Tonnage and U-boat Aces.

[somedude88]

I've started to notice that I always get nearly twice as more tonnage than the AI U-boat "Aces"

I'm averaging 20,000-24,000 tons per patrol... 1939 in a VIIB. Very unrealistic to me after reading that the average was 9,000.

Which brings the question, what is different in the game compared to RL that makes shipkilling so difficult? Cause theoretically, if it took 2 torpedos on average and had 90% hit chance, (which is my average, but only cause I get in real close.) You'd still sink at least 7 ships. Well over 9000 tons...

[Gargamel]

Dud torpedos and the time it takes to manually setup a shot.

In the invasion of Norway, the "hit rate" was supposedly very high (per the skippers), but almost none of the eels ever detonated.

I think Prein had about 100k tons lined up, all docked, 3 Cruisers and a few troop transports, Hit all of them, no detonations.

[K-61]

Yes, the dud rate was much higher in real life than in game. Kretschmer, in one of the videos on the "Aces of the Deep" game disc stated that if they'd had reliable torpedoes right from the start that they could've sunk double or triple their tonnage. I remember reading of one attack where a U-boat had lined up a British battleship and slammed three well aimed eels into it, only to hear them all clang off of the hull. They then endured a pasting from the escorts but survived to tell the tale. That sort of thing is enough to make one go insane.

I am also of the opinion, though some may scream at me for saying it, that the game gives us way too many contacts and that it is too easy to intercept convoys. I've even played entire careers where I deliberately do not hunt down single contacts and I still have plenty of scoring opportunities. The intelligence in the game is too precise.

[TarJak]

That and contact volume is way higher in game than in RL. You therefore have many more opportunities than a RL Kaleun would ever have had.

No-one wants to play SH3 Boredom in the Atlantic though do they?

[kapuhy]

Besides what was already mentioned, three more things spring to mind:

1) It's easier to spot targets using hydrophone in game than it was in real life

2) AI does not redirect ships and convoys away from you when you're spotted or when you attack a ship. It does reroute nearby patrols to hunt you but that's all - so the standard SHIII tactic "position youself on the shipping lane and sink all ships passing by" wouldn't work that well in real life.

3) Your life is not in danger when playing SHIII*... thus, even when playing DiD, you're more inclined to risky (but potentially rewarding) actions. Like raiding Scapa Flow every now and then :)


*as long as you don't neglect your wife/girlfriend in order to play more...

[Sailor Steve]

Also reloading torpedoes is much easier in the game. In real life the boat needs to be stable, so they were only reloaded underwater, and never in combat. This means that if you attack a convoy you don't reload while being hunted. After you are safe you reload all torpedoes, and if you want to re-engage you need to start all over again.

Also read accounts of unsuccessful attacks at www.uboat.net (http://www.uboat.net). You will find several stories of merchants opening fire on a uboat, at which point the sub dives and is never seen again, which means that once the boat was underwater he lost contact, or the captain didn't think it prudent to pursue underwater or to surface for an end-around so he could attack with torpedoes. I'm guessing that their thinking was that after a failed attack the probability of enemy aircraft showing up was too high.

[somedude88]

Are their any mods available that would intentionally bring down my patrol tonnage? I know that sounds crazy but I'm a stickler for realism... While I wouldn't enjoy a 5 hour depthcharging in real life, I wouldn't mind experiencing what a real U-boat commander did in the depths of the Atlantic by a game/simulation representing said experience.

[Tessa]

Are their any mods available that would intentionally bring down my patrol tonnage? I know that sounds crazy but I'm a stickler for realism... While I wouldn't enjoy a 5 hour depthcharging in real life, I wouldn't mind experiencing what a real U-boat commander did in the depths of the Atlantic by a game/simulation representing said experience.

I can never stress enough that this game is meant to be fun and enjoyed, it shouldn't be a source of frustration while playing. That said each person imo should play the game in the manner which gives them the best experience and enjoyment, even if it isn't 100% historical. Many players get hung up on realism that they forget that the whole point of the game is to have fun.

