Doubts about Sonar, Radio, Radar and TAI

[Jamesphillip]

Thanks once again

I'm using OH II base mod. I'll stop the whining and start playing fo'real . Just reinstalled all the mods and downloaded 6.8-0 New UI TDC's.

A newbie like me with all these questions must be a real pain in the buttocks...

[Jamesphillip]

BTW I need help with the northwestern approaches missions, I can't find squat, only found a single merchant ship and a fishing boat. Enemy convoys seen by other subs are reported and appear on the nav map but I can't seem to catch up with them, nor find them. Where are the best places to patrol and how should I patrol? I've been alternating between surface and submerged patrols, but no good either way. No visual contacts nor through the hydrophone. I updated my hydrophone to the 360 degree one. Already posted on the OHII thread... Let's see what happens

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

BTW I need help with the northwestern approaches missions, I can't find squat, only found a single merchant ship and a fishing boat. Enemy convoys seen by other subs are reported and appear on the nav map but I can't seem to catch up with them, nor find them. Where are the best places to patrol and how should I patrol? I've been alternating between surface and submerged patrols, but no good either way. No visual contacts nor through the hydrophone. I updated my hydrophone to the 360 degree one. Already posted on the OHII thread... Let's see what happens

Anywhere West/SW of Ireland (this is Happy Times, right?) should work, though if you're seeing fishing boats you could be too close to land. To catch the contact reports, make sure your game is set to TC1 on new contact report (radio message options in TDWs UI). Set your waypoint in the direction of the convoy and you should see the convoy icon move on the map, relative to your speed. Crank it to ahead full and if you get to the spot too early, head in the direction the convoy's coming and dive to pick them up on sonar earlier.

For general patrolling, if you're far from the coast you can stay on surface in daylight, but the weather (lots of fog and rain - how is your weather now by the way?) can often make this difficult, so dropping to 30m and using sonar (especially when your TC lags a little due to proximity to shipping) can help.

[Jamesphillip]

Yes, I'm playing happy times and finally caught a little rain

I've been patrolling north of Ireland, maybe that's why I haven't seen many ships. Gonna try west and northwest.

How far should I be from the coast? I've been trying and really can't find anything. Only north of Scotland. As for convoys reported I never ever seem to catch them anyhow. Weird.

[Jamesphillip]

I just realized that my hydrophone ain't working. Just finally sighted a Task Force, submerged and had no contacts. what the... I normally go to periscope depth and get contacts, but this time I got nothing.... Maybe the 360º one is broken?

[0rpheus]

Hmm.. a quick glance through the thread and I can't see any mention of it, so try this:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=181433

This exe patcher fixes the broken hydrophone station (and lets you change the colour of ruler marks etc, which can be handy). Use is fairly self explanatory - extract, run it and point it first to the config file that comes with it, then at your SH5.exe and click the options you want to change. Hydro fix is the first option shown.

If you've done that already, it could be a number of things. The 360 sonar is on the front deck (you'll see it spinning) and sometimes, 11m isn't enough for it to be able to 'hear' properly. Sonar range increases with depth, so if you hear nothing at peri depth, try dropping to 20m, or 30 for the longest range.

Sonar is also affected by your engine speed - running at flank, it's a lot harder to hear over your own engine noise - so try slowing down and seeing if that helps. Optimal sonar position is all stop at 30m or below, any speed or depth above that and variance starts to occur (especially with 'realistic sensors' enabled).

Finally it could just be a bug. Some people have trouble with the imported ship sets in OHII Full but you're using the base mod so that shouldn't be it. That doesn't mean it couldn't be a random bug however - if none of the above works and it happens more than once, then we start to worry

[Silent Steel]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

November 15th and still no rain, besides that I haven't seen mines anywhere, maybe some mods have overlapping files. I will try to reinstall all the mods.

I'm giving magnum opus a try as well eheh

Edit: Magnum Opus download link broken... This mod will have to wait a while

Hi JP,

Here are links to the MO mods that I've loaded up.


/

[Silent Steel]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

Other question, what mods add the kriegsmarine flag to the sub? have seen some screenies with the flag in the tower, and would like to have one as well And would subs in real world war II carry the flag? Or is it ahistorical?

Here you find the flags

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20467...eDarkWraith_7z

[Hannibal85]

I updated my hydrophone to the 360 degree one

I think thats the fault. I did the same and got no contacts for hours and hours in the middle of the convoi routes where i had hundred contacts with the first hydrophone. So i just replaced it again with the first one and everything worked again, also on surface and no matter how much speed my boat had.
When you dont want to install something to fix the 360 one just replace it and enjoy your map contacts :-)

[Jamesphillip]

Thanks a lot for the feedback

I already discovered the conning tower flags before and already using them

About the 360º hydrophone, it is working, only thing is I have to dive to 20-30 meters for it to function properly and reduce the speed to ahead slow. I'm getting contacts now and just sunk an entire convoy of 16 ships yesterday with 2 destroyers (with a load or two in the middle because of CTD's.)

