convoy interception training mission - HELP.

[misfitdreamer]

hi all,
i'm still very early in understanding the full mechanics of operating a fleet boat.. and before i set out into campaign or single missions i want to make sure my skills are at least somewhat honed. i've been therefore trying to tutorial missions over and over again and my first success was learning how to manually target (yay! :p) but now i'm quite confused by the convoy interception. i'm confused as how to determine range and bearing of radar and sonar contacts.. and more importantly - how to remain undetected. it seems i'll travel submerged for quite a bit and then when i rise to periscope depth to visually check on the convoy.. the escorts have already picked up on a whiff of me and the convoy has started zigzagging or have started running around crazy.

i'm stumped. i need advice.. what should i do for this mission?
anything would be great at all.

if it helps, for the time being i'm playing on low realism settings.. the only one's on being disabled free cam and manual targetting.

[Ducimus]

Distance to convoy?

[Washington]

I am hoping we can turn this thread into a strategy session about aproaching convoys. What speed can you remain undetected? What is the range of enemy sonar? Everyone share their experience please. This could be a very very useful thread on getting in close to an escorted convoy. Let the magic begin!

[Zantham]

You need to do an end-around. Assuming you picked up the convoy on sonar or radar, but it is still outside visual range, you must begin to plot the course. I will often slow down and start putting marks at the end of the detection line (or lines). After a few sweeps of the sonar/radar, you will have the convoy's heading. Note its a good idea to not change the zoom level on the nav map while doing this step.

Once you have a few plots, you can draw a line that gives you the best fit, this is the convoy's course. It is quite possible to get a pretty good idea of the convoy's speed at this point too if you like. Then you can extend this line to extrapolate where the convoy will be at a future time. I often extend the line 50nm or more.

Now which way the convoy is moving will determine you you next proceed. Ideally the convoy is moving towards you. Go to periscope depth, silent running and set up your position. Quite often the convoy is moving some other direction, forcing you to plot an intercept.

While there are a lot of circumstances and situations here, the general idea is to maneuver outside the detection range of the convoy, surface, plot a course parallel to the convoys course, but outside their detection range, say 10nm, then travel at high speed. every now and then submerge, obtain a sonar bearing to ensure the convoy has not changed course, then surface, so on so forth. While submerged you can make more marks and adjust your extrapolated line for more accuracy.

The end goal here being that you will eventually get far enough ahead to maneuver back into the path of the convoy, submerge and go silent, all before the convoy can see you. Then it simply becomes a waiting game for the convoy to sail right into your torpedos.

The caveat here being if the convoy changes course you have to figure out the new heading etc, sometimes you will even lose the convoy altogether if it changed course, say right after you did a hydrophone check.

[Zantham]

I am hoping we can turn this thread into a strategy session about aproaching convoys. What speed can you remain undetected? What is the range of enemy sonar? Everyone share their experience please. This could be a very very useful thread on getting in close to an escorted convoy. Let the magic begin!

So much of this is dependant on many many variables. Are you driving a uboat or a fleetboat? Fleetboats dealt with generally inferior Japanese sensors. Fleetboats had superior radar. UBoats had lousy radar, excellent sonar, but the Allies were much better than the Japanese at prosecuting submarine contacts.

What version of the game are you using? Patch 1.4 (I think) added a 20km player bubble, and changed the ingame sensors to match.

What mod are you using? I know that Trigger Maru really ramps up the Japanese ability to detect you, and maintain that detection, even giving planes the ability to spot you underwater.

However a few things stay constant: the faster you go, either surfaced or submerged, the more likely you are to be detected. You will be detected faster if the enemy has a side profile of your sub than if they have an end-on profile, whether surfaced or submerged. I've even read, tho I can't find the source, that having your periscopes up while on the surface increases the chance of being detected in the game.

The point here being, that if people are going to start posting their detection ranges, they should post a few other details, such as weather (fog, rainy, wind speed etc), time of day, type of submarine, what detected you first, how fast were you going, what depth were you at, were you running decks awash, the game year and month, version of the game they are running, what mods, applicable difficulty settings (realistic sensors?), was silent running on or off, battlestations on or off, radar on or off.

[misfitdreamer]

hey zantham, thank you very much for the advice.. but at least in the training mission it still seems to be hopeless. i marked the ends of the sonar tracks on the navigation map and found where the ships were heading.. but the ships are still out of range for pinging. (tangent - is it right to think that it's a bad idea to ping an escort?) however.. the starting position for the mission is inside 2 of the escorts sweep range (which you estimated to be a 10nm area..) what should i do? should i blame this on poor mission design from ubi? :damn:

[misfitdreamer]

i'd also like to accumulate information from other people as well as to their experiences.

[Ducimus]

Was just looking at the mission. Its really a bad position it puts you into. Your best bet is to do an End around, and attack at night.

[misfitdreamer]

i was sortof getting the feeling it was a bad deck of cards - thanks ducimus. glad it's not just me.

[Washington]

When life gives you lemons....:D We can still figure this one out.

[Ducimus]

The position your put in....

If you try and push more then 3 kts, the destroyers will hear you.

If you surface, they'll see you.

Your position to the convoy is such, that you might get a 4,000 to 5,000 yard shot at the side column, but you'll have to contend with the flanking escort detecting you as you attempt it, as your placed right into his active sonar beam.

On top of that you ahve two aircraft buzzing around.

Your options are two.
a.)Take the long shot (good chance they'll miss or be sighted, thereby spoiling the setup)

b.) Turn away from the convoy, wait tell your sure the escorts cannot see you, and hte planes have gone. Surface, and do an end-round and get ahead of them. I suspect you'll be able to attack at around 0, to 0100 easily.

The big fly in the ointment are those planes. Better hope they go away. Fairly hard training misison.