New player with a few questions

Rawkus · 01-10-10, 09:16 AM

First off, hi all. Just started playing SH4 and it's my first time playing a subsim, really enjoying it although there are a few points that I'm yet to get to grasp with and are niggling and frustrating me.

1] Finding contacts at a given location.
When you're told to go to a location then told sink anything that moves, what is the best way to find a target? I read somewhtere people circle the area at about 50nm using the hydrophone every hour. This seems to take alot of real time and is proving very unfruitful. Am I just looking in the wrong locations, should I be looking near port or looking for shipping routes in the area? Should I be moving any particular routes or should I pick a spot and wait it out? Is it right that my sonar guy will miss just about everything unless it's on top of us, is there a way to help him out or should I be checking more manually?

I seem to be spending several hours (realtime) trying to find some targets. If/When I finally do they're 20nm moving away, at what point is it reasonable to try and chase them, hunt them out going to surface and flank to catch them, the few times I've tried this I've ended up losing them.

2] Aircraft
It seems I keep getting caught out by aircraft, I spot them on my radar and I choose to go to periscope depth but even at max radar range I have barely started descending when they're on top of me, slight exaggeration, most of the time I get away with it but it seems to be occurring more frequently, is there a way to descend more quickly, should crash dive speed up the process, is it affected by traveling speed. This become more of a problem after the first time it happens because then the entire Jap airforce wants to come hunt me after I've been spotted. This takes me onto my next point...

3] Traveling to and from port to missions
Often traveling to a mission point it's fairly uneventful, a couple of contacts nice easy going. However returning from missions can be a royal pain. I suppose it's realistic that when you've sunk a few thou' tons of ship they'll be on the look out for you, how can you best avoid the mad hunting to get back to port? People must be able to take on more than one group of target before having to turn tail and run from the aircraft. Should I keep a good depth at day only surfacing a night, should I just move to a new spot?

Thanks for any answers you have to any of these, I just can't seem to figure them out.

P.s Is there a short cut to bring up the watch? I'm using TMO and find it frustrating to have to switch menus to bring the watch up to time 3mins to get speed etc?

01-10-10, 09:16 AM	#1
Rawkus Swabbie Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 6 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	New player with a few questions First off, hi all. Just started playing SH4 and it's my first time playing a subsim, really enjoying it although there are a few points that I'm yet to get to grasp with and are niggling and frustrating me. 1] Finding contacts at a given location. When you're told to go to a location then told sink anything that moves, what is the best way to find a target? I read somewhtere people circle the area at about 50nm using the hydrophone every hour. This seems to take alot of real time and is proving very unfruitful. Am I just looking in the wrong locations, should I be looking near port or looking for shipping routes in the area? Should I be moving any particular routes or should I pick a spot and wait it out? Is it right that my sonar guy will miss just about everything unless it's on top of us, is there a way to help him out or should I be checking more manually? I seem to be spending several hours (realtime) trying to find some targets. If/When I finally do they're 20nm moving away, at what point is it reasonable to try and chase them, hunt them out going to surface and flank to catch them, the few times I've tried this I've ended up losing them. 2] Aircraft It seems I keep getting caught out by aircraft, I spot them on my radar and I choose to go to periscope depth but even at max radar range I have barely started descending when they're on top of me, slight exaggeration, most of the time I get away with it but it seems to be occurring more frequently, is there a way to descend more quickly, should crash dive speed up the process, is it affected by traveling speed. This become more of a problem after the first time it happens because then the entire Jap airforce wants to come hunt me after I've been spotted. This takes me onto my next point... 3] Traveling to and from port to missions Often traveling to a mission point it's fairly uneventful, a couple of contacts nice easy going. However returning from missions can be a royal pain. I suppose it's realistic that when you've sunk a few thou' tons of ship they'll be on the look out for you, how can you best avoid the mad hunting to get back to port? People must be able to take on more than one group of target before having to turn tail and run from the aircraft. Should I keep a good depth at day only surfacing a night, should I just move to a new spot? Thanks for any answers you have to any of these, I just can't seem to figure them out. P.s Is there a short cut to bring up the watch? I'm using TMO and find it frustrating to have to switch menus to bring the watch up to time 3mins to get speed etc?