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I have not been pinged while surfaced, nor decks awash, yet anyway.

I came close to having crew number 2 myself on the last patrol. This was a regular anti-shipping patrol to the Azores, but just as we got there, control reassigned us to BD grid to the north. Headed there and finally reached our patrol area ten days out of port. It wasn't until the seventeenth day that we fired our first torpedoes, sank two medium freighters of 6,000 tons apiece over the course of a few days. A few nights later I got on the tail of a merchant clipping along at a good rate, and assumed we had a tanker or maybe a troopship. Trying to find it at night in a light fog I fouled up somehow in time compression and ran right in to it. It was a glancing blow thankfully but it still nearly wrecked our boat. Many damages, and leaks, injuries. Chaos aboard U-410. Stopped panicking long enough to extricate the boat and pulled off to sink that bastage with two torpedoes, a 9k tanker. But we didn't have enough spare parts to fix most of the damage, and I have neglected giving any of my THREE engineers the skill to make parts out of salvage. One leak remained, with a high flow rate that the pump could keep in check, but if we had to dive it would be the end of the line I think. We were 2500km from port and had to sail it all the way back, the auto option is not available when you have leaks. I had to keep turning the pump on for 2500 kilometers lol. But we made it, thankful to encounter no aircraft. I called for resupply hoping they might have spare parts, but the reply came back, no supply ships in my area. All injured crewmen lived, I've got two medics with the medic skills just for such a situation. Skipper Kurt Hoffman nearly bought it. What a story generator this game is. All of the little additional mechanics and facets this adds beyond Silent Hunter make for a wonderful narrative on every mission.

U-410 is ready to sail again, having been patched up back at La Rochelle. This will be patrol number 14 I think, and we are heading off for the first stage of The Southern Routes off the west coast of Africa. It is April 1941 and we have T3 torpedoes already. Just a few so far, but I shouldn't have these (historically until late 1942). I need to figure out how to shoot underkeel mag shots. Will the torpedo just work as mag if it is passing below the ship? Or do I have to set the pistol?

The mission debrief for the first stage of Southern Routes specifically mentions false flags, and how we are expected to sniff them out. So far in my two careers including the one ended by the release version, I've stopped and boarded probably twelve to fifteen ships, only one of which we determined to be in violation of the rules and could sink her. This has not paid off so far. We have also taken on board a war correspondent for this cruise to Africa.

Thinking about what I just posted.... one of the reasons UBOAT stands out to me as a narrative machine is how the crew are handled. I care more about the characters on my boat than I ever could in Silent Hunter. Sometimes you get a message from control, that one of your crew just became a father, or that a parent has recovered from an illness or whatever. Jump in to first person view of the skipper and walk through the boat to find him and deliver the good news. These are also some of the best ways to gain crew XP to gain specialization points. Always do these when you can.

I play lots of PC games and in many of them you can customize companions and other characters, and regardless of how well it might be done I mostly ignore it. Just not interested. They look like they look and that's cool with me. But here I do care about this stuff. Like asking myself should I let the ratings wear a mish mash, or should I run a proper naval vessel with a standard uniform? Then I go and change what they have on, who starts without a beard (everyone has beard before too long) and so on. It's pretty cool that it appeals to me like this and I want to customize it. U-410 is a relaxed boat, and the sailors are allowed freedom to wear what they like for the most part. XO has to wear an officer's cap though, and my skipper looks the part.

Speaking of officers... I said earlier that you start with five and can get two more. That's how many can sail on the boat, but you can have more officers ashore. These can be useful to do the research missions, or replace injured crewmen. Maybe you want to change up your specialty distribution, or rotate to ensure that any forced replacement isn't coming on board totally green. When I mounted the Cross I discovered it is run in the soundroom, and that leaves gaps as my two radio officers cannot work both the sound and radio rooms 24/7. So maybe I should swap out an engineer for another radioman? But then that leaves me short when I ram enemy tankers.

Anyway, all the crew sh!t adds a lot to the experience.

There's a rumor that after FS2024 is out the entire FS world will be used for another major sim, and the rumor is a train sim. Would love to see that!

