Big Tip: Use Map Contacts

[karamazovnew]

I've never used Map Contacts in SH3 or SH4. So I thought I'd go 100% with SH5. BIG MISTAKE

- Mast Values are wrong.
- Draft Values are wrong (or the 3d models, not sure which).
- The AOB has a little bug and does strange things when you use the stadimeter.
- No Gyro displayed.
- Blind deck crew.
- Deaf Sound man and no possibility of reporting contacts continuously.

However, with Map Contacts On, the game is actually ok. Changing course with the minimap now makes more sense, you can see the speed, range and easily calculate the AOB. You can also see where your torpedoes go so you don't need to use External views and Event Camera to figure out why you missed. Overall I'm now getting a more fluid gameplay and I suggest you all try the combination of Manual Targeting and Map Contacts.

It will allow you to Focus on the game's OTHER bugs

[himlaviz]

I did the same, usually play without map contacts on the map in SH3.

Focus on learning the new stuff in SH5 and try to have a good time, with time and patches I am sure one can go back to 100%

[Turm]

I've made the same mistake on my first patrol (100% minus external cam), so will be turning on map contacts once I'm back in port. It's just too much hard work at the moment!

I don't like 'giving in' and using easier difficulty levels, but it's probably justified in this case. Thanks for the tip - I think you've convinced me to give in

[Bosje]

besides, turning map contacts off makes the game a lot less realistic, so it's not actually 100% at all
you wouldnt be painstakingly drawing all those lines yourself in real life, there are crewmen to do that for you, it's just that the map contacts reveal far too much information which makes it tempting to turn them off altogether

[SabreHawk]

I've always used map contacts on since SH3, and realisim is at about 38% I think if I remember.

No im not into this 100% stuff, I like to relax and enjoy my game.

And yes as the Captain I aint supposed to be doing everything, I dont remember the Captain in Das Boot working all that hard at that sort of thing, that's what his crew was for.
In fact I only remember seeing him at the map table a couple times in the entire film.

Can someone explain how the difficulty settings works ? There is an option to tick and untick functions you want to have when setting realism, but when you try to begin career you don't have that option to choose except: easy, medium, hard, realistic. So frankly there is no custom option to make your own choices of realism.. ?

[lorka42]

when in bunker, you can hit escape and go to options and change things there.

[himlaviz]

Realism can be many things, mostly I want things to feel and give the illusion of realism, like using the WO in SH3, sure it might be easy mode for some and he might be to correct but its still "realistic" as it mimics how it was really done. No auto homing torpedoes or +10 heat damage torpedoes.

Also important is that one has the same restrictions, limitations as the real thing, no endless supply of torpedoes or fuel.

I wouldn't mind a auto TDC where I have to identify the target but the rest is given to me, though I might have to click a few buttons to get the values so one doesn't just have to aim for autovalues. Preferably without a green, orange, red triangle.

So if I am wrong with the identification things might still go wrong.

[walsh2509]

Ive got map contacts on , that and auto/lead targetting so my % is some 70+%.

But the thing I find strange , when I click on a contact and say its details are 500km from me travelling at 10knts say its heading due South and I am coming up heading North, I draw a line out from the Merchant and mark X at the end of the line again say 500kms. That should take the merchant about 26/27hrs to travel to the end of that line.

To cut the time I travel up along it , I do this I click my boat and drag a waypoint line out up the line the Mrechant is travelling down. As I do this a small ghost icon comes out from the main Merchant ship icon, as to there is would be if I travel at x speed up that line.

But anyway, I sit at the end of the 500km line , put my watch up at run fast forward until In see nearly 50hrs have past. I hit the main Merchant icon on the map at it says the Merchant is 1km from my postition.

I go to torp depth and go to the sonar station and listen , nothing , to double check I hit the Key for contact and up comes No Sound Contacts!

I up back to the surface and look around and travel at speen up the line and back down it .. no sign of any ship or ships.

Not the 1st time this has happened in the game.

