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Yes DB GOG is really keeping up on the patches, got another one today. Version is up to U-Boat GOG v2026.1 P5.

They need to keep coming. Started another career, and did the first patrol, but saves failed, both auto and manual. A message pops up saying so. I quit upon return to port so don't know if it saved at all. It's unfortunate this DLC was released in such a state. Four hotfixes already and more are needed.

Being back on the bridge is fun, but the issues are too many, and especially so if I cannot save my progress. It should all be put right in short order I reckon.

I agree, but in the meantime I've just stopped trying until they at least get close to finishing the patching. I think I'll leave it until June. I have other sims and games to keep me occupied in the meantime.

Another update from GOG today, version is up to U-Boat GOG v2026.1 P9.

Yes, the hotfixes have dealt with each of my issues in turn, or most of them. The save game state error was the worst, and with that fixed I can progress.

Was able to pick up my last campaign early in the patrol, the one where it stopped saving. But I must have had a good one just after arriving in my assigned grid, so picked it up from there. I chose the BF grid for my next patrol. In the first, my fuel only lasted about three weeks, before I returned to base with 25% remaining. I forgot you can increase fuel efficiency by assigning your engine man sailors to help. I was thinking that wasn't all that impressive endurance, and I had been careful with fuel the entire patrol. But this time I gave the engineer some help and it extended the range considerably, up to 30%, but never quite that as they cannot be on duty all the time.

BF grid has proven to be my best grid for the happy times in this sim, and here we put under three freighters for 12k. One was a Swedish neutral we boarded to find contraband and sank him by stern tube. Not much, but I want to work hard to find targets, and having turned off the enhanced encounters setting it's closer to what I want. To conserve even more fuel I went through the Channel, rather than roundabout the British Isles where we would have burned 50% just getting there. Going through the Channel was 15%, but I had to dodge a number of patrols, and aircraft too. I don't want to get trapped here, but I reasoned that it's still very early in the war and we would have a shot at it. Got through in a couple of days with only one aircraft managing to drop on us, but well astern by the time they hit. Long careers will get a lot of specialization points which will be key to overcome this boat's biggest drawbacks, especially dive time and detectability. I'll be looking to get a blueprint and shift in to the IXC as soon as possible.

How do we download external torpedoes?

Had a good third patrol, six freighters/tankers plus a destroyer for 43k and that's enough to go past 50k for Tonnage War phase two, which nets a blueprint and we swapped commands to IXC U-196 in early December 1939. Next blueprint is North Atlantic Operations if I recall and that can take a bit. The IXC/40 will come then. U-196 was actually a IXD2 so I'm surprised it comes up as a IXC boat number.

The only real difference in the IXC should be additional fuel capacity, with accompanying increase in displacement. The IXC/40 gets a little more fuel still, and might be a bit faster on the surface.

I don't know when the Monsun operation and transfer becomes available, I'd expect late 1943. The first boat to arrive in the war was in October. So that's a lot of campaign to play between a 1939 start and shifting operations to Penang. If you're in to that. I gotta do it at least once. That's an epic voyage. The hunting may not be so good there, but we will see about that. And if we live that long. If I'm sunk it's a new game. Crewmen with diving specialist should prove key to surviving the war in this boat. If you're a IX skipper there's no /41 to move up to, and that extra depth capability was key to making it through the war in my previous play. The IX gets no improved pressure hull and that means no hiding very deep. Remote operations where the ASW is not so strong is probably the way to go if you play dead is dead.

Fourth war patrol was successful, returning to BF grid. In the IXC I went roundabout because we have a lot more fuel. Knocked down 37k to hit 98k so far, and the third phase of Tonnage War is 100k so nearly there.

But I'm doing this with 12 torpedoes as I haven't worked out how to download the external torpedoes. How is it done?

