Help! New player with some questions

[Nayeen]

Hello everyone!

First let me just say that I never played any Silent Hunter games (nor any other submarine / ship / naval games). So sorry if I don't use the correct phrases and words. I kinda wanted to try Silent Hunter 4 for some time. Anyway, I recently got it (1.5 gold) and I also decided to install TMO mod since so many people seems to enjoy it.

I don't really want to play the game on easy (with auto-aim), because I really enjoy a bit of a challenge and manual torpedo aiming seems very interesting to play with.

I played a bit with submarine school missions but there isn't any tutorial that would explain things in more details (rather than a few lines of text at the briefing page).

I then went on to play the campaign mode. I used realistic settings (I only disabled faulty torpedoes and enabled that stabilizer so I can aim more easily, and also I have map contacts). On my first patrol I had to go to an area for 5 days and patrol. However I didn't encounter any ships (just one plane passed me).

On my second patrol I had to go all the way to Japan (from Pearl Harbor). My objective was to find and destroy any enemy shipping. I found 6 small 200 ton fishing boats along the coast (in packs of 2) and I just used my deck gun to sink them. Apart from that I couldn't find any other boats and my fuel was running really low so I decided to go back to Midway.

1.) Why didn't my mission objective get completed? I did sink 6 small ships... That's all I found and I practically used almost all my fuel patrolling south of Japan. Apart from fishing boats I was being searched by A LOT of planes but I just went deep to wait for them to pass.

2.) After refuelling at Midway do I need to go back to Japan or back to Pearl Harbor (with my mission uncompleted)?

Anyway, on my way to Midway I did encounter an enemy merchant ship. It was at night and I decided to stop my ship and see what direction it was going. As it turns out the ship was going just in the right direction. On a straight course it was going to pass around 1500 yards in front of me.

I went to periscope depth and periodically raised my periscope to check the location and plot it's course. I drew marks on the map and with the ruler I plotted it's course (very precisely if I might add). I also used stopwatch to approximate it's speed (was around 8 knots).

As the ship was close enough for me to identify it I went to the periscope and I identified it as a merchant vessel (can't remember the name but the draft was around 25 feet I think, and it had about 3,500 tons).

I first selected my scope to automatically track the target (the button at the torpedo panel). I then measured it's height and updated it to the crew. I also went to the map to measure the angle - it was around 120°. I went to make the adjustments to AOB and again updated the info to the crew. I also clicked to enable the position tracking thingy (GSP). After around a minute or so I measured the height and AOB again and updated them and also asked my crew to approximate the speed (they said it was 8 knots). I lowered the periscope and waited for a while.

3.) I went to my torpedo panel and set depth to around 10 (I heard they go 10 yards deeper?) - so if ship is 25 feet deep and 10+10=20 feet it should be okay?

Since I disabled faulty torpedoes I just set 2 of them to high speed and 2 of them to low speed and all four of them to magnetic impact.

After a while I raised my scope again. And measured the height of the ship and updated the crew. I also looked at the map and took new angle reading - it was now 85°. I updated the crew with AOB and asked them to update the speed again (it was 8 knots again).

And then I fired all 4 torpedoes. Suffice to say they didn't hit the ship but instead they passed way behind it (like 5-10 lengths of the ship behind it).



4.) What exactly am I doing wrong? (I also drew a picture of the situation)

5.) GSP was enabled so I thought it was GSP's job to track the ship? Or do I need to aim ahead of the ship when I am firing torpedoes. For example in my case should I put in like 80° AOB to aim ahead? I thought that if I have GSP enabled and correct values I could just dive and fire the torpedoes at a random time and torpedoes would hit (if target doesn't changes it's speed and course).

6.) Can I move my ship when GSP is enabled and will it still track?

7.) What's the point of opening torpedo tubes manually? They seem to fire either way - whether the tubes are open or not.

8.) In submarine school I saw a destroyer and he seems to spot me way before I can identify it. For example I am at periscope depth and I see him far away (I can't identify it even at max zoom). If I raise the scope when he is closer (but still far away) - just about at a point where I can identify it - he seems to spot me immediately and change it's course towards me. Even though I am submerged and just the periscope is up. AOB was about perfect 90°. :/