SH3 Newbie Guide, FAQs, Tactics & Tips, Links, & other helpful stuff

I don't remember exactly what time compression I was running, but I'm sure it was at least 32X, probably more like 128. I don't think I'd gone through a night cycle on that career yet since I left port very early in the morning (it was pitch black). It was definitely daylight when I was spotted by the destroyer though. It also seemed like he was AWFULLY close for having just been spotted. My bridge was fully manned with officer and crew and the green bar was full.

I started a new career last night (my third in two days <sigh> ) and actually got to leave the docks during daylight hours for the first time. I'm in a type IX heading towards sector BE, IIRC. I think I've been out to sea for about two days now and have yet to see or hear a thing.

Is there a way to have the game pause when your crew spots something during time compression? I hate the choices of essentially "dive or do nothing". If I spot a ship I dont necessarily want to dive. I want to stay just outside of his visual range and get his identity/range/speed. I'm also curious if it's worth my time to dive, cut engines, and check the hydrophone every so often. I've been doing that every four hours like clockwork and have never had a hydrophone contact. So far all of my sightings have been visual.

[robj250]

Okay. I usually run at TC 128 (let's say out in the Atlantic Ocean) and as soon as my Watchman (who has been qualified as Watchman) spots a ship (in SH3 you got the screen to make 3 choices and you cannot break TC until you answer one of those choices, then I immediately break TC.

Now, using TGW1.1a, I have yet to have a ship spotted by my Watchman (who is qualified) after leaving Wilhemlshaven, either in the daytime or night time. But Just now, in Grid AN95 my Watchman spotted a submarine on the surface (I had no screen come up with me having to make choices). It was a clear night 0157. Through the periscope I checked the distance and it was 1659 m. So I would have had plenty of time to make a normal dive if I had needed to. I was in TC at the time (probably 128) so I would have had to dive had it been an enemy ship. I'm sorry, but I cannot recall whether the TC dropped to 1 itself or whether I pressed "break" and then +.

This is only my 2nd patrol using Grey Wolves and in my last patrol, my Watchman never spotted a ship.

But in SH3, I would go to periscope depth so I could not be spotted.

Originally Posted by robj250

Okay. I usually run at TC 128 (let's say out in the Atlantic Ocean) and as soon as my Watchman (who has been qualified as Watchman) spots a ship (in SH3 you got the screen to make 3 choices and you cannot break TC until you answer one of those choices, then I immediately break TC.

I think this is what caused my problem. I was running pretty high time compression and when I got the popup I didn't want to dive. I wanted to just maintain speed and course and get eyes on the ship before I did anything drastic. Unfortunately, the TC doesn't seem to default back to 1X when you make a selection. So, I clicked "continue on course" or whatever that choice is, then immediately hit pause. However, "immediately" on 128X or 256X time compression is a fair amount of time in-game. Even if it only took me a quarter of a second between "maintain course" and pause, at 256X TC that's a full minute of game time! If i'm going 14 knots and the destroyer is going 20 knots (closing at 34 knots), we'll get a LOT closer in a full minute of game time. I wish that one of the options on the "ship sighted" popup was to pause the game or at least IMMEDIATELY set TC to 1X. I guess from now on I'll have to choose "dive" and hit pause ASAP.

I did find this: http://www.communitymanuals.com/shii...ssion_Settings

I'm going to try setting EnemyDetected=1 tonight to see how that works.

[rjbudz]

Hi all,

Does anyone know how I can darken the screen in SHIII? I tried turning the brightness down on my monitor, but it's not enough (not to mention that everything else is too dark now). The interior of the boat has too much light, the shadows aren't black, but light gray. It could be a contrast issue as everything inside has a kind of white haze. I've seen screen shots that look much more real than what I see, because they're darker and the details come out more. The exterior world would come to life if I could just ...

My rig is top notch, processor, video, ram, you name it. So I can tweak to my heart's content, if I know what to do.

There is no setting for this under video options, so I'm hoping that someone understands the config files enough to show me the way.

Much thanks!

