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I've ignored the free-roam so far, since I can do as much of that as I want on the other mission types. I have bought all the other 'favors' from the officer though.

I have torps set as realistic, or historical or whatever it says. Dud rate is no higher than 8% in my career. And I discount any that hit a a sharp angle. I just mean for those fired on an ideal track.

Why do you think these shots are missing Leaf? What sort of range are you shooting from?

Nice to see the variety of little phrases increase with the patches.. I'm hearing a few new ones from the officers. Funny though to see all the ships officers in rain gear in the port when its pouring, then go talk to the Staff Officer on the dock and hes in his dress suit in the pouring rain. Its a small thing but they got a lot of these small things right

. I'm seeing some of these Empire ships using some kind of sonar early in the war.. is that accurate? I'd love to see a way to efficiently automate the crew task scheduling based on current specializations. Asking a lot probably other than selecting the universal EASY setting on campaign startup.

I've got every box checked, so 100%. My misses might be a combination of rough seas, getting the enemy speed a bit wrong, and even range might be off a bit- it's fine margins I'm pretty sure, but since I can only sit and stare until I hear the explosion or the end of the chronometer, all I can do is ask 'wut?'. I'm launching between 1000 and 1500 yards and have good angles, eel depth settings are based on the identification booklet. I'm using up the supply of poor torpedoes...next run I think I need to actually spend to replace having now exhausted the freebies lol. I'm not too concerned-- one source I have says U48 (Sept 39-Aug 43) had 55 hits from 126 launched (of that 44 hits from 96 surface launches). I'm obviously aways from that, but I might suggest the U48 misses may well have been from the early part of the war when Kriegsmarine torpedoes were plagued, and on top of that, U48 was considered the best, so I'm probably in good company lol with the 'rest'.

I think I'll give the ammo capacity and texture mods a whirl for the one day I advance out of this type II. Another one I'll try is to add a decimal place to speed https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3257616355&searchtext= No more target speeds being rounded for me.

Leaf, are you torpedoes warmed up and you do have the gyro light light up before firing, right? I noticed if one or both of those aren't set it usually runs wild.

That patrol is complete.

Uneventful in the North Sea as most contacts were too far away and those that seemed catchable eluded my Type IIa. The one I did catch was a ship from Norway heading back to Bergen and wasn't a valid target. I did board and check it though.

So I snuck into Edinburgh and found 5 freighters tied up. 5 freighters for 5 torps, piece of cake. One was a dud so only 4 of them sank. They were all under 4k tons. I did catch a different Norwegian ship on the way home, this one was bound for Edinburgh. I got them to evacuate and sank it with my AA gun. Turns out that works, took four 30 round AP magazines to do it. This was 6k tons.
It was dark and stormy and they sent a PT boat after me. I sank that too with the AA gun. It never saw me in that dark dirty weather. Risky, but I was feeling brazen and it worked.

I did have morale problems and had to have officers cooking and playing cards. At the start my fatigue was giving a minus 18 to morale. By the time my eight and a half day patrol was over this increased to -21. I tried swapping some crewmen and officers out at port, but it didn't seem to help so I'll upgrade to a Type IId and give my tired crew a break. A couple days out from port I did get news that one of my crew members had a baby girl and the wife and daughter are doing well. So that leave is prodigious timing for him. It is 13 November 1939 so the crew has been hard at it for two and a half months without break. (not counting the odd 2-4 days changing loadouts between patrols).

Hi Wormfood, I have to manually set my torpedo maintenance (I pulled my second engineer off torp duty since he was always pulling them and getting them ready, and put him on engines- that way I can run a four hour on/off schedule with two engine teams and keep my fuel economy between 30-50% at all times)- matched up with running two navigation/watch teams. But thanks for the reminder about warming the torps as I may well have not done that prior to launching the last set.

As a side note, Kretschmer, commanding the Type II U23, fired four torpedoes on his second patrol in September 1939 and all four missed. I figure if the eventual Ace of Aces could have moments like that, I can too (lol).

Upgraded to the Type IId which should give me a bit more range. I then ordered upgrades to the Accumulators and Hydrophones. These upgrades were finished while the crew was on vacation to a Bavarian village. The mission set to choose from did not look good for a small boat like that. Raid Scapa Flow, Recover an Enigma, or a patrol North of Ireland. I know that boat's got a bit more range, but they all seem better suited to a Type VII, particularly the Scapa Flow raid, I could probably sneak in easily but with only 3 tubes and two very slow reloads that doesn't seem like a good plan.