In a single mod, h.sie's 'realist repair and flood times' will defintely give you a taste of how the crews acted under varying circumstances. Its unforgiving as the repair times are closer to realistic times, repairs that would only take a minute in even the stock GWX now take 1 hour, or more if the damage is bad. This makes any damage you take potentially lethal depending on the cirucmstances/area you are in. It further goes on to modify your watch officers distance estimation to a rough guess instead of the precise ones they currently give.

There are further mods in his package that add to the realism and make life even harder. Its one of the most ingenious mods I've ever seen/used, and also the most game chalengieing (save the supermod itself) mod currently available. Its' got a couple of great vices that work in your favor, but an equal, if not one sided balance to make things harder for you using historical data.

Also there is no set way to play the game, if during your career you exceed Kretschmer's tonnage score so be it. You aren't doing anything wrong by being better than the aces in terms of tonnage. It's usually a result of having a longer career than most of the aces which died or were captured right in the prime of their careers. There are times when the situation on hand is perfect and you have the opportunity and means to sink 100,000+ tons worth of merchants. This never happened in real life but can happen in the game quite a few times early in the war.

Long as you play by the rules of the game it doesn't matter if you sink 200,000 tons in your career or 2 million tons. We also have history on our side, we can pick up various u-boat/history books and discover important convoys and how they were re-routed or special task forces carrying VIP's. The level of intelligence that we have at our fingertips is perfect, if the Royal Oak is going to be going through Gibraltor at x time, we can sit there any lie in wait ifwe wanted to or at least be nearby so that an intercept course is possible.

[Sailor Steve]

The biggest reason a player can get so much tonnage is that the game throws us far more encounters than they had in real life. If we're going to take Kretschmer as an example, look a the list of his actual attacks http://www.uboat.net/men/kretschmer.htm. Note that even when he attacked convoys he usually only hit one ship, and there was no second attack on the same convoy.

What Tessa said is true. If the game was truly realistic we would all die from boredom; even me, and I like only getting one kill per week (if that).

[ralphnader23]

If only some real life U-boat aces had played SH3! Then we could compare the SH3 high scores they got on the game to ours, instead of having to compare against their real life tonnage. That would be sweet! :88)

[Jimbuna]

The biggest contributor IMHO has to be the fact that EVERYTHING is rendered again after loading the game from a save or new career/patrol etc.

[somedude88]

I really love the Longer Repair Times mod... makes the pressure of repairs all the more exciting. When you're being depthcharged to the stone age and your electric engines are severely damaged and you're just a sitting duck waiting out those surface ships to give up. It's quite exhilarating. Makes a good story afterward. I understand that it's boring and frustrating to some. But it makes the game much, much more unpredictable and tense.

Will the 3 eels I fired detonate and score me a 8,000 prize? Or will they bounce off like BB's fired at an elephant?
That uncertainty just makes this game unbelievably intense and it's rewarding when things do work out.
I've had plenty of failures when I started playing and at first I WAS frustrated, but then when I got to 90% hit ratio and started bringing the merchant marines to its knees, every kill, every sinking ship... got less and less rewarding and exciting.
Sink a ship? No big deal... move to the next one... Sink a ship? No big deal... move to the next one...
You see how enormous success and kicking ass becomes standard fare after a while?
But it would be a different story if half your "kills" lived another day because of duds. Much more challenging.

I make it a habit to not sit in a shipping lane. And I only attack convoys once... though... to be honest, I used to attack convoys until all their medium or large merchant ships were at the bottom.
I do reload torps on the surface, but I never reload after attacking a convoy because of silent running.

All that said, is there any mods that increase duds to realistic levels?
Are there any mods that decrease target/contacts to realistic levels?

[Gargamel]

I know that sounds crazy but I'm a stickler for realism... While I wouldn't enjoy a 5 hour depthcharging in real life, I wouldn't mind experiencing what a real U-boat commander did in the depths of the Atlantic by a game/simulation representing said experience.

Oh no worries there mate, as the years progress, the DC'ing's get worse and worse..... I've actually started to feel real stress from it, Like I mentioned in another thread, I don't think I coulda handled it in real life.

[Tessa]

I really love the Longer Repair Times mod... makes the pressure of repairs all the more exciting. When you're being depthcharged to the stone age and your electric engines are severely damaged and you're just a sitting duck waiting out those surface ships to give up. It's quite exhilarating. Makes a good story afterward. I understand that it's boring and frustrating to some. But it makes the game much, much more unpredictable and tense.

