AI-sub spawning rate in campaign

[sergbuto]

Here is the question for people who have experience in working with campaign layers and have a good feel on spawning frequencies of various units.

I have prepared a random layer of Japanese AI-subs movements which is common for the entire war. It contains 44 routes which cover whole Pacific, including US and Australian coast. What would be the best spawning rate to set so that a player does not run across such AI subs too often or extremely rarely?

Currently I set the spawning rate to 10%.

[tater]

Hard to tell. Use the "play" button and watch them under time compression is the best bet.

Quite a few IJN subs were sunk by USN submarines. Many as the rteult of ULTRA information. IJN subs were very "chatty" and we DFed them as well. Their undoing (related to ULTRA) was that they were tightly controlled from home, and had specific noontime lat/long to be at on specific days. We'd read their mail, send a sub to wait there, and boom.

Might make sense to have a few make frequent (once a day?) contact reports.

<S>

tater

[tater]

BTW, after ~june/July 1944, the chances might go down a bit, they lost something like 40 subs in those 2 months (about equal to the whole war up to that point).

tater

[sergbuto]

Hard to tell. Use the "play" button and watch them under time compression is the best bet.

Quite a few IJN subs were sunk by USN submarines. Many as the rteult of ULTRA information. IJN subs were very "chatty" and we DFed them as well. Their undoing (related to ULTRA) was that they were tightly controlled from home, and had specific noontime lat/long to be at on specific days. We'd read their mail, send a sub to wait there, and boom.

Might make sense to have a few make frequent (once a day?) contact reports.

<S>

tater
Good info. This probably suggests an increase in ReportPosProbability up to 50%. Currently I use 20%.

[tater]

Yeah, and perhaps only for a few tracks so the map isn't covered with sub reports.

I've been experimenting with that. Making a certain convoy or TF be one that was well known by the intel guys so it gets frequent reports. Another method I was playing with was to set the time between reports such alnog with a 100% contact report so I'd always get a report in a certain place.

[Hitman]

BTW, after ~june/July 1944, the chances might go down a bit, they lost something like 40 subs in those 2 months (about equal to the whole war up to that point).

tater

Yes that's right, though destroyers had the major share on that in some special operations (Hunt&kill). Sinkings by US submarines were more or less average along the war AFAIK, most of the time by Ultra but also -specially near the japanese coast- by some casual find of the enemy sub. (Source: Silent Victory)

Sergei, I think you should set a low spawn rate coupled with a high contact rate, to represent well the lower number of subs when compared to other warships, but the influence of Ultra in locating them :yep: