Not with a bang, but with a kind of crunch.

[kenijaru]

Originally Posted by mmm...Dönitz

At this rate the war will be over before I leave Naval Academy.

OK, so I'm pretty good at manual torpedo targetting now, even if I am relying a bit heavily on the "Gods Eye" contacts update being left on. Hey - I've got a 1st Officer with a good eye, so what?

Anyway, after putting several eels into the larger, slower moving targets at long range I am starting practising sneaking up to the smaller, more manoeuverable targets. Last night I put three into a tramp steamer, only to have her sail merrily off. WTF? Ok, the first one was a dud, I'm pretty sure. However the second and third made a kind of cerrrunch noise rather than a nice bang. No water spray or explosion or damage vidible through the scope. Is the strange noise the sound of a torp bouncing off the rounded bottom of the ship without detonating? I had depth set at 5m (IIRC the tramp's draight is 6.8m).

Seems a shame to waste more then one eel on such a little ship!

*edit* Oh yeah - and is the arming raneg definitely always 250m, or is it time based rather than distance? One of my attacks was from just over 300m away but no closer. I was also wondering if the torp didn't arm in time as it was set to fast run.

try opening fire from a little more than just 300m (standard arming distance)... 600 to 1000m should be a nice distance. also, a torpedo bouncing makes a clear and loud*CLANG* like hitting metal (or a bell) with a hammer.

also, set the depth of the torpedo around 0,5 to 1m under the keel for magnetic detonators or at the middle of the hull (depth wise).
also, the closer you are to a 90º impact, the better

[mmm...Dönitz]

Maybe I'm setting the depth too low. Thing is that when attacking very large targets with eels at 3m depth I found that they took best part of an hour to sink. I then changed the depth to about 7m on the large cargo, scored two hits and got the "She's going down!" message about five minutes later. I assumed that because the hole was double the distance under the waterline - hence double the water pressure - the sinking "model" would flood the ship much faster. A small tanker similarly went up in about 15 mins with deeper hits. Ever since then I've been "aiming low" Maybe different ships have different hull shapes?

OK, so maybe one of my attacks was inside the 300m arming range then. That explians two out of three duff shots.

The reason I'm getting so close is that in the training missions there's one tramp steamer that sits still until you attack it, then it proves very adept at maneuvering out of the way. Of course I could aim in front of it but I'm guessing that it would then decide NOT to move, and simply let the eel pass in front. I've convinced myself that its probably best to attack the smaller faster unarmed ships from very close range using fast torpedos to rob them of the chance to get out of the way.

Oh, and I don't trust those new-fangled magnetic detonators

[Keelbuster]

With little shallow ships, the hull starts to curve fairly shallow - if a torp hits the curved part, she tends to bounce off (even at 90 aob). With little ships I aim 3m. Little ships are also surprisingly resilient. I've seen tramp steamers take a torp and sail on merrily with a hole the size of the bridge in her side. Basically I don't even bother with the little ones for this reason. They're basically deck-gun bait. If I absolutely must sink one, aim for the extremities - either the stern or the bow. Get her to flood complelely on one side and she might just slide under. This holds for most ships, but especially for the little 'uns.