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Old 10-10-21, 09:16 PM   #1
Zero Niner
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Default FOTRS - some questions about gameplay

1. There's an empty compartment labeled "Watch crew quarters". What's the purpose of this room? To shelter the watch when the sub is submerged and under attack, thus preventing injuries?

2. I have a mission to patrol an area for 10 days. What is the range from which I can sail from the mission star, and still be considered to be in the area?

3. I noticed the damage control crew in my new sub had weapons specialists. Was it the intent of the mod's authors that the crew of the deck and AA guns be drawn from this pool of Petty Officers and Seamen?

4. The crew manning the damage control and gun stations will never get fatigued unless they have been at GQ in which case the entire crew of the sub will accumulate fatigue accordingly. Am I right to assume this?

5. Is there any way to tell the local time? The display shows the base time, which is a bit of a problem if one is patrolling the Gilbert Islands but the clock is set for San Francisco!

Last edited by Zero Niner; 10-11-21 at 03:04 AM.
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Old 10-11-21, 06:49 AM   #2
propbeanie
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1. You don't have to use the Watch Crew Quarters, but if you do leave the watch crew at their duty stations, even if not on watch, and you do get depth-charged, then yes, they can be injured rather easily. The Watch Crew Quarters have the "shielding" of the boat to protect them somewhat. They can still be injured, but not as easily as at their stations. The game does not actually remove a crew member from outside the boat when submerged, they just "disappear" from view. This is all 12 watch crew members, and any of them at gun positions. This can also apply to surface battle stations though. You need watch crew topside, but you can put the off-duty crew, the 'sleepers', in the lounge and protect them - but watch the clock. They change crews every four hours (except at Battle Stations)...

2. Most of the missions will have a green circle drawn on the NavMap that signifies the size of your patrol area. They might range in size from 2nm for an Insert mission, to anywhere from 50-200nm (or more) for a Patrol Mission. Generally speaking, if you don't have a circle drawn for a Patrol mission, then the orders you receive will say something to the effect of "Establish a 50nm radius patrol area centered on 32N; 137E and conduct anti-shipping operations for ten (10) days." If you have a "Proceed immediately to 32N; 137E and await further orders" (or similar), that would then be a "Sink" mission, and you will usually then be told something like "Conduct anti-shipping operations in the area..." which might be accompanied with a green circle and would then establish a time frame for you, in addition to the Sink requirements, or if no circle is drawn, in spite of what the orders might say, you can fulfill the "Sink" requirements anywhere on the NavMap, including off the coast of Sweden if so desired, just so long as it is "enemy" tonnage. If you happen upon one of the old missions, those were generally 100km, or roughly 70nm in radius from the center of the Patrol indicator on the NavMap. We hope we have all of those removed from the calling database. If you do have one, let us know in the FotRSU thread what your orders were, and were that patrol indicator is located, along with the boat you have, and where you sailed from. -btw- if no tonnage is listed for a Sink mission, then it will usually be between 1200 & 5000 tons, or roughly one ship. Some of the older missions were 10000 tons...

3. Yes, the Damage Control team is crewed sufficiently deep to crew all of the guns a particular boat might have - unless you add double deck guns later in the career when those become available, at which time, you'll have to add more crew to your boat, or pull the extras from other positions (such as the torpedo room). The Narwhal class will have enough to do the same, both deck guns and 4 for the future AA guns. You can always find other gun crew members from the rest of the boat though, for situations when you might have wounded crew members, or for personal preference, or for better gun handlers. Your choice. Your Damage Control team though will be short-handed if you do not put the gun crews back when not needed, and like the watch crew, they have minimal "armor" protection when at the gun positions, and should definitely be brought inside the sub when under depth charge attack. They will "sleep" when appropriate, unless you have the boat at Battle Stations all of the time, or if the Damage Control team is activated, so watch those situations.

4. At Battle Stations, the whole boat has duty stations to attend - all personnel. If you keep them at Battle Stations, no one in the crew is allowed to rest. However, they will begin dropping from fatigue after a while, and then you will get "Unable to comply..." messages, and just a failure to follow orders until you take them off of battle stations and allow them to rest. Hopefully, they don't fall into that state in the middle of a dive!... The Damage Control team, as above, will fatigue if they are kept active on damage repairs. There is nothing to prevent you from rotating appropriate crew into and out of the Damage Control though, if appropriate for the amount of damage your boat may have sustained.

5. If you started in San Francisco, then that is your base time. Pearl? and that would be your base time. Fremantle? and that is your base time. "Time" as you travel, unless you use a LOT of high time compression, should be relatively stable, so pay attention as you travel for when sunrise and sunset are locally. That is for when you are in a career and on patrol. Single missions will use Local Time from where the sub starts, and similarly for the War Patrol and Submarine School missions. Sub skippers used to be able to set their clocks on the boat to reflect Local time, and had several clocks that could be used to track Local and Base, or whatever time they desired. If you look at some of the War Patrol Reports online, you will see where some skippers, besides reporting their noon location and fuel consumed data, will also indicate when they changed their clocks to Local time, based upon their longitude. That is not possible in the game as it is. We have experimented with vertical marks on the Nav Map to signify where the approximate time zones are, but that looks like a hodge-podge mess of a mess, and we have not implemented that. If we can find a slightly more elegant manner to attempt to indicate the time zones, we will do that, but your clocks will not change. There was a fellow a while back that did keep himself a wind-up clock on his desk, that he would physically change the time of as he played, but that would be a major pain the after quarters to keep up with, especially when Time Compressing... moon cycles would be nice to have also, but alas, things like that died with the first version of Silent Hunter... If you want to get into the weeds with Local Time, read Front Runner's thread Local Time 2018 - and you'll see some of the issues we had to deal with to gets things more stable with FotRSU mod.
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Last edited by propbeanie; 10-11-21 at 08:38 AM. Reason: -btw- forgetfulness... aka: oldmanitis
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Old 10-13-21, 03:21 AM   #3
Zero Niner
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Thank you.
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