Silent Hunter 3

[Gaidin]

I am still having this issue to a certain extent.  If I give the order to fire on a target with deck gun, then the ammo is loaded, if I want to initiate the attack myself, I can't get the ammo to load.  I have done it once, but I dont know how I did it.  Is there a certain sequence?

[GScholz]

I'm not sure I understand the problem: Are you trying to get the crew to attack? Or are you trying to fire the gun yourself?

[ImADot]

I am still having this issue to a certain extent.  If I give the order to fire on a target with deck gun, then the ammo is loaded, if I want to initiate the attack myself, I can't get the ammo to load.  I have done it once, but I dont know how I did it.  Is there a certain sequence?

When you're in the deck gun and want to fire, check the big ammo icon on the right side of the screen. It will show the type (HE for GWX) and two numbers under it. The left number is the number of loaded shells (for deck gun it would be 1 for loaded, for AA gun it will vary with model, but typically be 20 or whatever number is in the clip being loaded). The right number is the remaining number in stock. If the left number is 0, click on the shell icon to start the loading process - you MUST have at least one crewman assigned to the deck gun station or there's nobody to load it for you.

Once you have a shell loaded, you can fire and it will be automatically reloaded until you're out of stock. If you move to a different station and come back, it should be automatically loaded as long as a crewman is assigned to the deck gun station.

[Franz Von Werra]

I have SH3 with Greywolves gold? It might be outdated, been a year or two.

Anyways, I seemed to always try to hunt the battleships, going into the ports, slowly, submerged, scope up, and hoping to see the mines before crash into them and blow up.

Best story I have:
I think it was my first patrol of new career, I went up to the north side of Scotland, major port there, I forget name of it. I intended to enter the port. I was heading West, and there ahead of me, appeared the dream: carrier, battleship on the horizon, and lots of destroyers, heading East, directly at me. So I dove past periscope depth, hoping to sneak under the lead destroyer. Well, in the first pass, he dropped wasser bombens, and one of them hit me, blew up the entire conning tower. Both scopes, AA gun, Radio antenna, the whole deal up there. I still had the intention of trying to surface and firing on the CV from close up, I still hydrophones. The destroyer came back around. I NOW realized that the max depth of this area was like 90meters. I don't remember how close I got to the ocean floor. Either way, 90meters is still only in the green section of the depth gauge. I may have lasted a turn or two, but within a two minutes maybe, that same destroyer dropped again, blew me up. All hands lost. Got owned. Makes sense I guess, the lead destroyer of a CV group would have  the most skilled captain probably of the whole English Navy. Yep, not enough depth for even a chance to get away. That was the most stuff I ever saw on the surface.

Park on ocean floor?
What has always bothered me about SH3, even with Grey Wolves Gold - no matter how gently I try to land on the ocean floor, I get major damage. I have the windows 98 'Command: Aces of the Deep' game also, and in that game, hunting at correct depth, about 160 - 180 meters, and we could land on ocean floor, and repair the most of the sub before blowing the compressed air in hopes of surfacing. Sometimes had to blow some of that while running to lower depth though too. There was luck here, sometimes a day later just before running out of air, we could get off the ground, which meant we could then use the electric engines to climb out or just float up. "Stuck in the mud" sometimes so couldn't  engage motor. Hated that we couldn't repair on floor in SH3, it just keeps breaking more systems if try to park.

AA gun:
other thing, a plane could be buzzing around me and I would be unable to find him in the air. Invisible? Seemed like the SH3 deck view was sooo zoomed in that couldn't even find dam enemy plane... boo.

[ImADot]

Park on ocean floor?
What has always bothered me about SH3, even with Grey Wolves Gold - no matter how gently I try to land on the ocean floor, I get major damage.

There's a mod for that...I'm not using it, but have read about it. You might even be able to fix it by editing a config file.

[Gaidin]

When you're in the deck gun and want to fire, check the big ammo icon on the right side of the screen. It will show the type (HE for GWX) and two numbers under it. The left number is the number of loaded shells (for deck gun it would be 1 for loaded, for AA gun it will vary with model, but typically be 20 or whatever number is in the clip being loaded). The right number is the remaining number in stock. If the left number is 0, click on the shell icon to start the loading process - you MUST have at least one crewman assigned to the deck gun station or there's nobody to load it for you.

Once you have a shell loaded, you can fire and it will be automatically reloaded until you're out of stock. If you move to a different station and come back, it should be automatically loaded as long as a crewman is assigned to the deck gun station.

Lets see if I can elaborate some.  The steps I use when conducting a surface attack are surface, and I either use the WO to man the deck gun or the crew menu using surface attack option. 

Now, if I go to the Deck gun, it is not loaded and has no rounds available at that point.  If I go to the bridge, use WO menu or the Binos mounted there to order the crew to attack with the Deck gun, the gun gets loaded an I can then move to it and control it myself. 

Now once I do this 1 time per patrol, I can then go to the deck gun at any time and the ammo is available.

Hope that explains it a little better.

[GScholz]

Yeah, you have to do that once per patrol.

[ImADot]

Lets see if I can elaborate some.  The steps I use when conducting a surface attack are surface, and I either use the WO to man the deck gun or the crew menu using surface attack option. 

Now, if I go to the Deck gun, it is not loaded and has no rounds available at that point.  If I go to the bridge, use WO menu or the Binos mounted there to order the crew to attack with the Deck gun, the gun gets loaded an I can then move to it and control it myself. 

Now once I do this 1 time per patrol, I can then go to the deck gun at any time and the ammo is available.

Hope that explains it a little better.

That is pretty much what I described - except you did not indicate that you click on the ammo icon on the lower-right of the screen to initially get the HE rounds loaded. You can do that instead of ordering the guys to attack something to get the ammo loaded. And yes, you only need to do that the first time on a patrol.