Anime General Silent Hunter RAGE!

[WhiskeyWolf]

Out of my fucking way!










8/10 rages

Here I am playing SH3 (+GWX3), it's year 1942 and I'm on way back from an uneventful patrol in the south Atlantic, riding my glorious IX-A. Hell - I'm thinking - I didn't raid any port lately, might as well visit Gibraltar. Looks like a cool place.

The situation is as followed:
- you can only enter the port from the south
- it's shallow, periscope depth is as far as you go

+ the bay is large, you have enough place to play hide&seek
+ the port is guarded by: 1 Elco Boat and 2 shitty tugs

I slowly proceed through the bay directly to the port looking for some fat targets - and there I see two destroyers but fuck them... there are 2 Cruisers (+10 000t) plus the icing on the cake a London Class Heavy Cruiser (+13000t). Oh God it's heaven!

Or so I thought, I also saw two small dots on the other side of the bay but there were too far away for identification (didn't want to bring my periscope up because the tugs were circling very close). I had time so I took the camera (fuck you, I know it's a noclip command gone legal but it gives me a boner every time I use it) for a longer trip. So I'm closing, closing... the closer I am the stranger one of the ships looks... and then... holy shit!

It's H.M.S Motherfucking Nelson...

How happy I was, how naive I was. As of now it's the third day I try to sink those fuckers to the bottom. It's not that it's hard, it just that it takes a shit load of time... and some other problems:
1. Hmm, it's 1a.m., might as well finish for for now, you can always have a cup of burning fuel in the morning

Morning. Saves are corrupt.

2. The game just crushed for fuck of a reason.
3. The tug crushes into me because they can't sail worth of shit... not to mention them coming back and bombing me till kingdom comes.
4. Generally running out of ammo because the torpedoes are being a bitch.

Today, the situation was finally shaping up. Or so I thought.
1. Sinking the Nelson - the bitch took 4 shots and it looked like it didn't even break a sweat. But the fifth one generated some awesome frame shuttering fireworks.
2. Next a Small Depot Ship that was nearby.
3. Sinking one of the Cruisers.
4. Sinking the Heavy Cruiser. Around 70 000t is sunk, I'm dry.
5. Getting the fuck away from here. They tugs were looking for me but in the wrong place - long range attack on the Depot Ship concentrated their attention elsewhere.
6. Tugs are close but nonthreatening.
7. WHAM! Who the hell put an anti-submarine net here? Don't remember it being here last time. Anyway, minor damage - repairing it took like two minutes.
8. To 40m we go and under the net.
9. Free, thugs far away! Engine 60%, periscope depth... time to get back home.
10. Time compression to 16x.
11. Suddenly I look back and the tug is breathing down my neck. Damn it all to hell! Dive! Rudder to Port! *Two Depth-Charges hit me on both sides* Three forward compartments are taking on water, I scramble the damage control that was still on standby. Shit is serious, but it can still manage it... if I wasn't sinking like a stone 60... 70... 80... too fucking fast... WHAM! Explosion in the second compartment (not a depth-charge).

Status: Damage Control crew's dead, along with at least 10 other that were in the compartment. My U-105 is going to the bottom while I still curse like there is no tomorrow.

ARGH!

 

[poocolator]

frame shuttering fireworks.

Very nice.

Also, now I want to install and play it again, you mofo.
Mmmmm.

 

[Gragt]

If you watched Das Boot, you'd know you should stay the fuck away from Gibraltar.

 

[Destroid]

The Nelson is such an ugly ship.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

If you watched Das Boot, you'd know you should stay the fuck away from Gibraltar.

First thing that came into my mind too. Don't get your dive plane stuck in the down position after taking depth charge damage.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Such missions are practically impossible without save & reload.

Prien himself got only one lucky shot on the Royal Oak. All his other torpedoes missed, or failed to go off. One hit the anchor chain, but the british didn't react.

SHIII and sHIV I've seen it often happen that capital ships don't sink, although you send several torpedoes into them.

Lastly, if you are spotted by escorts in such shallow water, you are totally fucked.

 

[DwarvenFood]

nice read, did u ever try waiting laying down on the sea bottom with engines off? seems to work.. in books

 

[Burning Bridges]

You can't use a lot of time compression on the ground, land proximity check

Besides it's the worst thing thing you can do in Silent Hunter, for the escorts will spot you anyway, and you lose all benefits of a moving target.

