Let's commence Operation Monsun! (Update Q-7)

Thank you for this LP, excellent work.

Nice work. Can't wait for the next update.

Good thing this finally got to page 2, the first one was starting to get huge. In the middle of sneaking up on a convoy but I've gotta go to work.

As for life rafts yes, I'm fairly certain they're broken at this point.

Im reading this LP and I didnt even like SH. Good Job!

Great LP.

Inspired by this LP, I've decided not to remove Das Boot from inventory. Cool movie and cool LP.

Excellent LP!

Gonna start typing out a giant update now, can someone please post the pic of Cleve in his bunker? I just spent an hour looking and can't find it for the life of me.

overtenemy said:

Gonna start typing out a giant update now, can someone please post the pic of Cleve in his bunker? I just spent an hour looking and can't find it for the life of me.

Click to expand...

The thread, appropriately, is a sticky in retardoland

? Was looking for the real pic of Cleve. What thread is this?

Part 4: Convoy Quest Redux: Deluxe Enhanced Ultimate Edition (that'll be 60 dollars)

For this update I took more screenshots than the last three combined. Hopefully most of them are superfluous, or this is going to take forever.



Where we are currently. Our systems are repaired, we haven't taken any permanent damage, and we're on our way to begin patrolling west of Gibraltar.



I go as far East as possible while being in acceptably deep water. It's about 400m here.



Lone boat. Lame tonnage. Deck gun.





See nothing for the remainder of the 3 days. Get ordered West of Spain.



We see a boat on the way there. Panama. I'm beginning to suspect those cunts.

We zig and zag around the grid when we get a boat spotted in daylight. I head to the bridge.















Yeah, it took me 6 screenshots to photograph the whole convoy, and there may even be more further away that we can't see yet. I think our torpedoes have found a new home. The wisest course of action here would be to call it in, then stalk it until night time, and begin picking them off one at a time by closing in, doing a nice, calculated shot, and cruising away so that by the time the torpedoes hit you've covered enough distance that the destroyers won't simply be able to go to the flaming wreckage and find you.

But then again we haven't done a submerged attack on a convoy yet, so let's DO THIS.

I spend a lot of time browsing between the targets, trying to find the most valuable, when BdU makes the decision for me.



The convoy is up to its neck in fat, juicy tankers. We set engines to full and start to close some ground to it, remaining on the surface for as long as we dare.



That's the forward destroyer. Our conundrum is essentially this: in order to actually hit something with torpedoes, you need to position yourself properly. This hasn't been a problem yet because most of our attacks have been on the surface, at night. I'm currently heading eastish. The convoy is heading northish. So we'll need to head northeast on an intercept course, so that the angle on bow is at least roughly 90, give or take 20-30 degrees or so. If you take too long to close in, they'll be too far north and there'll be no chance of hitting them. But we can't make it all the way on the surface because it's daylight and the destroyer will waste us. We have to submerge at some point. We go 18 knots on the surface, max. We go 8-9 submerged, max. Except, your battery will deplete at an unacceptable rate at that speed, and more importantly, it'll make so much noise every destroyer captain in the Atlantic will make it his personal mission in life to end you. Realistically, we'll only be going 3 knots. Can we choose the right time to dive, and can we then make it to the convoy in time for a good shot?

I think so.



I decide that's close enough and make the dive. You'll notice the destroyer has turned at us...



But it's chill. He's just doing a 360 to ensure there's no U-boats behind him. The hydrophone won't pick up anything bearing roughly 180 degrees because of the ship's own propellers.



I decide on a target. Probably the closest tanker in the convoy, though there are several regular cargo ships to the right of us that are closer by a fair bit. Also good tonnage, and we should be able to make it in range before the opportunity has past.



Life would be so much easier right now if we were going after one of these guys instead. It'd be an easy, 90 degree shot close shot.



The information gathering begins. Think I've got his course plotted. Should be easy from here...OHSHI



ITS COMING RIGHT FOR US

lol jk he's just doing another 360. I was convinced during play, however, that every time he was facing us we were detected. At one point I had the engines set to super slow and dove to 40 meters because I thought he was going to see us. Fortunately, the maneuver I began when approaching the convoy went perfectly. By the time we were close to the destroyer, he was ahead of us, and we slipped in behind him no problem.



Back on the targeting from I'm running into some problems. I thought I had his range and course plotted correctly, but every time I take a new range I keep fucking up. Did the convoy turn? Just looking at it, I can't even tell. The first speed I took was 9 knots. I really, really don't think this convoy is doing 9 knots...



I still haven't found a course and firing solution I'm happy with when a ship from another column gets right in front of our intended target. Our chance to fire is also slipping, and I'm getting desperate because I for the life of me can't seem to reliably get their range. I must be doing something wrong.

