mcoca
04-22-07, 06:48 AM
First of all, I'm not a modder, just more of a tinkerer, so I'm just getting this information out for those who intend to mod the campaign files for realism.
The subsim members more familiar with the Pacific campaign say the Japanese rarely used destroyers as merchant escorts, mostly relying on the smaller subchasers and converted minesweepers. So I was curious to see how those performed in the game. The results are not good.
I tested with a single mission in which I placed first a subchaser, and then a minesweeper, near my sub, let them see me, and then ran away making lots of noise.
First problem is that the subchaser doesn't use it's deck gun at all, so if you run around in the surface, it just runs circles about you (sometimes using the AA gun, which doesn't really cause any damage). I don't know how to fix this. The gun si the same used on merchants, and it works fine there.
Also, it had trouble hitting my sub when at periscope depth: the AI avoids collisions like the plague, so they would drop DCs to my side, not directly on top. When going down to 100-120 feet, they would do a proper run and kill me.
That's more or less ok, at least it will keep you occupied. But the minesweeper is a mess. It attacks on the surface, but even though it has active sonar and two DC racks, it will not attack a submerged sub. It pinged me once, and then ran away zig-zagging. The good news is, this is fixable.
Apparently the minesweeper AI is not programmed for ASW. But if you edit its config files (both the one in Roster and the one in Sea), and change its type from 5 (minesweeper) to 0 (patrol craft), it will become an efficient sub killer (with the same problem at periscope depth as the SC, though). This change will crash any mission using a minesweeper, but the ship is not used in the campaign files, so it's no big deal.
I hope this helps someone.
The subsim members more familiar with the Pacific campaign say the Japanese rarely used destroyers as merchant escorts, mostly relying on the smaller subchasers and converted minesweepers. So I was curious to see how those performed in the game. The results are not good.
I tested with a single mission in which I placed first a subchaser, and then a minesweeper, near my sub, let them see me, and then ran away making lots of noise.
First problem is that the subchaser doesn't use it's deck gun at all, so if you run around in the surface, it just runs circles about you (sometimes using the AA gun, which doesn't really cause any damage). I don't know how to fix this. The gun si the same used on merchants, and it works fine there.
Also, it had trouble hitting my sub when at periscope depth: the AI avoids collisions like the plague, so they would drop DCs to my side, not directly on top. When going down to 100-120 feet, they would do a proper run and kill me.
That's more or less ok, at least it will keep you occupied. But the minesweeper is a mess. It attacks on the surface, but even though it has active sonar and two DC racks, it will not attack a submerged sub. It pinged me once, and then ran away zig-zagging. The good news is, this is fixable.
Apparently the minesweeper AI is not programmed for ASW. But if you edit its config files (both the one in Roster and the one in Sea), and change its type from 5 (minesweeper) to 0 (patrol craft), it will become an efficient sub killer (with the same problem at periscope depth as the SC, though). This change will crash any mission using a minesweeper, but the ship is not used in the campaign files, so it's no big deal.
I hope this helps someone.