How to find ships?

[spoolx]

Hi guys, I am new to the game..
I have gotten lucky and killed a couple ships, however 90% of my time is just going around and trying to find ships, the reports are useless in that even when I get one the ships are gone by the time I get there, also anytime I even get close to a convoy the warships take me out.

Also is their anyway to turn of the airplane sightings? I am trying to patrol at a higher speed but every 2 seconds airplanes set my speed back down to 1 and its a pain to keep bringing it up... any noob advice is appreciated.

Thanks

[Gathrun]

Welcome to hunting. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Finding the prey is the hard part.

Unless the radio reports are close, and/or heading in your direction, its hard to intercept. Remember that they are moving too. If you get a report and head for where they are, you will miss them. You must head them off. Getting in front of them and waiting usually works best if you can.

Once you get surface radar, finding ships becomes easier.

Avoiding escorts is a different story. You can't go charging in full speed. If you can't get in ahead and wait, then you either have to risk shots from farther away, or try to sneak in slowly. Very deep and one or two knots. Or you may get lucky and hit the gap in their coverage perfectly to slip in behind one escort, where their sonar is useless, and far enough in front of the next one that you aren't in sonar range.

[spoolx]

Is their anyway to turn of the airplane notification? Because that makes finding ships much worse because every 2 seconds it stops my time advance

[pookapotamus]

hi Spoolx welcom to the forum, air plane sightings suck, the best way to avoid them is to stay submerged in daylight and surface at night to recharge (just like it really was) as an added bennifit your ears work better when you are submerged than your eyes while surfaced, which means you can detect ships farther away than you can see.

also have you patched your game to 1.4 yet this solves many issues and makes the game much more enjoyable, also Ducimus's mod "trigger maru" adds much more realizm to the game and tones down on aircraft but also ups the difficulty. you fild find great advice in the sticky's at the top of the forum read trough them to get some great tips on all areas of SHIV.

another great newbie tip is to make sure you open your tube doors before you fire, this launches the fish faster and cuts down on errors due to time lage in your firing solution.

good luck!!

[Bextu]

If you want ships try to go somewhere historically accurate such as around the coast of Japan or near Manila. You can also sneak into ports but this is no fun, The ships are sitting ducks. I consider this to be poaching.

[Whisperer]

Hey there Spoolx!

Here's a tip for you. I don't know in witch year you'r playing. But if you have a bad patrol and would like to get some kill's i'd suggest you take a peek in Osaka. Since there where quite a fiew ships maintanance there during ww2. And guess what, this data is also incorporated in the game. Just go to the west, north/west of osaka. Maby you'l get lucky! http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif

Good luck buddy! http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/25.gif

Sorry bout the poaching Bextu, but try this at 100 percent reality and it is still quite a chalange.

Also this was a sertain danger for Docked ships in ww2, the HMS Royal Oak is one of those examples.

"Underneath the massive hull of the HMS Royal Oak, the superstructure of the battleship lies crushed, with gun barrels buried in the sand. These are the clearest images yet of one of the most terrible naval tragedies in British history. The Dreadnought class warship, one of the largest in the British WWII fleet, was sunk by torpedoes during the Second World War in a U-boat attack in Scapa Flow on Oct 14, 1939."

[mwebbo]

Failing all of the tips above. use the game map which comes with the instructions pack. It has all info such as; mine fields, air space, most importantly, shipping lanes. If i'm having a bad mission i go to the junction points of the closest shipping lanes. It's like a duck shoot

[Baolo]