That would be kinda cool.

So far 3rd times the charm. Did another mission sinking 5 ships in a type II, luckily no duds and my one miss was in a convoy where it just missed my target and hit one behind it. No duds, maybe it helps to have a torpedo specialist who does nothing but tinker with them. It's now October 19. They were all sub 7k in weight so a single torp was enough. One was a corvette that I normally wouldn't waste a torpedo on, but they insisted I sink it since it had some VIP on it. For once that special assignment wasn't too far away for my poor Type IIa boat to get to.

The next mission list they gave me was to attack Scapa Flow, Mine Cardiff, or recover an enigma machine from off the coast of NE Scotland. Kinda rough for a Type II skipper out there. I'm gonna make the tedious trip to Cardiff and plant some mines. Not looking forward to that.

And yeah, the seven officer limit is kinda rough. Navigating in a type IIA constantly tires out an officer fast, so between that and someone on the con, I need 3 leaders. Two engineers lets me run those with crew 24/7 and keep torpedoes updated easily. Two radio men lets the radio or hydrophones manned often. Maybe if I had a Type Vii and didn't need to run the navigation all the time for fuel reasons I'd drop a leader for another hydrophone guy since those guys are the only reason I'm finding contacts out there.

Did my first headquarters assignment unlocking improved hydrophones. Sacrificed my radio technician to do it and only realized as I was leaving port that I could have hired or promoted another one to take his place on the boats since that limit of 7 is just for the ones on the boat. Oh well, I did the first patrol really short of officers anyways and I wasn't about to turn back once I started the engines.

Good luck in Cardiff. I found this one the hardest of the three mining missions I did (Channel, Loch Ewe). It's a long shallow run in confined waters to reach the spot where you plant the field. So far in fact it is difficult to do it all in darkness, the run in, the mining and the escape.

I touched earlier on the decision the player has to make about officer distribution, and yeah, it's a tough one. Most players are going to have at least two of all three types, and the choice comes down to which one you add a third. I've gone with engineer since survival is my highest priority. Sort of redundant under routine operations, but does allow me to always have someone on the engines, plus a torpedo man. But during calamities he is invaluable. My first, shortened career I ran three leaders.

U-410's African sojourn went well. Assigned grid was off the Cape Verde Islands, about 3600km each way. I was very conservative with fuel, running on one engine all the way there. Took about 16 days to reach the assigned area. Found a lot of targets, but most were flying Spanish flags. Stopped and boarded another six ships with no luck. Finally found a convoy and got in to sink a Liberty ship (too early by several months) which hit the optional tonnage objective of 7,000 tons and we headed home. Only used about 13% of our fuel oil getting there, so had plenty for the run back to port. Total time at sea was 31 days. Tied up with more than half of the fuel oil still onboard. It was also the first time in port with our fancy new submarine pens. Safe from those raids now

I would have stayed at sea longer, but we were running out of food. Like a dumbass, I made the wrong decision when we had an event where the sausages brought aboard were discovered to be moldy. Of course I ordered them thrown out, only the best for my crew! and immediately regretted it and had to hurry home. Just 10k sunk on this patrol (added a small coastal freighter off the coast of Spain), but it was valuable experience in long range patrolling.

One of the rewards for Southern Routes is a milk cow, which I want. If we survive long enough we will have Drumbeat missions in 1942 and the refueler will be needed. We have also kicked off The Black Pit stage of the Battle of the Atlantic, which also has a milk cow reward, plus a blueprint. Got my eyes on the VIIC/41. It is now August of 1941. Skipper Kurt Hoffman has won his Oak Leaves

When I reach the ability to add crew/officers I think I'll add another watch officer/navigator to counteract the 'game-iness' of the deterioration of the travel data and spell off the watch officer in the conning tower- as it is I think about 1/3 of the 24hr period the watch is manned by sailors, the other 2/3 covered by the Capt/XO. Has anyone used the crew set up? Not the cosmetic one, but assigning them stations etc.

Played around with the boat's dive schedule tool and found that it's inert. You can set dive times but it must be for visual purposes only as, for example, you set 0500h as a dive time the crew just ignores it and you still have to manually order the dive to occur. Quite possible I've missed a setting or missed something.

