Thanks a lot trindade, I appreciate the comment. The hunting off the coast of your country is some of the finest in the sim
That's cool you've returned to sub simming. Good hunting. Which boat do you command? I haven't played SH3 in way too long.
With Korvettenkapitän Otto Popp's career nearing 1943, it's a good time to take stock of what's unfolded thus far, and some comments about our Type VIIB. The first point is that I am thrilled to have survived to this point. We've had too many close calls. We've taken depth charge damage from a number of escorts, and also at least that many aircraft. Time and again we've gotten under just as the attack came, but so far none of these attacks was quite enough to sink us. As noted in the AAR, we need the Metox, which when we get it will be referred to simply as the Cross. Being able to detect the enemy's radar signals will flip the score, and give us invaluable warning of approaching radar-equipped aircraft and surface ships. Not only that, it also serves to help find targets, particularly task forces and convoys, especially in heavy weather. It reveals a bearing and that is a huge help in developing an interception or avoiding one. Range is shown in the sim as 13km, shorter than hydrophone by about 7km. But that allows the time we need to take action.
As mentioned in the OP, I decided to take a Type VIIB because of the reported bug that causes issues when a boat receives some sort of conning tower upgrade, usually in the form of additional space or platforms for mounting AA guns. The Type VIIB does not receive these upgrades in OM for whatever reason, so I reasoned would be immune to this particular bug, allowing me to sail though a career without running in to a dead end. As you may have noticed, I don't man the AA guns and they have not been fired at all in this career. If there are aircraft in sight I dive, and no mistake. We face a lot of dangers but aircraft are at the top of the list. As a result I do not miss any of these possible upgrades as I wouldn't be using them anyway.
At no point have we been offered any new boat type, like in most shades of Silent Hunter. A type VIIC is an improved version, but in some ways slightly inferior, such as speed, which is already on the slow side. One pertinent consequence is the fact that without the control room expansion of the VIIC, I get offered no hydrophone upgrades. We began the war with the standard Gruppenhorchgerat, with a range of around 20 km. This is good enough, but we are locked out of upgrades. Our version is not rotatable, meaning it should be less effective ahead and behind, but that does not seem to translate to the sim.
In addition, I believe that we will not be offered a schnorchel when the time comes, should we make it that far.
Since the outset of war, things have gone well for U-46. We have sunk about 450,000 tons of enemy shipping, including two fleet carriers, a cruiser and two destroyers. The arrival of the T III electric torpedo is excellent, and it is good to have reliable torpedoes after three years of shooting defective ones. The Metox is crucial though, and without it it is only a matter of time before an aircraft gets the drop for good. My shooting was very good, with only about six misses though all of our time in the Atlantic. This is down to positioning, and if you look at any torpedo impact screenshot you see the range is set between 500 and 1000 meters. By conning the boat to the best position, firing the fish becomes academic and then just a matter of dud-rate. Most of my misses I attribute to error in speed calculation. Through our time in the Atlantic, we only missed one ship entirely, and that was the destroyer during the convoy attack on June 29, 1940 in grid BF 41. That torpedo missed the destroyer, but went on to strike a passenger freighter that went down. Since arriving in the med however our percentage has gone way down, with shots at high-speed task forces from long range having low probability of success and our hit rate has gone down sharply.
As we move in to 1943 we face an increasingly lethal enemy. The Torch landings in November of 1942 will begin to switch control of the Med over to the Allies, and we should see an ever-increasing enemy presence in the form of air patrols and hunter-killer groups. Convoy escorts are sure to be radar-equipped. I am not sure if DF'ing is a thing in Silent Hunter, but I don't use the radio in case it is! I don't send status reports to Donitz just in case. Sometimes I will use the contact report to alert headquarters to a convoy contact for a bit of roleplay, but with no other subs in the game it's just for flavor. No need to send beacons and bring your kameraden in. Too bad really, friendly and enemy subs in the game would add so much. Imagine taking hours setting up a shot only to have it blow up in your scope. That actually happened to me in the U-47 career, but it was the Luftwaffe who did it, in the waters between Malta and Sicily.
At this point I have two clear goals. Survive the war and sink a battleship. We have yet to see any battleships in this career, discounting the battlecruisers. It's not very likely we make it to the end, I know that. The one thing that we have over our historical counterparts I believe is that our radar detectors detect all radar. There's no worry of losing our detection ability on the advent of centrimetric radar for example. At least I believe this is how it works. As long as we heed the Cross' warning, we should be able to avoid surprise attacks, and it will be depth charges that pose the most lethal threat.