The evening of December 9, 1939 sees my crew about to depart to recover an Enigma machine. I kinda wish I had some research ongoing for this long patrol, but I just don't have enough points.

Hey Leaf, the torpedo maintenance is warming up the torpedoes. Once I figured that out I only send an engineer to do that just prior to contact. Otherwise, leave them on the engines.

How did you sniff out the ship's deception? I still have managed it just once in probably twenty ships. I always check papers and use any option there to challenge the captain. Seems he is right.

In about a third of those I've taken the long time to search the hold and don't find any contraband.

The one time it worked I challenged his navigation, story didn't add up to the port he was heading for or something. My crew have the right skills for these interrogations.

I asked about the misses, but yeah, misses were common in the war, for all sorts of reasons. In the game, with 100% solution the torpedoes should just about always hit unless the target is maneuvering, so I thought there might be a step or tip to get more on target.

My goal over the past year or more in the campaign has been to get in to a VIIC/41. I would be astonished and pleased to survive the war. No way that will happen, but if it is going to, I think the VIIC/41 would be the reason why. It's not much different from the bog standard VIIC, but it can dive deeper, test depth greater by 50 meters, which is significant. The description in-game notes the lighter weight of the boat gives it a higher top speed, thought the accompanying stats show both versions at 17.7 knots. Despite the thicker pressure hull, the VIIC/41 was lighter since they were built with lighter machinery, intended to offset the heavier hull, and ended up exceeding the offset.

Our next patrol was another Black Pit, got about 30k out in the BD grid, a long one at 33 days at sea and a number of fish left on board, to leave us just short of the 100k needed in the Pit to finish phase two and get a blueprint. Next patrol I took another agent insertion on the west coast of Ireland. Sneaked in at high speed on the surface at night, dodging Irish patrol boats, like motor torpedo boats. Left just as quickly and after calling in mission success when gaining the ocean proper, BdU radioed that the enemy was wise to our mission and would be hunting us. That agent we dropped probably just went to the first pub he saw and blabbed his ass off. I had gotten the same message after picking up the interned agent in Vigo earlier in the career, but we were so close to home I just high-tailed it back to base and nothing came of it, maybe they were near and I never saw them, who knows.

This time we were just off the Irish coast in AM grid and had a long way to go. And I do believe they were after our boat. Most times I did a sound sweep I would pick up contacts of two warships at high speed on a constant or nearly constant bearing. So I had to keep running on the surface or they'd catch up. Credit to the game, the AI didn't know magically where we were, but I felt them hunting me. Super cool. During all of this I had a secondary objective, not just getting home. And by the way, when you get this hunted event, you have to reach port manually. The secondary objective was we were still 18k tons short of the blueprint. Had to come in BE, BD, AK, or AL grids So we were both evading at high speed on the surface, while simultaneously diving from radar contacts (the Cross has only just started picking up signals, November 1941) and trying to get in on a few merchants so I didn't need to do another patrol to get my new boat.

A stinkn Amerikaner Liberty Ship was the one to put us over , by 700 tons. Also got a Dale-class tanker, which are nice and fat.

This is a serious boat







It's funny, but I am partial to U-Boat numbers, certain ones appeal to me, others don't. I knew which number serials were used for the VIIC/41 and some I didn't want to command, like any four-digit numbers. U-1063 just feels like the conscripts at the end of the war lol. So I worked out how to keep rolling new numbers, if anyone wants to encourage a certain result next time they upgrade. I would have taken any in the 200s, 300s or 900s. In the end I took command of U-292, which appropriately enough, was the very first /41 laid down. Here I have it in January of 1942, more than a year ahead of historical service entry, but if the Germans had gotten their act together earlier (and had the resources) these boats could have seen action in 1942.

To keep rolling your boat number, spend the blueprint and choose the new ship. If you don't like the number back out to the quartermaster and do it again. Your blueprint is considered spent, but each time you come back in a different boat number will pop up.

