escort tactics

[navy_ae]

ok heres the situation have a convoy with escorts closing on but going to the north so im making a surfaced at night flank bed to the north then plan is to drop to periscope depth and sit there like a hole in the water ... do the escorts ping away constantly or only if they detect a sub ?? plan is to then shoot a spread at merchies shoot 4 mk 27s out the stinger and run like hell and go deep

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

We got another Bilge Rat! Somebody call Pest Control!:lol:

They ping when they suspect a sub is around. Hit and run sounds like a good idea. Man, those DDS are a pain in the nether-regions.

[Quillan]

They do not ping unless they think a sub is in the area. The escorts do a couple of different things:

The lead escort alternates between travelling the center line of the course of the convoy at a matching speed, and searching ahead of the convoy. When it is searching ahead, it'll weave back and forth about 500 yards to each side of the center line until it's well ahead of the convoy, turn back and wait, then move out again on the center line for a while.

The flanking escorts sometimes run parralel to the convoy, sometimes search nearby, and sometimes search up to5-8k yards off that side of the main body.

The rear escort generally just follows the convoy but sometimes will stop and lie dead in the water for a while listening for anything following behind, then catches up.

If they get a sniff of you due to noise, torpedo impact, spotted wake trail or periscope, or even one of them just gets close enough to detect you even with everything you're doing to avoid it, then they start actively looking, and if they think they're in the area where you are they'll ping.

If you get ahead of them, submerge, and lie still, you'll probably be safe as long as you stay at least 500 yards away from any of the warships. If they hear you, spot a wake trail or see the scope, all bets are off.

[navy_ae]

ok so got past that part .. now tangling with 2 escorts 3 in bow tubes 4 in stern 4 in reserve but making a night surface deck gun only attack are there better odds doing this or am i just screwed and should run got 1 destroyer but still have 2 escorts no merchies sunk

[Rockin Robbins]

enought to get good escorts. I've met several convoys lately where I had no choice but to do battle with the escorts because they were too wiley to be able to sneak by. Then the big risk is of taking damage or being killed if you're overmatched.

A surface battle with escorts is folly. Even a subchaser has two really good deck guns to your one. He can fire faster and more accurately than you can. It is possible to get lucky, but the odds are not in your favor.

Your best bet is a series of attacks during the night with torpedoes. Attack, do damage, lose 'em. End around, approach from a different angle, do it all over again until you wear 'em out. Sometimes they wear you out and you end up with not much to show for it.

[The Fishlord]

Maybe you're playing it on a different difficultly level Robins, but I seem to do okay in surface battles a lot of times. I can often outgun subchasers (I did when I snuck into Tokyo Harbor. Two 40mm and a 4 cal bow gun can make short work of it, surprisingly). Medium Gunboats are also pretty easy to take down with the deck guns.

If it's night time and you think conditions are better than normal, go for it and surface (after saving your game, just in case). I would say that you can probably go in a near head-to-head fight with a Mutsuki or Minekaze, since your sillouhette is much lower, you're pretty fast, dark, and your single gun is better than one of their single guns.

Anything bigger than that is suicide. MAYBE, if you are VERY lucky, you could fight a Shiratzuyu. But even the Shir has great surface firepower; once in an S18 I was forced to surface, three destroyers just made the air thick with gunfire. I really was getting hit about twice a second.

So bottom line: Avoid tangling with these boys. If you can outgun them without damage, go ahead (not probable.). If you can hit them with a torpedo, do it and cripple/sink them while you work on the convoy itself. If none of these work...avoid them entirely and sneak through. If you can't, then just distract them with flank speed, while you sneak into the convoy (though this does set them on alert for pings then).

[mookiemookie]

ok so got past that part .. now tangling with 2 escorts 3 in bow tubes 4 in stern 4 in reserve but making a night surface deck gun only attack are there better odds doing this or am i just screwed and should run got 1 destroyer but still have 2 escorts no merchies sunk
Depends on how realistic you want to play it. Surface gun battles were pretty much suicide, and no sane captain would have gunned it out on the surface with a DD if he had a choice.

But if you think you can exploit the shortcomings of the game modelling that real life situation, I'd say make a save and try a spread shot on one of the DD's while you gun the other down. What the hell, right? :lol:

[tomoose]

....mookiemookie.

It depends on how realistic you want to play. After reading a couple of books on the sub Pacific war I tend to play the game as it was "played" in real life which means duking it out with a DD is suicidal (and with TM it still basically is, LOL). The sub's objective was to disrupt the Japanese war effort, best achieved by hitting the supply/merchant ships etc, taking on warships was secondary to that unless given specific orders to engage a TF etc.

As mookiemookie implied, winning a "gun battle" vs a DD is exploiting the weaknesses of the game as opposed to reflecting historical reality. Ultimately it boils down to what you enjoy out of the game.;)

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

As a rule I dodge any DDs I find. I found myself faced with a screen of 4 DDs, 2 Subchasers and behind them a juicy merchant convoy. Wonderting how the hell to get past them. Then I said what the hell submerged and went in for that juicy Seaplane Tender. Had to endure hours of diving deep, dodging DCs but finally I got to the Tender only to have 3 duds and one miss. Ain't war hell?:dead: