Originally posted by Curval
Why is it that I can see a green contact on my map, but no radar reports or sonar reports?
I have set intercept course only to appear to be right on top of the contact, but can't see anything on top or hear anything below?
Those are single ship contacts. Sent via radio by bdu and auto plotted on your map. Imagine they are relayed reports from other boats. The position information isnt 100% precise and changes over time. You basically get an idea of the sector and general heading and its up to you to set an intercept course and search.
FYI for those interested:
To remove those contacts markers:
Go into
C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\SilentHunterIII\data\Cfg
and look for the Contacts.cfg (test file)
You will have the below as default
[ContactSettings]
; Contact settings
Display Range To Opportunity Radio Contacts=300 ;[>0] kilometers
Display Range To Important Radio Contacts=1500 ;[>0] kilometers
Decay Time For Important Radio Contacts=172800 ;[>0] seconds
Decay Time For Opportunity Radio Contacts=32400 ;[>0] seconds
Decay Time For Imprecise Sensor Contacts=600 ;[>0] seconds
Decay Time For Precise Sensor Contacts=60 ;[>0] seconds
Single Contact Min Size=1 ;[>0] minimum numbers of units in this type of group
Small Contact Min Size=3 ;[>0] minimum numbers of units in this type of group
Medium Contact Min Size=7 ;[>0] minimum numbers of units in this type of group
Large Contact Min Size=13 ;[>0] minimum numbers of units in this type of group
you basically have 2 types of contact reports -
Opportunity - mostly single contacts
Important - mostly convoys.
In real life your radio man would have gotten many contact reports. Your Kaleun would plot them on the map and make a descision on whether to investigate them. I doubt a Kaleun would chase a single contact report unless it was a real good target.
However, convoy reports would have peaked his interest.
The quick and easy way to eliminate the single ship contacts is just to set
Decay Time For Opportunity Radio Contacts=0 ;[>0] seconds
And you won't get any markers on the map for single ship contacts but you will still get convoy updates.
I choose not to have either and set both decay time for important and opportunity to 0..
I also to increased range of convoy (important) contacts to 6000km.
You can also adjust the range (from your boat) at which you get contact reports from Bdu by modifying the following:
Display Range To Opportunity Radio Contacts=300 ;[>0] kilometers
Display Range To Important Radio Contacts=1500 ;[>0] kilometers
Your RA will still recieve contact reports but they will not be plotted on the map.
What this means is when an 'important' contact message is sent (convoy) you will get a text / audio mesage that reports the sector heading and speed of the convoy. I then plot this on the map manually with the nav tools and decide whether I can get their in time.
I don't get any single ship contacts and have to spend time actually hunting rather then just responding to position / contact reports from bdu.
I just started a new career with the above settings.
In my last career I just used the a mod that changed the color of the contacts on the map to black-grey (just like your own uboat marker on the map). This way I still got all the updates but the contacts were plotted on the map in one color. This way I didn't know if they were nuetral or enemy etc...
It got realitivley easy and I ran up huge tonnage score so I am trying something different. I play with 100% realism (actually I sometimes kept external view on) I just renamed the umark.tga (Program Files\Ubisoft\SilentHunterIII\data\Misc\UMark.tga) to no.umark.tga. Now when I am submerged and want to get a screen shot the orange marker that shows up on the water above your boat (reprents your position under the water) isn't there.