If we want to fire, we gotta fire soon, but I'm irritated at the prospect of firing torpedoes with a solution I'm not happy with, so I reach a compromise. I'll pick a tanker, do an impromptu fast 90, and fire the two electric torpedoes I have loaded. The reason for this is twofold: I'm fucking sick of electric torpedoes, and because if they miss, the convoy won't be alerted and we'll be able to slink away to prepare for another attack later.



I choose you! Torpedoes in the water.

I take a look around, and...



I don't think he's fucking around this time. I didn't leave my periscope up very long. Surprised we got caught. Normally merchants aren't very astute.



We crash dive and head east into the merchant columns, hoping one will get in his way and impede his maneuvering, giving us some more time to get deep before the inevitable depth charging. ASDIC pings begin immediately. We're lucky enough to time a 90 degree port turn right as the ASDIC stops, meaning they won't have our new course, and the charges will be slightly off. A few explosions rock the boat, but we take no damage.



We escape several attack runs unscathed, and reach a cozy 140 meters. The ASDIC appears to have stopped. I don't think they can really do anything at this depth, because it seems every time we get into the 140-160 meter depth, the ASDIC stops. We're running quietly now, trying to slink away. It's also abundantly clear at this point that the torpedoes have missed. Cleve finally knows the bitter taste of failure. I had set the speed to 9, trusting in my dumbfuck measurements rather than common sense, and it cost me. They're almost certainly going 5-7.



I think we've escaped when we are very suddenly rocked by close depth charges. They took me completely by surprise. A few more detonate, but they're obviously very far away. I order the boat even lower, eventually reaching 170 meters. We incur sporadic depth charging for about forty minutes of game time, but nothing hits us. I don't think they really know where we are.



After all the twisting and turning, this is our current position, a little west of my poorly plotted tanker course. Although the course was inaccurate, the visual reference is helpful. They're certainly North-Northeast of us now.



Sound contacts bearing 022 and 349, moving away. My initial guess as to their position was correct. My current plan is to tail them for hours until it gets dark, then surface and catch up.



I decide to head west a bit, so that when we surface it hopefully won't be right next to the destroyer that hangs in the back.



I'm greeted by a glorious sight as we surface at sundown.



I also call the convoy in again, and BdU gives us another objective to attack it, even before the first one was complete. Lawd



The destroyer is only bearing 120. If we speed up we may be able to get out of range before it detects us, even though it's not quite as dark yet as I'd like it to me. We may have surfaced too early.

A shell whizzing over the ship quickly confirms that suspicion.





The splash in the back is a shell barely missing the boat. If one of those hits us, we're in deep shit. We finally manage to dive.

I didn't screenshot it very well, but after we dive, the destroyer actually doesn't attack us. He just keeps going along with the convoy. Confounded, I wait a few minutes and surface again, only to be greeted by the same phenomenon. Realizing that it's senseless attempting to attack at this time of day and from this position, I spend a few hours heading northwest, submerged.



I go a bit far, and surface with no visual contacts. So I turn northeast and set engines to full, occasionally diving to see if I can pick them up on the hydrophone. We eventually locate them visually, bearing 022.



I also call in the convoy yet again, receiving a third objective to attack a convoy from which we've yet to sink a single ship. I look around for targets til I find a tanker, which we're still under orders to prioritize, and set about getting a firing solution while covering the distance.



Despite being surfaced, I actually use the attack periscope because the regular stadimeter fucking pisses me off.



wow I fucked up again, 9 knots. I must be doing something wrong...



Alright alright it's chill, I got it this time. I'm fairly certain that's the course, and the speed is 5 knots, like I had originally figured. If only I'd listened.



Two eels in the water, properly scienced out. He's about 2500 meters away, so we have some time before the torpedoes hit. While beelining for this guy, we've actually passed in between two other cargo ships.



He's bearing about 130.



This guy maybe 30. So, we accelerate to close distance on the far one, and to gain distance on the close one, because it's actually too CLOSE to hit with torpedoes. I turn a little to the left to line up the rear merchant with bearing 180, and clear all data from the TDC for a nigger shot, and fire both aft tubes at him.

Then it all happens at once.



The first two torpedoes get solid hits against the tanker, and destroy him instantly.





The two negro torpedoes hit the back guy, one amidships, the other further back. He doesn't sink quite yet. We set the engines back emergency because we got too close to the guy in front of us to shoot.



Star shells in the air, better make this quick. That's not actually that boat on fire, he's our next target, and he's passing in front of the hit tanker, which is producing an immense fire.