No it does not there is no game map with SH4 that tells you this stuff not with mine anyway nore are there any files in the games folder with this info you must be thinking of SH3 or some mod.It is clear to me that spoolx is so new he still needs to learn how to find the ships and you cant just go anywhere you have to learn to find targets where you get sent to patrol. spoolx use your your map screen and if you have contacts on when you get advised of something via message dont bother heading for it if it more than 120 miles form your current postion you'll most likely wont get to in time go for something close to you and use this as a guide slow=no ore than 6 knots medium= 8-10knots fast=12 or more knots for the speed of the advised target then meassure the general course you think the target will(hint the "tail" shows the direction it is heading) he headed get the knots range of that course then based on the reported speed set your course and speed so that you will arrive where you think the target will be so if the targets course is say 35 knotical miles long and the speed is slow assume that they are going 6knots then devide the distance covered to find the time it will take the target to cover 35 knotical miles then set your intercept course find the distance in knotical miles and set your sub at a speed that will allow you to get to the intercept point well ahead of the target then plot a good small search pattern there so that you will be wating on the convoy when it arrives. You dont want to turn off AC warning if they come too close you get sighted or bombed dive with contacts on find the plane and click onits icon on your attack map it will show a circle this is the line of sight for the plane if it even remotely looks like his course will end up with your sub inside that circle dive to at least 100ft and stay there for about 25 minutes then come back up.As to getting close to the convoy and avoiding the DDs I that everyone has his or her own developed way to this so I'll let you figure it out or someone else will give your thiers but that dosent mean it will work for you. Just dive as soon as you see any ship when you get near enough to well see a DD(closer than 6000yds) run silent and dont stick your periscope very high out of the water play peek-a-boo with it might be hardder at first but using it like that you will thank me later. If they ping you dive DEEP I mean all the way to that red marker just above that puppy you go farther than it but not for very long. It takes time to get good at this game you'll get the hang of it and soon will find yourself laughing at your current skills.

@pookapotamus you are right to say that they did stay under during the war but only during the early months this was what the skips had been told to do by the Navy(prewar idea based on 0 combat evidance) as the war progressed it was found that it was better only to dive when a clear threat was coming all the high scoring skippers threw the under all day up all night tactic overborad like weevil infested flour before the Navy Officially did. I used to use the under all day up all night thing as well it was not the stay up 90% of the time supporters on this site that convinced me that its better the book Thunder Below by Fluckey who firmly belived in this tactic that got me doing it. You just miss too many targets with under all day up all night and it limits you by staying down you also dont have your eyes or radar looking for AC making the odds that you will pop up to see a Jap pilot grinning at you as his bombs fall towards your sub for a loving embrace.In fact it was the missed merchants that brought about the change not only do you lose massive situational awareness(eyes and radar are much better than sonar,hydrophone, and sightable by AC periscopes) A sub on the surface can cover 25-30 miles radius on the surface(that means smoke on the horizon at that range meaning you could sight ship that was maybe 30 35 miles away) on a good day with just your scope you can only really see about 10 miles at best.

[MWolfe1963]

First, figure women out, then you'll know how to hunt ships. You have to be three steps ahead of them and know where they're going before they get there.

Please read the thread "Mods, tips, ect.." It's a sticky at the top of the page. There you will find all the info you need to learn how to shoot, find ships, ect. Read "The SHIV guide". It has tactics from stock game to playing with mods.

Make sure you have the game patched to 1.5. I would the TMO160 mod. While in port, look at the radio and adjust game settings to easier.

Planes are a pain. They get worse during the war. With mods, they can spot you deep. Best to crash dive when planes are around.

If you play stock, planes are non ending. Just dive during the day and time compress until night.

[Yooperbacker]

Hello spoolx,

mwebbo is right about the map that came with Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific with bonus pack game. It is worth while to check out.

If your version doesn't have the SH4 map you can click on the link below my signature (sub picture) where it says SH4 map and it will take you to a download site where you can download the map.

Baolo some of the versions of SH4 do come with a map, naval ship recognition guide and an extra Dvd that is a WWII-era submarine documentary.

[K_Freddie]

Running any mods ?
The stock game is infested with aircraft - way to many - the mods change this.

I spend most of my time underwater, listening on my hydrophones... you hear further than you can see. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[RockinRobbins]

Warning: Thunder Below disciple! Admiral Fluckey in Thunder Below makes it clear that Admiral Lockwood found those skippers who believed in the stay submerged all day ostrich policy and gave them something else to do for which they were more suited... like driving a garbage scow or working on a turnaround crew or maybe they were just suited to become beach hamburger during one of our many amphibious invasions. Ostriches sure didn't belong on submarines, and he removed them with relish.

Fluckey has a conversation with Lockwood in the book where he praises Lockwood for letting his captains run their own boats as long as they produce, and for weeding out those people who thought the object of war was to hide. Fluckey was only interested in belonging to an elite group of warriors who took their lumps and made the enemy pay. Ostriches need not apply. Cowards!http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/nya-nya.gif

Now, if you think about it, the coward strategy is not only shirking your duty to seek and destroy the enemy, it is dangerous for your crew. Look at it this way. Your radar reaches out about twelve or fifteen minutes of flying time toward the horizon. If you are on the surface and one pops up, you have plenty of time to assess the hazard.

