Is it just me? (GWX2 oddities)

[onelifecrisis]

A few things are bugging me at the moment in my new GWX2 career, and I wanted to know if others have noticed the same stuff happening...

First, dud and premature torps: I've never had so many! Much more than half of the magnetics I fire either detonate prematurely or not at all (they just go straight under the hull). Impacts also seem more inclined to dud than they used to be, although I still seem to be guaranteed a detonation at an impact angle of 90 degrees. This could be just bad luck.

My other problem is the buoyancy of the IXB I just "bought", which is incapable of maintaining a depth of less than 12.5m without momentum. The type VII has no such problem and will quite happily adjust its depth (slowly, of course) at zero speed by using the ballast. But the IXB, when stationary, just completely ignores my depth commands. If I tell it to surface it does so, so but just barely (if I stand on bridge in rough weather at zero speed I spend more time under the waves than over them - again this is unlike the VII which bobs around happily on a rough surface at zero speed). I sailed many IXB careers in GWX 1.03 and don't remember this problem. I'm just wondering... did this change in GWX2? Or did some mod I'm using break it? Maybe RWF or OLCE? I don't see how it could be either of those...

Or has it always been that way and I just never noticed before? :88)

[mr chris]

I have had the dud problem it is slowly getting better the long i survive and advance longer into the war. I striped my boat all the Electric torps at one point as they were utter rubbish.

Am now in Nov of 1940 and i only had 4 duds on my last patrol but unfortunately it was when i was faced with some very juicy targets 2 whale factory ships. I had slowly made my way into the center of the convoy and chosen the two biggest targets then i let loose after getting into a perfect firing position. But got no hits what so ever.

But from what i read the U-Boat commanders in the war did have major trouble with Electric torps in the early war years. So i guess GWX has done a good job recreating this in game. It just so bloody frustrating sometimes.

[Contact]

Keep in mind as well that bubble torps will most probably detonate before reaching the target if its speed is set to fast and sea condition is rough. In rough seas I'm always leaving bubble torps speed set to slow since it helps to avoid that.

[Sailor Steve]

First, dud and premature torps: I've never had so many! Much more than half of the magnetics I fire either detonate prematurely or not at all (they just go straight under the hull). Impacts also seem more inclined to dud than they used to be, although I still seem to be guaranteed a detonation at an impact angle of 90 degrees. This could be just bad luck.
I'm glad to hear that. I've been waiting for my upgrade to start a serious career, so I haven't actually experienced the full range of GWX yet. One of my complaints has always been that the dud problem in SH3 is way underdone. The Germans experienced just as many problems as the Americans, and actually abandoned magnetic pistols from 1940 to 1943. And just the opposite of the Americans, the German impact pistols required almost a precise ninety degree angle to work properly.

The bouyance problem I can't help with, but I've long been a fan of NYGM's 'Anti-Hummingbird' mod, which makes the boat sink at 2 knots or less; much like AOD did. Real WW2 subs couldn't 'hover'. Well, they could, but it took constant playing with the pumps, which was very noisy.

[moscowexile]

I think that the frequency of duds in GWX 2.0 reflects what happened in real life. All torpedoes had two pistols - contact and magnetic - which could be easily selected before firing. At the outset of hostilities, the then "state-of-the-art" magnetic pistols (Vorsprung durch Technik?) proved to be so erratic that crews switched to contact pistols, only to find that they too were faulty. The trigger prongs were too short: a torpedo often hit a ship and was deflected without the prongs being touched. The U.S. and Imperial Japanese Navies suffered from similar problems: I am sure the Royal Navy did as well. A design problem also effected the torpedo depth-keeping mechanism which suffered adverse effects caused by constant pressure variations within the pressure hull of the U-boat.

The official explanation for the failure of magnetic triggers was that they were affected by variations in the Earth's magnetic field. I should think that it is also highly likely that the de-gaussing of British and United States ships had more than a little to do with the failure rate of such triggers. Whatever, these faults continued throughout the war and were only solved after the end of hostilities.

Dönitz complained bitterly to the torpedo directorate about the failures: the directorate responded that crews were to blame. The same happened in the U.S. Navy: buck-passing.

Post-war research suggested a failure rate of 30% overall. On one war cruise the U-32 fired 50% duds. An inquiry showed that the contact pistols had only been tested twice before the war and that they had failed both times! It became clear that torpedo failure had been experienced and reported since December 1936 but nothing had been done about this. When the war made it impossible to ignore the faults any longer, Raeder demanded action. A rear-admiral was court-martialled and found guilty; a vice-admiral was dismissed from the service.

The whole story simply provides a glimpse into the sort of bureaucratic bungling that was a well established feature of Hitler's Third Reich, when party loyalty tended to outrank competence.

Torpedo failure notwithstanding, one should also realise in the interests of "reality" in a subsim that a more important, and perhaps more surprising, statistic concerning U-boat warfare is that less than 50% of all boats built got within torpedo range of a convoy: of the 870 U-boats that left port on operations, 550 of them sank nothing.

Ende der Durchsage!

[onelifecrisis]

Well, they could, but it took constant playing with the pumps, which was very noisy.

Great piece of info, thanks!

About the pistols, I'm not actually saying its a bad thing, just unexpected! I agree with you, they should be problematic. It just seemed to me that they didn't used to be so bad, but I'm probably just having a run of bad luck...

@moscowexile
Very informative, thanks!

[bigboywooly]

No the RN firing mechanism was near perfect
Which led Doenitz to look into the possibilty of copying the RN trigger after the high failures at Weserubung


I hope now for a pistol of the simplest type, in which the striker will transfer the blow immediately aft and not, as in ours, work from aft forward after a complicated transmission of the striking force. I have therefore demanded, as set out in a T/P to the Torpedo Inspectorate, that the English pistol be copied as quickly as possible. A faultless functioning of this pistol may be expected by reason of its simple construction


http://www.uboatarchive.net/BDUKTB30264.htm

[hocking]

I also noticed that I am having a terrible time with duds and pre-fires on Gas Torps set to magnetic pistols. I have also noticed that my overall patrol results, and total tonage sunk, has started looking very realistic. I am only sinking about 2-4 ships a patrol, and on one patrol I only sunk one ship. I fired all of my torps, but I only sunk 1 ship. I missed some, but had a bunch of duds.

When considering everything, I think they have made things more realistic in GWX 2.0. It is terribly frustrating, but it is more realistic.

I have been in 1941-1942 since installing GWX 2.0.

[onelifecrisis]

No the RN firing mechanism was near perfect
Which led Doenitz to look into the possibilty of copying the RN trigger after the high failures at Weserubung


I hope now for a pistol of the simplest type, in which the striker will transfer the blow immediately aft and not, as in ours, work from aft forward after a complicated transmission of the striking force. I have therefore demanded, as set out in a T/P to the Torpedo Inspectorate, that the English pistol be copied as quickly as possible. A faultless functioning of this pistol may be expected by reason of its simple construction


http://www.uboatarchive.net/BDUKTB30264.htm

Ha! Nice one. :D

[onelifecrisis]

I just loaded up my saved game from yesterday... and now my IXB's depth control is working properly :doh:

I'm pretty sure they were just cigarettes I was smoking last night :hmm: :o

I'll just put it down to SH3 acting up...