[Oldgamer48]

I know that most people don't have as much time or patience as I do, but I'm one of those "strange people" that plays at 1x speed. One of the things that I've noticed is that I will spot a ship about 2-3 minutes faster than my bridge watch. A lot can happen in those 2-3 minutes. Also, playing at 1x speed adds immeasurably to the experience of the game.

For example, watching the sun go down and rise the next morning, at 0532 hours, is a rewarding in itself, having survived a night at sea. I also like to play the gramophone, to which I've added .mp3's of my own, including many Wagnerian pieces. If one of the pieces from Das Boot comes on, I go to my bunk and enjoy.

But the trouble with time compression is suddenly coming out of it to find yourself under attack by warships or aircraft. I learned that with Aces of the Deep, the hard way. After all, they may "make them good in Germany, Heinie ..." (The Enemy Below), but even a U-Boat can't get hit with a full salvo of 5-inchers from a Fletcher-class, and survive, if you don't get out of time compression until you've sunk 450 meters down!

Okay, I may take several weeks to run 198 hours at 12 knots to my patrol grid (I did on my first patrol with SH3). But on the way, I managed to dive away from a British aircraft, evade a destroyer patrol between Scapa Flow and the Shetlands, and still manage to sink a C2 two hours later (after the DD's broke off). I'm now happily patrolling BF17 at 4 knots (maximum effort with hyrdrophones), and just before I quit, tonight, I came up with a merchie sound contact, long range, closing.

Tomorrow will be fun.

[robj250]

I'm much like OldGamer. I used to run TC a lot because I was impatient with the long distances I had to go, but I soon learned that a ship (be it a destroyer or just a plain C2) is right next to you before your Watch man got the word out "Ship Spotted". Too late "Crash Dive" in order to avoid a colision.

Now I run mostly at TC 1. and that's when I started hearing strange noises, like wire scraping the bottom of my U-51. These were in area I figured I would never come across a subnet. As a matter of fact, the nets (or at least the scrapping) continued through 6 grids.

Golly Gee Molly, I would never had heard those noises or hear the crew talking when running ar high TC.

Now for the point of brightness in your screen, I wish I could borrow a little of that brightness, because my nights are so dark, I wouldn't see a whale parked in front of the Good Ol'e U51.

[Oldgamer48]

Originally Posted by robj250

I'm much like OldGamer. I used to run TC a lot because I was impatient with the long distances I had to go, but I soon learned that a ship (be it a destroyer or just a plain C2) is right next to you before your Watch man got the word out "Ship Spotted". Too late "Crash Dive" in order to avoid a colision.

Now I run mostly at TC 1. and that's when I started hearing strange noises, like wire scraping the bottom of my U-51. These were in area I figured I would never come across a subnet. As a matter of fact, the nets (or at least the scrapping) continued through 6 grids.

Golly Gee Molly, I would never had heard those noises or hear the crew talking when running ar high TC.

Now for the point of brightness in your screen, I wish I could borrow a little of that brightness, because my nights are so dark, I wouldn't see a whale parked in front of the Good Ol'e U51.

U-51? That's my boat, sir ...

[robj250]

Originally Posted by Oldgamer48

U-51? That's my boat, sir ...

Sorry Dude, but I had her first back in March 2006.

[ArtieEngineer]

Hello!!!

New to this myself.

I find this to be an excellent thread\post for us newbies. Learned a few things.

On the torpedoe training\exam thing. My son and I found that we can generally get them all by going after the Tanker first as it is moving the fastest. SO. From the start turn due east and go at full speed or flank to get inside of 800m for that tanker then go around in clockwise direction jumping on the surface to run them down as they delete upon reaching last waypoint. OK let me explain we were using what I call the point and shoot method. Set the torps for impact at 3 meters depth 000 gyro angle and maneuver the sub to be dead abeam and slightly ahead. Now since the stationery ship starts moving rather quickly you need to sneak in rather close (under 500) and hit him with a fast one or even a salvo. (I tried for five kills with five torps) That C2 Cargo is moving slow so he is no worry. Even better to turn short of due east and send one out the rear for the third ship clockwise from the tanker as I find the second one not much trouble to run down.

On lower realism settings where the game figures the solution it is entirely possible to sink them all without moving, though I find that stationary ship to be a real pain even then. Just installed Grey Wolves and it makes the five for five feat that much harder to achieve even with the lowest realism setting.