Are they going to enter a circle of five mile radius around your sub? Then they might be able to see you. You have lots of time to dive normally, do not hit crash dive, do not alter throttle from ahead standard, you have all day to get to periscope depth before he's crossed the 5 mile line. Now keep submerging to 100' if you are subject to Ducimus' evil airplanes. If you don't know what those are it doesn't apply to you. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif

Stay down there for 5 minutes and immediately surface without pausing to look around or any of that useless stuff. Why? Because you can see 15 minutes out and you've been down seven or eight minutes, that's why! NOBODY can be in your danger zone. You just surfaced with 100% safety and you're patrolling at 9 knots searching ten times the area per hour(that's VERY conservative) that you could submerged.

Now let's consider the cowardly ostrich. He stays "safely" at periscope depth all day, safe in his ignorance that the enemy can see him but he can't see them. If he is subject to Ducimus' evil airplanes they will do Admiral Lockwood's job for him and relieve the coward of command and life. But let's pretend he actually survives his foolishness and surfaces. He could have a hundred planes in his danger radius and would never know it until St Peter tells him! Ignorance is not bliss, no matter what Oppenheimer said. It is only a mask for criminal stupidity in this case.

Eugene Fluckey's yo-yo strategy is more offensive, makes you much more productive and is hundreds of times safer. You have a crew depending on you. If you think you owe it to your country to die, just jump overboard, feed the fishies and let somebody better take the con.
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/muttley.gif

[Baolo]

Ah yes RockinRobbins I knew another like minded person would come along. I forgot the Yo-yo name for so reason but it is the best way to get things done as you say you can cover much more area on the surface than under regardless of the hydrophone even the German U-Boats tried to use the Yo-yo. the game sort of lets you get away with "hearing" farhter with the hyrdophone in real life that is simply not correct you might be able to hear farther than can be seen by radar and other methods in a modern nuclearpowered sub but not in a WWII era vessel. In just about every WWII era book by US Navy submariners they all mention how limited the hydrophones and sonar really was. And I was not trying to discredit the "Ostriche theroy" though I do like RRs name for it very accurte. I was trying to give spoolx another idea to try. I am sure if you did a poll on this site asking who uses Yo-yo and who uses Ostriche theroy you will find alot of folks on here use Yo-yo it is 10,000 times more effective bottom line and no one is going to convince me other wise I used to use Ostriche theroy and once I tried Yo-yo and saw the light(pun intended) I had much more productive partrols. And Yo-yo is better no matter what version or mod you are using.

[bubblehead1980]

In stock due to the ridiculous amount of air contacts I stayed submerged alot during daylight and surfaced at night.

In TMO I use the yo yo because its more practical although as in real life, some days, esp at dawn after you sank some ships a couple hours before in darkness, air activity gets intense and I stay down most of the day...as real skippers often did in such a situation.Gave the crew time to rest as well as the skipper.

I attacked a convoy off Java in 1944 around 0330...planes kept me down all day once dawn broke...everytime id come up, within 30 minutes, planes heading right over me, mustve had radar.Can't wait for next TMO when it has a radar detector...ahhh.

[RockinRobbins]

Well you can't say I'm afraid to be in the same room as an opinion. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/winky.gif

What the ostriches don't realize (because they WON'T see) is that their practice is more dangerous than the alternative. Any time your dive is longer than seven minutes you endanger your crew. You may choose to do that for offensive reasons, or if your crew is bushed after a solid 20 hours of battle, or to make repairs, but no other reason can justify the safety and awareness tradeoff. The admiral expects to maximize the number of square miles of ocean surface searched per day and that can only be done on the surface.

A submarine is a torpedo boat with the ability to submerge for the shortest possible amount of time when it is absolutely necessary. Every second you are submerged you must ask yourself, "Why can I not surface NOW?" If no compelling answer is forthcoming, you blow ballast!

