New player with a few questions

[Rawkus]

First off, hi all. Just started playing SH4 and it's my first time playing a subsim, really enjoying it although there are a few points that I'm yet to get to grasp with and are niggling and frustrating me.

1] Finding contacts at a given location.
When you're told to go to a location then told sink anything that moves, what is the best way to find a target? I read somewhtere people circle the area at about 50nm using the hydrophone every hour. This seems to take alot of real time and is proving very unfruitful. Am I just looking in the wrong locations, should I be looking near port or looking for shipping routes in the area? Should I be moving any particular routes or should I pick a spot and wait it out? Is it right that my sonar guy will miss just about everything unless it's on top of us, is there a way to help him out or should I be checking more manually?

I seem to be spending several hours (realtime) trying to find some targets. If/When I finally do they're 20nm moving away, at what point is it reasonable to try and chase them, hunt them out going to surface and flank to catch them, the few times I've tried this I've ended up losing them.

2] Aircraft
It seems I keep getting caught out by aircraft, I spot them on my radar and I choose to go to periscope depth but even at max radar range I have barely started descending when they're on top of me, slight exaggeration, most of the time I get away with it but it seems to be occurring more frequently, is there a way to descend more quickly, should crash dive speed up the process, is it affected by traveling speed. This become more of a problem after the first time it happens because then the entire Jap airforce wants to come hunt me after I've been spotted. This takes me onto my next point...

3] Traveling to and from port to missions
Often traveling to a mission point it's fairly uneventful, a couple of contacts nice easy going. However returning from missions can be a royal pain. I suppose it's realistic that when you've sunk a few thou' tons of ship they'll be on the look out for you, how can you best avoid the mad hunting to get back to port? People must be able to take on more than one group of target before having to turn tail and run from the aircraft. Should I keep a good depth at day only surfacing a night, should I just move to a new spot?


Thanks for any answers you have to any of these, I just can't seem to figure them out.

P.s Is there a short cut to bring up the watch? I'm using TMO and find it frustrating to have to switch menus to bring the watch up to time 3mins to get speed etc?

[Inner Sound]

X brings up and loses the watch.

Some places air patrols are so bad I just submerge for the day.

Somebody worked out mathematically you get most contacts patrolling at standard speeed.

I find it productive to bring up the watch, then get up to 1000x or 1500x, and if the watch stutters hit the backspace and then H to man the sonar myself. Often as not there's something out there.

Happy sinkings to you !

[Inner Sound]

Oh, and yes, surface and manouver to a good ambush position. If you cant catch it at flank then you've missed a juicy military target but they're pretty rare, merchantmen are usually around 10 knots.

[CaptJodan]

Originally Posted by Rawkus

1] Finding contacts at a given location.
When you're told to go to a location then told sink anything that moves, what is the best way to find a target? I read somewhtere people circle the area at about 50nm using the hydrophone every hour. This seems to take alot of real time and is proving very unfruitful. Am I just looking in the wrong locations, should I be looking near port or looking for shipping routes in the area? Should I be moving any particular routes or should I pick a spot and wait it out? Is it right that my sonar guy will miss just about everything unless it's on top of us, is there a way to help him out or should I be checking more manually?

I'll admit, this may be something of a cheat, but I don't worry much about where they send me. I put in the time required to patrol that area by sitting in the area, waiting, and then moving on. I've never found ComSubPac very intelligent when it comes to my orders, either in the vanilla version or in RFB (which is what I use) versions.

Once finished with the time I have to spend in an area, I move off to more juicy areas, like sitting just outside ports. Rabaul and Tokyo bay are two favorite hangouts. You get a lot of aircraft troubles, but if you dive during the day and keep your eyes pealed at night, you can usually avoid them. For me it's all about sitting and waiting for the convoys to come to me. I'm a green Captain, concerned about the environment, and so am as economically fuel efficient as possible.

Should I keep a good depth at day only surfacing a night, should I just move to a new spot?

Not played TMO myself, but either of these options is what I'd consider the best plan. I generally submerge during the day and pop up at night for recharge, and if I get frustrated that the aircraft just won't let go, I'll clear out and find some other place to hunt. But I'm sure others will have better suggestions than that.

[Col. Caldwell]

If you have map contact updates enabled, you can get a general idea of where is the most frequently traveled routes. Luzon Strait is another good spot to find targets.

[jerm138]

Usually if something can only be heard on sonar I'll let it go if all 3 of these conditions are met:

-Long Range
-Moving Away
-Moving fast

If any one of those 3 conditions are not met, the hunt is on! If they're closing, I use the Hydrophone Interception technique (link below). If they're moving away, I go ahead full on the surface to try to close the distance, keeping an eye on the sonar bearing to figure out which way they are headed. Look at the map for bottlenecks or ports they may be headed toward, then head that direction to try to intercept them there.

