Is there a funner way to return to harber without escape?

[Liddabit]

I'm now on patrol 4, only really doing about 10-15k per run.. but its getting better now that I'm learning to use the deck gun more and the torpedos less :P

But anyway.. my patrols are farther and farther out.. and sailing back to harbor takes forever and is really boring just looking at the map screen with time compression. Do any of you do anything spiffy during that process ?

[Liddabit]

I'm now on patrol 4, only really doing about 10-15k per run.. but its getting better now that I'm learning to use the deck gun more and the torpedos less :P

But anyway.. my patrols are farther and farther out.. and sailing back to harbor takes forever and is really boring just looking at the map screen with time compression. Do any of you do anything spiffy during that process ?

[Kaleun1961]

Define "spiffy." Me? I listen to music or read a book while keeping an eye [and ear] out, and make sure I save every now and then in case I have a nasty time compression accident.

[demigod151]

http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif

I also usually save a torpedo and few deck gun rounds for a "just in case" situation.

[Kaleun1961]

Me too. When I am down to my last forward or stern fish, or both, I set course for home. Chances are you may run into a single on the way home, and being a tiger without teeth is a sad thing.

[Stingray-65]

I believe Kaleun1961 has hit the nail on the head. Might add consume snacks with favorite alcoholic beverage. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[Liddabit]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Stingray-65:
I believe Kaleun1961 has hit the nail on the head. Might add consume snacks with favorite alcoholic beverage. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like the alcoholic beverage idea! :P My crew might not :O

Thanks Kaleun1961, Stingray and demigod http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

This makes me wonder, if the realism of the game is right on.. I seem to only die when I do stupid things like mess around with warships then panic and crash dive into the sea floor :P

Was being on a u-boat one of the safer combat jobs for a German in military service?

[logman01]

Depends on where you are stationed. If you are in Germany or Norway, if I have a few torps left, I make a run into a harbor before a straight shot home.

If I am in France, I hang out by the channel until something comes along and then it is a quick sail to Brest.

[Liddabit]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by logman01:
Depends on where you are stationed. If you are in Germany or Norway, if I have a few torps left, I make a run into a harbor before a straight shot home.

If I am in France, I hang out by the channel until something comes along and then it is a quick sail to Brest. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ahah! That makes me feel better for the future. I'm still at Wilhemshaven. Patroling outside of the border between france/spain and then sailing back over scotland and down again to denmark/germany area is really long :P

[Kaleun1961]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Liddabit:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Stingray-65:
I believe Kaleun1961 has hit the nail on the head. Might add consume snacks with favorite alcoholic beverage. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like the alcoholic beverage idea! :P My crew might not :O

Thanks Kaleun1961, Stingray and demigod http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

This makes me wonder, if the realism of the game is right on.. I seem to only die when I do stupid things like mess around with warships then panic and crash dive into the sea floor :P

Was being on a u-boat one of the safer combat jobs for a German in military service? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope. It was a very dangerous job. It had a death rate of about 75% averaged out over the whole war. In the early days, not many U-boats were lost to enemy action. Officers and crew gained great experience and many were sent ashore to assume land duties, such as administration and training. Starting in 1943 the U-boats were very much the hunted and remained so to the end of the war. By 1944 and D-Day, a U-boat had a 50% chance of surviving its first patrol. Approximately 30,000 of 40,000 U-boat personnel died at sea.

[Liddabit]

This forum is fascinating!

Thanks!

[walsh2509]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by demigod151:
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif

I also usually save a torpedo and few deck gun rounds for a "just in case" situation. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


I use the deck gun every time I can, but does this have an effect on the score you get, I mean sinking a ship with a deck gun rather than a Torp?

I like to take over the gun and blast away, I hit more than the gun crew. But does going that have an effect on the crew as in points they may score?

I don't know how renown works as in each crew memeber do the gun crew get renown points?

I see when I'm dishing out the medals that some of the crew have renown points and others don't even though each have sailed on the same amount of missions.

[Kaleun1961]

A ship destroyed is a ship destroyed. The total points awarded are the same regardless of the method you used to sink it. The total renown you accumulate throughout your career has no effect on the crew. What is more important for your crew is the experience they gain, which affects their performance in combat, for torpedo reloading, efficiency and so forth.

[logman01]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by walsh2509:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by demigod151:
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif

I also usually save a torpedo and few deck gun rounds for a "just in case" situation. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


I use the deck gun every time I can, but does this have an effect on the score you get, I mean sinking a ship with a deck gun rather than a Torp?

I like to take over the gun and blast away, I hit more than the gun crew. But does going that have an effect on the crew as in points they may score?

I don't know how renown works as in each crew memeber do the gun crew get renown points?

I see when I'm dishing out the medals that some of the crew have renown points and others don't even though each have sailed on the same amount of missions. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I used to use the deck gun all the time, especially when the torps were horrible. However, I changed my tune when they started putting deck guns on merchants.

I don't believe how you sink a ship matters in your reknown. I may be wrong on that. Just put them under the waves and you are fine.

I use the deck gun myself whenever I use it. I only have a petty office with that qualification to help speed the reloading. I am much more accurate and I used to be quite good at taking out the other deck gun before finishing off the merchant.

However, with the IXC that I am in now, I have less deck ammo and more torpedos. Now that the torps are better, I use them first and finish off a disabled ship with the deck gun later.

As for the reknown of your crew, I believe that is the reknown you paid to get them, not what they are worth. I still have some original crew who have all their medals, but have 0 reknown.

