Where to start ?

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Lancezh

Some questions that arised:

played campaign on Normal 1941, Preselected Submarine.

- I couldnt find an option to switch from Imperial to Metric, is there one ? (The mod has one i think).

That is found in your options menu. Pause the game and it comes up. Alternately, when you start the game you can go to the options screen before you load up your game save. Life is much easier in Imperial, by the way.

Originally Posted by Lancezh

- The Detection Circles around Contacts when in navigation mode, are they reliable ?

Yeah, they're TOO reliable. They shouldn't even be there. TMO deep sixes them. Pay close attention to that wedge behind where they can't detect you at all because of their own propeller sounds.

Originally Posted by Lancezh

- Whats the difference between 3 50 Deckgun and a 4 50 Deckgun ? I can't make sense of the number ?

Here's where you have to relearn the meanings of some well-understood words. We think of caliber meaning the diameter of a projectile. Forget that, this is the US Navy and things will mean what WE want! Understood?

The first number is the diameter of the projectile in inches, 3 inches for the 3 50 and 4 inches for the 4 50. So right away you can see that you want the 4 50.

So what's the 50 number? Well that's the caliber, and in US Navy gunnery speak, the caliber is the ratio between the projectile diameter and the length of the barrel. 50 caliber means the barrel length is 50 times the projectile diameter, so the barrel on the 3 50 is 150", 12' 6" long and the 4 50 barrel is 200", 16' 8" long. You may convert all that to metric at your leisure!

Originally Posted by Lancezh

- I remember when playing the TMO mod for a short time yesterday i burned through my diesel very fast, now in the campaign i have unlimited fuel obviously, however, whats the most cost efficient method to travel ? Surfaced 2/3 i recon or standard ?

With a fleet boat, your best fuel economy is at 9.5 knots (an imperial measurement by the way....) Depending on the mod, that will be at different throttle settings. At that speed with TMO there is no limit to where you can go with no problems at all with running out of fuel. This assumes use of any throttle setting you choose when in pursuit or when evading.

It also assumes that you stay on the surface every single second your life doesn't depend on being submerged. This keeps batteries fully charged as much of the time as possible. If you are running at 9½ knots while charging batteries, those diesels are running wide freakin' open and burning as much fuel as possible to get those batteries back to snuff. You don't want that happening.

Originally Posted by Lancezh

- When spotted by an aircraft does it make sense to change the bearing afterwards or does the AI not care about that ? And i thought about staying surfaced after shooting the plane down so i can make some distance before diving, was that a correct thought ?

Don't be spotted by aircraft. That's the long and short answer. Why? Well, let's talk about the stupidity of pitting submarine against aircraft.

First, the aircraft will get on the radio with its aircraft buddies right away. That will bring more of the lousy things for a 24 hour period or so, looking for you. They'll cover a fairly large area of the ocean. It won't matter too much whether you change course or not. What? You gonna outrun a plane?

Second, the very idea of shooting at a plane is preposterous. Here you have a cheap, mass produced plane containing one easily replaceable fly-idiot (or two sometimes) dropping bombs and shooting machine guns at you. If they hit your pressure hull once, it's over and you lost.

On the other hand, your expensive, slow to produce people tube is full of 80 highly trained and motivated, difficult to replace people, (aside from you, you're easily replaced since you're dumb enough to fight this plane), One hit on your very slow, very large target self and all that is dead. However you have to hit this tiny, rapid moving, cheap, easy to replace plane lots of times to have any chance of downing him. If you DO succeed in downing him, several dozen of his cheap friends are on the way to make your day exciting.

The odds are in the plane's favor. The downside is devastating to our war effort. If you down the plane he won't even be missed and it will make no contribution to winning the war. Heads you lose, tails they win. It's a battle you don't wanna fight.

Don't be seen by aircraft. Don't fight aircraft. Use the AA guns for drying laundry. That's what they were designed for.