New Person saying hello

[Kateblanchette]

Good Morning/Afternoon, wherever you are!

As encouraged by the welcome message from the dite's "Cheif Bottle Washer", I bid you all Hail and welcome.

I live in Australia, in Darwin.

I appreciate Silent Hunter 4 enough to reload it when my computer felt the need to stop working. I had loaded 'trigger maru 1.4' in the past, but lost all of that, so I'm here to rectify this, and to add to it.

I found 1.4 a tad easy, with a few tactics of my own. Am hoping to download more, and restore my fav game to it's former glory, maybe better.

I'm married with one step daughter, (17) and a two and a half year old daughter of my own. I used to spend a fair bit of time on SH4. I play ONLY on the toughest settings, but my own enthusiasm for attacking gets in the way of my survival. My best performance from Dec 7 1941 onward was all the way to April 1944, where my highly experienced crew were mortified to find their skipper falling victim to a collision in the middle of a filthy storm.

When I lose a sub, I do not go back to reload. Real submariners had no such option, and I don't think it's right. If you die, start again. It makes your decisions that little bit more realistic, and the consequnces for me are the same.

Anyhow, nice to be here, and I look forward to swapping pixels on this site with the best of them!

Take care!

Kate

[Dowly]

Welcome aboard

[Cybermat47]

WELCOME
TO
SUBSIM!

Always good to see a fellow Aussie on here

[Herr-Berbunch]

Haha, a girl's name and Dowly is the first response.

Welcome aboard

[The Enigma]

Hello Kateblanchette,

Welcome to the place to be: Subsim.com.
Enjoy your stay

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Kateblanchette

my highly experienced crew were mortified to find their skipper falling victim to a collision in the middle of a filthy storm.

Reminds me of the time I was accidentally rammed by a British freighter on my way to Scapa Flow in SH5. "It's not fair", I thought. Turns out it was fair, seeing as I was playing on 2% realism. 81% is better, I reckon.

[Gerald]

[Valentino]

Welcome to Subsim Kateblanchette !

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

Haha, a girl's name and Dowly is the first response.

It was the "swapping pixels" line that sparked my interest.

[Jimbuna]

Welcome Aboard

[von Kinderei]

Wel-come aboard Kaleun ...

[u crank]

Welcome to SubSim Kate.

[Kateblanchette]

Thanks for all the kind words.

Just how dedicated a group of gamers are you guys anyway? I will admit to being familiar, so to speak, with certain of you, but this is a new site and new people.

Anyhow, my struggles with enabling the darned mods continue. A few questions....

Does tm 1.5 need to be purchased?

Can I download it? Is it necessary?

I actually do have several other trigger maru downloads. As of yet, I'm at a loss to be able to use them. Patches, that don't need mucking about with filing, cutting and pasting, enabling, and all the other rigmorole, seem to suit me better.

The old tm used to be in my hard drive. I did not need the SH4 disc to play the game. I ussed to have a base at Alaska, and the features on my sub worked differently. I'm a 'straight shooter". I don't use anything but contact detonators, and set my angles strictly at zero degrees, so that all tinfish come out of the tube straight as an arrow. Positioning a sub for a frontal or rear shot , with no deflection, is best. Better still, why shoot at a moving target when you can penetrate a port and line up a guaranteed 'kill' when the ship is tied off at the berth? For this reason, I run my torpedoes about 5 feet below the surface to minmize the risk of detection by the target, and prefer the classic 'down the throat' shot to deal with destroyers. But, really I would prefer to hunt fat merchantmen that don't fire back much. This is the key to a llarge tonnage haul, and helps with survivability from month to month.

If you must attack a convoy, set up a front shot, or don't attack at all. Fire your torpedoes, then get the hell out and live to fight another day.

I approach a patrol area at about 9 knots, and will only move about faster than that when absolutely necessary. This conserves valuable fuel. On the run home, I never approach my base without one or two spare torpedoes just in case. When the aircraft warning goes off, I simply stop, submerge, and wait an hour or so, then continue.

I do not engage in surface gun duels with anything other than merchants. Even a gunboat can be highly dangerous. However, a favourite tactic is to wait for a ship that has only one gun at either end, then get in that gun's blind spot. Japanese medium composite freighters are particularly deadly, but their gun is mostly on the stern of the vessel, so a frontal approach works best. Put a fish into it, wait for it to list over then pop up on the blind side. I use still floating ships to hide under, safe from destroyers.

When I follow my own advice, I can regularly sink 50,000 tons plus on an average patrol. But I'm a little to agressive for my own good, so, Ive not taken a single sub all the way through the war as of yet. Statistically, there were not a hellofalotta subs that achieved this in reality. Great Captains like Dealey, Prien, and Wanklyn did not survive the war. Otto Kretschmer was one of the fortunate few to be able to get out of his pig boat alive and actually be picked up and taken prisoner.

Have i given too much away? If I take the plunge and go online, I don't want too many people knowing how I operate!

One more question. If I decide to take the plung and become a financial contributor to the site, how much will it cost? How much is too little, and how much is too much? I'm not harping, but we only have one income at the present moment, with a house and bills to pay. Convincing my wife that financial contributions to a website will be a regular thing can only lead to arguments about money. Further, does financial contribution enable me to get some coaching, so that step by step, I can modify this game into a glorious device, good for thousands of hours of play and then some.

What I would REALLY like is for someone with a little time to kill to sit online and guide me step by step to enable all these goodies. We could meet at an agreed upon time, and on a section of the forum nominated. Support like THAT would turn me into a REGULAR financial contributor, for I would have a case to go to my wife with, and justify any expense to here by pointing out the many many hours of cheap fun to be had. But doing all this with an inferior programme seems not the best of paths.

This is how I originally got Trigger Maru into my computer. A site member, (who shall remain nameless) sat on the telephone and helped me, step by step.

Any interested parties please let me know. You will not only get a financial contribution on a regular basis out of it, I could then train well with my sparkling, very updated program and be the best I can possibly be for the big one, the Holy Grail of ONLINE play!

[Red October1984]

Trigger Maru 2.5 has been released for free.

I highly recommend the Run Silent, Run Deep Campaign Mod.

Go to the Subsim Downloads Section and take a peek at what we've got.

Subsim is an extremely dedicated forum. It's among the best the internet has to offer. You will love it here.

Welcome aboard and happy hunting!

[Herr-Berbunch]

Very few survive the whole war, and playing SH4 you're only actually playing half of it anyway.