With SH3/4 uboat add , when I got a map contact in those games and did the same plotting distance/time/knts I would always find the contacts.

But in this game they seem to just disappear

[SabreHawk]

The ghost ship icon is showing the hypothetical location that ship will be at by the time you reach that waypoint you are setting.
That is of course so long as that ship maintains present course. It could for all you know change course at some point.

Took me a while to figure what that was myself, but that's what it is and I can see where this will be quite helpful when trying to lay in an intercept course. Sure takes a lot of the work out of it.

[FiL]

Originally Posted by SabreHawk

The ghost ship icon is showing the hypothetical location that ship will be at by the time you reach that waypoint you are setting.

HeLLo
Thanks a lot for that tip. I just didn't realize why this ghost ship icon moved as I moved my Way Point. Now that is obvious.
Thx again
Good Hunt

[karamazovnew]

No, actually I think that feature is bugged. THere are 2 main bugs when you plot courses:
1. the Navigator reports the course from your current sub position to the new waypoints (not from waypoint to waypoint as it SHOULD be).
2. The ghost always starts from the last known position, even if that report is 10 hours old.

Also on one occasion I was closing up to 12 knot tanker. I had my periscope on him from about 6km so the "report" was ok. I had only one waypoint to intercept him and yet the result is he overtook me by a LONG shot, even though he never changed speed or course. It's a great feature but it needs to be fixed a bit.

And yes, the ships do change course a lot, which is a good thing In open waters, I still manage to intercept them 90% of the times. Near coast lines you need to follow the the coast.

I wouldn't want to get to accustomed to Map Contacts. At one point I was actually playing GWX with WO solution simply because I got too bored with sinking every ship with the same technique that never failed. Bu I never put on Map Contacts. The main pleasure of a Silent Hunter game is to try to figure out the big picture by yourself.

What they SHOULD've done by default for the attack map is this:
- assign a "searchlight" to the hydrophone, so it behaved just as the periscope does, rotating and updating contacts every 20-30 seconds
- plot each stadimeter reading automatically on the map with simple markers (or better, with ship ID and TIME to the second).
- allow you to click a sound contact so that the soundman can focus on that single contact (not just the closest one).
- a good soundman could easily switch to the greatest threat (such as the next destroyer coming in for a DC run).
- visual reports also drawn as lines and allow the watch officer to give you distance to any particular contact with a 500m precision and a rough AOB.

[don1reed]

I still play at 100% and use Hitman's Angriffsschreibe (whiz wheel). It works about 98% of the time for getting the correct speed of the target.

[Steeltrap]

I always used map contacts ON for SH3, with everything else on manual. Gave difficulty of around 85% I think (not sure, might have been higher). I played NYGM, mostly, although also tried GWX (and I liked them both).

I did this for the reasons Kara mentioned in opening i.e. the stadimeter was always a mess for me, especially given resolution issues, and having to plot everything yourself as skipper was not realistic in itself.

That way I concentrated on the TACTICAL aspects of command. I got to firing position undetected, planned escape, chose targets, conned my boat to the course I wanted and set up periscope/TDC in advance etc etc. I was able to fire at specific parts of specific targets. It made the whole experience more 'realistic' for me.

I remember posting about this in the SH5 thread last year, about the desire for things to be represented more 'realistically', and the issues I've always had with the whole target tracking/stadimeter etc etc due to the always-present limitations of rendering the 'real world' in restrictive resolutions.

Don't have SH5 so I can't comment on it directly, but this issue/discussion is not surprising.

Cheers

[gutted]

While everyone has their own opinion, for me personally map contacts are not necassry. They are nice to have in alot of situations, but IMO they take any chance of missing out of the game.

I have an extremely high rate without contacts, and can even do it without ever looking at the map. If i turned on contacts, the game just wouldn't be that interesting to me. It's like manual TDC with all the information given to you.

Anyway, I'm about to upload a TDC video that shatters alot of people's misconceptions about how hard it is to hit a ship with contacts turned off (soon as it's done rendering).