SH3 Newbie Guide, FAQs, Tactics & Tips, Links, & other helpful stuff

[rjbudz]

I can not believe this. The fish actually closed on the hull, then, at the last second, TURNED AWAY! Like the magnetic detector is in backwards and repelling from the target.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by rjbudz

Nope. 220 meters. Dead on bow. two fish. RIGHT UNDER THE KEEL. It looks like the torpedo gets within 10 meters then actually drops below the keel.

You're too close, your eels need at least 350-400m distance to arm, so even when firing at 500m you might be too close since your target will be moving towards you as well.

Try for a shot at 500-600m or so from the side, a 90 degree angle. Plot their course, and setup a shot where you'll be waiting as they pass in front of you. Move your periscope so that the gyroangle reads 000, then fire as they pass that point. The AOB of 90 degrees and the gyroangle of 350 to 10 is the most important parts.

[Stealth Hunter]

I did that once before when 3 of my men were hit by shells. I put them in the bow quarters with the medic and 2 died. I guess it IS realistic when it comes to wounds. Thanks anyway.

[holden88]

Great thread, great site, great game. A few questions and observations from a new player.

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue. It doesn't seem like my men are recovering endurance at all when sent to quarters. Also, I don't heve near enough space to rest all my idle men. I end up putting the un-used manpower into the battery compartment or a torpedo room. Unfortunately here they suffer endurance loss even if they aren't doing anything. After a while I have a boat full of extremely fatigued sailors. Is endurance recovery affected by the sea state? Can you recover endurance quicker if you you dive your boat to get under a storm? And if so how deep do you need to be?

The computer selected settings for crew assignments can be quite annoying. For instance, I hate that the computer shoves both of my skilled seior mechanics on watch in the engine room at the same time. It would be much better to have these guys on a rotation. In fact the entire notion of the captain manually selecting individual members for mundane crew assignments is pretty silly. On real warships, crew members rotate on a watch rotation automatically. In my opinion all the crew stations should be swapped out by the computer every four, six or eight hours, without the need to involve the captain. It can be quite tedious to interrupt my voyage all the time to manually move guys around on the boat. Also, in this game guys can stand on watch for days at a time!

Every now and then I get a radio message which refers to longitude and latitude. How can I see these co-ordinates on my nav map to determine where to go?

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

Thanks for any help or comments.

[fredbass]

Originally Posted by holden88

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue.

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

I would guess that most players have installed "SH3 Commander" and turned off fatigue.

Yes, you can go back to port immediately any time you want regardless. That's totally up to you, but the penalty is losing renown gained.

The GW supermod has maps that you can look at to see where friendly mines are at. The mod is quite popular and will be even better when GWX arrives.

If you install SH3Gen then you can get a fair idea where mines and subnets will be at enemy ports as well.

[robj250]

Originally Posted by holden88

Great thread, great site, great game. A few questions and observations from a new player.

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue. It doesn't seem like my men are recovering endurance at all when sent to quarters. Also, I don't heve near enough space to rest all my idle men. I end up putting the un-used manpower into the battery compartment or a torpedo room. Unfortunately here they suffer endurance loss even if they aren't doing anything. After a while I have a boat full of extremely fatigued sailors. Is endurance recovery affected by the sea state? Can you recover endurance quicker if you you dive your boat to get under a storm? And if so how deep do you need to be?

The computer selected settings for crew assignments can be quite annoying. For instance, I hate that the computer shoves both of my skilled seior mechanics on watch in the engine room at the same time. It would be much better to have these guys on a rotation. In fact the entire notion of the captain manually selecting individual members for mundane crew assignments is pretty silly. On real warships, crew members rotate on a watch rotation automatically. In my opinion all the crew stations should be swapped out by the computer every four, six or eight hours, without the need to involve the captain. It can be quite tedious to interrupt my voyage all the time to manually move guys around on the boat. Also, in this game guys can stand on watch for days at a time!

Every now and then I get a radio message which refers to longitude and latitude. How can I see these co-ordinates on my nav map to determine where to go?

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

Thanks for any help or comments.

First off, I need to know what you running. Are you using the Silent Hunter 3 that came on a DVD or you downloaded, or have you installed Silent Hunter, the 1.4 patch and Grey Wolves? Have you downloaded and installed SH3 Commander?

Using SH3 Commander allows you to set you fatigue level, but you must do this in port.

Regarding the longitude and latitude, you can simply pause your game, press ALT + TAB and go to this page: http://www.ubootwaffe.net/quadrant.cgi then you can enter the information and press find square and it will tell you what Grid it is referring to, then go back to your game.

You can return to base anytime you want by pressing Escape and then choose exit. BUT doing this action warps you back to your base, where your sub will be repaired and you begin a new mission. If you just want to quit your game and continue at a later time, say after supper or something, then after Pressing Escape, choose Save and Exit and you can enter a name which will save your career at that point in the game and then allow you to exit the game without returning to base. When you want to go back to that point in your career, you select career, saved game abd the list of the saved games for that mission for you to click to load, choose the most recent point, because if you choose a point earlier, you will loose any saved career missions that follow it. It is recommended not to save a career while you are submerged as there is a bug in the game that sometimes creeps up and will not let you load the career that you saved.

I suggest you also install SH3GEN which is another separate program, just like SH3 Commander, that permits you to generate an intelligence report ONCE you are out of your harbour.

With respect to you crashing and sinking before you get out of your base, if you are using the stock game, make sure you have enlarged the map large enough to bring you sub out of the pen, safely past any obstructions. If you are using TGW1.1a which is Grey Wolves, you will have lots of harbour traffic that you must avoid. If you are using TGW1.1a, you should have checked "remove frendly mines" if you don't want a chance to run into your own mines.

If you wish to install any MODS into your game you must download JSGME (which is a generic mod enabler) and install it into your Silent Hunter directory and install the MODS using it, PLUS you MUST be in PORT before installing or uninstalling any MODS.

If you have any other questions, just ask and someone will answer your question.

ENJOY THE GAME and welcome to the subsim community.

[holden88]

I'm using the dvd version of the game, patched up to 1.4 with the grey wolves mod added on top. I also have jsgme. Sounds like I need to get SH3 Commander loaded on my machine too.

Just so I'm clear on SH3 Commander. I need to start a career and then save it before I do anything. Then, leave the game and run SH3 Commander to change around my game. Then go back into the game and play?

When I leave harbour I sail out past all the buildings and ships manually. Once I'm clear I plot a course to bring me out into open water. Twice I've hit mines and twice I've gone through no problem. Where in the GW mod can you see the mines? On the main nav map once you zoom in or something?

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

It's too bad that all your spare crew don't fill up the foward compartments on the boat automatically when you crash dive. That would have been neat.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by holden88

I'm using the dvd version of the game, patched up to 1.4 with the grey wolves mod added on top. I also have jsgme. Sounds like I need to get SH3 Commander loaded on my machine too.

You won't regret it. You'll be amazed at all the different things it can do.

Just so I'm clear on SH3 Commander. I need to start a career and then save it before I do anything. Then, leave the game and run SH3 Commander to change around my game. Then go back into the game and play?

No. You click on Commander and create the career from there. It lets you set all the beginning parameters (flotilla, base, type of sub, sub number) and conditions (time compression, wave height, gun reload times and more) and you type in your name-or let it choose one. Then it generates you crews' names, and you can change them too.

When I leave harbour I sail out past all the buildings and ships manually. Once I'm clear I plot a course to bring me out into open water. Twice I've hit mines and twice I've gone through no problem. Where in the GW mod can you see the mines? On the main nav map once you zoom in or something?

You can install and use SH3Gen, but it doesn't work until you've restarted. GW gives you maps of ports showing mines and nets. Also the ship that appears in front of you and starts moving right away is your escort. he'll lead you out safely.

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

That one I'm not sure on; a regular GW user will have to answer it.

It's too bad that all your spare crew don't fill up the foward compartments on the boat automatically when you crash dive. That would have been neat.

True, but then we would have complained that there wasn't a cut scene from Das Boot showing them doing it.:rotfl:

[robj250]

Originally Posted by holden88

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

No. once GW is installed, the options cannot be changed. If you used JSGME to install GW, then just uninstall everything and then reinstall.

If you setup GW in the Silent Hunter Folder like I did, we're out of luck. I had to start all over with a clean install of Silent Hunter, add patch 1.4 and JSGME. Now you ae ready for your fresh install of Grey Wolves.

[bigboywooly]

No Rob
You can reinstall GW1.1A again making the changes you want
No need to uninstall just run the installer again - while in port of course

[Stealth Hunter]

Yeah, I'm not a newbie to SH3. In fact, I own at Bismarck level and online play. The one question I have is what is the point of a medic being on board if he can't even tend to the wounded?:hmm:

[fredbass]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Yeah, I'm not a newbie to SH3. In fact, I own at Bismarck level and online play. The one question I have is what is the point of a medic being on board if he can't even tend to the wounded?:hmm:

He can. Just remember to put the medic and the wounded in their quarters together at the same time.

[noizy]

Hi. I was under the impression that there was a very complete FAQ for SH3 somewhere on subsim.com. I haven't been able to find it. I just started playing (just found a gfx card that does pixel shader; yea i'm slow to upgrade, anyhow). I have a few questions I thought an FAQ would surely cover. I have alread checked the community manual and read most of it.

What I want to know is what exactly all the professions/qualifications do exactly. And who best to assign it; to officers or petty officers? What exactly I need in a boat, and what is worth buying, etc. I have tried looking for these topics in the forum but to no avail. So, is there a repository of facts about what does what exactly? Thanks.

[bigboywooly]

Well the qualifications are simple

Flak gunner qual makes your flak gunner more qualified so more accurate - same with the gunner ( deck )
The radio qual means that your radio ops are better - they run the hydraphones as well as the radio\radar
Torps load faster with the torp qualification
Watch crew see better with theirs
Engine crew efficiency is raised when given their qualification
The repairs happen faster when that one given out

The Helmsman and Medic are a matter of choice
I bother with neither

I usually start giving out qualifications to officers then PO's
If you give those crewmen medals too it increases moral/efficiency etc even more

As to upgrades - well the bolds are a must when available
Bigger boat - better flak guns - all depends on how much you have to spend and what your aims are

If you dive every time you see an aircraft then no point upgrading to a Uflak as would be a waste of renown

[noizy]

Thanks. Yea, I guess I wasn't too sure because with the rotation my staff got mixed up and I wasn't too sure whether I needed a watchman in the radioroom. But now I see that it's quite clear: There are icons at the top of compartments that indicates the type of qualifications that gives a boost. Makes sense.

If the radioman has a radio qualification, does it help the sonarman? (I assume it does because both officers make a difference in the overall operation of the radioroom (if you look at the efficiency bar on top). That's initially what got me thinking about qualifications... and a bit confused.)

I think I get the general idea now... boost the crew and boat... and sink some ships (I used to play SH2).

Btw... is there a SH3 FAQ (I mean a good one... with lots of technical info)? I suppose the community manual is as good as it gets?

Cheers