[MWolfe1963]

Originally posted by RockinRobbins:
Warning: Thunder Below disciple! Admiral Fluckey in Thunder Below makes it clear that Admiral Lockwood found those skippers who believed in the stay submerged all day ostrich policy and gave them something else to do for which they were more suited... like driving a garbage scow or working on a turnaround crew or maybe they were just suited to become beach hamburger during one of our many amphibious invasions. Ostriches sure didn't belong on submarines, and he removed them with relish.

Fluckey has a conversation with Lockwood in the book where he praises Lockwood for letting his captains run their own boats as long as they produce, and for weeding out those people who thought the object of war was to hide. Fluckey was only interested in belonging to an elite group of warriors who took their lumps and made the enemy pay. Ostriches need not apply. Cowards!http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/nya-nya.gif

Now, if you think about it, the coward strategy is not only shirking your duty to seek and destroy the enemy, it is dangerous for your crew. Look at it this way. Your radar reaches out about twelve or fifteen minutes of flying time toward the horizon. If you are on the surface and one pops up, you have plenty of time to assess the hazard.

Are they going to enter a circle of five mile radius around your sub? Then they might be able to see you. You have lots of time to dive normally, do not hit crash dive, do not alter throttle from ahead standard, you have all day to get to periscope depth before he's crossed the 5 mile line. Now keep submerging to 100' if you are subject to Ducimus' evil airplanes. If you don't know what those are it doesn't apply to you. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif

Stay down there for 5 minutes and immediately surface without pausing to look around or any of that useless stuff. Why? Because you can see 15 minutes out and you've been down seven or eight minutes, that's why! NOBODY can be in your danger zone. You just surfaced with 100% safety and you're patrolling at 9 knots searching ten times the area per hour(that's VERY conservative) that you could submerged.

Now let's consider the cowardly ostrich. He stays "safely" at periscope depth all day, safe in his ignorance that the enemy can see him but he can't see them. If he is subject to Ducimus' evil airplanes they will do Admiral Lockwood's job for him and relieve the coward of command and life. But let's pretend he actually survives his foolishness and surfaces. He could have a hundred planes in his danger radius and would never know it until St Peter tells him! Ignorance is not bliss, no matter what Oppenheimer said. It is only a mask for criminal stupidity in this case.

Eugene Fluckey's yo-yo strategy is more offensive, makes you much more productive and is hundreds of times safer. You have a crew depending on you. If you think you owe it to your country to die, just jump overboard, feed the fishies and let somebody better take the con.
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/muttley.gif

Ducimas airplanes...go down to 100 feet...better to go 150. He made them that evil.

I have panned back up and looked down from the sky at my ship from a planes view. It's amazing how your sub shows. At periscope depth, you still looked surfaced. I could spot my sub in the right waters at 150 feet.

Still, even though I don't know how they know you're there. I crash dive now. Seems even at deep depth, they have auto lock and bomb the exact spot you dived. Never get hurt at 150 feet, but have suffered mild damage at 100 several times.

[K_Freddie]

http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif
This is my boat and I'm in charge and, I don't give a toss about Admiral Lockwood, and if he did confront me about it I'd tell him off - 'in no uncertain terms'.
I have done this before, in the miltary, with no negative results - coz I was ...'right' http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Essentially - I'm not going to let some PRATT 'sink me' because he has strange ideas about how to conduct stealth warfare.
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/88.gif

[Baolo]

I can tell you where never in the miliatary because I can tell you that no one tells off a commanding officer hell you dont tell off anyone that out ranks you! I have seen many people foolish enough to have done this end up standing tall before the man and then often getting busted in rank and getting extra duty and if they had a command losing it(I am talking about the real life military here not the game. And it is the Us Navys' boat not yours http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gifYour in it because they ORDERED you to command it).The only answer you give a CO is "Yes Sir/Ma'm!" Do what you want in the game but Yo-yo works find a highly succesful skipper in real life in the US. Navy in WWII that used the "stealth" hide all day long. tactics I bet you wont find one and reguardless there are many that used Yo-yo When in Rome do as the Romans do. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif And if you are playing with TMO it says in the equipment page of your sub that the JPs hydrophone range is 10,000 yards that is far less than the 30knm range that an SJ radar scope can cover and on the surface at ahead standard a sub covers a vastly larger area so you are much less likely to miss a ship or convoy. Like RockinRobbins says it is the "Ostriche Theroy" that is so true and funny as well!

[K_Freddie]

Hmmm, you have read up on how the uboats could hear convoys up to 100 miles on a good day - think about it.

