Hunting methods

[Hooston]

I'm a u-tourist. i try to visit as many historical battles as possible and see how well they have been captured. My latest was May 1941 in the Western Approaches. I saw a few Swordfish and BdU kept telling me about fast moving friendly and enemy warships but the only ships I found were some neutral US tankers! Maybe I should have cheated a bit harder.
Brief historical summary below; but be aware that all sweeping generalisations are complete rubbish.

Historically in 1941-43 the BdU would set up patrol lines across known convoy routes (as given away by decrypts) which would sweep very slowly across the Atlantic. In theory the first boat to find a convoy would shadow it until the rest joined for a pack attack. In practice the radio traffic involved allowed the allies to dodge these lines on many occasions. The BdU were baffled about how boats operating independently did better than those in patrol lines.
Eventually with more boats in 1943 the patrol lines got so big that it was almost impossible to dodge them. This prompted the allies to get their act together in May 1943 and they then quite happily attracted attacks so they could sink more boats.
Finally in 1944-1945 most boats operated independently in coastal waters using schnorkels and homing torpedoes. They did better but were so slow they were reduced to ambush tactics and were so outnumbered that getting detected was a death sentence.

[stork100]

I'm a masochist when it comes to patrolling, in so far as I try to introduce as many factors to prevent me scoring an unrealistic tonnage. Whatever megamod I play I significantly reduce the spawn probability of convoys (30% seems a good number for me at the moment). The Realistic Contacts mod prevents any easy intercepts. I adhere to the 'Just Follow Orders' mod guidelines for everything therein, and use the grid system of patrolling based on pre-conceived ideas such as:

For a given U-boat/Flotilla at a certain date I'll approximate a list of viable grid square locations for patrolling based on historical plausibility. Then use a random number generator to select an overall grid e.g. AL. Another random decision to select a further sub-grid e.g. AL6, and again e.g. AL63. With that established I'll go and patrol AL63 for the prescribed 24hrs or so and then 'radio' BDU for new orders. That will involve the random number generator again telling me to go to any location within AL6. My self prescribed rules dictate that I continue in this fashion for a number of times, and if a contact is not engaged within a set number, than I am ordered to a new adjacent location e.g. AL5.

My understanding is that the U-boats were generally micromanaged by BDU in a similar way and this system tries to replicate that to an extent. If you get luckily assigned to a hot spot for traffic well happy days. Otherwise a lot of boats went out there to their assignments and found nothing. It gives a sense of following orders which sadly has always been a limitation of SH3.

[Hooston]

Some good ideas stork100.
I'm afraid the campaign game for SH3 is a bit of an afterthought and is spoilt by the broken fatigue system and the likelyhood of "insta-death" if you run too high time compression. A historically correct contact frequency (i.e. often nothing in an entire patrol) is too boring for me.

Like many on this forum I used to play European Airwar many years ago and used Ctrl-N to skip to the next excitement. Sometimes this landed you in a world of s**t, which had a good historical feel. I think something similar could be done by modifying SH3 Commander - exit game and restart at the next encounter. This would be a lot of work as you would have to duplicate the entire campaign model at some level of realism.

I think I'm really waiting for someone to do a GWX with "u-boat".

[Shadowblade]

I prefer to have something to do so I patrol in areas with high naval traffic to have some action.
Having default contacts (for GWX). I rely on my hydrophones for to find more targets.

[Captain Drastic]

I basically use GWX with a 20k environment and have no real issues with the frequency of contacting ships or convoys. If I have not had much luck going to and patrolling my assigned grid, then I consult the flotilla.cfg file for that month and choose another grid either by closest grid to my location or random choice. It pays to submerge for several hours per day in transit to and from grids. I have modified the fatigue system to allow me to rotate crew on a semi-weekly basis (in addition to situational conditions) which makes most of the crew problematic at functioning around the length of time that particular type of boat spent on patrol historically. Also, I edited out that huge annoying red exclamation point which I don't need. I have already provided a copy of my fatigue files in an earlier post . After conducting many patrols, I find I run short on both torps and supplies (fatigue) without having to stress about how long it took or about managing crew. By the way, I love the Just Follow Orders Mod. I have integrated it into the game automatically mostly via SH3 Commander. Also, I have looked at the Onealex megamod and it seems similar except for the fatigue system, so the method of finding ships should not be that different.