Ok, Stupid questions from history buff.... | Forums

[jlf1961]

First off, just where are the Narwhal class boats?
Two were in service, Narwhal and Nautalus.
Second, someone care to explain just WHY the Gar class boats cannot upgrade with surface search radar at the game opening?
The Pearl Harbor facility was upgrading all fleet boats with the SJ surface search radar beginning June of 41.
Third, these subs seem to be fuel hogs. Care to explain why, when leaving Pearl with full tanks, you really have to sweat returning from patrol?
I mean really, boats out of Brisbane would run patrols in Japanese home waters and still return with fuel to spare. Unless of course you are running at full or flank all the time.
Standard is just that, standard manouvering speed while under way, full and flank are only used in combat situations.
Fourth, from 1941 through late 43, the Marshals were prime hunting grounds. I have run two patrols in those islands and have only come across a few merchies, and zero convoys.
Fifth, just where is the Tokyo Express in the Solomons? Or the supply convoys out of Rabual into the Japanese bases on New Guinea?

I mean all in all, the game is actually not as bad as some have made it out to be. Granted, I dropped another $120 on a 2nd video card to run the game, but big deal, I'll just put the first card in a friend's system.

I never used the 'a' key since it is a heck of a lot easier to just set a depth on the depth gauge.

As for some of the other problems, well, IT would be nice to be able to turn the radar on, as well as upgrade at the beginning of a career.

It would be nice to have some interaction with the crew. Im sorry but in this case, it is too much like Jane's 688(i) which even my cousin the bubble head hates with a passion. (he is actually a commander in the navy, and has skippered his own boat) now he is assigned to the Navy Design Bureau.

Finally, I would like to suggest to the designers that in the future patches, they might want to put in a few of the infamous Japanese Destroyer skippers. For example, there really was a Bungo Pete who patroled the Bungo strait between Honshu and Kyushu in the home waters. There was an equally infamous skipper in the Tokyo area, as well as one around Truk.

Rabaul had a number of these types, you can read Beach's 'Wahoo' for his accounts of these guys.

With the exception of the real Bungo Pete, eventually every one of these skippers were put out of action by a determined sub skipper. Bungo Pete survived the war... it would be nice to be able to change history.

As far as the people on this forum that seem hell bent to rip the game for its faults rather than consider the good points of the game, may I remind you, it could be worse, it could be like windows... requiring some sort of critical update every week or so.

[ld762n]

Hmm. From what I read even surface ships would normally only run at 1/3 to conserve fuel. Ahead slow was a fuel burner that only got you a short distance, 1/3 was generally the mid point fuel to distance, while standard generally used more fuel and increased distance a bit. Even ever car has a best fuel to distance ratio that is different for each car. Some get better gas milage at 80 while some get better gas milage at 50. Even with SH3 I generally cruised at 1/3 as it seemed to get better mileage.

[davejb1167]

Problem is that if you include time compression that goes jerky and doesn't actually run any faster than 1024 (at 1024 I ran further than at 4096 in one 'trial' I ran) it takes a l-o-n-g time to get to Honshu at 2-3kts!

There are 'fixes' for this at subsim.com in the modders section, a good starting point is the list of mods stickied at the start. I generally find 2/3 speed gives the best range v speed for Pearl - Japan runs. At 2/3 for the transit speed, occasional Standard speed for getting past dodgy bits at night etc I can patrol the area and still RTB with 10-20 fuel left.

Early boats weren't as long legged as later ones, but simply going there and back shouldn't be a gamble the way it is in the stock game. A boat running at 2-3 kts would quite likely never get where it was meant to be going, against any sort of a swell.... at 1/3 speed a surface warship is doing 10-12 kts, a slow transit speed but it'll get you there, although I doubt very much that a warship would proceed to an operating area at this speed. Merchant traffic is going to travel at 10-15kts, so escorts will be travelling at the same sort of speed if on station relative to the convoy body, whilst 'weavers' will of course have to travel rather faster.

[davejb1167]

Oh,
regarding other points -
Bungo Pete (etc) - some of these are in - escorts are rated from 'lame brain' to 'expert' apparently (I may have the nomenclature a little bit out of whack there) so some DD skippers will shoot themselves in the foot a lot, while others are tenacious little devils who will come very close to sinking you every time. Some of the current 'mods' on subsim will increase this if you want a tougher game.

Early war Japanese ASW was poor, it improved over time but was never given the emphasis that (say) NATO in the 70's/80's applied to the job, or the Brits during the battle of the Atlantic v the U boote Waffe.

I can't fault the devs for not modelling two boats - the S class was, apparently, a late addition simply due to demand. I suspect Narwhals will appear via the mod community at some point, however!

Early radar is, I think, a fix on the subsim mod forum.

Like you I find some details annoy me, but I accept that they aren't going to get everything A-1 for a history buff.... getting the torps to exit the tubes probably had a higher priority.