New officers can be gained as missions rewards, can be purchased from the recruitment officer, or you can promote a rating. I highly recommend doing the mission to retrieve an interned officer from the Port of Vigo when it pops up. This one took me just two days port to port (three days at sea are needed to gain another vacation, mind). Doing this will help with your research projects.

Projects take at most 24 days (30 for sub pens). If you don't have a spare officer ashore, you can return to port, assign your officer, go on vacation, and if needed, swap stores on and off the boat to buy the few extra days to get your officer back when the research is complete.

Leaf, thanks for the feedback on that system. My routine is to hit the sound sweep button every two or three hours in high time compression, and the game drops to 1x when a contact is heard

Let's talk mods.

Someone mentioned the Grey Wolves mod to replace the flags. I found it on workshop, but is from 2019. Is there a release version version? I downloaded it but heeded the warnings that it could muck up the works.

Which other mods do you skippers recommend, or are using?

I am using a mod to allow more deck gun ammunition. Default game is just 30 rounds for some reason (balancing?). The mod allows 205 rounds. I rarely use the gun, but we should have more than 30 rounds, and this takes care of that. There's a hidden achievement for sinking a warship with a deck gun and I got it last night on my first Black Pit patrol. We were vectored in on a convoy by another boat, U-95. I got in position dead in the center of the formation's path and a Black Swan was out on each flank, leading. It was the perfect setup, they were plodding along at 7 knots. I positioned my boat 2300 meters from the one off my bow and 2100 meters from the one passing astern. Fired single electrics at each, set at 1 meter depth, the closer distance to the one astern covering the time it took to set up on it after the bow shot. Both torpedoes hit within a few seconds of one another, which is key so the second target doesn't maneuver and increase speed. Delighted with this success I then fired off the rest and dove to 190 meters to pass below the formation and escape. Sonar buoys were a big help in this evasion I believe.

Made it out the rear end and turned back to trail. A big freighter I had torpedoed before going deep was still afloat, abandoned and listing heavily to port. I came up to set up on it and put it under and saw two destroyers some distance beyond. They were hunting U-95 who wrecked one with a torpedo and then got sunk. When the others cleared out I put the freighter under with a torpedo and then maneuvered to do the same with the wrecked and abandoned destroyer, which only had the superstructure and bow sticking out. My torpedo actually ran over the target since so much was submerged (should have been mag detonation). So I surfaced to put it under with the deck gun and got the achievement. I won't be doing any running gun battles, so this was a cool way to get it.

This convoy was escorted by at least six proper destroyers which is a little heavy for this part of the war. Should be more trawlers and corvettes, sloops and frigates. I won't knock it for this and anyway eventually I'll be able to get it where I want it to be.

Ive been using the dive plan while on the long leg of a journey. Works fine here. My sub dives once every two hours while transitioning. Are you invoking it with the lowest button on the Dive panel?

More gun rounds yes PLEASE.. I'll look for that one.

This is the one I am using

More deck gun ammunition

That's 30 loaded at the gun storage, you can have more rounds in your general storage. Just be sure to restock the 30 at the gun. This also limits the slots available for carrying medkits, parts and food. But it stacks to something like 50 or 60. A running freighter if you place the shots carefully should still be sunk within the 30 rounds. I've also found if you get the to evacuate it takes far less shells to sink something. Maybe all the compartments are open and there's no active damage control or maybe it's jut that it's a stationary target that easy to place good hits on. I really miss not having a gun by running a Type II. You can also put other things in that slot, but I tired food and it wouldn't let me move it from the deck gun to the general storage or galley.
A mod still does sound great since quick google searches show that they often carried around 200 or more rounds.

Another tip on storage, you can put stuff in the ventilation, so you can hide a stack of medkits or spare parts there.



Haven't you seen Das Boot, mold is the next best thing to fresh lettuce on a long voyage.


