NYGM ruined my weekend

[schuhart]

or 'NYGM 2.0 Convoy Battles'.

Ok, i knew NYGM 2.0 was going to be harder, but i had not imagined that i would spend approx. 7½ hours being pinged and wasserbombed by escorts in real-time!

My story:

On the way to my patrol grid, i accidentally stumble upon a large convoy.
I notice a faint plume on the horizon in perfect clear weather with calm sea. Closing in on this plume, i suddenly see a lot of plumes on the horizon (count 16-20 ships).
Getting closer during overtake,i notice a flank escort about 7-8 km away, suddenly the escort turns towards me. First when i actually see his bowspray i realise that i have been spotted. I dive to a comfortable depth of 100m and is soon getting pinged by asdic.
Now continues 1 hour of wasserbomben and i learned the hard way that you cannot just sit back anymore, you have to actively try to evade all the time. I went for a drink and coming back i saw my diesel-room damaged and one man wounded. There is no first lucky punch any more, as the punches can now happen anytime it seems.

Using my hydrophone for evasive maneuvers i suddenly hear another fast propeller closing in (and the convoy was now some way off doing about 4-5 knots). My torturer had called for help. Then went another 2 hours of wasserbomben until suddenly they seemed to give up.

Ok, its dark now and i found the convoy again, set up an attack from right flank on a 45 angle. It was dark so i thought this should be good. Convoy came into sight, almost all large merchants. Noticing a flank escort on my left I start my attack run. This is the first time in SH3 i have actually been forced to make an attack run like that.
Fire I+II at C-3 and both hit damaged, fire III+IV at C-2 both hit sunk.
When firing III+IV i realise that i am taking fire from the convoy (1000-1500m). No time to see who is firing at me i crashdive.
Now follows 4½ hours of relentless wasserbomben by initially 3 warships and in the end 2. The last hour or so they ran out of wasserbomben, but still made their attack runs.
During those 4½ hours (real-time) I tried every trick i know (even those Teddy had suggested, but i simply could not slip away).
Running at 1 knot is good but you cannot maintain depth. I was forced to go deep, even deeper than i liked to go. So maintaining depth at 200m is crucial at some point.
Well, in the end a series of flank bursts behind the warship doing an attack run succeeded to make me slip away even though i had tried it several times. Pure luck i think.

This escort was extremely agressive and well organised. When one made an attack run, the other was setting up his sonar scan. And so on.

A wasted weekend? Not a bit! This was my most exciting experience in SH3 yet.

Word of caution. You might want to train evasion before you attack a convoy. I did some missions first, but somehow this campaign escort seemed a lot more brutal. So training in a campaign might be better.

Thanks NYGM team


- Schuhart

[Seminole]

One thing that concerns me, now that I know the escorts can run out of DC ammo, is what is to prevent them from just keeping you down until you run out of oxygen?

What I mean is:

I have been using the peroids of DC explosions to rev up to max speed and gain a little distance on the escorts, with each DC run, and so eventually escape.

Once they run out of DCs I'll be stuck at 1 knot, unable to go to Ahead Flank because there will be no explosion noises to mask my cavitation noise..... and since the escorts now stay on the trail much longer than before I can foresee a situation where it might be impossible to get away from the escorts.

I have to assume there is an ultimate limit to the time escorts will stay on the hunt before giving up....right?

[schuhart]

Seminole,

No, i dont think there is a time limit for the escorts chasing you, but there should be. Especially if they were not part of an independent hunter group, then they should be called back to their convoy duties, maybe even before having expended their DCs.

Well, i had two encounters with escorts hunting me.
The first lasted 3 hours after which they seemed to give up.
The second lasted 4½ hours and was much more agressive. I think they could have continued until they ran out of fuel.
The only difference i see is that i crashdived before the second attack. This made maintaining depth at 1 knot very hard and this was probably enough for them to ping me again.

- Schuhart

[U-Bones]

Originally Posted by schuhart

Seminole,

No, i dont think there is a time limit for the escorts chasing you, but there should be. Especially if they were not part of an independent hunter group, then they should be called back to their convoy duties, maybe even before having expended their DCs.