I think you have to be on the surface and then order a junior officer to perform the task? I've not done it myself. It sounds like, from Steam posts, that the external storage numbers in each 'locker' are incorrect, but the total external available is correct. They did patch some of that c. patch 6. iirc

Yes thanks. Of course I had been on the surface but saw no way to do this, at least through the UI or orders. So I took over one of the off-duty officers and went first-person up on to the deck to see what options I might find. And sure enough I found deck storage which you can click on, and then drag and drop a torpedo from external to internal storage. It takes a long time, as you would expect, though I didn't notice how long. 30 minutes? An hour? I'd expect that having ratings assigned to this officer will speed up the download. These IX's carry ten topside fish, so this is important to make the most of the boat's capabilities. Not sure what happens if you get caught by aircraft. I'll be doing this at night from here on out.

U-196 manages to work out how to use all of her torpedoes while on patrol in the North Sea, January 1940

I paid attention for the next download. It took my boys 57 minutes to bring one torpedo down. 20 minutes to remove the deck plates and 37 to load the fish. The topside canisters are mis-balanced. The stern storage holds six torpedoes and the bow storage holds four. With just two tubes and two internal reserve slots at the stern it means that in order to make the most of your loadout you need to use the stern tubes that much more, and you'll download more often as you can bring fewer down at a time, and you cannot shift the fish from one end of the boat to the other. So 10 of your 22 torpedoes are at the back of the boat, but half the tubes to shoot them. I would guess all three IX's are the same? I'm in the IXC

The time it takes to do this might drop as the crew becomes more experienced, I'll keep an eye on it.

Gotta add that it always amazes me the amount of manhandling effort it took in real life without a whole lot of 'modernization' (like, for instance, the magazine elevators to bring up gunpowder to the turrets on a 1940's battleship, and all the winches and electrics to move the 'shell' into the breech etc., where in the U-boats a bit of block & tackle went a long way) until finally automated in modern attack subs (fully automated in the old Soviet Alpha Class iirc). Cool stuff DBond! I'm happy you managed to figure it out. Should be safe for another year or two on the surface I would think.

Nice report DB, great screen shot too.

Thanks.

There are three radio/soundmen as I rotate officers in and out to train them up. The skipper and XO are always on board, but the others get rotated off the boat and in to HQ projects. By mid-war I want to have veteran alternates at radio and engineer. As the peril rises I want these officers for their medical and repair ability. And they need to get some patrols in to take the special abilities I want them to have, especially the one that allows first aid if you run out of medkits, and the repair speed. Ideally, in the second half of the war I'll run the skipper and XO, three engineers and two radio. Or the other way around. It's a difficult choice. Once you get the cross (radar detector) you want to man the radio shack and the hydrophones station on the surface, because that's where the radar detector equipment in mounted. It should be with the radio man, or I wish it was I should say, which would make having just two radiomen enough to go round the clock.



Yeah, that was hard work. And it's done on a pitching deck in foul weather perhaps. Imagine taking torpedoes from a torpedo supply boat in the north Atlantic. As for being safe on the surface, do you mean for torpedo attacks, or against aircraft..while loading topside fish? At night yeah.

Speaking of surface attacks, in February of 40 I took the Scapa Flow mission. I was going to skip it, but then remembered I'd get Otto Popp a really good special ability, Bullseye, which gives the skipper +15% solution speed. I thought I might be pushing it in the Type IX, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I wanted to do it in darkness and crept up to the eastern entrance submerged and surfaced for the run in when the indicator showed night, but it was bright as day. Made the run-in decks awash, crashing over a sub net which caused some damage, but kept going and put three torpedoes in to Royal Oak and missed the carrier behind with the fourth. Took the shot from 3500 meters to allow escape time and headed for the barn at all ahead flank. It looked too bright out but I banked that since it was 'night' the AI would treat it as such. Regardless we got out undetected. The battleship took a really long time to sink, about the time we were heading out past the blockships (if they were in the game ha). But we got credit for it. I bring this up because there is a setting that changes how claims are made and I wonder if we would have missed this as we didn't actually see it sink, if I had it on a different setting. On the way home we put under 22k of 'trade ships' including my second Dale class tanker which are the grail. Both were running the route between Edinburgh and Bergen.