That Cardiff mission is tough, I made it there and mined it, I got a fair amount of fuel since I cruised there mostly at speed 2 with a navigator and engineer with a full crew. The exceptions being when I had to evade an aircraft and some hunters it sent after me in the middle of The Channel. Once there I slipped in and placed the mines, but the run out is tedious as there's loads of traffic and it's all destroyers and corvettes. I'm crawling around with extra manpower at the lookouts to avoid things when recharging the batteries and air. Got about halfway out before I had to save and get back to my real job.

I'm using the Greywolves mod and it works fine as it's cosmetic stuff.

I've started using the full scheduling of the crew on the Type IIA, with the boat's dive schedule (thanks Combat99, I managed to find that button after I posted lol). The officer and crew work scheduling works well, and I've got it set to give me a 50% reduction in fuel use. Also the scheduling takes away the need to micromanage things like nav plot deterioration.

Found this super helpful video on YouBoob [video:youtube]https://youtu.be/kLU2fLpdHVU?si=SU8Z2mmIt2A9ZKIq[/video] which I found explained the crew scheduling really well. The range extension by way of fuel savings is huge--- nearing the end of a patrol, processed an enemy freighter, then ran from a destroyer which arrived as I was handing out canned bread to a lifeboat of survivors. I'm assuming it was answering the freighter's distress call (Empire Crossbow with almost 6000 tons of supplies). Was able to use flank speed without worrying about running out of juice and we fled into the night. Fun times. Erwin Meyer with the Iron Cross 2nd class (first award! )

thanks kommandant! may all your eels go BOOM

HA great stuff I'll check out the video. Theres a ton to learn with this one!

It's vegetables, right? It's was a headslap moment as just after tossing the food overboard it struck me we were off the coast of Africa, not sitting out in BF grid or something.

I didn't know you could put 88 rounds in storage. I was trying to fill the four slots under deck gun and was stuck on 30. Maybe that's the ready ammunition locker. Thanks for the info. Anyway, the mod gives us a realistic loadout and doesn't take valuable storage space. 205 rounds is correct, although I'm sure it varied from boat to boat on occasion.

Leaf, you're on the 2019 Grey Wolves and it isn't causing issues right?

Next patrol was another run in Black Pit in the Battle of the Atlantic. This one is great, the rewards are good, and the patrol areas have been just west of Britain (sink ships in the BE, BD, AK and AL grids), which is a skip and a jump from the French ports. Phase two reward is a blueprint, and if we get it I'll look to take command of a VIIC/41. This means buying all the upgrades again, but we have plenty of cash on hand. Currently researching the third hydrophone, which will be done after we return from the next one. If.

As we move in to late 1941 we are encountering larger ships on average. Liberty ships are suddenly all over the place (7200 tons), and the Commonwealth got their share so they are viable targets outside of convoying. This resulted in our best patrol yet, eight ships for 63k tons of trade shipping, as the game calls it. T3 torpedoes feel like they have a more powerful warhead. The T3 is cracking ships in two. These are set to impact depth, usually 4.0m or less for my shots, so not magnetic unless they are running deep I reckon. I still fire two at most good sized ships, but with how reliable and powerful they are in this version, shooting singles shouldn't be an issue and we could run up big scores.

One thing I hoped to see in this game is some sort of running total of your sinkings and tonnage during a career. It's not there, except it is. If you mouse over Menu in the top right and click campaign, Tonnage War is shown there, and keeps a running total even when you pass the top phase. This is trade ships only, warships are not tracked as far as I can tell.

It's honestly been so long since I've seen it, it might be vegetables. I might have to rewatch it in the near future.

Getting into Cardiff and getting the mines laid was easy. Getting out was tough as there were loads of destroyers and corvettes pouring in and out. I avoided most of them with only distant depth charging and some crew stress. I did also use my only torpedo on a DD bearing down on me. I hit it, but it didn't sink. Stopped it dead in the water and I lived, and that was the important part so I'll call it a win.

Getting back through the Channel was also a pain with all the aircraft and roving warships. One small aircraft did dive out of a cloud and caught me completely unawares. Damaged my scope, AA gun and broke the arm of a one of the sailors. He'll need a month or so ashore. Got off lucky there. Finally made it back after just shy of two weeks at sea. Seems long for that little boat.

