FUEL LIMITED OR UNLIMITED?

[Crannogman]

You may find a useful alternative to crash diving is to cruise with decks awash. You can find other threads on how to do this; basically, it involves changing your boat's "radar depth" to about 9 meters. At this depth, you can run on diesels and go to the bridge, but most of the hull is below the surface; your speed is limited to submerged speeds (maxing out near 12 knots), but you can fully submerge in half the time and present a much smaller profile for enemies to spot. "Decks awash" is probably the best way to travel long distances during daylight

[Havan_IronOak]

Originally Posted by Crannogman

You may find a useful alternative to crash diving is to cruise with decks awash. "Decks awash" is probably the best way to travel long distances during daylight

...

And it makes your sig quote about the USS Monitor so much more relevant, no?

[Sailor Steve]

Making an attack in that condition might be a good idea, but cruising? Not only would that slow you down, but would increase fuel consumption dramatically.

The best discussion we've had on the subject can be found here.

[Crannogman]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Making an attack in that condition might be a good idea, but cruising? Not only would that slow you down, but would increase fuel consumption dramatically.

The best discussion we've had on the subject can be found here.

That discussion is far from definitive; the only testing concluded that Decks Awash's reuction in silhouette does in fact seem to reduce detection in-game. This makes sense, since game spotting is based upon surface area above water. Also, speed is reduced, although not so much to keep you from maintaining your most efficient diesel speed, ~11kts.

However, nobody did any efficiency testing. In my experience (but without empiric testing, Decks Awash does not drain fuel tanks as fast as running the same speed fully submerged drains batteries, nor does it use as much diesel as running full or flank on the surface. A test would not be hard to design...

[Havan_IronOak]

I've been dealing with planes a lot lately while getting to the South China Sea and in cruising that area. I've always caught approaching planes on my radar in plenty of time to submerge from normal surface cruising depth to periscope depth in plenty of time to avoid detection without any crash diving. I generally plot the course of the planes when first detected and try to avoid diving if the plane's closest approach point puts me outside 5500 Meters. If it's gonna be a near thing that I think is questionable, I go to decks awash and then wait to make the final call a bit later.

Planes tend to stay on course so 7 minutes from the time I've hit periscope depth I'm surfacing and continuing on. Ramping up acceleration a step at a time back to 256 or so. It then drops back down to 8 when the next plane is spotted. It's mostly an annoyance that I wish I could leave standing orders for. (an automated mode maybe in SH6)


I'm running the following mods
Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
[C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Silent Hunters wolves of the pacific\MODS]

01 Improved Stock Environment_v3
02 ISE Realistic Colors
03 Dark Recognitionmanual
04 MaxOptics IV for SH4 1.5
05 OM_SH3_Command_Keys
08 3000 Meter Bearing Tool (1920x)
09 Sobers Better Sand II
10 Captain Midnights CBS News
12 BBC World
merchant skinpack release

[ColonelSandersLite]

Originally Posted by Havan_IronOak

I generally plot the course of the planes when first detected and try to avoid diving if the plane's closest approach point puts me outside 5500 Meters.

Oh, worth mentioning. This doesn't work if you're playing without map contacts on. In my experience, the best option is:

1: Get Report "Radar Contact Bearing XXX"
2: Immediately order a crash dive
3: Go straight the surface radar screen and check around the reported bearing.
4: If it was a ship, cancel dive and proceed normally. Otherwise, continue evasive action.


I 100% agree that I wish you could just have a standing order to deal with aircraft as well. At least for situations where the aircraft is the only contact. It makes sense to me that a player might want to do something else if also chasing a convoy or something. It's just one of the things in the game that gets really friggin tedious. Sometimes I'm even tempted to go through the campaign files and just remove all the airbases, but that would have unwanted secondary effects so I never actually have.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend running DA for prolonged periods either. It just eats gas and kills your speed.

I just crash dive. I don't find it impacts the length of the patrol all that much. It may take a couple of days off of your maximum loiter time, but I don't find that to be a big issue. Especially since I almost always run out of torpedoes well before I run out of fuel. In my experience, there is a tradeoff between a crash dive and a regular dive. In a crash dive, I find that it's very rare for an aircraft to spot me before I get under water. With a regular dive, I have had enemy aircraft spot me before I submerge and attempt to bomb where I was plenty of times. Further, when you have been spotted, air patrols in the area will ramp up substantially, meaning you will have to dive more often. In the balance of things, I feel that crash diving actually tends to use less fuel overall than regular diving. SJ-I Radar might change this, but I tend to just play it safe where aircraft are involved.

Also, while I wouldn't generally recommend just running submerged during the day, I have been known to do so. Specifically in the event where I'm getting buzzed by aircraft frequently enough that it's becoming a real annoyance. Though I fully admit that in this case I'm purely trading fuel for gameplay convenience. There is, to my mind, an exception though. Specifically, this would be at the start of the war if you don't have air search radar. In this case, I don't find that you can reliably spot an aircraft and submerge before it has a chance to make at least one pass on your sub.

@Crannogman
Yeah, you can maintain 11 knots DA, but only at a much higher engine RPM, which kills fuel efficiency. Testing in game isn't difficult at all, the game has a maximum range at current speed button built right in.

[Rockin Robbins]

Totally agree. Cruising at best fuel economy is so you can crash dive, and can do an ahead emergency pursuit for several hours without worrying about fuel consumption. You're in effect putting fuel in the bank during maximum efficiency cruising to be spent liberally on the short hunts that the cruise develops.

And what you say about early in the war is correct for the game but incorrect about reality. Standard orders on the best boats were to spot the plane and consult the captain, who would give orders to dive if necessary. They would have plenty of time to watch the plane and assess whether it was necessary to dive, in spite of the fact that they didn't have radar. Fluckey spends a lot of time discussing that in "Thunder Below."

In the game your best response is to dive to periscope depth if you don't have radar. The LAST thing you want to do is man the AA gun. It's more effective to point your finger at the plane and yell "Bang! Bang!" But you better do that as you're headed down the ladder and the sub is crash diving....

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Crannogman

You may find a useful alternative to crash diving is to cruise with decks awash. You can find other threads on how to do this; basically, it involves changing your boat's "radar depth" to about 9 meters. At this depth, you can run on diesels and go to the bridge, but most of the hull is below the surface; your speed is limited to submerged speeds (maxing out near 12 knots), but you can fully submerge in half the time and present a much smaller profile for enemies to spot. "Decks awash" is probably the best way to travel long distances during daylight

Cruising decks awash at ahead emergency gives you a speed of 10 knots, may vary with mods. At that speed you do not charge batteries at all as all power is pushing the boat. Cruising surfaced at 11 knots gives you maximum fuel economy. Makes no sense to use decks awash for normal cruising unless you're working for the Japanese.

With radar there is no scenario where you can't have several minutes to hit the periscope depth button and get to periscope depth without touching the throttle several minutes before the plane could possibly see you. As a matter of fact, there is no reason ever to leave the nav map while cruising in an airplane infested area, no reason ever to touch the throttle, no reason to go under 8x time compression the entire time it is so simple to deal with air gnats.

I guess I know what my next video tutorial is going to be on. But decks awash is not an appropriate tool for dealing with airplanes. It's using a shotgun to swat a mosquito. Planes are not a danger factor in Silent Hunter 4.