Puzzling Escort behavior

[Otto Heinzmeir]

I had this happen once in GWX.

I'm in heavy seas, 15mps winds, thus the escorts have a hec of a time finding you. I am in front of a convoy that is about 8 or 9k away. There I sit at 2kts and I double checked to make sure the engine rpm's were not above 100. My crew is at silent running. The lead escort comes near but not real close, about 600-900m and without even pinging just starts a DC attack out of the blue. He continues the DC attack for about an hour in spite of the fact he never once pinged and I never incresed speed but kept at 100 rpms. None of his attacks were close. Eventually he is joined by another DD from the convoy.

What puzzles me is how he knows there is a sub in the area without pinging? At 100 rpm's he should not be able to hear my props in 15mps seas. Why is he dropping DC's all over when he is 800 to 1000m off my location? A few times he would come to a complete stop. I think this might be a good tactic for an escort that knows the sub location in calm seas. But its asking for death when you don't know a subs location. Generally I like to save my torps for merchants, but I thought these idiots are wasting my time and I want to get back to the convoy. So I killed both of these DD's and moved on.

I'm wondering does the AI cheat? It just seems like there was no explainable way the lead escort could have known I was there. What escort goes along and randomly drops DC charges? I know they can carry over 200 but ocean voyages last a long time so it doesn't make any sense to me. PLus they may as will put a kick me sign on the side of there hull when they sit in place.

[Fr8monkey]

I dont know. That has happened to me too. THis DD comes charging at me at full speed and starts Depth charging me 2Km ahead of me. He does this about 3 or 4 times and then heads back to where he was. Kinda weird.

[UnterseeBoogeyMan]

If it's early war, maybe it's inexperience of the sonar operators on those DDs?
I ran into something similar myself. Attack on a convoy in rain and fog. I almost have a near collision with a freighter, re-adjust and line up for my main target. I know a Black Swan is aft about 1000 meters of the ship I almost hit.
I'm afraid of getting waxed by him, so I go to periscope depth. I look back,180 degrees bearing, the DD makes a run at 18 knots 90 aob to me, and drops depth charges about 700 meters away. He doesnt ping,but makes a run at a spot where I must have been reported. I can explain that behavior, visual siting. Why he didnt ping, who knows. I do know he had pinged away hours earlier on a different attack, so I know weather didnt hold him back.

[gigel_escu]

It is a little bit strange, depends the depth you was running, I run into a convoy at silent running at 100 meters, they didn't find me until I was on the periscope depth ready to launch torpedo, if you are near the surface you are very exposed, even in 1942 they didn't find me at 100+ meters at silent running, but 80 meters or above they find you very easy. It is strange that normally on the storm seas the hidrophone operator from escorts is almost deaf...

I had another problem with escort, I play with external view, generally not cheatting to view from outside, but I ask my SO to tell nearest contact. Warship, closing baring 180 degrees. OK left(or right) full rudder, depth 80 meters, I was at periscope depth. The distance between me and escort was 200 meters or close and surprise the escorts came after me. In normal condition the sonar was blind in distances under 500 meters, but apparent not. Or I was at 100 meters the escorts was above me and when I heard "depth charge in water" I decided to rise the sub at 60 meters. Bad ideea at 80 meters a depth charge explode near me and I was sunk. Or the depth charge was on remote control or my sub is so ugly and DC explode when it saw it, was in sept 1942.
Another thing, generally the Flower escorts are very dumm, if you stay on periscope depth you are very safe if a Flower escort is above you, you don't take so much damage, a little bit collision with escort, no more. If you dive 20 meters or even deep, you have some problems. That problem is in particular when you are in the middle of a convoy and you try to made some English to take a bath. If you have a River or Black Swan the things are very complicate because they are precise.

I tell the date to make difference between tactics and weapons used by allies and germans. In 1940 for example I approached at 1000 meters on convoy, the escorts finally saw me, but in 1943 for example, at surface, it was thick fogg, I knew is a convoy somewhere in front of me, when surprise a DE appears sudden from fogg at 300 meters left and shell me, after that rammed me.

[kdv]

Had a weird one too yesterday;

Sept. 1941, while escaping after attacking a convoy at slowest speed in silent running mode, I could not shake one escort. He kept finding me over and over again. Weather was lousy, moderate seas, bad visibility (under 300m). He used up his 200 or so depth charges, but wouldn't stop doing runs over my position.

So out of annoyance, I surfaced when my sonar dude showed that the DD was behind me (doing his sweep?), and went flank speed (18kts in a 7C). I had nothing behind me for a few miles, when suddenly my watchman shouts out the visual - a DD coming up on my butt hard and fast.

Crash dive! And swerve! The DD made slight contact with my stern, but I got down safely. And then back to the same nonsense of waiting for him to get bored and head back to his convoy.

What gives with these DD's in GWX?

[Oneshot/Onekill]

I just chalk it up to limited AI.

[Threesixtyci]

Most likely part of the sub popped out of the water due to the heavy waves, causing the AI to do an AI sighting routine, or something.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by Threesixtyci

Most likely part of the sub popped out of the water due to the heavy waves, causing the AI to do an AI sighting routine, or something.

