New Player - not impressed so far....

[soopaman2]

1. Yeah, time compression stopping for friendlys is annoying, but when you run into one of your own because of time compression you will see why it was implemented as it was. Subs are fragile, why do ya think destroyers rammed!

2. As said above, east coast of Britain.. The garbage weather makes using your deckguns a pain, I understand. I am a deckgun kinda guy myself. As for the renown, try raiding english ports. As long as you stay away from Scapa and Dover (early war) you will not find much resistance. I went into one of the ports on the east coast and sunk a c3 and a t2 tanker sitting in moorings. Easy money, just have to have some cojones. Just be careful of Scapa and Dover, they are naval bases.

Real men raid Scapa, but I am a wimpy boy, so I got for Portsmouth instead.

3. Get yourself SH3 commmander. and start jan of 1940, you can roll with an IXb if you pick the proper flotilla. Sh3 commander is an essential for SH3 IMHO

4.Crew fatigue. This is a simulator. once again SH3 commander, you can turn it off so you can concentrate on learning the other aspects, also search around here there is ways to tweak your files to turn off fatigue that the kind folks around here figured out.


This is a sim. Real sub life was periods of tedium and boredome, followed by moments of excitment, fear and apprehension. You will die...alot.

Das Boot put it best, 40000 men set out, 30000 never made it back. Your odds are not good, and it is well represented here.

Good luck, andstick with it. it does get easier.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

1. Yeah, time compression stopping for friendlys is annoying, but when you run into one of your own because of time compression you will see why it was implemented as it was. Subs are fragile, why do ya think destroyers rammed!

There's also Commander's "start at sea" option. You lose all the purty eye candy of sailing all the way in and out of the pens but if getting alerted to tons of friendly traffic is a real pain you can avoid a lot of it that way.

But watch out for those little patrol boats that run around just outside the harbor entrance, they are fast and I'm pretty sure I hit one or close to it coming up to Wili in too high a TC once. I assumed because it was friendly it wouldn't be a problem but I can't imagine what else caused the sudden drop in my hull integrity between there and the pens.

[Nerazzurri]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

1. Yeah, time compression stopping for friendlys is annoying, but when you run into one of your own because of time compression you will see why it was implemented as it was.

Slight hijack.............

What do people think is a 'safe' maximum tc in operational areas? If I remember correctly, if set too high you can get 'jumped' by aircraft or even enemy ships.

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by Nerazzurri

Slight hijack.............

What do people think is a 'safe' maximum tc in operational areas? If I remember correctly, if set too high you can get 'jumped' by aircraft or even enemy ships.

The general rule of thumb is don't exceed 128 TC, else you'll have little to no time to react to enemy planes.

[Nerazzurri]

Originally Posted by Fish In The Water

The general rule of thumb is don't exceed 128 TC, else you'll have little to no time to react to enemy planes.

Roger that.

Hijack over

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Nerazzurri

Roger that.

Hijack over

Not quite. Too high TC will keep you from encounters, not make them worse. Part of the problem is what it drops too, which is 8x. You don't drop to real time, and they're shooting at you before you know what happened. I use SH3 Commander to make sure that 'Enemy Detected' is set for 1.

[Nerazzurri]

OK mate, that's a change I'll need to remember next time I'm in port.

Originally Posted by Fish In The Water

The general rule of thumb is don't exceed 128 TC, else you'll have little to no time to react to enemy planes.

Safe maximum TC is x256, you gonna put the guy into deep depression with lower than this

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by PapaKilo

Safe maximum TC is x256, you gonna put the guy into deep depression with lower than this

Not so safe for me. I've been turned into Swiss cheese @256 before I even had a chance to touch the keyboard.

Originally Posted by Fish In The Water

Not so safe for me. I've been turned into Swiss cheese @256 before I even had a chance to touch the keyboard.

This is sad. How did it happened ?

I never had incidents if TC < 256

At that time when thera was no SH3 Cmdr yet and I had no idea that high TC is dangerous. I used to patrol at 512 or 1024 that was max so yeah I sometimes ended my carrer because my crew spotted aircraft almost above our boat

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by PapaKilo

This is sad. How did it happened ?

Just the usual, it was nothing special. One second they're telling me 'aircraft spotted' and the next I'm full of holes. Like Steve said, they're shooting at you before you know what's happening.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by PapaKilo

This is sad. How did it happened ?

I never had incidents if TC < 256

At that time when thera was no SH3 Cmdr yet and I had no idea that high TC is dangerous. I used to patrol at 512 or 1024 that was max so yeah I sometimes ended my carrer because my crew spotted aircraft almost above our boat

The 128 rule is about events and aircraft spawning (see Steves post above).

Whilst developing and testing the game engine over a number of years (and I'm talking about a few dozen testers and thousands of man hours) it was found that aircraft in particular would spawn only on occasion if at all.

As for reaction time, x128 would make it impossible for the player to react quick enough, hence the game engine by default drops to x8 which IMHO is still unrealistic.

Better to use Commander and manually set the tc to x1

[Herr-Berbunch]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

Just be careful of Scapa and Dover, they are naval bases.

One of my greatest successes was in Dover went in just before the war started proper (sorry Poland) I sailed in and waited for the war, then submerged fired at (I think) a troop ship and a med. cargo - one from the stern, one from the bow, a DD was sat tied up by the entrance also received my attention, but could only return deckgun fire, and then the best thing happened, a corvette (again, I think, it was a long time ago) came steaming in and DC'd me, but in the very shallow water merely sunk himself. Escaped all the RN in the channel and came home for tea and medals.

I think I was a marked man after that as I never again had that much luck, or fun.