BTW, have another question, I said before I was in Happy Times campaign but I was wrong, I am in the first one before Happy Times. I have Open Horizons II installed and already finished British Eastern Supplies, Northwestern Approaches and Breaking the Fortress. I am at 15th February and still no new missions (the last one I finished was Northwestern Approaches around 15th January). When does Operation Wesenrubung and the another mission become avaiable?

Also, when I finish this campaign, does the game continue normally and the game continues automatically into Happy Times, or do I have to start a new campaign? Will my crew retain all its abilities and skill points, or will I have to restart from zero?

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

Thanks a lot for the feedback

I already discovered the conning tower flags before and already using them

About the 360º hydrophone, it is working, only thing is I have to dive to 20-30 meters for it to function properly and reduce the speed to ahead slow. I'm getting contacts now and just sunk an entire convoy of 16 ships yesterday with 2 destroyers (with a load or two in the middle because of CTD's.)

BTW, have another question, I said before I was in Happy Times campaign but I was wrong, I am in the first one before Happy Times. I have Open Horizons II installed and already finished British Eastern Supplies, Northwestern Approaches and Breaking the Fortress. I am at 15th February and still no new missions (the last one I finished was Northwestern Approaches around 15th January). When does Operation Wesenrubung and the another mission become avaiable?

Also, when I finish this campaign, does the game continue normally and the game continues automatically into Happy Times, or do I have to start a new campaign? Will my crew retain all its abilities and skill points, or will I have to restart from zero?

Op Weserubung begins around April 10th iirc, patrol as you like until then. You'll get an order to head to Norway just before OW starts, when you get it rearm & refuel before you head out or you'll struggle to complete it in time.

Re the hydrophone, do run the exe patcher to hugely improve hydro performance. I think the stock game has a much smaller detection cone that the patch fixes so you'll get close contacts from the sonar man even at periscope depth and much better manual control to boot. TDW would be able to explain better but it really is a must have, and won't affect any save games etc.


@ Hannibal - running the exe patcher will improve the 360 hydro for you too - you'll still have to be at at least periscope depth to use it, but you should get better contacts.

[Jamesphillip]

I already have the exe patcher and TDW UI, I was having trouble with the hydrophone working because I only went to periscope depth
Thanks a lot though

BTW, after finishing Total Germany campaign, by which I mean completing all its missions, will the game continue by itself onto the Happy Times campaign, or will I have to start from scratch and choosing that campaign on the menu, and subsequently all of my crew will lose all of their skill points and abilities?

[Trevally.]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

BTW, after finishing Total Germany campaign, by which I mean completing all its missions, will the game continue by itself onto the Happy Times campaign, or will I have to start from scratch and choosing that campaign on the menu, and subsequently all of my crew will lose all of their skill points and abilities?

When you finish a campaign (Coastal Water - 1st campaign in OHII) you will get a result screen. After this you will get the campaign tree screen.
here you pick your next campaign. You crew will stay with you and keep the upgrades/training you gave them

[Jamesphillip]

Ehehe, good thing then

I'm sinking a lot of ships, which may be unrealistic, already sunk 101 ships (90 merchants and 11 warships) for a total of 405000 GRT by February 18th 1940. The most successful uboat in WWII sunk around 250000 GRT (without warships). My patrols last for around a week/week and a half, then imagine what I would do if I made longer patrols for 2 or 3 months; the Germans would only need me and my crew to win the war at sea with the Tommies

Other thing, I'm getting a lot of CTD's when fighting convoys, dunno why. I don't own a high spec computer, it's already 5 years old, but I can run the game with medium-low graphics. It's a Pentium IV 3.0 x 2 with 2GB of RAM memory and a Nvidia GeForce 9400GT.

[0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Jamesphillip

Other thing, I'm getting a lot of CTD's when fighting convoys, dunno why. I don't own a high spec computer, it's already 5 years old, but I can run the game with medium-low graphics. It's a Pentium IV 3.0 x 2 with 2GB of RAM memory and a Nvidia GeForce 9400GT.

Hmm, does it happen when you hit a ship with torps/gun, specifically a freeze, then crash? The emergency flares in FX_Update made my system lag like hell, so I manually edited them out. I think they cause CTDs on some older systems... could be that?