After firing our last two loaded eels into the next target, we turn left and crank the engines to max to escape the approaching destroyers. Amazingly, in spite of that incandescent ball of fai-fire, this asshole doesn't sink, so I encourage him to go down with a few shells from the deck gun. But the time we get confirmation, we have a whopping 10 shells left, which I aim to expend on the formerly rear merchant, which is now to our left. I don't know if it'll be enough, but it's all we can do. We have no torpedoes loaded, and we need to jet, NOW.



As we run completely our of shells, he sinks peacefully. Nice of him.



More star shells. That destroyer is almost certainly right behind us, though we can't see it yet.



It appears we've escaped the scene of the crime, when...



Good God, I can't believe I forgot to screenshot it. The destroyer actually drives through the flames and comes at us like our arch nemesis out of some 80s B action flick.



But then he turns. Are we safe? Along the way, I've disabled battery recharging. Basically, you use electric engines underwater. They take battery. The battery gets recharged by running the diesel engines on the surface, but it also reduces speed. You can manually turn recharging off before the batteries are fully charged to get a few extra knots. It bumps us up from 14 to 18.

I also forgot to screenshot, a little bit past the flaming wreckage the destroyer dropped a few depth charges into the water, assuming we'd be close by. That was pretty cool.



Can you believe that shit? We escaped! In sinking those three ships, we completed our convoy based objectives, and things are looking good. But unlike with last convoy, I'm not giving up yet. We've got plenty of torpedoes left and I see no reason not to keep attacking. We head northwest again to reload safely, before resuming contact.



We actually maintain faint visual contact with the convoy this time, rather than running off and risking losing it. The destroyer doesn't know where we are, so it makes no difference. He can't see us from this far. When we've got two tubes loaded on the bow, I begin approaching again.



As we reapproach I notice they're still going batshit looking for us. That's okay.



Looking around, I find another tanker of basically the same type we sunk last time. Seems like a pretty good target. 8-9K tons, and explodes in a hurry if you hit it right.



History pretty much repeats itself with this guy. The firing solution was very, very similar, except we got a little too far ahead and had to sit still waiting for him to come to us. On the other hand, it was an even better shot, a little closer to 90 degrees.





Oh dear, I didn't notice that at all. Time to get the fuck out of here. He hasn't seen us, but I've got the feeling we're about to get some illumination in the area...



We're spotted before the torpedoes even hit. He's pretty close. I don't know if we'll be able to make it without diving.



Back to the tanker, the torpedoes were so well-aimed the first one confirms the sinking immediately, meaning the second was a bit of a waste. Meh, what can you do?



One last pretty sight before dealing with the ensuing bullshit.



I spot the other one as well. They're both behind us, and it looks like they're gaining.



They're very close. We're now being fired at by both. We've been hit by a few machine gun rounds, but they don't damage the hull, and none of the crew has been hit. All cannon shells have missed so far. Even if I dive now, they're sure to get a successful attack run on us. I have a plan to ease the pain...



I steer the ship so one of the destroyers is heading at me at exactly 180 degrees. We only have one aft torpedo loaded, but destroyers can't withstand a torpedo. Even if it didn't sink, there's no way it'd be moving.

Torpedo in the water! He doesn't turn for the longest time...he finally turns, but too late!



TOO BAD THE TORPEDO DUDDED

Fuck me. ALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARM







So far, so good. We manage to get to 60 meters when...





Pretty negligible damage. It won't cause much flooding, but just the same I manually set the repair team priority to prioritize the bulkheads.



One of our watch officers is almost dead however. His health is 4/100. If it was 0 he'd be toast. Let's hope he has time to recover.



Every 20 meters or so new depth charges ring out and the boat is rocked, but no damage is incurred. After what is becoming now a routine and seemingly random depth charging, so safely time compress away and go to periscope depth after nearly two hours of game time.



The only destroyer I see is pretty safely behind us. I order the surface.

I didn't screenshot it well, but as I surveyed the convoy I noticed most of the ships weren't moving uniformly. They were often times off in different directions. With the convoy scattered in this way, it's no wonder that they're still in visual range after we've been submerged for so long. They're not making much progress.



We set our sights on yet another tanker.

Since the convoy is in such disarray, and the ships are constantly changing course, I don't trust any 2000+ meter shots to actually hit properly. Since our position is still unknown and the destroyer is behind us, I'm feeling pretty confident and cruise right up to him for a drive by nigger shot.



Now we've only got 4 torpedoes left. Three front, one back. Since we have no deck gun shells to further persuade ships to sink, I decide that rather than attempting to sink two ships with two torpedoes each, which could easily end in no ships sunk, we'll simply sink one ship with three torpedoes and save the last aft in case we're pursued by a destroyer, and just not fire it otherwise.






With that done we turn straight west to finally break contact with the convoy. A destroyer is spotted bearing 90ish somewhere down the line, but he's heading inwards towards the sunken ship, and stands no chance at finding us. We're FREE!



