(Youtube) Let's play SH4 with mods....

[Rockin Robbins]

I should HOPE that since you posted here you would read the site! Don't get me wrong here. I play differently because I am a lifelong student of the war and have played the game so much. I know that. You are actually playing the game a bit more like the real sub captains would have. In some ways they knew as little as you do.

However, they WOULD have known that where you were fleeing for safety was exactly where every Japanese warship was headed for their next round of invasions though. The idea of the Pearl fleet was to hit he sparsely defended areas around the home islands to tie up warships there instead of having them support the invasions to the south.

There was a real danger that Australia would be invaded and the submarines staying north was an important part of weakening the Japanese offensive. Put a submarine in the middle of a convoy of a hundred warships and something like episode 23 happens. It's not a pretty sight for the sub.......

You're doing the right thing until you have the experience: avoid the warship convoys and concentrate on merchants. That part of your strategy was very sound. Looking blindly thousands of miles away from your present position for "safety" was the unsound part of your strategy. Hang out in your assigned area.

Choose who to engage, who to avoid. When your objective is fulfilled, base will not radio you with a new assignment, you must radio them to receive a new one. Do that until you do, and then do what you're told. That way you get the renown points for fulfilling missions. Go off on your own jag and you give up a lot.

It's also a good thing if you can find a way to surface for a minute and send off a contact report for a few free points. You might even be able to do that from 40' or so, just surfaced enough to get the radio antenna out of the water.

I wouldn't feel too bad about two hits out of five shots. You were using the least accurate way to obtain target speed and it was lucky you got that many. I was amazed how haphazardly the setup was done and how well it still worked. I never imagined that could actually work.

Mostly I hold the defects in your technique against Ubi, who consciously chose that the vast majority of people who try Silent Hunter will give up in frustration, totally unable to do anything at all with their boat except die, time after time. They owe it to their players to give them enough knowledge to intelligently operate their submarine and they failed miserably. After doing all they could to sabotage the profitability and fun of the game, they make pontifical statements about "nobody cares about the submarine simulations any more. Might as well quit making them."

You know, if you try hard enough to fail, you will probably fail. They did, with a game which had enough quality in it to be a slam bang success. Kudos to Ubi, for they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!