This is not you average dumb sailors piloting these merchant ships. They zig then zag and not always the same direction. I have used the tutorials for deck gun and now torpedo attack. My first fish was running hot fast and normal when for no reason that I could figure out the merchant started moving from a dead stop. She must have seen my scope. The scope height is adjustable and the faster in the water you go the more spray the scope kicks up. My first fish missed. I then hunted down a small tanker and recieved a kill first fish fired at her. The next tanker was the one zig zagging all over. First two fish missed her the third hit the starboard side and she did not sink but had a HEAVY list to starboard. She slowed but continued to zig zag until the last fish blew her out of the water literaly everywhere!

Might be talking to myself but at least this will serve as a log of my first day with this game.

I started my first campaign and it was tough just getting out of the kiel. Around O dark thirty ran into a friendly DD no alarm was sounded. This truly reminds me of leaving port on so many ocations as the imersian factor is second to none! More in a little while after the next leg of my journey.

Keep posting, we hear you!

Yeah keep posting!! Its interesting for us not yet lucky to live in America!

I will as this will serve as the log of my first day.

Ok I finaly cleared the Norwegen straits and found a freindly merchant that I waived at as I hit DEEP blue water. It took me three days to clear that strait and it sure does feel good to be out in the deep ocean again.

On the third morning I woke up to the weather getting pretty choppy but heck that is the least of my crews worries. I have run the claculations four times in my head and it allways puts my going through the Dover narrows in broad daylight.

I will have to ponder this throughout this day and make a decision to stay on the surface doing 13 knots or submurge until dark. With the weather picking up it is slowing my progress. My assigned patrol area is BF17 and to go around England would take weeks if not months.

Freaking WOW! Talk about intense........ Taking water over the conning tower now the sea has really picked up slowing my pace to 12 knots. I had a red contact during daylight and ordered a dive. Cranked the perascope up and could not find or hear the contact anywhere. Noticed it had medum speed when last sighted and thought it best if I just leave the area. Now looks like I will be crossing the straits of Dover around Midnight due to my slow progress. Again the most intense game to come out in eons! I was crXping my pants for awhile!

Dawn comes and we put on our duck gear.



As the morning sky lights up good and bright it looks like I am in GALE conditions!

Great stuff Wolfar, keep it coming.

Made my first merchant contact before the Dover straits in extremly high seas. Could not man the deck gun as it was awash. Most of the crew was exhasted as I had not been making them take normal watch rotations. You HAVE to watch your crew fatige. Had 3 torps just plain miss and 1 dud I watched it bounce off. Took 3 direct hits to sink the 6600 ton merchant. Damb! I only have 4 freaking torps left. Might have to head back home. Remember rough weather although good for hiding in takes its toll on crew and firing solutions. Hell I had one torp breach a wave and explode when it hit the next one!

justa note, add SH3 to sig

Heck I have been gaming for over 20 years. If I listed all the games it would probably take up 20 pages at least.

Anyway think on this, I am running this game at ONLY 29% realisum. It is this tough can you imagine 100%? Ok it is only my first day so perhaps it will get easier.

It's not that we don't hear you talking, it's just that we aren't used to getting a word in edgewise

(I'll make him pay dearly for originally accepting me into his squad back in 1998).

LOL Tom! Come on I used to let you guys talk all you wanted.

Anywho, guess my next move is to try and figure out how to get back to port in one piece. I have 4 torps left, 1 in the stern tube with 2 reloads only for the stern tube and only 1 fish in tube 3. Nice corner I have myself boxed into as it took me 4 or 5 days to get to my present location just northeast of Dover.

Sea's are so rough that the whole bridge is going underwater. It states now that I can not man the gun during a storm. The last two fish I fired from the stern tube blew up probably from breaching waves. Storms are TOUGH nuts to attack in!

All in all this is it! This sim has it ALL!

I plan on picking this little baby up Friday Wolfar.

Maybe we can meet on the AG26 teamspeak server and have a go at multiplayer.

Maybe Teddy Bar will join us if he is awake.

I will be behind you guys on the learning curve but I am a quick learner.

Wolfar,

These are my favorite kind of threads to read. I didn't get through all the academy yet, but it was fun working through it. Best tutorial of any game I've ever tried.

Looking forward to my first patrol, but wondering what realism I should do. We'll see how it goes.

KC23,
Learning curve is high so I would keep it simple your first patrol. The default is what I am running right now @ 29% and I plan on keeping it there for this first try at the campagin.

Tom,
I will be more than happy to have a go at multi but remember I work wierd hours. Tuesday~Saturday 1400~2230 off Sunday and Monday. If you guys want to hook up on the mornings or eves of my days off I am ready to go!


I will be posting more of my patrol once I get my homework out of the way and sail the next leg.

Good thread. I like that you made a note about crew fatigue . . . I needed the reminder because I only skimmed through the manual in my eagerness to get started. So it's no surprise that my engines stopped on my journey.

Ok next leg of my journey.

The last merchant that I tried to attack stern first seemed to try and intercept my course and ram me. I ordered hard to starboard and went by her stern close enough to hit that merchant with a rock. The sea state is still intense, the only 2 torpedo reloads I have are on the deck. I can not get to them because of the stormy weather. Deck gun also because of the weather is a usless ornament. I ordered the navagator to plot a course back to base. I stood down 50% of the crew and gave them thier first eight hour sleep! After the eight hours was up most of their fatige was back upto full value. One has to really pay attention because I was only leting them rest long enough to get the red >>>! off of them. Ok back to the Sim and heading for home after a smoke.

WOW what a game with the best imersion I have ever had the pleasure to be part of!

This last leg of my journey not much to report. After the last 36 hours the sea state still remains volital. Can not get to the torpedo reloads on deck. Just clearing the Norwegen ford entrance. Might as well head all the way back to Kiel at this point. Rotating crews on about 12 hour rotation seems to be paying off as I have almost elimenated the red >>>>! from most of them.

Good stuff there, Wolfar!

Happy to report the work around in the patch fixed my UZO / Binoc's bug.

Almost to Kiel now sea state even in the straits back to Kiel is still just below Huricane strength. Headquarters will still not send the message for me to return home. I guess they figure I have 2 fish left go and use them. What they do not know is that I can not get to them. Crew fatituge is almost non existant now. Hopefully when I get closer to Kiel they will alow me to return to base.

Notice my Binoc's just off the starboard bow working fine.




Grrrr have to get ready for work! I am bummed because I am TOTALY hooked on this sim!

I should be pulling back into the port of Kiel tonight when I get off work. Will let everyone know what is going on then.

Good stuff, thanks for posting it. Gotta get this one.

Wolfar,

Are you sure you will get a message from HQ ordering you back? In my first mission I returned when the 'stay on patrol for 24 hours' mission objective was completed and nobody screamed at me.

I never got a radio message.

Well I never did get the message to return to port even though I kept radioing my situation.

I spent about 20 minutes getting to the straits going to Kiel. I then had the game lockup on me. Seemed to be a sound loop. So I turned down my sound card aceleration by one after a reboot.

Pulling into the Kiel strait area at dawn still in bad weather.



I had several points where the time compression went red and I was not able to speed it up. I must assume to shallow or to narrow. Anywho I made it finaly to the sub pens and like a amature proceeded to bounce the bow off of the concrete wall. Still no reply from HQ about returning to port. Recieved a Sir Ship damaged instead. GO SLOW very SLOW into the port. Gotta be more paitent next time. So I can not figure for the life of me how to end the damb mission. I hit the ESC key just because and there it is in front of my chops >>>>> END MISSION. :rolleyes: I sank 1 merchant for a total of 6350 tons and recieved 650 renown. I also got to give away a sub-marainars pin. Now what the heck does that pin do?

Will be sailing shortly after I get my homework out of the way again.

Addicted yea this game to a simulation gamer is like FREAKING CRACK COCAINE IS TO A JUNKIE!

Wolfa,

Wow, haven't had a dynamic campaign worth talking about since Mig Alley.

I am taking my time with this one and just enjoying every minute of it. Just about to tackle the last academy convoy mission before I start my first career.

Very much enjoyed hearing your first patrol. I also think I'm gonna start at the default 29% settings for my first dynamic campaign. I'm impressed how challaging it is even on these settings.

KC23,
I think there might be a problem with the 29% stuff. I did not see my fuel level going down or even my batt's that I can remember. Nice that you don't have to worry about them but that is somthing I would have rather turned on then off. I do not know if you can change things around once you start. Going back into the sim now.

Ok in port before you leave you can change the difficulty level. Things like limited fuel, limited O2 and a couple other things were turned off. I am now at 43% difficulty.

