Patrol Completion

[Von Manteuffel]

I believe it is 100km 0r 55nm for 48 hours for a 'patrol' mission.

If it's the 'engage enemy shipping' I think you need to sink 10,000t within the same radius.

Spot on, with one refinement I discovered yesterday. After 3 other sets of orders, I received the word to patrol the East China Sea & engage enemy shipping I only had 4 torpedoes left and a few rounds of ammo for the deck gun ( It had been a busy patrol.)

I always use the compass tool to draw a 50 nm circle around the star and stay within it until "mission complete".

Anyhow, I started to make the trip and about 50 nm short of my circle intercepted a juicy convoy. I sent in a contact report and imediately received a new set of orders to "inflict damage on escorts to make follow-up attacks easier." They were orders with an "incomplete" next to them, so I didn't have a choice if I wanted to complete the patrol.

I used all 4 remaining torpedoes to sink the 3 escorts and had to watch as the merchants sailed away over the horizon. Several of them were armed, so popping up and blasting with the deck-gun wasn't an option. When it was clear I surfaced and sent in a status report and got a "complete" against the order to engage escorts, but "Patrol East China Sea and engage enemy shipping" was still incomplete.

I finally crossed into the circle ( 50 nm patrol area around the star ) with no torpedoes. I sailed around for about two and a half days, doing nothing. Everything that came my way was either armed, or escorted by warships.

Suddenly the star turned to grey and I could set sail for home ( Pearl ).

So, I think that somewhere in the game it recognises that it's pointless to have unarmed boats out there and gives you a "complete" even though you may not have sunk the required amount of tonnage.

This game so rocks!