I am getting the hang of it, though. I discovered that I can emulate both O'kane and Fluckey by attacking the enemy in his own harbors. It is pretty cool sneaking into a harbor and targeting enemy ships laying at anchor. Then, once you have a solution, letting fly with torpedoes and running for open water. This post will probably bore most of you, so if you want to skip down to the end(last paragraph) it's ok.
One way to keep the shore guns from firing, or the patrol vessels, is to flood down to the deck and you sneak in slowly on the surface, just like they did in WWII. The only thing that shows above the surface is the conning tower which apparently resembles a small fishing vessel and is harder to see.
Another thing I was able to do was to sink some medium sized junks/ fishing vessels with the deck gun. One of them put survivors in the water in a small boat. Then, because I was curious and it happened on a few occasions in WWII, I used the 20mm cannon on them...the lifeboat sank. An amazing amount of realism, though, thankfully, there were no bodies to be seen.
At one point I had sunk a small destroyer type with my deck gun...it was a regular gun fight. I went on to sink another couple merchant ships at their moorings. My patrol area was just off Honshu. I loitered around the mouth of Tokyo Bay, but it was December of 1941 and the seas were atrocious! The swells were a good 20 feet and when they did fall to a decent heighth, the enemy send a batch of destroyers out to sink me. I managed through luck and remembering what O'kane did, to lose them and wander back up the coast. (Mind you there were numerous times today where I could not get away, more often than not)
At one point, after working my way up the southern coast of Honshu I was going to attack the coast of Hokkaido, but I had misjudged the time of day and surfaced at twilight. I figured that since I was still about 30 miles from land I would be fine, but a Kawanishi H6K Mavis attacked. He dropped his bombs just beyond my ship, but continued to make machine gun passes. I figured two could play that game. I got on our 20mm and began firing back. On the second pass I made a hit. But the bastard kept making runs. On the fifth pass I hit him again. STILL he made more passes. Occasionally he hit us with his machine gun, but not significant damage to a ship. I even opened up with the 4 inch gun, but the firing rate was too slow. Finally I made some good hits open about his 8th pass and just held the trigger down. That did the trick because a wing fell off and he dropped into the sea trailing flames and smoke.
If you attack a convoy at night, the escorts can light you up with search lights. It is such a remarkable program. Apart from the fact that I am in front of a computer, it is very realistic. The designers thought of almost everything! I am afraid I could find this game addicting. Something few games have done for me. Among them are Halo, Far Cry, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, air combat additions. So, if you know anything about submarine warfare and wish to give it a go for yourself, just go out and pick up Silent Hunter, Wolves of the Pacific! I am crazy about this game! I would have gotten it before now, but my computer was not capable of running such programs.
We had a Ham today. It was scrumptious and we should have plenty of left overs to feed us for awhile. Cora and I played Wii and enjoyed the day off. She even got to go shopping with her sisters today. So, the first day of 2010 was actually very nice!