Now about this boat. You can see it comes with Turm IV right out of the gate. The description says it has a fast-firing 37mm, but I got a quad twenty on the lower deck. Upper platform has twin twenties. Serious firepower that I will probably not use lol. I dive at every aircraft contact, no questions. I thought it would be expensive to re-equip, but it wasn't bad. I wish I had this conning tower arrangement before we got the sub pen, would have been a surprise to those Sunderlands. The boat came with the Cross, accumulators and some other upgrades I had already unlocked. But I did need to upgrade the hydrophones (GHG Balkon, 32000 cost) and I had to upgrade the toilet again! How is this not standard by now?!

Changed to this nice camo, and put a wooden deck on her. U-292 is ready for her first war patrol. We have just unlocked Drumbeat too. You get a milk cow after the first phase, but that first mission or two could be painful.

Hey Worm, thanks! I had a derp typing moment regarding the warmup/maint. lol. I need to sink some more ships so I can get the upgrades going. Nice work. I've yet to get a mission out of the North Sea on this crew.

DB, I hope your crew can make it to the end! Getting the 100%...I assumed that meant you'd obtained 100% of the information required, not that it meant you had a 100% hit chance? I deffo could be wrong. Cheers

Aiming at stationary ships is easy, just point the boat at 'em and shoot. Did it last patrol when I raided that port. Did it again this time when there was a destroyer and corvette stationary over the downed sub. So I just pointed and shot with a small delay. Both torps hit a few seconds from each other but the one on the corvette was a dud. I don't know if it's because of the mission, but after chasing me around for a bit it just returned to the scene of the wreck and went stationary again where I blew it out of the water.
I then nabbed a tanker and freighter between Ireland and Scotland The tanker didn't seem phased by the AA gun. It showed I did some damage to it but that's probably a poor candidate for that. They also wouldn't abandon ship when I signaled I'd sink it. I had to hit it with one of my two remaining torps.

Before this patrol I spent a crew point and put it on one of my sailors. It was discipline. He then He then started talking bad about the officers and I could either take a monumental morale hit or court martial him. Waste of a point. I've since held on the the other point I've gotten for fear of just throwing it away again.

I then went back around to the East side and nabbed a few more freighters. My engineers now have the skill that lets them scuttle ships and that helps for these lone wanders when you only have a few torps. Found a Norwegian ship heading back to Norway, but had to let it go.
It seems the ones going to Norway I cannot stop even though they came from England. The ones going the other way I can usually sink. I think the two things I have in my favor is my radio operator has the merchant skill and one of my crewman speaks English, which all the captains going to and from England seem to speak. It usually gets me the info I need that they're in fact going into a blockaded port and are fair game.

I knew that Type IId had a bit more fuel, but I almost didn't know what to do with all that extra fuel. That patrol took 18 days and for once I didn't feel pinched for fuel. Torpedoes yes, but not fuel.


I also had a problem with the crew shifts where if you interrupted the schedule say to man a gun, or reload a torpedo they wouldn't automatically go back to their task. Turns out the little rest icon cancels the task and if they're scheduled for something else, they'll go do it.

Ah man, I have been thinking about exactly that and have gotten lucky so far. I've spent six points in diving, and four on silent running so far. I've court-martialed a number of crewmen, and some are lost to illness. The only exception is the event where a sailor punches another after he made untoward comments about his girlfriend, and I issue a warning. By luck of the draw none of these were sailors with the skills. Just a matter of time. Bad break wormfood.

Shooting at stationary ships is easy as wormfood says. It's a perfect opportunity to practice manual torpedo shooting. Maybe it depends on settings, but this should work

Go to the attack scope and place the scope on the target and set speed to zero. With a zero speed, none of the other data matters. The torpedo will go straight on the scope bearing, So you can enter an AoB of 90, or 180, or 60 or whatever, it doesn't matter since the ship is not moving. Range doesn't matter either as the torpedo will keep going until end-of-run. It does however affect when the soundman will call it a miss. If you set a range of 1000 and the target is 3000 the soundman will say miss way early. If you have the solution drawn on the map, a quick check to make sure it's heading in the right direction is the final check. LOS!

Worm, you can undo your direct order so he'll go back to his routine schedule- if you hit tab and bring up your crew menu, there should be a button to "Stop Direct Orders". It might take a bit of time as they start dithering a bit, but eventually they'll get back into their assigned stuff. There is also the little anchor symbol on their 'card' you can clic. Hope that helps.

Oh nice, that'll probably work too. I was getting a bit frustrated on the last patrol when things got real mixed up for a bit.

An yeas, stationary targets are easy, just get the bearing right and the rest doesn't matter.

