I'm STILL being surprised on the surface...

[Troutish]

You certainly cant sit below and expect your crew to spot surface stuff - yes - fog conditions seem to matter and you may be right about the hydrophone. I was following a sound contact last night and going after it on the surface. i got suspicious that my crew had not seen the contact, so i went on deck and CLEARLY visible 2000 meters BEHIND me, close to my wake! I might have rammed the damn thing. This was on 128 TC. maybe becuase a hydrophone identified contact is considerd by the game to be "IDed" already, so why tell the captain when you eventually get a visual on it?

I also noticed once that when i saved the game right after spotting a ship myself at a great distance, when I exited and then reloaded the game, the crew saw it.

its terrible bug especially for people who feel like there are not enought targets in the game (i dont mind long searches myself, but I DO need my watch crew to be alert!)

Originally Posted by Dogfish40

Hi Troutish
I hear you. I have seen smoke on the horizon 90% of the time before my watch crew spots it. We must remember that the watch crew are tied down to very specific parameters. I think most of these are hard to get at, or we would see a lot of "Watch Crew" mods out there. When the crew miss your warships, is it 'Clear' weather? Or, is there Med fog? (I get a lot of Medium fog). It seems the watch crew don't see so well in any fog like conditions.
When I sail around Heligoland, there are something like four or five DD's hanging around that island. There's a good place to test how your watch crew are going to perform. Sometimes my crew calls'em out, but I can always see them first. I've also felt that there might be a relationship between the watch crew not calling out contacts, and the hydrophone (even if it's set for no contacts while surfaced).
One thing that they are really good at in my game is aircraft. They do very well at aircraft spotting, so at least that's something, and since TDW did some very good work on fixing both the soundman and the watch crew, the latter does work.
Maybe we can get this tweaked in a bit better or at least find out why the crew is still slow at spotting, (the enemy).
D40

[raymond6751]

The high TC is useful in the open waters and dangerous close to land or enemy frequent tracks. You, as captain, have to choose when and how to use the tools you have.

The concept of TC is to avoid boredom while you get into the "hot" zones where the enemy will be. Once there it is only reasonable to expect YOU to work with caution.

Even real-life equipment and men have glitches and miss things.

Do the role-play thing and enjoy the results.