Well, i had two encounters with escorts hunting me.
The first lasted 3 hours after which they seemed to give up.
The second lasted 4½ hours and was much more agressive. I think they could have continued until they ran out of fuel.
The only difference i see is that i crashdived before the second attack. This made maintaining depth at 1 knot very hard and this was probably enough for them to ping me again.

- Schuhart

They will give up if they lose you and can not re-aquire for "Lost contact time", set in /cfg/sim.cfg.

[AI detection]
Lost contact time=40 ;[min] (was 15)

IMO, their larger arcs and ranges and the 1kt requirement mean this rarely happens once they get more than one ship on you. They can take 30 minute naps and still get right back on your tail. Most of my escapes in NYGM2 involve the use of a torpedo.

You might want to consider setting the above back to default. I have not yet done so, but I have been mostly testing damage, so I want the contact. When I go back to a career, I will probably set it to 20.

[Grey Legion]

I had the same thing happen to my last mission, heading out in the middle of the English channel and I have 5 warships hunting me down, and no place to go. DC's all around and damage, damage, damage. I finally ended up stuck on the channel floor, with flooding a few dead crew and no batteries and damaged diesels. I tried to blow ballasts after my diesel were repaired and was willing to try one last surface run but my boat would not float !?! I was in a panic the ships heard the ballasts and came back with a vengance they dumped all the dc's my poor little boat could handle and I finally drowed due to heavy flooding all in all that was about 3 hours of game play I was so sad when my crew and I died. but wanted to start a new career asap.

Great game !!

[irish1958]

How effective was WWII sonar if a sub was sitting on the sea floor at, say 80 meters?
irish1958

[Seminole]

I had four on me last patrol. None ever ran out of ammo. After about half an hour real time two of them rejoined the convoy while the two remaining continued to hammer me for several more game time hours until I managed to slip away by accelerating to Ahead Flank each time one or the other made a DC attack and so lost contact with me.

My point was that had these run out of ammo I don't believe it would have been possible to break their contact without the masking noise of the DC attacks. If they had maintained contact and thus hounded my boat for long enough I would have been forced to surrender for lack of O2.

:hmm: ....btw...I'm thinking the running out of DC ammo factor is getting renewed attention only because NYGM 2.O intensified the DC attacks and now they last long enough for this limit to be really noticeable....and no don't mistake this for a complaint. I am thoroughly enjoying the cat&mouse escort encounters. I now have a new respect of and reason for avoiding them when possible.

[sergbuto]

Main task of escorts was a protection of a convoy, not a chase after submarines for hours and thereby leaving the convoy unprotected. An extensive hunt for subs was left for hunter-killer groups and aircrafts. Making the game harder in terms of cat-and-mouse play with chasing convoy-escorts for hours after the initial attack on the convoy does not necessarilty mean that is how it was in reality.

BTW, escorts in SH3 can not run out of fuel.

[Myxale]

Cool stuff Schuhart! I felt sorry for you...but then again this could've been me down there in the sub...so

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by sergbuto

Main task of escorts was a protection of a convoy, not a chase after submarines for hours and thereby leaving the convoy unprotected. An extensive hunt for subs was left for hunter-killer groups and aircrafts. Making the game harder in terms of cat-and-mouse play with chasing convoy-escorts for hours after the initial attack on the convoy does not necessarilty mean that is how it was in reality.

BTW, escorts in SH3 can not run out of fuel.

I think you will also find many instances where one or more escorts from a convoy did stay behing for hours hunting a u-boat.

The practice of only 'keeping a u-boat down' in my opinion was probably more associated with HufDuff where they could keep a u-boat down from great distances.

In Operation Drumbeat by Michael Gannon, Hardegen says, "The crew were very surprised when the destroyer (American) moved off. A British destroyer would have worked over the area repeatedly for a regulation thirty six hours"

In the video interview with Jurgen Oesten he relays how in 1939 while submerged, inferring that he was just not found due to any previous action, he was detected and attacked by a lone destroyer.

