Wolfpack: Project Escorts

[PL_Andrev]

Originally Posted by Fidd

The addition of all crew-compartments has been good, and I look forward to learning to operate the engines and e-motors, however, in my personal view, it was an error not to move quicker to the PVP playable escorts instead. YMMV of course.

You can't have a cake and eat it too
I agree with you 100% but Wolfpack focuses on multicrew operations.
Nowadays it is hard to play SUB vs DDs when it is problem to meet 4 people together to play one sub...
Now I don't believe PvP is joining to Wolfpack, even corvette model is ready.

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by PL_Andrev

You can't have a cake and eat it too
I agree with you 100% but Wolfpack focuses on multicrew operations.
Nowadays it is hard to play SUB vs DDs when it is problem to meet 4 people together to play one sub...
Now I don't believe PvP is joining to Wolfpack, even corvette model is ready.

I play 4 times a week for 3 hours a time, always on a full, or near full boat, and almost invariably with 3-4 boats a game. Look for Duyfken and Frost games, first find the discord channels for them, where you can enlist for each game. Frost games are circa midnight GMT, and Duyfken 18:00 or 19:00 dependant on the day of the week.

As things stand, DC's are wildly too lethal, and the evasion portion of a mission for a u-boat is usually limited to one pattern of DC's, if it occurs at all. That means that the most dramatic and nerve-wracking, and fairly common, aspect of being a u-boat crewman is essentially absent from the game, as is a physics-model to more accurately portray the difficulties of keeping the boat and trim and at PD, and likewise a damage-model for crew to repair or stop leaks with isolation valves. Finally, the AI is woefully poor, relative to the decision-making a human being would apply in relation to an asdic contact. Even the "dive to 185m and you're safe" is a construct that necessarily limits dc attacks to a single pattern.

Playable escorts would put a great deal of that "content" back in the game where it belongs, not to mention make the duel between the u-boat skipper above much more personal! It's a no-brainer that this should have been in the game years ago, if only with human-directed AI ships initially, of the "Go here and prosecute an asdic search for 30 minutes, attacking when you have a fix, and readopting the search unless you see debris" variety; with players able to jump onto escorts who gain a contact coming later?

[Fidd]

How I'd implement playable escorts, were I coding God! :

1. Make a playable "Convoy Commander" (CC) who is based on an escort destroyer or sloop.

2. The CC has the ability to:

1. send any escort(s) to either a point in relation to the moving convoy
   to a contact held by another escort
   to an area to maintain an asdic search relative to the moving convoy(for an interval of 5 mins to 3 hours)
   to an area in relation to the moving convoy (as above)
   to detach an escort to occupy the nearest opening in the screen
   to cease an asdic search and reposition to nearest open escort slot
   to come to all stop and listen with hydrophones
   to relocate to another escorts position, on reaching, the replaced escort may be directed to a new location, otherwise it moves to nearest one

Otherwise all escort actions are AI, until playable escorts come into game, thence:

Some 6(?) or so players would be able to play as escorts. They may not enter a u-boat and then join the allies in that lobby. Players may relocate to an AI destroyer or Corvette that acquires an ASDIC contact, or detects a u-boat on the surface. Once the last player leaves that escort, the escort then returns to the direct command of the CC. So, most of the boring patrol side of things is done by the AI as of routine, but any escort may be temporarily manned at any time, by players. When so manned, all AI detection modes are suppressed, meaning visual contact is by human sight, not "detection range", and asdic contact is by human manual use of the Asdic, rather than AI "use" of it. 2 players would be the minimum crew - skipper/helmsman and asdic operator. Optionally more could join as gunners/dc operators. The skipper decides on the DC depth and either sets them, or orders the player to do so if present. Boats operated by human players would shew with a distinct marking on the CC's map. The CC may direct players to a particular escort. Roles not occupied by human players would prosecute AI behaviour for that role.

The aim being to minimise the number of allied players required to mount an intelligent defence of the convoy, without recourse to highly predicatable AI behaviours, but instead to have (if a CC is in post) the AI carry the burden of the boring aspects of the patrol, but have human players tending to prosecute attacks, or to otherwise keep a u-boat at depth via asdic searches. The lethality of DC attacks could be dialled back, as more DC attacks would tend to occur one a uboat is detected. This would create the highly personal and dramatic contest of the u-boat captain trying to outwit the escort and vice versa.

[Fidd]

As an addition to the concept laid out in the previous post: It's important that if more prolonged DC attacks come into existence, eg with a human escort commander keeping DC attacks/asdic lost-contact searches going, that there's ALSO a change to the way "alerts" works, so that the other 3 uboats are not compelled to wait for an hour or more of the 1st uboat being detected/DC'd/reacquired on asdic. The simplest change would be for a convoy to alert as it does now, however, once a given u-boat has been detected, it ceases to be re-alert the convoy if re-detected or continuously detected by any or all of the escorts, past 5 minutes from the detection. At which point, the convoy would de-alert, even though AI or human player operating an escort had it detected. Naturally, AI escorts in asdic contact with that u-boat would continue to attack it until called back to the convoy by the convoy commander, or it is sunk.

In other words, after a fairly short alert, the convoy would settle to a heading and speed fairly smartly, allowing attacks to be resumed by the other u-boats, even though, one of their number remained detected and was being attacked. This would keep gameplay going for the 3 undetected u-boats, whilst the 4th was suffering a prolonged DC attack(s) from one or more escorts (as directed by the convoy-commander.