Patrol #2 starts now.
Got some more seamen that were green raw recruits. 2 more warrents that were raw as well. All of these cost me 0 renown. As long as they are raw no experiance they cost nothing. I did pay for 1 warrent officer that was good @ 150 renown.

Took it out of the sub pen @ 1/3 speed. Time was 0330 and dark! Really cool!



I then ploted my course to clear the small channel leaving Kiel. I then proceeded to increase time compression to 32. I heard somthing and blew it off as a fluke. WRONG MOVE! This was follow by a damage report. I raced to the damage control room to find minor flooding and assigned a damage control team to take care of it. I promply hit F-12 and raced under my U-Boot on a reverse course. I saw even in the dark that it got VERY shallow. Frick I hit a damn sandbar! Knocked my hull integrity down to 68% and I have not even cleared the channel!

Here is on the way out of the Kiel straits area at dawn.



I have the BEST assigned patrol area this time also. It is NW of Irland and a proven good hunting ground in 1939.

Ok so now I continue on with a already damaged U-Boat. I guess the moral is to take her out slow and do deapth under keel reports often and NO TIME COMPRESSION untill you clear the first strait out of Kiel.

Grrrrrr What a way to start a patrol!

Cleared the Norwegen straits now in deap water. The morning reviels PERFECT sailing weather!


Time to get to work! All ahead standard!



My rough and ready crew on watch.



Night time I dove and attempted the new learned trick of listening at 4 knots.


It worked and I picked up a merchant noise and direction within 30 min in game time 30 seconds my time. I investegated and it turned out to be a friendly but what the heck it did work!

Just one more hour and my saga continues! I hope to start posting screenshots soon.

S!
Still waiting for my game to ship

I have one, I repeat ONE, game on my computer; IL2/FB/PF. I have no serious interest in naval sims whatsoever.

I will be buying this one tomorrow.

Reading with interest Wolfar - I'll be buying this tomorrow!

smith

Now that cracked me up!

Ok I am now out in open ocean. Had a brief enemy sighted it was at night in calm sea's. I went to flank speed trying to pursue the bandit because it was just off of the Norwegen coast. Dove and went to ahead slow speed to listen on hydrophones. The more I thought about a enemy being off of the Norwegen coast the more I figured MUCHO trouble for me. I was not in shiping lanes so it has to be somthing war like. Ok Navagator return to plotted course and surface.



As soon as I reinstall all my web tools I will be posting screen shoots of all my patrols. Probably Monday as that is when I have the most time. I will be going on anouther leg of my journey tonight and will post soon.

Next leg report.

Everything calm and nothing really happening. Other than the fact that I still say I can feel the ocean on my face and BY GOD I love this sim! Even when nothing is happening the imersion is second to none! I can NOT over stress this point. Just fricking sailing around is pure joy for me!

Anywho I am off of the north east coast of England in calm sea's for a change unlike my other patrol! This time I have all intentions of making it to my patrol zone.

This game rocks - but one thing AI wise seemed a bit odd to me.

I was getting attacked by a Destroyer - so tucked in behind one of the convoy ships (cargo one) and the Destroyer continued its assualt completely pummeling and sinking the cargo ship ! Would they really do that ?!

Mark.

I do not know about that. What does seem odd is the targeting of the tin cans. From what I have read they lobb shells all over the place. :rolleyes:

I am taking this mornings patrol time and updating this thread with Pics of my patrol.

Ok now I can refine my story now that I got my pictures up and running.

Wicked man!! This thread is fun to read, i will have to do a story thread with pictures. Its good to hear how someone else does.

Thank you!
The pictures I posted today really add to the discriptions.

This looks incredibly interesting. I use to love Silent Hunter (the original) back in the day on my 486 66mhz.

I'm thinking about buying this one but I'm fairly poor. Is it really worth it?

What are the system requirements? I have a Pentium 2.6 Ghz, 1 Gig of Ram, and a Geforce4 Ti4200. Will that be sufficient? Also I do not have a DVD drive, is it only available on DVD, or is a CD version also available?

Hey wolfar 1 ? for ya
Is it true that 50 sailors go into a sub and go on tour and at the end there is 25 couples?

Slaps forhead Dasher not that old joke again!

Sputnik,
Runs perfect on my Celeron 2.0 Ghz with 1.2 gigs of 133mhz ram and my FX5200 256 meg card. It is deffenitly worth it. You can pick up a DVD read only drive @ http://www.tigerdirect.com for $22.95. I am not sure though about your Geoforce 4 card though. Only is availible on DVD or download on the 22nd of this month from what I understand.

