New member and tough game!

[Raptor]

Hello!

I picked up SH3 this weekend and I have been playing it a good bit the past few days. I am terrible!

I have been following the site for a week or so. Nice work Dominico! I have seen a lot of hints and tricks that have helped me immensely already, but Im still getting my ass handed to me. Guess it will keep my attention more right???

I just ended my first career (or had it ended for me ) last night. I am playing with pretty high realism (I think its 77) and manual targetting, which is frustrating at best.

My first patrol went pretty well. I sunk three merchants for over 10K in tonnage. I had one ship that I hit with two torps that didnt go off for whatever reason, and a second ship that I had to let go when I hit it with my last two torps and it wouldnt go down.

My second patrol directed me to the W of the English Channel. Dispite all of the warnings I read here, I thought 'How hard could it be? Im going through the Channel'

Hehehe bad idea

As I approached Dover, there were multiple destroyers around - maybe 6 or so - and I skirted them quite easily. This is cake! Once in the Channel, I destroyed three merchants with my deck gun. How easy is this??? Im gonna do what I want in this game! The night of destroying my third merchant, the destroyers came looking for me. I had three bearing down on me, and I didnt survive the first run of depth charges...

So anyway, I had a few questions for the vets here. I am finding manual targetting extremely difficult - especially in stormy water, and Im finding myself taking 'eyeball' shots more than I calculate them. Should I be playing at an easier level (automatic targetting) until I get the hang of it, or do you think its more rewarding to do it manually? What about 'Realistic Damage'? I was surprised at how quickly I died last evening - the charges were right on target. Does 'realistic' mean that one charge that gets nearby will finish my career? And finally, when patrolling, can you return to base to rearm without ending your patrol?

Anyway, thanks for reading, and happy hunting!

[Nabeshin]

1. Manual targeting is hard and takes alot of practice. If your having a hard time with other aspects and just want to focus on them for the time being you can make your WO plot the solutions for you. Just click his pic, click torpedo attack, and then click plot solution. Takes him about 2 seconds.

2. Avoid the channel like the plague. You can sneak in if you are carefull and go slow but once they know your there its too narrow and shallow to be able to escape.

3. Everything is difficult in stormy weather, if its bad enough you can even have your torpedo leap out of waves and sail over top of low ships or explode in mid air.

4. Escape and Evasion is hard at first but once you get the hang of it things get alot easier. Save a game right before you get spotted by a DD and then just run it a few times for practice. Does the convoy attack training mission have DD's in it? I forget but you can practice on them maybee.

[faamecanic]

Yep...the convoy training mission has 2 DDs in it I believe. Got sunk by depth charges the first time I tried that mission ;D

[con20or]

ive been playing for weeks and i still suck at manual targeting. STARTING to show signs of improvement. i hit 2 times out of ten now. keep at it

[Dominico Baggio]

I have to do a manual targeting walk through when i get time dont i...

The tricks i would quickly say for you are speed is often wrong when you do manual targeting. If you are moving, or if you get one of the previous estimations wrong, speed will be wrong.

The trick is you can usually estimate speed later on, this is what i do. Another trick is to sail behind or alongside them, and match the speed. Then you know what speed they are going. Or just come to a stop.

If you are travelling 10 knots west, and your target is north of you traveling 10 knots east. Your timer for speed will come out with 20 knots, so its a case of realising this and setting it to 10 manually. Complicated but eventually you will figure it and get a feel.

Finally if the enemy has spotted you they will start to zig and zag, when this happens hitting them is very hard.

For small ships you need to be 400-800 metres. Bigger ships like tankers and cargo ships you should hit at 1500 metres to 2000 (when you get good) with practice. Get as close as possible every time you fire though.

Most frieght ships travel at about 6-8 knots, so if you are getting strange speed estimates well above this, set it by hand.

Finally open the tube doors before firing as this makes a small difference to the track of the torp.