There's also a few good tutorials out there.

Here's one, accent is a bit thick for some people, but the info is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-oSXRKmO9I
Here's another one with more suggestions in the comments https://www.reddit.com/r/uboatgame/comments/1emmrov/ausdampfverfahren_a_fun_manual_torpedo_firing/

Another thing on torpedo aiming, if you assign your crew to do it, they're really slow, and they don't update things very often. So if the range is increasing you might want to double check that and if the speed or course changed at any time it'll miss even if it says 100%, they don't seem to update the target course or anything once it's in the first time.

In one of my earlier posts I credited sonar buoys with helping me escape. I meant of course sonar decoys, as sonar buoys are likely to work against me

22 February 1941

After our first cruise, many of the crew were suffering. Four deaths was much to bear. After conferring with HQ it was decided that 3 weeks rest in Bavaria was realistic. The wine flowed freely, as did the women. On return we were much refreshed. The ones who simply could not continue were released from service, and I selected new sailors with the help of the XO. All my officers decided to continue with me. Hardship has a way of welding people together.

Our tonnage in the end was good, at nearly 40000, and damage to the boat was repaired within the week. Our coming cruise, we can only hope, will not involve such a close encounter with a British destroyer. We are replenishing supplies and the mood is optimistic. A new cook with a reputation for making life interesting is perhaps helping.

Myself and two of my officers were decorated. WIth the way things turned out we had mixed emotions at this; but they certainly deserved the accolades, and the two who are married were very happy to spend some time with their families. Who knows how long our second cruise will be? But we are anxious to take the fight back to the enemy!

18 March 1941 XOs Log

The Captain took the crew losses very personally on our first cruise. I hoped that the vacation time, and the distance from the battlefield. would work its healing. But as we approach a large convoy on our way to our assigned patrol, I see that the only way forward now is glory or death.

Its midnight and we are running with decks awash on our approach from the rear of the convoy. Hoffmann intends to take out both rear escorts and then have easy pickings for the next hour. I am remembering the prayers my mother taught me as I finger the cross around my neck.

Hoffmann has positioned us between two escorts - one at 1.5km to port, and the other equidistant to starboard. Both are a half kilometre ahead, just visible in the darkness. As we complete the solutions for both targets, he calls for all four tubes to be loaded at 2.5m depth and 74km fast speed. The solution locked, he makes the call and all four eels are on their way! The red lighting feels more eerie now and the sweat is running down into my beard.

20 seconds.. 10.. we hear and feel the first impact, then moments later, the second. The destroyer is shattered and all hands are lost. 20 seconds.. ten.. the first eel for the second target is a dud! 5 seconds more then BOOM! The destroyer has only begun to accelerate when she is stuck in the stern and her engines are shattered. The cheer from the boys is deafening! Now they will believe Hoffmann can do anything. Maybe he can. Maybe it was our desperate prayers. Either way the deep has her victims. We turn into the convoy to begin the nights real carnage, just as on the horizon we see a massive explosion and the sky turns red.

I'm breathing easier and remembering my family. We surface and pick up the pace, feeling confident that we have our enemy by the balls. Not ten minutes later the sky lights up above us like an early dawn. Star shells! We are fully exposed and in the distance we can hear alarm bells. Who will be hunter and hunted tonight. As we dive to periscope depth there is a deathly silence.

(#%&*$# when those star shells went up I nearly crapped my pants!)

>>Another thing on torpedo aiming, if you assign your crew to do it, they're really slow,

And remember that if you assign crew to help an officer with loading things go much faster. And you can assign them as a default setting in the SQUADS tab in the crew menu.

2am 30 December 1939, started 8th Patrol to mine Portsmouth. Loads of Corvettes slinking around. Managed to find a gap in the patrol and slip between them on a near moonless night.
Slipped out and ran up the East Coast looking for trouble. Another Eastbound Norwegian ship which I boarded but had to let go.
Spotted a convoy a little farther up the coast. Radioed it in and took an aim at the biggest ship I could see and my torp hit. Only 6k, but I can't do anything about the other freighters with no fish and alerted escorts so I slunk away making it back into port early on 8 January 1940.

The bug I got is I never had a cook the entire time. I had to assign my captain for the crew to eat. Not sure what caused that. It's also not during a dive or alarm, just general cruising.

12 january, about to depart to patrol the Celtic Sea, AM8 and BF1.