I sit around our patrol objective til it's complete then report to BdU, who tells us to come home on account of our lack of torpedoes.



I drew a line on the map through all the markings I made to point out the range. That convoy battle lasted about 10 hours game time, spanning over 95 kilometers. Altogether on this patrol I believe we completely missed three torpedoes, had one dud, and had one that hit a ship that we never actually saw and never got credit for. In my opinion, great success.

The cruise home is uneventful.





Cleve receives a hero's welcome for his amazing 81 thousand ton patrol! And what's this?



The Fuehrer is so impressed by our heroics that he skips the Iron Cross first and second class and just gives us the fucking KNIGHT'S CROSS! Unfortunately, after docking, the game wouldn't reload the autosave, so I had to reload from outside port and redock, and it gave us the Iron Cross 1st class instead. But we'll always have this screenshot to remind us.

Hitler himself often times presented the Knight's Cross to recipients, and very frequently did so with the Oak Leaves variant. This, I feel, should be our goal: to arrange a personal meeting between legendary ubermensch Cleve Blakestein and his fearless leader!



Suck it down, Herb.



We have some promotions and medals. All the medals go to the damage control crew, because I'm sick of shit taking so long to get repaired. Step up your game fools. The promotions are mostly not a big deal, and are given with barely a thought, except one.



When you promote a dude with no specialization, you may choose one. I promote our shitty damage control guy and specialize him in engines so he gets a boost to mechanical and electrical skills, which should help us repair more quickly in the future.



Our Iron Cross on display. Somebody mixed that up...

Other than that, there's no upgrades to get or anything. So we're ready for next patrol. Til then.

(fuck that took a long time)[/img]

Excellent work thus far Kapitan.

I got really pissed off at SH3 last time I installed it. Kept giving me patrol grids that were out of my range for some reason.

*edit* Excellent, a new update.
*edit2* Excellent work Kapitan. Carry on.

*twitch*

*twitch*

....Ok, that does it. I'm off to see if I can find my old SH3 discs.

Awesome saga.

Good thread is good.

Take her down, chief!

Too bad you couldn't sink that destroyer.

Awesome LP is awesome.

I love this LP. If this continues to be amazing, I think we might have a new contender for a custom tag.

Vaterland is pleased I presume.

Verdammt nogmal. This is turning into one damn fine LP.

Cleve is definately proving himself to be a real übermensch. Any chance he could run a patrol with outside camera enabled, so we can get prettier pictures of the 'splosions? It can be a bit hard to tell what's going on in some of the screenshots, when all you have is a periscope.

Yeah I meant to have it on this patrol, but I forgot :[ Next patrol 100% there'll be external camera.

Great LP, look forward to further tales of danger and excitement.

Inspired by this thread, I got my hands on SHIV and the Uboat missions addon. I've followed the links in the first post, but for some reason, I can't make the addons work.

Installation order has been SH IV, Uboat missions patch, JSGME

The order the mods were installed with JSGME was
OpsMonsun_V705
OMv705_to_V720
OMv720_Patch5
OMEGU_v300_pkg
OMEGU_V300_Patch7_pkg

...Which is what the installation instructions sats is the order I should install them in. However, when I launch the game, I'm only presented with the options to play in the pacific threatre, starting in 1942. Any idea what I did wrong?

Baron Von Ulm is amusing himself decently in the pacific theatre, but he's itching to sink some limeys instead of yanks.

Ulminati said:

Inspired by this thread, I got my hands on SHIV and the Uboat missions addon. I've followed the links in the first post, but for some reason, I can't make the addons work.

Installation order has been SH IV, Uboat missions patch, JSGME

The order the mods were installed with JSGME was
OpsMonsun_V705
OMv705_to_V720
OMv720_Patch5
OMEGU_v300_pkg
OMEGU_V300_Patch7_pkg

...Which is what the installation instructions sats is the order I should install them in. However, when I launch the game, I'm only presented with the options to play in the pacific threatre, starting in 1942. Any idea what I did wrong?

Baron Von Ulm is amusing himself decently in the pacific theatre, but he's itching to sink some limeys instead of yanks.

Click to expand...

Hum, not sure. I installed it many, many months ago and never deleted it, so I haven't dicked around with it recently. I have an older version apparently.

Mine are as follows:

OpsMonsun_v705
OMv705_to_720
OMv720_Patch3
OMEGU_v300
OMEGU_v300_Patch5A
OM_Harder_Escort_L1
KiUB_English

I get a crash every now and then so I really probably ought to update. I may do that when I dock from the patrol I'm on.

In any event, you can try going over to the OM or OMEGU threads and ask Lurker to help, since they're still active I believe. Be advised, if you post there, be respectful as well as thorough and specific regarding the problem, or Lurker may hulk rage on you, or at the very least just not help.