want to give up, Gambling that the flooding was controllable and considering the hull was nearly fully intact, i decided to risk a crash dive and to 70 50 meters and get the flooding stopped rather the bomp there like a cork for the planes.

Only the flooding didnt stop, and neither did the boat. U-517 nosed down at a steep angle, and decended into the depths all too quickly. The flooding in the bow compartment had increased and was out of control. Looking more closely at the damage, the bow planes were destoryed, the boat was completly out of control. On top of this both fore and aft batteries were destroyed.

I couldn't stop her decent.

[Payoff]

Heart pounding tale there Ducimus.
Ive always used the smaller boats, so no real long voyages yet. Does that battery travel pay dividends in the long run?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Payoff

Does that battery travel pay dividends in the long run?

In the long run yes it does. You have to run on the presumption of running your diesals as little as possible. That means surfacing/snorekeling at 0 hour, and diving at around 0500. Gives you around 4 to 5 hours to charge your batteries.

An example would be having to patrol grid GR89 near capetown in 1944. I was barely out of Lorient when I plotted the entire course round trip and arrived at the conclusion that i would be a bit short of fuel coming back. Simply put, not enough fuel, and no resupply. This also meant i had no fuel for any end around attacks, or any sort of pursuit. At that point i ran mostly submerged the entire trip. Turned out to be around a 130 day patrol, and i had enough fuel to return to lorient. The longer you stay submerged the more gains you'll make in fuel, but it takes awhle.

[Respenus]

It's never too late too man the flak guns

[Ducimus]

You don't know my game settings, trust me, it was too late .

[Respenus]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

You don't know my game settings, trust me, it was too late .

Wanna explain? Does your "Long range Mod" make it so hard?

Well there is always time for "AAALLLLLLLLAAAAARRRRRMMMMMMM!!!!!"

[Dantenoc]

No disrespect to you or anybody else who uses this technique to conserve fuel, it's a well known trick used by almost all the "old salts" of this game, but I find it terrible annoying that SHIII completely ignores the laws of thermodynamics on this one... it is one of the game's weakest points and shows that Ubisoft didn't really do as much research for the game as they should have.

As for your story: I feel for you. Going all that way just to be blindsided by a bird... that's gotta be hard to take

[The_Blockade_Runner]

At least it was his first patrol,
I play DID and just lost a very experienced and highly decorated crew just due to a lucky depth chagre during a convoy attack. It flooded the stern quarters too badly to be reparied and I plummeted to crush depth. This crew also sank the Illustrious in Scapa Flow and I was very disappointed to lose that crew. But if I had reloaded a saved game I would have felt too guilty and the rest of the career would have had a taint on it

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Dantenoc

No disrespect to you or anybody else who uses this technique to conserve fuel, it's a well known trick used by almost all the "old salts" of this game, but I find it terrible annoying that SHIII completely ignores the laws of thermodynamics on this one... it is one of the game's weakest points and shows that Ubisoft didn't really do as much research for the game as they should have.

As for your story: I feel for you. Going all that way just to be blindsided by a bird... that's gotta be hard to take

Thank you for saying "almost". I too find this method to be distasteful, to say the least.