Anyone else know?

Man can't wait to get home and get back into the saddle! SH3

Get a DVD drive and you are all set. They are about $22.00-$30.00.

i've played about 20 missions at 48% difficulty. Tried the mark2D sub aswell, but it ran out of diesel enroute to my patrol area. Back to 7B and C.

Now i have VIIB equipped with MAN engine and all accessories for this sub. Can reach 20knots on surface
All crew slots are manned.


My favourite mission this far. I was sailing on surface near Scapa Flow, and sunk a merchant with my cannon. Immediately after that, i had 2xType C destoyers and 1 bigger ship attacking me. DIVE! Went to silent running mode, but the enemy was still circiling above me. Their depth charges struck my boat, but i managed to get away. Batteries were running low, so i surfaced the boat. Immediately a Hurricane attacked, and sunk our ship.


btw. Has anyone tried ramming those smaller ships. Those teeth on your sub can cut a fishing boat into 2 pieces

Have not tried ramming yet. I hear you win 4/5 times. I would rather keep it on the realistic side as much as possible as I do not think U-Boat's rammed that much.

We are cruising just NNE of England and one of my lookouts calls mast on the horizon! Everyone's heart starts skipping a beat. I work it out in my head where is the best point to intercept. I then plot an intercept course. I then make the first sighting and I am greeted with a big juicy target!



I line up for a perfect port side no deflection shot. Back 1/3 I told the crew as I wanted to make sure we had the 300 meter arming range with some to spare. I then set the spread to 3 deg firing out of tubes 1&4. I waited and waited for the perfect shot. Then I gave the command LOSE!


Running hot strait and normal my weapons officer informed me.

We continued to wait and wait. Sweat was running off of our browes. The stopwatch was clicking down and it was if all the crew were holding their breath. I could swear that I heard that merchant captain order HARD TO STARBORD!

The sonar operator said the merchant had increased speed and was making allot of noise as if they had just seen our torpedo's.



Then we heard an explosion actually two of them.


The sounds of the explosions reverberated through the control room. Everyone was screaming YES and patting each other on the back.



We promptly heard her break up and go strait to the bottom.


Side note: I think I hit cnrl P and that is why you do not see debris flying off of the merchant.

Side note:
My hands were all sweaty last night. I could not even bring myself to use time compression when lining up for the perfect shot. It was 0300 in real time when I finnaly put my boat back on course. I remember holding my breath literaly before the first fish hit. I am telling ya this sim is IT and MORE!

We I started my campaign on 86% realism. That TDC stuff is still a bit much for me. Everything else is realistic.

Up to my 5th patrol. I did die and go back to a saved mission once.

I stumbled across the Battle ship Revenge and tried my luck. He was too far and his escorts did me in.

Still haven't seen my first convoy yet, but I did have my first couple of air attack just north of scapa flow.

Absolutely fantastic game. Easily the best naval game of all time IMHO.

What the hell....? So that's where my officers went. Wolfar you @#$@#&*#...you bribed them to join your crew, ey?!

Gotta love this game. I am starting my 7th patrol now with my VIIb. Last night I finished my 6th with my first convoy attack off Ireland. It was very, very intense. Got about 26.000 tons overall, until the escort finally chased me away. Playing at 59% realism.

For now I can't be bothered with manual TDC. It's tough enough as it is

BTW, the conning tower going under in a storm is real funny. I find myself making gargling (sp?) sounds everytime...how sick is that?

Last night, returning home from the 6th patrol I ended up in a severe storm. I was running at about 13 knots, but the tower kept going under and the engines sounded like they where almost stalling everytime that happend; not sure I imagined it, but speed went down to 7 knots each time, so I went to flank speed enabling me to run the waves better. Had to do this for almost 2 days, when the storm finally let up.

Damnit man, LOVIN' THIS!

I really like stories people make similar to this. IL-2 was the best I've seen up till now Keep em comin'!

My specialty has become heavy fog attacks. I've avoided ramming every time and have rarely missed with my torps.

I get within about 600m at flank speed, then down to full speed up until just under 500m and then cut it to 1/3rd and basically drift into visual and let the eel go. I use stop and even back slow to fine tune staying between 300 and 350m.

I only do this on lone merchants. You can bet I won't be fooling around in the fog with any escorts around.

The graphics of ships moving in and out of the fog are amazing.