I cant find ny merchant ships to destroy.

[Steiger]

You know what's really going to piss you off? If you're playing early war, when you finally find a contact your torpedoes are going to run deep and you'll miss your shot. Hahaha.

[TomcatMVD]

Originally Posted by Steiger

You know what's really going to piss you off? If you're playing early war, when you finally find a contact your torpedoes are going to run deep and you'll miss your shot. Hahaha.

That´s what saves are for...
I played SHIII for some time... and after a long pause, I returned to the submarine warfare through SHIV and U-Boat Missions... and I am finding it quite dificult to start getting the hang of manual targetting again... so If I´m about to let go of some eels, I normally save my game, just in case I screwed up really bad.
Once I´m good enough, I guess I´ll have to stop doing that.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Steiger

You know what's really going to piss you off? If you're playing early war, when you finally find a contact your torpedoes are going to run deep and you'll miss your shot. Hahaha.

Torpedo depth isn't a problem early way unless you set them for keel shots. Early war I set most of mine for half the keel depth of the ship.

The problem is prematures and duds. I carry a lot of M10's early war. Not as powerful, but they work 90% of the time.

[Steiger]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Torpedo depth isn't a problem early way unless you set them for keel shots. Early war I set most of mine for half the keel depth of the ship.

The problem is prematures and duds. I carry a lot of M10's early war. Not as powerful, but they work 90% of the time.

Yeah but that's not really "fair" is it? You have a sort of hindsight advantage. I use the magnetic detonator and give depth for the keel as listed. If it runs deep it runs deep. I popped off 7 torpedoes at a small tanker, all of which ran deep except the last one, which exploded right under the tankers keel, just like it said it would on the box, but the real bastard of the whole thing was that the tanker just kind of shrugged it off and went about its business.

[Sailor Steve]

My feelings exactly. In SH3 I used to keep patrol logs, then post them up here at Subsim. Once I complained 'in character' about not finding any traffic and I got several replies telling me where to go for better results!


It's hard sometimes to explain that I like having realistically empty patrols and dud torpedoes.

[Armistead]

No, it's fair, just use a S or a Sargo, they used a lot of the early M10's, all the S class used them in real war...just what they were stuck with at the beginning of the war if you port down under. Sargo uses both, so I'll carry about half and half. If I port out of Pearl...I'll take mostly M14's

It's silly using the keel depth when all the Skippers figured out they were running much deeper. Most skippers ran them at 10ft. About 80% of the torps will run deeper than normal in the game, about 9ft deeper. A keel shot was seldom used against merchant shipping, they were used mostly against strong armored warships.

See, you're going by the books. Most skippers learned quickly this was failed policy and adjusted by mid 42, they used slower speeds, shot at angles and many used contact only and set them to run shallow. It was trial and error. Many were told to use influence regardless, but many refused knowing they would fail. The ones that refused the by the book were the ones that became the best skippers.
Yes, we have hindsight, so if you want reality, run em deep, but few skippers ever went for the keel shot.

If you enjoy empty traffic, stay out of the shipping lanes and waste fuel.
Your job is to sink ships, not patrol around empty seas. I spend most of my time fighting convoys with 50 ships or more. Playing TMO1.9 with RSRD, historically we broke their code and subs were vectored into convoy paths all the time. We really don't have that in game, contacts from base are few and far between, while in real war subs were constantly vectored in on enemy ships.

Still, mods balance it out. If you use contact only, you're gonna get more duds, influence more prematures. The best way is to use low speed, some angle and contact only and most supermods scripted this to work. Still, you're gonna have a 50% failure rate.

There's a difference between being real and just making it harder on yourself. Early war by the book skippers did as told, used influence, set torps deep, ect. Men like Morton, Dealy and OKane saw these tactics were flawed and made up their own rules, doing what worked. Skippers in war did what killed ships. I almost alwasy play 100%, no cams, no contacts and that's real enough.

Obvious, each should play what style they enjoy, but let's better define historical reality and game settings.