BEST BATTLE EVER!!

[woodenboat]

Maserati, that's an AWESOME story! I'm going to have to try the German perspective soon. When Stukas have your back, you're in pretty good shape.

Majestik, I fully understand about Kentucky Windage in real life. It never dawned on me that it would apply to this sim as well. I won't be missing any more enemies in that situation.

Also, I didn't know that the Agano class didn't have any anti-sub capability. I was going on the fact that it was pinging the heck out of me just like the destroyers do. Live and learn.

[Majestik 909]

February 28, 1940 - 0117 hours - 50 miles S/E of the Orkneys - HN-12 comprised of 20 ships in 3 colums, with destroyer escorts at each corner, making 7-1/2 knots. The lead destroyers are zig-zagging and the trailing destroyers are on a steady course. An 'L' class submarine (Thistle) is sailing between the rear escorts.

Kretchsmer manuvered surfaced to place the dark horizon at his back. Kretchsmers submerges and attacks the rear portside destroyer, HMS Daring, from 800 meters. The single torpedo #E-2749 strikes HMS Daring port side aft with a tremendous explosion. An immediate secondary explosion breaks the escort in two. Both sections capsize. Forward sections sinks with half hour, rear section sinks, leaving the tip of the stern floating like a bobber.

The convoy maintains its course and Kretchsmer is attacked by one escort that drops 5 depth charges, all of which miss U-23...

[woodenboat]

Well.... that's a target rich environment for sure. Is the L-class sub any real threat?

Correct me if I'm wrong... but didn't Kretchsmer survive the war to open a chain of delicatessens? He was really famous for his ham, I think but, since the Nazis didn't succeed in wiping out the world's Jewish population, Kretchsmer also introduced a line of Kosher meats. Right?

Ok, I'm kidding.

I'm pretty disgusted right now. Factoring in Kentucky Windage, I'm still missing slow ships at virtually point blank range. I think it's probably time for me to learn how to do manual targeting. I'm still using the automatic settings. I am either failing to take SOMETHING into consideration OR there is a bug in my system. Right at the moment, I am so mad that I need to walk away from the sim and do something else for a while. I did a save right before I took on a huge convoy. I went deep, came up between several rows of merchants, had beautiful firing position, missed everything I shot at. So, I ran it again and missed everything AGAIN! Finally, the third time, I not only missed everything in sight, but the destroyers killed me. I went deep and silent, dropped decoys, changed course and was doing fine. I was watching my sonar blips on the map and suddenly....... I just died. It was a pattern of tin cans dropped from a destroyer that was right above me. One second it was all clear and then, the very next second, there he was and I was immediately dead.

Oh well, that's enough for today. I'll come back and play again tomorrow but right now I need to think about something else. I need to go play my guitar. That is so much more productive.

[Sniper297]

Couple items;

1. If you note the small half circle of the escort's active sonar and can maneuver to stay outside that arc, it's not usually necessary to dive below the layer every time.

2. If you do dive below the layer, on the way back up switch to external view and check that the outer doors on all tubes are open. Or hit the Q key and check the message box to see if it says "opening tube one" or "closing tube one". If it says closing, obviously hit the Q key again to make it say opening before shifting to the next tube.

Reason I stress that is because the game is set to automatically open the outer doors if they're not already open. Why that's a problem - when sitting in the tube, there is a spindle sticking down into the gyroscope on the torpedo which sets the gyro angle according to the data coming from the TDC. As soon as you hit the firing button that spindle retracts, so the gyro angle is set and stays at that setting until the fish leaves the tube.

The programmers got this wrong in the game, if the outer doors are shut and you hit the fire button, the gyro is set, there's a few seconds delay while the outer door opens automatically, then the fish is fired WITH THE GYRO SETTING THAT WAS VALID 3 or 4 SECONDS AGO.

This almost ALWAYS results in a miss, so I used Silent 3ditor to edit all the subs' SIM files to change auto_open = True to auto_open = False. There's no point in having the auto open feature if it means the tube will fire with outdated data, so I turned it off in my game. Can't upload a mod for that since many of the supermods edit the same files, but once you learn Silent 3ditor it's easy enough to do it yourself.

Before that, one thing you can do is simple text editing in notepad.

Open windows explorer, browse to \Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Submarine\NSS_Gato

Find the file named NSS_Gato.cfg, right click and select OPEN WITH and choose NOTEPAD.

Find the line that says;

TorpLaunchMaxDepth=30;meters

Change that to;

TorpLaunchMaxDepth=99;meters

Save, exit, now you can dive to 326 feet before you're too deep to launch. If that's not enough make it 150 meters or whatever you want, the idea is to open ALL tubes when you first come in contact, and not have them automatically closing when you go deep. Do the same for any sub class you drive in game.

[woodenboat]

Ok, I'm back. There are some good suggestions here. Thanks guys.

Sniper, I've been real conscientious about opening my torpedo doors before I shoot but you are correct in that, once I fire, several seconds pass before I hear the first officer (the one that sounds like Worf) says, "Torpedo in the water!" It's at times like these when my butt gets really chapped. Like, I'll turn on the stop watch to get an idea of when I will hear the explosion but the watch won't have the red indicator. I've already come to understand that, when my stop watch has no red line, it's going to be a miss. GREAT! Then I will watch the destroyer merrily circle around to pound my tail and next, after I'm trying to recover from all the damage and somehow keep the boat afloat, Worf will come back and say, "Torpedo Missed, Sir!"

No REALLY? Jeez, tell me something that I didn't already know!

I went into the files just like you said but when I try to save the change it gives me a message that says "Access denied."

[Sniper297]

Can't help with that one, I'm still chugging along with Windows XP, the last version Microsoft made before they decided that the home user was too stupid to have any control over his own computer. So the following is based on what I've read about it, I have no personal experience with UAC.

If you intend to modify games on your computer, first thing is to disable UAC;

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

Second thing is from Vista on the C:\Program Files folder was changed to C:\Program Files (X86) and that's the one folder that Windows Vista/7/8/etc. guards like a junkyard dog. Most gamers recommend NOT installing any game you intend to modify in the C:\Program Files (X86) folder, unfortunately all the idiot programmers who make the installation software make that one the default folder to install everything in. So at some point during the install you should see a window that allows you to browse, instead of just bypassing that and letting it automatically install in the default C:\Program Files (X86) folder you need to redirect it - C:\Games or just C:\ or anyplace else.

When you see that access denied BS you don't have control over your own computer, so the first thing you need to learn is how to take control.

[Armistead]

too many too remember, wait until you run into a large TF, but one fav I remember in Formosa, one large convoy with 20 plus ships was coming from the north, while another just as large coming from the south, I attacked as the passed each other in 200 ft of water. I really didn't have to aim to hit anything as I used long rang settings and timed the attack shooting from the flank of one, shooting all 10 torps. Those that missed ran into the other convoy and got hits. The return attack on me was about 12 Type AB escorts that drop about 24 charges per run... I survived after sinking about 20 ships after one more end around, but barely made it back to base with 90% damage