Quickstart Boilers, cheating AI

[Bronzewing]

Ok, has anyone else ever torpedoed a ship at anchor only to have it spot the eel coming and suddenly start moving, causing a carefully aimed shot either miss altogether or hit in a non-critical location?
This happens to me fairly often as I port raid a lot. I recently tried to sink a C class destroyer at anchor, I fired from just over 1000m, it spotted the medium speed T1 at about 800, and then went from 0-25 knots in about 4 seconds.
I find this HIGHLY annoying, and inaccurate. I can just accept it if it were something small like an Elco, but I've seen Auxiliary cruisers suddenly spot an incoming T1 and start moving ahead trying to dodge. The vast majority of world war two era ships had steam engines, you can't just turn a key and hit the accelerator. They had to raise steam first. Even for a destroyer that'd take 5-10 minutes or so. For those cruisers it'd probably take over half an hour. There is no way they could just up and move from a cold start if they saw a Torpedo comming.

[Jimbuna]

Limitations imposed on us by the game engine I'm afraid....ships can accelerate like a motorbike or stop dead over the space of a few yards :yep:

[Sailor Steve]

Yep, this has been one of my biggest complaints since day one, right after I had a merchant do that in Torpedo School! As Jim said, watching a destroyer stop from accidentally ramming a merchant by stopping NOW and reversing even sooner is extrememly annoying. Unfortunately nobody's been able to fix it.

[Bronzewing]

Well I don't know about STOPPING, I've actually seen destroyers crashing into docks before when I'm port raiding. Funniest ever was a destroyer guarding Hartlepool. I was making my way out after sinking the C3 in the Eastern half of the port when TC resets from 64 to 1 and there's a roar. As my IID's GHG is death straight ahead I never got any warning of anything appraching. I jump to the attack scope and raise it, just in time to see a V&W charging for the dock at the back of the harbor at 15 knots dropping DEPTH CHARGES in 16m of water. I got to see the very rare sight of a destroyer blow it's self up with it's own DCs, crashing into the dock and sinking! The game even played the triumph theme it does when you successfully torpedo something!
http://i332.photobucket.com/albums/m341/Keppabar/Idiot-Destroyer.jpg
(though it didn't credit me with the ship's sinking unfortunately. If I'd been there IRL I'd have claimed I sank it, how'd BDU find out right? ;) )
One last, at no point did I stop and save here so it was not the save glitch that made it crash.

[Jimbuna]

Ai units can display a tendency to lose their waypoints especially in the tight confines of harbours coupled with the fact they are aware of your presence and automatically trigger their attack/hunt mode.

This again is down to the game engine I'm afraid and lets' be honest, as unrealistic as it is....how realistic is harbour raiding :hmm:

[Kielhauler1961]

Try switching to TII's, they don't produce a visible wake.

[Bronzewing]

I only port raid in the first year of the war as a rule as it becomes somewhat suicidal once the escorts get their acts together. In 1939 and early 1940 the T2 is too unreliable. I don't use them at all before August 1940.