 

[Trash]

Decided once to enter a French harbour for the fun of it. It's a small one in Northern France and is surrounded by two piers leaving only a small opening. Place is extremely shallow so I am only marginaly under water. Got in undetected at night after sneaking up to the place for two consecutive days and nights. Lots of patrols outside.

I use a periscope to see what's what on the inside. One cruiser, hospital ship, several large merchants and a handfull of smaller ships like destroyers. Noone saw the periscope and I figure that I can probably fire one good salvo from the front tubes and back tubes before TSHTF and perhaps throw in another one on my way out. My torps often don't explode so I decide to focus on only a few targets.

Hit the hospital shit with four torpedoes. All detonate but the ship is still floating. Damn. My aft salvoe hits two smaller ships. One is sinking. With my camera (couldn't resist) I see the entire harbour is in turmoil. One ship is on fire, hospital ship looks damaged but floats. I can't resist and wait for my men to reload the tubes.

Second salvoe is spread among hospital ship and cruiser. Neither sink. The aft salvo sinks the burning destroyer and damages another one. Place looks like an inferno with fires raging all over and alarms going off. I am frustrated that the capital ships are still floating but decide to GTFO and fire one last aft salvo at them.

Then I discover that several tugs and patrol boats have gathered at the harbour exit and that I am under heavy shelling fire from all sides. Get hit in the tower by a shell, heavy flooding. Fire my last salvo. All duds. I sink.

I love that game.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Now that I think of it, it may be even harder to sink big ships in such shallow waters.

First, a really big ship may hit the sea floor and stay there before it's completely underwater.

Moreover in open water, the waves do their part. I've often seen water is spilling over the parts of the ships that are flooded, and give them the rest.

And to Trash since you went for the hospital ship I would not be surprised if exactly this model that has no sinking mechanics implemented.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Another thing, to all Silent Hunter III fans. I switched to the SH IV and Operation Monsun Mod long ago. It's better than SHIII in almost every respect. The damage system deserves special mention. If the convoy escorts are working you over, you may well be struggling with water inrush and multiple system breakdowns for a few hours or so. With OM it's actually as much fun to be "am Kanthaken" as they say, as it is sinking ships. If you disable external cameras and time compression, it is exactly the same nail biting experience as in Das Boot.

In most ways it plays very similar to SHIII, most of the mods and equipment were imported from the older sim anyway. The graphics are imo extremely improved (little problem: you need to get Anti Aliasing to work, otherwise it will look shit like most SHIV screens on the internet). If you're interested, here are some screenshots I made with SHIV:

 

[Trash]

I actually think the hospital ship hit the sea floor but just kept standing upright. It was a really shallow port.

Wasn't Operation Monsoon quite buggy and filled with little niggling annoyances together with all the brilliance? What I liked about SHIII with the GWX mod was how it all gelled together brilliantly without any obvious irritations and gamey aspects.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Hehe.

The guy who made Operation Monsoon was to put it mildly, strange, and has given up the mod.

But it's not buggy at all. and I recommend it 100%.

One advantage is that you can now play with the "final" version, and need not worry about updates.

One problem I really had was that SHIV would CTD because of some mods, in particular some sound files which I had introduced. Once I found the culprits, it runs rock solid.

I cannot write about everything there is to like. For example you can download real radio programs, BBC, Radio Paris or Grossdeutschland (even specific news for every year of the war) and it feels real when you run those programmes in the background.

I actually thought about writing a tcancer article about Silent Hunter IV + OM around the time SH5 came out, but I still need to make sure it's really welcome here.

 

[Burning Bridges]

You should of course also install OMEGU (environmental graphic update for Operation Monsoon).

OM includes the Kriegsmarine interface by karamazovnev
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=152590
absolute brilliant stuff!

 

[bonescraper]

Decided once to enter a French harbour for the fun of it.

Cool story bro. I bet you knew they're french 'cause of their flags?

They looked like this, right?

 

[DwarvenFood]

There is a LP here on SH4+OM by overtenemy I think, giving a good showing what it is like. An article would be welcome as well. Strangely enough on my PC the water does not show at all so that is at the very least annoying. Also after returning to port I could walk around a bit but do nothing else. Haha.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Entering an enemy port in a....type IX?

I enjoy assaulting Gib, Scapa Flow and Rosyth. These always have the best picks at different times. I don't always win gold, but if I sink anything and escape it is an achievement.