That's probably what happened. But then you'd think they would ping. I was at periscope depth and as I understand it, it would be harded to be picked up by sonar at that depth because the DD's sonar cone doesn't widen out until it goes deeper. I think the AI doesn't ping unless your already in the sonar cone. Not positive about that but it seems that way.

I also noticed in NYGM early in 1940 the Flower classes were impossible to elude until I checked my RPM's. While going back slow they were 120. Unlike when you go forward, there is no way to fine tune your speed in reverse. When I did a 180 and went ahead at 2 kts at 100 RPM's I slipped way. So 100 RPM's is the magic number it seems. I opened up my Sub.sim (Edit - Sub.cfg file) file and changed the value when going back slow from .25 to .18 so hopefully back slow won't be over 100 RPM's now.

[Bent Periscope]

So how do you check your RPMs? I'm using stock 1.0 right now, can it be done? I'm eventually going to patch up to 1.4b, can it be done there or is this only a GWX feacture.

Thanks,

BP

[Oneshot/Onekill]

To see what RPM's your engine's are running at, right click on your Helmsman, then pan your first person view to the port and starbord engine RPM gauges. They are green and red respectivly.

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by Oneshot/Onekill

To see what RPM's your engine's are running at, right click on your Helmsman, then pan your first person view to the port and starbord engine RPM gauges. They are green and red respectivly.

I never knew that about the Helmsman. So he has a purpose after all Another way is to click on the ladder to the conning tower. Most of your guages are there as well. Trouble is I always find those bottles that are clamped nearby.

[kdv]

I've got to check the RPM thing out, and possibly modify the .cfg to adjust them.

Yeah, it could have been my sub bobbing up and down high enough out of the water, was in the chart view at the time using time compression (8x). But then shouldn't my watch have been able to see a big DD vs the big DD seeing the tiny Uboat? Freakin' AI has to be cheating.

But while on the subject of speed and silent running - how come my boat slowly sinks when I'm deeper than 100m, and at 'Ahead Slow'. If I go the next speed setting, it'll maintain depth - but make too much noise and the escorts will hear me.

[RoaldLarsen]

Originally Posted by Oneshot/Onekill

To see what RPM's your engine's are running at, right click on your Helmsman, then pan your first person view to the port and starbord engine RPM gauges. They are green and red respectivly.

Well, I do have red/green colourblindness, but I am reasonably certain that red is the nautical colour for port and green for starboard. The two gauges in the boat are arranged to have the one with the red case on the left and the green case on the right, as your helmsman looks at them, and the left one has popup text that says "PORT ENGINE RPM" and the other has "STARBOARD ENGINE RPM".

A couple of mnemonics that help are: "port wine is red"

and for those of you who like alliteration and don't mind a complicated explanation, something I picked up in Galveston last year:
"Red Right Return"
Explanation: the navigation buoys and lights that guide you into a harbour are red on your right and green on your left as you return to harbour. So, when you are going out to sea, (leaving harbour, not returning) along a river, the red is on your left, and the banks of a river are named "left" and "right" as you face downstream (because that is where the river is heading).

[Otto Heinzmeir]

Originally Posted by kdv

But while on the subject of speed and silent running - how come my boat slowly sinks when I'm deeper than 100m, and at 'Ahead Slow'. If I go the next speed setting, it'll maintain depth - but make too much noise and the escorts will hear me.

Was this after you crash dove? There is a stock SH3 bug where after you crash dive. The sub doesn't level off again. One of the guages you can see when you right click the helmsman is the one that shows the dive plane angle. If the sub is still angling down a few minutes after a crash dive you need to select a new depth, I think a shallower depth might be necessary. Say 60m. Then the sub will level off and after that you can select any depth and it should level again. I don't use crash dive so have never seen this, but I read about it in the one of the Uber Mod manuals.

In the NYGM mod you will slowly lose depth if you do not maintain close to 2kts. The loss of depth is very gradual though. In this instance it was modeled into the mod to reflect how a sub handles in real life. As I understand it, the depth of the sub was maintained mostly by the dive planes, so without movement it was difficult to maintain a specific depth. A sub could be trimmed down or up with ballast. It was preferred to trim them down, lest you breech the surface at periscope depth. Since torpedoes weighed 1 ton a piece. Firing a spread of 4 forward torpedoes would instantly make the sub 4 tons lighter and apt to breech the surface if not trimmed down.

[kdv]

I will check out the dive-plane gauges once I fire up SH3 later this morning - thanks for that tip.

I'm using GWX3, and the problem doesn't manifest itself until deeper than about 100m. It doesn't seem to matter whether it was after a crash dive or regular dive (although in this particular instance it was a crash dive to avoid a ramming attack by that DD). Ordering a Crash dive levels it off at 70m depth, at which point I usually go a little deeper to get under the sonar cone by hitting "D", then "A" to level off at my desired depth.

Have already adjusted the .cfg of the sub to reflect a .18 value for "Ahead Slow", will see if that keeps RPM's under 100.

I'm wondering if hull-integrity has anything to do with slowly sinking - it was down to about 60% after a deck-gun dual with a freighter....