Anyway nice to meet you guys and gals. Hope to get some multi player time in with at least a few of you in the near future.

[holden88]

Great thread, great site, great game. A few questions and observations from a new player.

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue. It doesn't seem like my men are recovering endurance at all when sent to quarters. Also, I don't heve near enough space to rest all my idle men. I end up putting the un-used manpower into the battery compartment or a torpedo room. Unfortunately here they suffer endurance loss even if they aren't doing anything. After a while I have a boat full of extremely fatigued sailors. Is endurance recovery affected by the sea state? Can you recover endurance quicker if you you dive your boat to get under a storm? And if so how deep do you need to be?

The computer selected settings for crew assignments can be quite annoying. For instance, I hate that the computer shoves both of my skilled seior mechanics on watch in the engine room at the same time. It would be much better to have these guys on a rotation. In fact the entire notion of the captain manually selecting individual members for mundane crew assignments is pretty silly. On real warships, crew members rotate on a watch rotation automatically. In my opinion all the crew stations should be swapped out by the computer every four, six or eight hours, without the need to involve the captain. It can be quite tedious to interrupt my voyage all the time to manually move guys around on the boat. Also, in this game guys can stand on watch for days at a time!

Every now and then I get a radio message which refers to longitude and latitude. How can I see these co-ordinates on my nav map to determine where to go?

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

Thanks for any help or comments.

[fredbass]

Originally Posted by holden88

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue.

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

I would guess that most players have installed "SH3 Commander" and turned off fatigue.

Yes, you can go back to port immediately any time you want regardless. That's totally up to you, but the penalty is losing renown gained.

The GW supermod has maps that you can look at to see where friendly mines are at. The mod is quite popular and will be even better when GWX arrives.

If you install SH3Gen then you can get a fair idea where mines and subnets will be at enemy ports as well.

[robj250]

Originally Posted by holden88

Great thread, great site, great game. A few questions and observations from a new player.

I'm having difficulty managing crew fatigue. It doesn't seem like my men are recovering endurance at all when sent to quarters. Also, I don't heve near enough space to rest all my idle men. I end up putting the un-used manpower into the battery compartment or a torpedo room. Unfortunately here they suffer endurance loss even if they aren't doing anything. After a while I have a boat full of extremely fatigued sailors. Is endurance recovery affected by the sea state? Can you recover endurance quicker if you you dive your boat to get under a storm? And if so how deep do you need to be?

The computer selected settings for crew assignments can be quite annoying. For instance, I hate that the computer shoves both of my skilled seior mechanics on watch in the engine room at the same time. It would be much better to have these guys on a rotation. In fact the entire notion of the captain manually selecting individual members for mundane crew assignments is pretty silly. On real warships, crew members rotate on a watch rotation automatically. In my opinion all the crew stations should be swapped out by the computer every four, six or eight hours, without the need to involve the captain. It can be quite tedious to interrupt my voyage all the time to manually move guys around on the boat. Also, in this game guys can stand on watch for days at a time!

Every now and then I get a radio message which refers to longitude and latitude. How can I see these co-ordinates on my nav map to determine where to go?

Is it just me or can you simply hit escape and end your patrol at any time? Regardless of damage or fuel state you can simply warp back to port safely. Is it just the honor system in place here to restrict people from essentially cheating? It can be real hard to resist warping home when you've had a paticulairily good patrol or are in real trouble (or both).

Numerous times when steaming through the straights into Wilhelmshaven my ship would take massive damage and sink. I assume I'm hitting mines. How do you avoid these things? Can they be spotted? Why doesn't my captain have some prior knowledge as to roughly where these mines are laid? There should be some known safe routes, shouldn't there.

Thanks for any help or comments.

First off, I need to know what you running. Are you using the Silent Hunter 3 that came on a DVD or you downloaded, or have you installed Silent Hunter, the 1.4 patch and Grey Wolves? Have you downloaded and installed SH3 Commander?

Using SH3 Commander allows you to set you fatigue level, but you must do this in port.

Regarding the longitude and latitude, you can simply pause your game, press ALT + TAB and go to this page: http://www.ubootwaffe.net/quadrant.cgi then you can enter the information and press find square and it will tell you what Grid it is referring to, then go back to your game.

