Looking for guidance on how to improve my game experience please

[treblesum81]

Ok, so after coming back to SH4 after a long break, I'm faced with the same old problem I had before, which was never really resolved, about how much time it takes to find something to shoot at versus how much time it takes to shoot at it, and how all that figures into my ability to play the game.

I just spent the better part of 4 hours today driving around in circles looking for something to shoot. It's December 8th 1941 and the first patrol area I've got puts me right on top of Cam Ranh Bay. Now, I'm not an expert, but from what I've been told, right about this time there is an invasion fleet leaving the bay bound for Luzon which I should be able to catch. I have RFB and RSRDC installed.

Anyway, like I said, I spent about 4 hours (real time) patrolling, moving on the surface at 512x and then diving every hour on the hour to do a 1x sonar sweep. The end result of all of this work was that I found a single destroyer, which I couldn't even really engage. Four hours of game time for one single ship... And even if it had been a merchant, that was all of the game time I had available for the day, so I wouldn't have even really had time to set up a proper shot at it...

Now, as much as I like watching my submarine go, I don't get any enjoyment out of searching endlessly without something to mark down in my "ships sunk" page. I'm not willing to give up either RFB or RSRDC because I want to have the realism that they both provide, however I need to have more action and less wandering. Or else I won't be able to justify the play time... I mean if I have on average 2 hours a day, and it takes me two days to find a target before I can even shoot it, thats two days of wasted game time in my book...

In SH3 there was a mod... more like an add on program that would let you change the probability of a ship or convoy showing up as a contact report when they are updated every few hours. For me this transformed the whole level of enjoyment of the game because instead of running around all day long in the patrol areas, I spent my game time actually hunting ships.

Months ago, I had asked if this same thing would be possible with SH4, and essentially got the response that it wouldn't be as long as I was not willing to give up RSRDC (which I tried and didn't like mostly because it didn't really increase my ship location rates, though I must admit I didn't give it more than a couple of days of trial), so I'm not going to ask for it again here... unless someone managed to come up with it in the months since I was last in here, in which case please point me straight to it ...

Instead, I would like to know if there are any other "cheater" mods out there, such as 100 mile sonar, or something like that, which would help me to find those targets without forcing me to give up the campaign realism offered by RSRDC. Even if they aren't so specific, please let me know if they are out there as any bonus might change things enough to make my game time productive instead of not.

Barring such mods existence, I'm hoping that someone might be able to point me towards information that would help me to make something of the sort for myself, though I'm not all that great at modding so I would much prefer a ready made mod.

Whatever the case, I've found myself right back where I left off last time, with not enough time to devote to playing the game the way it expects to be played (if only sonar worked while surfaced and you could just let it run at like 512x or 1024x until a contact was made...), but a strong desire to play none the less. Any help and/or guidance is much appreciated here.

Thanks