Anyone ever "lost" a contact??

[ddiplock]

My new boat, U73 recently put to sea earlier for her first combat patrol of November 1939. Four days into the patrol we recieve a contact report of a loan merchant steaming SW near the Shetland's.

I plot a course to have U73 intercept the lone ship perfectly. I get them right in front of my boat using my hydrophones, dive to 30mtrs, ahead slow at 2 knots, and I slowly creep towards my unaware target (i love this part, the lone ship having NO IDEA their heading straight for an ambush)

My hydrophone operater must be damn deaf, as he keeps losing the merchant, I on the otherhand can hear his props swooshing the water perfectly fine, however rare it is for the Kaleun to take the headset of the hydrophone

I adjust my course carefully to keep dead on track....then all of a sudden....he drops from my sounding!!!

I stay on course for an hour longer, constantly rotating my phones in a bid to find him!!!! Verdammt!!!! He's slipped away...somehow!!!

Note: Its very strange that this has actually happend. But has anyone else ever had this happen to them on patrol?

[danurve]

Two things;

Your sonarman isn't deaf, they are just retarded by deault I guess. If you take over the hydrophones at least you get to have some fun.

The disapearing ship may have sunk on it's own due to bad weather, or reached the end of it's programed run.

[Steppenwolf]

Not sure why you finally lost him, but the reason your sonarman kept losing him before that was probably the blind(deaf) zone of the hydrophone. The GHG has about a 20 degree blind zone in front of the sub and about a 60 degree blind zone in the rear. KDB eliminates the front blind zone and reduces the rear one to about 40 degrees.

Your hydrophone operator is affected by this zone and you will lose contacts on the F5 nav map. There is a bug in the game, however, that when you listen to the hydrophone station yourself, you can hear things in the deaf zone.

[ddiplock]

The ship i doubt will have sunk, it was a cargo steamer, one of the smaller 2000 odd ton ones.

I know this because i've discovered if u have a ship in hearing distance if you press the < > keys, you can cycle the camera through all nearby ships....hence i knew what ship i was up against before i established visual contact.

Bizarre how he dissapeared though :S

[Brag]

Another thing to watch is the tired SO. Replace him and you are back in business.

[Zero Niner]

Could have been that the ship reached its final waypoint and despawned from the world map.

[codmander]

use hydro manual put pointer right on sound than hit follow contac and your sonar man will ussallly pick up and start following the contac for you

[TarJak]

Check the bearing they get lost on. You can't hear ships in your "baffles" (the noise your own engines make), so if they are behind you turn about 30 degrees one way or another and you might find he picks them up again. IIRC you lose contact in your baffles from about 170 through 190 degrees.

[xlbob]

Originally Posted by danurve

The disapearing ship may have sunk on it's own due to bad weather, or reached the end of it's programed run.

How long or how far is it before it reaches the end of programmed run? Does the same rule apply to convoys?
Thanks,

[TarJak]

How long depends on what track has been scripted for the ship or convoy. Yes they are prtty much both teh same. If you hang around the west coast of Britain long enough you can watch them disappear.

If you open up the .RND or SCR layers you can see where the tracks start and end.

[Siegfried von Funk]

Originally Posted by danurve

Two things;

Your sonarman isn't deaf, they are just retarded by deault I guess. If you take over the hydrophones at least you get to have some fun.

The disapearing ship may have sunk on it's own due to bad weather, or reached the end of it's programed run.

Or was assimilated by the Borg...