You can return to base anytime you want by pressing Escape and then choose exit. BUT doing this action warps you back to your base, where your sub will be repaired and you begin a new mission. If you just want to quit your game and continue at a later time, say after supper or something, then after Pressing Escape, choose Save and Exit and you can enter a name which will save your career at that point in the game and then allow you to exit the game without returning to base. When you want to go back to that point in your career, you select career, saved game abd the list of the saved games for that mission for you to click to load, choose the most recent point, because if you choose a point earlier, you will loose any saved career missions that follow it. It is recommended not to save a career while you are submerged as there is a bug in the game that sometimes creeps up and will not let you load the career that you saved.

I suggest you also install SH3GEN which is another separate program, just like SH3 Commander, that permits you to generate an intelligence report ONCE you are out of your harbour.

With respect to you crashing and sinking before you get out of your base, if you are using the stock game, make sure you have enlarged the map large enough to bring you sub out of the pen, safely past any obstructions. If you are using TGW1.1a which is Grey Wolves, you will have lots of harbour traffic that you must avoid. If you are using TGW1.1a, you should have checked "remove frendly mines" if you don't want a chance to run into your own mines.

If you wish to install any MODS into your game you must download JSGME (which is a generic mod enabler) and install it into your Silent Hunter directory and install the MODS using it, PLUS you MUST be in PORT before installing or uninstalling any MODS.

If you have any other questions, just ask and someone will answer your question.

ENJOY THE GAME and welcome to the subsim community.

[holden88]

I'm using the dvd version of the game, patched up to 1.4 with the grey wolves mod added on top. I also have jsgme. Sounds like I need to get SH3 Commander loaded on my machine too.

Just so I'm clear on SH3 Commander. I need to start a career and then save it before I do anything. Then, leave the game and run SH3 Commander to change around my game. Then go back into the game and play?

When I leave harbour I sail out past all the buildings and ships manually. Once I'm clear I plot a course to bring me out into open water. Twice I've hit mines and twice I've gone through no problem. Where in the GW mod can you see the mines? On the main nav map once you zoom in or something?

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

It's too bad that all your spare crew don't fill up the foward compartments on the boat automatically when you crash dive. That would have been neat.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by holden88

I'm using the dvd version of the game, patched up to 1.4 with the grey wolves mod added on top. I also have jsgme. Sounds like I need to get SH3 Commander loaded on my machine too.

You won't regret it. You'll be amazed at all the different things it can do.

Just so I'm clear on SH3 Commander. I need to start a career and then save it before I do anything. Then, leave the game and run SH3 Commander to change around my game. Then go back into the game and play?

No. You click on Commander and create the career from there. It lets you set all the beginning parameters (flotilla, base, type of sub, sub number) and conditions (time compression, wave height, gun reload times and more) and you type in your name-or let it choose one. Then it generates you crews' names, and you can change them too.

When I leave harbour I sail out past all the buildings and ships manually. Once I'm clear I plot a course to bring me out into open water. Twice I've hit mines and twice I've gone through no problem. Where in the GW mod can you see the mines? On the main nav map once you zoom in or something?

You can install and use SH3Gen, but it doesn't work until you've restarted. GW gives you maps of ports showing mines and nets. Also the ship that appears in front of you and starts moving right away is your escort. he'll lead you out safely.

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

That one I'm not sure on; a regular GW user will have to answer it.

It's too bad that all your spare crew don't fill up the foward compartments on the boat automatically when you crash dive. That would have been neat.

True, but then we would have complained that there wasn't a cut scene from Das Boot showing them doing it.:rotfl:

[robj250]

Originally Posted by holden88

Can I go back and add some of the GW features (like disable friendly mines or longer view distances) on top of my game now, or do I need to do a complete re-install.

No. once GW is installed, the options cannot be changed. If you used JSGME to install GW, then just uninstall everything and then reinstall.

If you setup GW in the Silent Hunter Folder like I did, we're out of luck. I had to start all over with a clean install of Silent Hunter, add patch 1.4 and JSGME. Now you ae ready for your fresh install of Grey Wolves.