Happy hunting!

[demigod151]

Basically in the early part of the war, the allies didn't have a clue what they were doing really and were effectively unprepared for the U-boats. The thing that really made fighting the U-boats hard was not the inexperience rather, the inablity to decipher what Germany was telling the U-Boats.

Once the allies were cracking the coded messages fighting the U-boats got a lot easier as they knew what the Grey Wolves were up to. Also as the war progressed the crews got better and better at fighting the U-boats while at the same time the U-boat crew were less and less experienced. With the addition of Radar as well, and the extension of the arial cover zone, life got harder and harder as the war progressed. After 1943 it was at a stage where it didn't really matter how many thousands of tons you sunk, simply completing your patrol and returning to base was a feat in itself.

The trouble was all the best crews and commanders were either being assigned to other duties or they were getting captured or killed so effectively as more and more U-boats poured out they were commanded by less experienced personel in a war where the enemy was improving daily in ASW.

So no, being a U-boat was not really safe, not by any stretch. They were not given the nickname "Iron Coffins" for nothing.

[Kaleun1961]

I have to disagree slightly with you, DG151, but only the first line of your post; the rest is fairly accurate. The problem with British escorts in the early part of the war was that they were inexperienced. Even in the vicinity of the convoys, where they knew the U-boats were there because their ships were being sunk, they didn't have much of a clue what to do. They first of all didn't have proper numbers of escorts with their convoys, which exacerbated the problem. The second factor was that they didn't have much of a chance of detecting the U-boats, as they operated surfaced at night. That was mainly due to lack of radar, which was eventually forthcoming.

The lack of experience was due to lack of training opportunities, understandable in the conditions of underfunding prior to the war. This meant that when a convoy came under attack, the most they could do was beat about, pinging the seas and hopelessly fire starshells in a vain attempt to see something. That changed when the British established a training establishment at Western Approaches and started training proper escort units, keeping them together and giving them the latest technological advances. They were repeatedly drilled in how to react on contact, much like fighter pilots are trained how to react when bounced from behind, or from above. With such men as Captain Walker training these units, they soon began to demonstrate their professionalism. Once significant numbers of escorts were assembled, the Happy Time was over and the war became more balanced, eventually to tip into Allied favour.

The decoding that you mentioned was best put to use to understand where potential wolfpacks were gathering. This information could also be gleaned from radio traffic intercepts; triangulations that told roughly where a U-boat was transmitting. Even if they could not tell what was in the message, they knew roughly where the U-boat was. Concentrations of these triangulations meant a pack was assembling and convoys at sea could be steered around these.

[demigod151]

http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif

Well I may have overexaggerated when I said about my British predecessors not having a clue. They were though unprepared to face the U-boats and I think Donitz was more than aware of this which is why he wanted x amount of U-boats to beat the British quickly before we could get our act together, but he didn't. Though, the U-boats came within 4 weeks of beating us.

Like you said and I say that they didn't have a clue, they were unsure what to do really. Eventually they learned to not let the U-boats get near the convoy in the first place by forcing them to dive and thus slow the U-boat down to a creep. They got the idea that it was better to not let the U-boats get near the convoy in the first place. They had the training then, which they didn't have to start with.

Decoding the message I felt was significant mainly because the allies would know how many U-boats to expect, because U-boats would not signal unless absolutely vital as the war progressed, I think you are well aware of this too, is, rather than wait for the U-boat to come to them, it got to the stage where simply driving the U-boat off was not enough, they were actively looking for to destroy U-boats.

So yeah, Iron coffins.

[Kaleun1961]

The Brits soon came to realize that the necessity of radio traffic, in order to assemble a pack around a convoy, was the Achilles Heel of the U-boats. It was soon learned that the first boat to sight a convoy radioed in contact and tracking reports. Often, the British knew a sub was trailing a convoy but were unable to do much about it. In time, especially with long range air escorts, this first U-boat could be put under or destroyed, so that the convoy had time to get away. With the miniaturization of HF/DF sets that could go aboard escorts, the commander could know exactly how close the sub was and send a destroyer off to force it under.

The Battle of the Atlantic was very much a numbers battle: for the Germans it was a matter of sinking British shipping faster than it could accumulate. For the British, it was a matter of buying enough time to develop enough escorts and train them, as well as develop the technology to defeat the U-boats. Doenitz did wish for 300 U-boats before war with England. This did not, however, occur in a vacuum. Hitler neglected the counsel of his Admirals; the result was that Germany began war with an undersized navy and not enough ocean-going U-boats to strangle British shipping. The British did not oblige him by standing still while he built those 300 boats.

[ottoramsaig]

Liddabit, getting back to your topic / thread...if I am right you have already downloaded SH3Cmdr, if not do so.....here you can adjust your time compression, I think mine runs at 4068 which is more than double the stock. While doing so you will notice that you can adjust the "ship spotted" alert. I changed mine from 8 TC to 1 TC, you can also adjust re-load times for your deck gun. If you load SH3Gen it will give some juicy targets in the ports.

[danurve]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Kaleun1961:
Me too. When I am down to my last forward or stern fish, or both, I set course for home. Chances are you may run into a single on the way home, and being a tiger without teeth is a sad thing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/25.gif

It would be nice if when, or if, you send a patrol report and your down to a minimum amount of fish your then sent a msg to resupply at a freindly port or head for home base.
It gives me an idea, but I don't know if it can be done with a text mod.