Also, you're not heading straight in the direction of the contact are you? That's an easy mistake to make, and it almost always puts you on their tail, which is the opposite of "ambush." The trick is to make calculations to get ahead of them so that they cross your bow without knowing you're waiting for them there.

There are many good tutorials on here for how to do this. Here are a few of my favorites:

Hydrophone Interception - This is for when you can hear them, but can't see them. It works best if they're closing instead of moving away because you have to sit in the same spot for a while. The tutorial takes it to the extreme and even fires torpedoes without looking at the target. I just use the concept to help me intercept a sonar contact, then use other techniques to fine-tune my position for the kill. This technique is very helpful and worth committing to memory.

Convoy Interception - Not just for convoys... I use this technique nearly every time I attack. It works especially well with visual contacts, and can even help you decide if it's worth chasing a target from periscope depth, or if you need to surface to get far enough ahead then dive for a proper ambush. Commit this one to memory. Practice it over and over until you can do it instinctively.

- I haven't used this technique because I don't have radar yet, but I watched the tutorial, and it's done very well.

SHIV Guide - This thread has a lot of really good general info. Read through it every now and then to keep proficient.


I have had a lot more success in the shipping routes (I asked the same question about a week ago.) The Luzon strait is pretty fruitful (playing last night I got 2 merchants within 24-hours in-game time). I got one in the East China Sea too... didn't take long after I got there.

Happy hunting!

[Sailor Steve]

Can't add much to what's been said, but

WELCOME ABOARD!

[Rawkus]

Wow, thanks for all the great replies guys, think I'll try hunting at the ports now too, thanks CaptJodan.

I'll look out for the stutters Inner Sound, think I've seen them but didn't know that's what it meant. Pro tip

Jerm138, great list of links will have a read through them, not seen most of them.

Time to go back with renewed vigor

[Zero Enz]

Watch out for Mines and Subnets since you're playing TMO, I was pretty new to SH IV when I first put on TMO, was going ahead standard at periscope towards a port and suddenly all hell broke loose as my bow was sticking 15 feet in the air and was flooding heavily If you play with the 3rd person camera available you can search ahead if you think there's a net, they extend pretty far but have a decent opening in them. As for mines, I still have yet to befriend one.

[latearrival]

Originally Posted by Rawkus

2] Aircraft
It seems I keep getting caught out by aircraft, I spot them on my radar and I choose to go to periscope depth but even at max radar range I have barely started descending when they're on top of me, slight exaggeration, most of the time I get away with it but it seems to be occurring more frequently, is there a way to descend more quickly, should crash dive speed up the process, is it affected by traveling speed. This become more of a problem after the first time it happens because then the entire Jap airforce wants to come hunt me after I've been spotted. This takes me onto my next point...

Given I've only been playing SHIV (stock) for a few days, I hardly feel equipped to help others out, but I'll have a go anyway!

When I'm in an area that's full of aircraft I run at decks awash by day (a depth of 8m in the Porpoise). When you're at decks awash you run a lot slower than you would at the surface but you can submerge in seconds (rather than the one minute something it takes when you're fully surfaced). In the stock game I find that this makes all the difference - we're submerged before any bombs are dropped on us. At night, I just run on the surface as there doesn't seem to be any air patrols by night.

I hope this is good advice - it seems to work for me.

Originally Posted by Rawkus

1] Finding contacts at a given location.

2] Aircraft

3] Traveling to and from port to missions

P.s Is there a short cut to bring up the watch? I'm using TMO and find it frustrating to have to switch menus to bring the watch up to time 3mins to get speed etc?

1 - TC is your friend so let them come to you, if you need to stay in a smaller area then sit still and just wait.

in most cases running around looking is why you keep finding yourself in the wrong position all the time. remember when you were a kid, your mom said if you cant find me then stay in one spot so i can find you? the same priciple applies in the game.

if its a big enough area then i will set up a standard "z" type grid pattern to cover the area without going too far away from any one spot. the "z" pattern works better then just following the box outline because doing that means your spending too much time on one side of the box and it reduces your detection range by a lot.

2 - use crash dive "c" key, its twice as fast as "pd" dive because at decks awash the sub starts to level out and sinks slowly untill it reaches PD. in crash dive it wont start leveling out untill fully submerged, cutting dive times in half.

3 - no matter what mod you use the game has a nasty habbit of teasing you like that as soon as you run out of torpedos its very common to run accross a convoy or juicy task force just to frustrate you.

if your presence is known then stay deep during the day then pop up at night and get out of the area quickly, once they lose contact with you it will be the same as on your way to the area.

the mods you use can make a big difference and tmo is designed to be challenging

4 - the "x" key brings up and hides the stopwatch

[Rawkus]

Thanks Webster for such a comprehensive set of answers, will give them all a go. Glad to hear that crash diving definitely speeds up the process.

Thanks latearrival, never heard or tried running at decks awash, sounds like a sensible idea, how I'll do it from now on.