He goes on to say that the destroyer was very accurate and that the destroyer knew exactly where he was. This destroyer gave his u-boat a massive work over with him eventually ending up on the bottom at 134 metres with his u-boat extensively damaged and unable to move. He also relates that the hull was buckled in from a depth charge that also knocked the port diesel engine off it mounts.

It is inferred to have been over many hours possibly in double figures. On the 3rd night they surfaced to find that a trawler had been left there to watch for the u-boat possibly surfacing!


SHIII more often than not does not have all the escorts leave the convoy so all in all I would say that I feel that the result is quite reasonable.

[Yahoshua]

So...IS there a fixed amount per destroyer class of how many DCs' they carry? (I'm thinking the Das Boot thing...counting the DC and hoping you don't get hurt.)

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

So...IS there a fixed amount per destroyer class of how many DCs' they carry? (I'm thinking the Das Boot thing...counting the DC and hoping you don't get hurt.)

It's not counted per destroyer, it's counted per rack/launcher. Each one carries 40, AFAIK.
So, a late-war destroyer escort could have as many as 400 DC's to throw at you (2 racks + 8 K-guns)

[CB..]

here's summat that might be a side issue to the thread in some ways but relevant to gameplay especailly regarding reduced tonnage capability and damage etc

and i've not heard it mentioned before..

A further indication of the great accuracy of depth charge attacks was the frequent damage that the U-Boats now sustained to the upper deck containers for torpedoes, and this affected their diving capacity. In a type IXC boat for example, if four or six of these containers were suddenly flooded, the sinking of the boat could only be prevented by the immediate blowing of the diving tanks. On 30th April (1943) we had to order the removal of the upper deck containers on ALL operational boats. The resulting reduction of torpedoe-carrying capacity was not serious, for the constant air danger had allready discouraged boats from reloading at sea-- a process that required a considerable time on the surface.

this is taken from the Ministry of Defense's originally classified work
"The U-boat War in the Atlantic" by Gunter Hessler (Donitz' son in law)
having been given access to all available classified and unclassified German intelligence reports for the project.

and i thought i was being unrealistic by removing the external torps from the subs ...

on the length of time spent attacking an u-boat during/after a convoy attack it would be usefull to have a convoy commanders point of view?
im pretty sure there's info regarding this in the Gunter Hessler work but boy is it hard to find what you want in this book-- he does mention that most subs expected to be damaged either on the surface by aircraft or escorts or whilst diving to avoid an escort and still shallow-only after the introduction of hedgehogs did commanders become surprised and alarmed by the amount of damage they were recieving at depth--even in 1943-
the type nines being more liable to damage than the sevens-- even to the extent of being withdrawn from full convoy attacks-

it allso mentions the use of a mine by the escorts which the Germans did not have any knowledge of untill after the war-- the Mark XXIV mine..doesn't go into detail on this point sadly except that i think it was called the "mouse-trap"
anyhuw offers possibilities for gameplay modifications

[Observer]

Originally Posted by CCIP

It's not counted per destroyer, it's counted per rack/launcher. Each one carries 40, AFAIK.
So, a late-war destroyer escort could have as many as 400 DC's to throw at you (2 racks + 8 K-guns)

I think I know how to get around this. It's a bit of work, but not impossible. Please post any sources you have on DC load out by escort type.

[sergbuto]

Originally Posted by Der Teddy Bar

In Operation Drumbeat by Michael Gannon, Hardegen says, "The crew were very surprised when the destroyer (American) moved off. A British destroyer would have worked over the area repeatedly for a regulation thirty six hours"

In the video interview with Jurgen Oesten he relays how in 1939 while submerged, inferring that he was just not found due to any previous action, he was detected and attacked by a lone destroyer.

A lone destroyer most likely means a patrolling destroyer which probably had nothing to do with a convoy and was directed to the area as a result of previous action. British extensively used a systems of patrols and those patrolling DDs would indeed repeatedly work over the area where a sub was seen last time.