Claiming Warships

[Viper114]

OK, Merchant ships seem to be easy enough. They follow a straight, linear path to allow ambushes to be set up quite readily and efficiently. No more problems with those.

Now, for warships. I don't know what's going on with them, but these things are ridiculous. They're spazzing out when they move, moving left and right quickly, doing U-turns that I have no hope of accomplishing, sometimes just doing tight circles with no real purpose. The way they move, I can't seem to get any torpedo hits on them, as they just decide to change course arbitrarily. Once I lined up the two 3s perfectly, fired two torpedoes, and just as they were about to hit, the damn thing did a quick turn, avoiding the torpedoes, but then continue on his merry way as if nothing happened. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. And then for a further ridiculous stunt, I followed one that kept moving away from me to the point where they hit the shore and sank. It was kind of funny, but annoying because I chased him for nothing.

What the heck can I do? These things fidget like crazy, and I waste torpedoes nearly every time I shoot. And I know I won't be able to go toe-to-toe with one in a deck gun fight. Is there some trick to fighting these things? Something I'm not getting that if I did get it, I could kill them easily as merchant ships? I'm at my wits end here.

Thanks to those who help.

[tater]

Merchant ships in combat areas virtually never steamed in a straight line, then in fact used complex zig zag patterns—not a simple /\/\/\/\/\ pattern. So that's already a joke.

Dunno about the evasive stuff, if the wakes are detected you'd expect them to comb them.

[Viper114]

The warships may be doing zig-zag patterns, but these patterns seem really erratic compared to the earlier games. And they certainly don't comb the area if they see wakes, they don't seem to notice those at all. If they actually see my sub surfaced, then they react properly. But when I'm out of sight and approaching them, they just move very weirdly and are so damn hard to hit...

[tater]

REAL zig zag patterns were somewhat erratic, though along the general path they were moving. Short time scales were typical. They have to be to be useful. Literally on the time scale of an attack and torpedo run. A few minutes per leg.