For standard Radio Usage.
Prolouge
All credit goes to Robert E Lee!
I am making this guide to help those aspiring radio men who just can’t seem to get it working. Also I have seen too many boats go unaided by their allies or those that do not work together because they can not communicate, so I hope that players will use the system laid out as a kind of unofficial standard way to communicate without too much hassle.
Using the Radio Itself
All subs have to agree on a transmit and receiving frequency beforehand and if another sub joins in during the match, set your transmitter and receiver to 1 and try and explain the situation. I would recommend using a higher channel like ‘8’ because the lower channels don’t appear to work too well. Everyone must transmit and receive on the same signal, it won’t work for more than two subs if you use different channels. You can use the enigma machine to encode messages, however the enemy can not intercept your messages yet, so there isn’t really a point to encode it yet. Use the telegraph to transmit messages by typing out what you want to say on your keyboard. Don’t type too fast though, let the animation and audio cue finish before sending the next letter. Most importantly you must be above 15 m to use the radio, so say something before you dive.
Understanding Radio Communications
First things first, reading the messages. If you hit ‘C’ you can go to the ‘Radio Log’ and view all received messages. Now that you have read the messages, you have to respond. Start by using a prefix, Some good ones that I have had used in my games are…
- UNS – for U-96
- UFFT – for U-552
- UFSF – for U-564
- UTZS – for U-307
These let the other end know who is transmitting and makes things easier on everyone. Then You have to say whatever it is you want to say, like “We’re diving to 50m” it should be short so it isn’t a pain to send and read, but there should be a way to differentiate the words. “weredivingtofivezerom” is not a very legible message(also there are no numbers, so you just have to spell them out). So how do you fix this, one way is to wait a second before starting the next word, which isn’t all that reliable. However the best way in my opinion is to use X’s to break words, like “werexdivingxtofivexzeroxmx” So a proper message should be “UNSxWerexDivingxToxFivexZeroxmx”
Also communicate often, relay your position, changes in course, if you’re being attacked, found a target or starting a hydrophone search. That last one is quite important because your friends can mess with your search and then you hunt a friendly sub for an hour. Give you allies the heads up and get them to shut off their engines (switching to electric then all stop) or even join you in the search and attempt to triangulate the convoy for easier finds.
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