New to the forums

[Gaz360GT]

OK, I have completed the tutorial, I managed to sink a ship and cripple one on the 1st attack run, lied low for a while, sank the crippled ship with the aft torp (i was so proud of myself for that shot!) whilst catching up with the convoy again to sink another ship.
I used the hydrophone whilst deep and found it to be an excellent tool for obtaining the bearing of other ships, but is there a way of getting their range whilst below periscope depth without giving away my position?

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Gaz360GT

I used the hydrophone whilst deep and found it to be an excellent tool for obtaining the bearing of other ships, but is there a way of getting their range whilst below periscope depth without giving away my position?

Its hard to get an exact range, but you can get a rough estimate. Your hydrophone operator will tell you if the contact he's currently hearing is near, medium or far range, but the best way to see this is to go to your nav map (F5 key). You'll see your sub in the middle and a bunch of lines radiating out from it. These lines represent the hydrophone contacts around your sub. The longer the line, the farther away the contact is.

Welcome aboard! Once you get your feet under you and you feel you've mastered the stock game, give some mods a shot. Our modders have done some amazing work in the past few years. Last year we had a Subsim meetup here in Houston where SH3/SH4 lead designer Dan Dimetrescu was in attendance...he said that even the game's design team had no idea how some of the modders have done the things they've done to the game.

Welcome aboard, Gaz.

Sounds like you're doing just fine.

Warning: Silent Hunter and SubSim are highly addictive. Enjoy!

[sharkbit]

Originally Posted by Gaz360GT

I used the hydrophone whilst deep and found it to be an excellent tool for obtaining the bearing of other ships, but is there a way of getting their range whilst below periscope depth without giving away my position?

Without active sonar-no. With active sonar-yes. But then you are going to probably have an escort heading your way since they will probably hear you pinging.

Like mookie said above, the lines will give you a rough idea. In fact they may be a little too accurate. You can plot a real general course over time using the lines which I don't think is very realistic. Not accurate enough for a solution, but it gives enough information to get a feel for the course of a ship.

With map contacts turned off(No God's eye view), I believe the lines are no longer there(don't know for sure-I play with map contacts turned on).

I'm currently playing around with SH4 and the RFB super mod makes the hydrophone contact lines dashes. That works a lot better realistically IMO. You can still see the direction on the map, but guesstimating range is a lot harder. The hydrophone operator still gives you his range estimates.