On the previous patrol I homed in on AI beacons and it was a convoy. Got in great position about five miles ahead and then watched the escorts start to peel off and licked my chops because this meant the AI sub(s) were attacking and the convoy would sail on to me stripped of their protection. Another Dale class was spotted in the center, I could see her distinctive tops. I really like having AI subs in UBOAT, and I always wished it was in Silent Hunter. The escort can get overwhelmed against pack attacks, and the player can really take advantage.

But I waited... and waited.... and waited and noticed fewer and fewer smoke columns and went to free camera and all that was left was a DD and corvette. So I sank the DD which was sat still and that was that. The AI wiped it all out, which will cause some players to rage about 'kill stealing' or whatever, but I think it's cool. It's worth risking the Huff Duff detection (if it's a thing in the game and I think it is) to report a convoy before engaging to bring up other boats. And if you get beacons that are within range it's usually a good idea to go after it.

Sorry, I should have clarified regarding the surfaced movement of the torpedo stores by the deck crew. I was thinking of the larger gap in air cover over the mid-Atlantic c.1939-41 being somewhat 'safer'. All bets off in early '42 with larger numbers of hunter aircraft available, with longer ranges and operational air time. I'm thinking that both the RAF and RCAF used the Leigh Light, and MkII Air-to-surface radar, very well in that period of time.

How are you finding the handling of the IX versus the VII so far?

Handling is fine, it's gotta be a little slower at everything than the VII, but not having played for a long time I can't really tell. It feels a touch slow on the surface, I'd expect a couple more knots.

Dive time is slow, and I've dropped my first two specialization points in diving, and this will help as I keep doing so. So yeah, it's probably more cumbersome in turning, dives take longer and it feels a bit slow. But none of this has much effect on operations.

Later in the war these seconds may count, but so far no problem. And this is the reason I went with a 1939 start, so that I could train the crew and gain dive time specialization to carry us in to the later war.

U-196 has reached April of 1940. I had said next blueprint will come with Atlantic Theater Operations, but it seems the Type IX is ineligible for that operation, so would need to wait for Black Pit I reckon.

There are three operations that are of particular interest in my current career. Distant Operations, which begins in 1941 and two Monsoon campaigns that begin in early 1943, and these are the ones I expect will lead to transferring to Penang.

One thing I like about the current version of the game is the statistics. Not sure when this was added but I like it. It shows total fish fired, hits, hit percentage, longest torpedo hit, average torpedo distance, deepest depth and lots more. Good stuff.

I had a look at graphics settings as I just went with default and noticed AA is off and DLSS too, so I enabled DLSS and it sharpened things up and looks that much better.

DBond I just fired U-Boat up and looked for AA and DLSS in graphics options but didn't see any, went to video options too. My AA option in graphics settings is greyed out so I can't access that, it says NONE. Any suggestion ? thanks buddy.

Hey mate, just got to work and will be hours before I can look at my PC. But first thought is, which card do you have? I think DLSS requires a RTX card. If you do have one, then not sure what the issue might be. I can have a look later


I have four achievements left to get. The one for destroying a whole convoy, the one for getting sunk and returning to the surface, the golden Ritterkreuz with all the cabbage and the one for sinking a battleship found at sea. I've sunk Royal Oak at anchor a number of times, but this requires a BB in a convoy or task force and in nearly 400 hours I've never even seen one.

I'd like to get all of them. With a Type IX the convoy one becomes a little easier, so maybe I can get it if I encounter the right convoy with my racks full. The one for rising to the surface I could stage I suppose. The one for the highest decoration is nearly impossible I think, so probably never get it, unless the points required has been adjusted down since 2024

But the battleship. This one I want. Have you guys ever seen a battlewagon at sea? If so do you recall the details, and most importantly, which grid square?

U-196 has survived to July 1940 and is enroute to our new base at La Rochelle

My GPU is a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6 gigabyte and it is an old GPU so I don’t think I have DLSS.

Yes, that's the reason then. But doesn't explain why AA is greyed out, and FWIW mine is too, and I have a RTX card (4070 Ti Super)

DLSS works though

U-196 has arrived in France and kicked off the Happy Times campaign. Does this one yield a blueprint? I forget.

Yeah DB it's a mystery to me also that the AA button is grayed out as I know my GPU is capable of it.