For Patrol number 4 the next set of missions was to mine Cardiff again, which I wasn't too keen on doing or patrol the North Sea. So it's off to the North Sea again. One more minelaying mission or another 10k sunk and I should have a ship blueprint to upgrade to the Type IID, I think is the other one? Might make things easier. I got better hydrophones unlocked an another officer unlocking better accumulators. It's hard to get points when you only sink a few ships (or sometimes none) per patrol with the little loadout in that thing. I do love it's shallow draft and stealth for sneaking around the coast though.

DBond, I'm using this one " [82AD] ♤Stonewall♤'s Workshop Grey wolves texture pack" It was last updated on 5 August 2024 for full release.

Turns out I had the right Grey Wolves, it was updated August 5th, but it still warns me. I'll give it a go, thanks.



Ha, I was just joking since it's green. And a plant? Like a vegetable

I fouled up a little by drifting out of the required Black Pit squares, so progress is slower than it could have been as a number of sinkings did not count toward the Black Pit total. Need about 55k to get that blueprint, which could be one patrol, depending on how things shake out on the next patrol, and if we make it back.

The torpedoes have been extremely reliable in this career. Too much so I reckon. One of the skills you can give your torpedoman says it eliminates pistol failures. this is not the same I don't think as duds due to extreme impact angle. But even so, last night I fired a stern shot with a G7a and it was a dud. Perfect angle, but failed. They can still happen occasionally. Most sub sims have had torpedo failures, but they've always been of the exploder mechanism variety. UBOAT also has torpedoes which fail to run. Just drops out of the tube and doesn't go. Pretty cool, as this was a thing that happened in the war. Torpedoes would fail to run, or run hot in the tube and other defects and problems like circular runs and porpoising. This would be especially mysterious at higher settings with map icons off and no external views. You just sit there staring out of the scope and wonder what is going on, not knowing your torpedo just sank to the bottom. Any second now....

Soundman should report hot, straight and normal and the like. Torpedo failed to run Herr Kaleun!

I also suspect there is a deep-running fault modeled here, but no real evidence. But I've had a number run under when it should have been a hit in my opinion. In one convoy attack I had a torpedo run under three different ships without exploding. I set my depths quite shallow too.

Speaking of torpedoes, I've been loading them realistically in this career. I carry ten electrics and four steamers. Type VII U-Boats could not store electrics topside under the deck plates, nor were they carried in the after torpedo room, as there was insufficient space to perform the required maintenance on electrics. So my loadouts are always four electrics in the bow tubes, six electrics and two steamers in the forward storage, and two steamers aft. The game gives no restriction to where you load either type, so just a house rule to make it feel authentic.

I would say I'm experiencing the early war torpedo problems, although I've had more misses than 'doinks' lol, but statistically I'm not sure how it stacks up. At 100% realism on this crew, we've done 4 patrol missions and one 'free roam'. I've launched a total of 7 torpedoes; 1 hit (sunk freighter), 2 'doinks' (hits but no explosions), and four misses (but could also have been duds). The Type IIA has three forward tubes, and two spare torpedoes that take a longggggggggggggg time to reload (deck storage, so must be surfaced and not under fire), so I'm pretty choosey on when I shoot.

A side note about the free-roam. I have that selected from the admiralty (1 rep point) so I can go anywhere/anytime. During the free-roam patrol I encountered a single freighter ('doink') and few minutes later, a small convoy hoves into funnel smoke view (miss, miss). Ran from the slow destroyer. Later, got a mission to recon Dunkirk for AA; really be aware of shoals. All good until we turned for home. Cook went missing (known but unfixed bug), then crew got 'sick' and we ran out of medical supplies and had seven crew croak at sea. I'm like wtf? Anyway, the only 'xp' I received was from the Dunkirk mission, so I'm unsure if free-roam's worth doing. Anyway have to go find seven sailor replacements. Oh, and the time at sea was not recognized for vacation purposes. That was annoying since I wanted to give my survivors some time off.

The game has some good concepts but I'm finding it to be unpredictably glitchy at times.