Has anyone tried copying Priens escapade using the same route? I am sure it is impossible in this game. They have blocked the NorEast entrance entirely, though they have made it much easier to enter through the main channels than it was in reality.

Oh, and don't forget Prien sunk an incredibly out dated battleship with very poor underwater armour, the Royal Oak, one of the Royal Sovereigns that Britain has scheduled for a refit. The Admiralty thought of them as a liability and never wanted to send them into harms way due to their weaknesses in underwater armour and their lack of anti air capabilities.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ja I think it is widely recognized now that the loss of the Royal Oakwas pretty meaningless. But it also took 800 sailors with it, that was not. The propaganda and the effect on wartime morale was also considerable.

Still, in gameplay terms it is something special, and it is exciting to replicate this or similar missions.

A night surface attack with that beautiful scenery in the background, with all the escorts prowling about, is something where the Silent Hunter engine really shines. But it's also stupid to attempt it if you play dead is dead.

 

[poocolator]

I have played SHIV and it wasn't as popamole as I had expected, save for the automated targeting system. (it. Americans had a computer that plotted your attacks for you). As realistic as it may have been, I missed the good ol' days of figuring things out using trigonometric formulas one produced while playing SHIII.

 

[Quilty]

I have played SHIV and it wasn't as popamole as I had expected, save for the automated targeting system. (it. Americans had a computer that plotted your attacks for you). As realistic as it may have been, I missed the good ol' days of figuring things out using trigonometric formulas one produced while playing SHIII.

I was under the impression that the mod Operation Monsoon for SHIV brought this element of gameplay back? At least that's what I remember from reading one of the LPs here on the codex.

 

[Phelot]

I gotta fire it up again to confirm, but I remember sinking two UK battleships in the Mediterranean that were on patrol or something. Forget which sub I had but it was in SH3. Probably got really lucky.

 

[Destroid]

Can you play the jap subs with their fancy torps in any of the SH games?

 

[poocolator]

I have played SHIV and it wasn't as popamole as I had expected, save for the automated targeting system. (it. Americans had a computer that plotted your attacks for you). As realistic as it may have been, I missed the good ol' days of figuring things out using trigonometric formulas one produced while playing SHIII.

I was under the impression that the mod Operation Monsoon for SHIV brought this element of gameplay back? At least that's what I remember from reading one of the LPs here on the codex.

I hadn't played that mod, I don't believe.
So I can't comment on it. I was fairly pleased with the vanilla game.
This was some time ago, too. Years.

 

[overtenemy]

SH4 has an expansion that adds U-Boats back, and Operation Monsun adds more U-Boats as well as the entire Atlantic Theater. Anyway, saying that the Americans had a computer that did shit for you isn't completely accurate. U-Boats had them as well. Firing without them would be a lot more difficult. It's called the TDC - Torpedo Data Computer.

There's several differences with the Kwa ones but what you could be possibly referring to is that they have something called a "Position Keeper," which isn't something that works out a solution or anything, but merely keeps tabs on the solution you have. If you correctly enter all the data for a ship and it doesn't change course, the position keeper will constantly update its position, keeping your solution valid. U-Boats had something similar in that turning the Periscope (following the target) causes the TDC to constantly update bearing as as well as Angle on Bow if it's been set reasonably well. But not range of course, unlike the Position Keeper.

So even playing as Kwa SH4 there's no real popamole auto targeting rubbish. In fact it's a lot of fun with the Run Silent, Run Deep Campaign mod. Pacific was a cool theater.

 

[torpid]

Has anyone tried copying Priens escapade using the same route? I am sure it is impossible in this game. They have blocked the NorEast entrance entirely, though they have made it much easier to enter through the main channels than it was in reality.

The entrance isn't entirely blocked, as you can slip between the two blockships and avoid anti-submarine nets as long as you stay surfaced.

As for harbor raiding in general, it's too abusable, not to mention ahistorical, aside from Scapa Flow. The easiest way to sink targets is to sit at long range (>3 km), beyond harbor defenses, and shoot torpedoes at a very shallow depth to avoid nets. Since docked ships are stationary there's no need to calculate a firing solution, and at such a long range the patrolling destroyers won't come anywhere near your sub when the torpedo hits. Then you just back away at slow speed. I mastered the process during a campaign once and realized how cheesy it was.