And seeing that SJ radar has a small aerial means that it's high frequency, which also means that the radar beam does not bend over the horizon, so for ships it's range is line of sight... Hydrophone does better than line of sight. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

We do know that a lot of skippers 'DIS-OBEYED' idiotic orders from above, but would not admit it until nothing could be done about it.

As the one GI said something along these lines.. "The Japanese soldier was ordered on suicidal charges and died for his emporer, Hell no, I will not die for my president, I want to live and kill the enemy"

If the military are looking for fighting thinkers, then they'll keep me on. If they want robots, they'd fire/cashier me. Either way it didn't bother me...
Oh! and while we're at sea and I'm captain - it IS my boat. Back in docks the navy can have it back.
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/partyhat.gif

[RockinRobbins]

You would be immediately cashiered for non-production. Lockwood used to go through captain's logs and ask, "Why couldn't you surface right then?" There was no right answer, but believe me, your command was on the line answering that question. Fluckey's methods made him one of the most productive boats of the war while the ostriches were returning to port full of torpedoes, no enemies sunk, nothing to show for the risk of going into harm's way.

In war, there IS no safety. Looking for it is evidence of insanity. Aggressiveness without recklessness is the goal, always pressing the enemy being the safest way to conduct warfare. Yes, you can die doing that. But you are less likely to die than if you willfully blind yourself and pretend the boogie man is not out there. Likelyhood of survival is a product of active, aggressive awareness.

If you could search the same radius with sonar as radar (you cannot), you would still search 1/9 the surface area while submerged at 1 knot to "save" batteries, as at best fuel economy speed of 9 knots on the surface. In addition, when I make contact, my batteries are at 100% and I am in all respects ready for combat. You are not. That alone is dereliction of duty.

Fluckey took Lockwood's place after the war. What does that tell you about what worked and what didn't?

[Baolo]

Thats right skippers did disobey bad orders and ideas like when they where told to stay under all day skipper knew this was BS and did not do it! And I also find those German claims that a non powered hydrophone is going to hear 100 miles that is simply not true and water effects the range that unpowered and even powered sonar travels there is no way that your going to have 100 miles of water and in all that distance the sound wave not hit something that is going to distort it to a degre that the techonolgy at the time would not be able to correct. 100+ miles with modern sonar very easily. 100miles with any nations WWII sonar tech no way. And iff they had such good sonar why did the german U-boats fail at their goal? the answer is aircraft! you cant here them with sonar but they can kill you with ease.

[spoolx]

Thanks for the replies guys, I have had alot of luck finding ships but the airplanes are driving me crazy.. I cant move with them their.. Anyway to turn off the notification of them or remove them completely?

Also is their a way to make is so I stay fully fast forwarded when a contact is found?

[K_Freddie]

As a little anecdote...
My method is to go to a possible bottleneck. and sit and wait for ~ 2 days - I mean I just stay put at 100ft, listening on sonar, waiting.
If nothing happens I move about 100Nm further on and do the same thing again.
http://www.vanjast.com/SHPics/Map.jpg

Non-Productive http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif ... Fire Lockwood I say. In a time of 4 days, 2 coastal frieghters have been sunk (by gunfire), and a Large Split would have been sunk if... you guessed it.. !@$#@#$ Dud Torps.
On sinking each ship, I beat off to the next 'location'.
As you can see, I have a plan... and it works - well!! it has to work - I thought of it. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

So the reasoning.. is why make yourself desperate by expending your fuel running around like a YapDog, when you just let the target come to you, then you will have enough fuel for an extended chase if necessary. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

With regard to RL, I see sooo much mismanagement because people are too impatient, if they'd only take about 20% more time, they'd save themselves all the crisis bullsh..t, they have to manage afterwards.
This is my life policy, extending into my gameplay. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/25.gif

[MWolfe1963]

I bet you have a goldfish in a bowl near your cp.

You don't save an ounce of gas by staying submerged, what battery you use up, you lose fuel to recharge it...better speed on the surface equals more milage covered, thus better milage.

But in real life, near certain places such as airfields, radar or not, Captains stayed underwater during the day. Using radar may find a plane, but it also tells a plane your there, thus sending more.

Just enjoy the game...even if you get neckaches from keeping your head in that hole. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif