No contacts in a long time! Why?

[letterboy1]

I've been on this patrol for quite some time. I started out normal with contact reports and actual contacts (and some kills). I just went to Midway for my second refit and for the past several weeks there are no contact reports and no contacts except planes. It's as if the ocean is suddenly devoid of all shipping. Is there a big holiday I don't know about? Has anybody run into something similar?

[Packerton]

The Japenese are playing the new Dragon quest game.

[tater]

It is empty.

Real submarines patrolled for maybe 60 days.

The game breaks the war into segments. The first is from dec 41 til February 42. The next is march to august, and so forth.

The game ONLY LOADS TRAFFIC BASED ON YOUR PATROL START DATE.

So if you start in january 42, when the dec-feb traffic puts into port, that's it, no more traffic, not ever. There is a little slop set, so that if you start at some point in jan/feb, you will also see the spring traffic at the same time.

Go home, dock, start a new patrol.

This "refit" and go get more tonnage nonsense is what causes this.

tater

[GT182]

Tater is right. Plus the fact that the Japanese ships are hiding just out of your sonar/radar range. The crews are sitting there laughing at you running in circles looking for them while they eat their fish and rice. :rotfl: Stop and let the crew fish or swim for ahwile. Change your patrol plans to some place else and you you might get the surprise of you life.

Same happened in 1.4 SHIII. You could go for days out in the Atlantic and not see a single ship. Very frustrating to say the least but you had to change you way of planning your patrol.

But then again, Sh4 is not the same as SHIII in many ways.

[tater]

It's not really frustrating. What would be frustrating is for the crew whose skipper keeps taking the boat out for double, triple, quadruple patrols without letting them chase some tail in Honalulu or Perth. THAT would be frustrating.

tater

[Snuffy]

Originally Posted by tater

It's not really frustrating. What would be frustrating is for the crew whose skipper keeps taking the boat out for double, triple, quadruple patrols without letting them chase some tail in Honalulu or Perth. THAT would be frustrating.

tater

Always a good thing to keep an ey ... er ... keep the men in mind. :hmm:

I just started a new career with 1.3 and TM 1.5 ... I see I need to update when I get home as 1.6 is now out. First mission on the new career .... take a porpoise to Honshu and photo a port. We've been 10 days now getting there, and not a sighting of anything.
(tonight we make the run up the bay to the port though.)

[Frederf]

Originally Posted by tater

It is empty.

Real submarines patrolled for maybe 60 days.

The game breaks the war into segments. The first is from dec 41 til February 42. The next is march to august, and so forth.

The game ONLY LOADS TRAFFIC BASED ON YOUR PATROL START DATE.

So if you start in january 42, when the dec-feb traffic puts into port, that's it, no more traffic, not ever. There is a little slop set, so that if you start at some point in jan/feb, you will also see the spring traffic at the same time.

Go home, dock, start a new patrol.

This "refit" and go get more tonnage nonsense is what causes this.

tater

This is new to me. I generally go for 2-3 month patrols with 1-2 refits. I'll be going in early after getting extensive damage during a harbor photo recon. Perhaps I'll have to start making my patrols shorter rather than longer.

[tater]

Originally Posted by Frederf

This is new to me. I generally go for 2-3 month patrols with 1-2 refits. I'll be going in early after getting extensive damage during a harbor photo recon. Perhaps I'll have to start making my patrols shorter rather than longer.

It's very dependant on exactly when the patrol starts. The layers load from a little before a change, to a little after. If you load right at an interface, you get two layers running for a bit, say 42a and 42b.

The traffic also has to move around. So a convoy can spawn August 31st, and be on the map for 1 month as it drives around.

[letterboy1]

Thanks guys, going back to Pearl then for some tail. And to upgrade T Maru.