Will the 3 eels I fired detonate and score me a 8,000 prize? Or will they bounce off like BB's fired at an elephant?
That uncertainty just makes this game unbelievably intense and it's rewarding when things do work out.
I've had plenty of failures when I started playing and at first I WAS frustrated, but then when I got to 90% hit ratio and started bringing the merchant marines to its knees, every kill, every sinking ship... got less and less rewarding and exciting.
Sink a ship? No big deal... move to the next one... Sink a ship? No big deal... move to the next one...
You see how enormous success and kicking ass becomes standard fare after a while?
But it would be a different story if half your "kills" lived another day because of duds. Much more challenging.

I make it a habit to not sit in a shipping lane. And I only attack convoys once... though... to be honest, I used to attack convoys until all their medium or large merchant ships were at the bottom.
I do reload torps on the surface, but I never reload after attacking a convoy because of silent running.

All that said, is there any mods that increase duds to realistic levels?
Are there any mods that decrease target/contacts to realistic levels?

Having the dud torpedoes checked in the realism settings has pretty accurately mirrored how poor they functioned at the start of the war. Besides that I don't think there are any dud mods since the stock GWX setting is sufficient.

If you stop using the radio (either it gets destroyed from DC's or you put the radioman in another compartment) you won't get any position updates at all. During the war is was pretty common that a sub would discover a convoy on its way back home. This was always frustrating to the Kaleun's (all their eels had either been expended or the tubes were damaged beyond repair) because they had an ideal opportunity to wrack up tonnage but nothing left to fight with. Every time they would radio in the convoy's position so other subs in the area could be sent there. Thus you get frequent convoy sightings reports from the radioman.


To answer a previous question about Narvik, Prien came across a golden opportunity: 2 heavy cruisers, 3 troop transports and 2 or 3 merchants all anchored in the fjord and there were no escorts in the area. Prien was infuriated when he saw this, it was an opportunity that could have matched his feat at Scapa by sinkng (his estimate) 150,000 tons of warships. As every torpedo used at Narvik failed to detonate, even direct hits Prien just left. He had no confidence that any of his torpedoes would work so sailed home instead.

Prien was never repromanded for failing to attack in perfect conditions (several large warships, no escorts and all stationary targets) because of the massive failure of all the torpedoes used by all the captains at Narvik. Donitz actually used this to his advantage to force the KM to fix the problems. When he listed every ship that would have sank had the torpedoes worked the tonnage was astonishing, needless to say the head torpedo engineer didn't have a job after tha meeting and was replaced with a (truly) competent engineer.

[kapuhy]

Either decreasing hydrophone range (IIRC it's possible in GWX or by SH3Commander, but I'm not sure) or making a house rule that you rely on your sonarman for finding contacts (instead of doing regular 360 degree scans manually) will do much to decrease amount of ships you encounter. I don't know anything that could decrease amount of the radio contacts though.

As for duds... well for last 5 magnetic torpedoes I launched I had 4 premature detonations and 1 dud. Quite realistic, according to Tessa's depiction of Norway campaign.

Incidentally, the big advantage of U-Boat games over US fleet boat simulations is constantly rising challenge - this was most visible in old AotD - every new patrol Allies could come at you with new tactic, new weapon or new detection system that renders your tactics and habits obsolete and forces you to also come up with something new. This mostly prevents player from falling into "find next ship, sink it, find next ship, sink it" loop you've mentioned.

[Tessa]

Either decreasing hydrophone range (IIRC it's possible in GWX or by SH3Commander, but I'm not sure) or making a house rule that you rely on your sonarman for finding contacts (instead of doing regular 360 degree scans manually) will do much to decrease amount of ships you encounter. I don't know anything that could decrease amount of the radio contacts though.

As for duds... well for last 5 magnetic torpedoes I launched I had 4 premature detonations and 1 dud. Quite realistic, according to Tessa's depiction of Norway campaign.

Incidentally, the big advantage of U-Boat games over US fleet boat simulations is constantly rising challenge - this was most visible in old AotD - every new patrol Allies could come at you with new tactic, new weapon or new detection system that renders your tactics and habits obsolete and forces you to also come up with something new. This mostly prevents player from falling into "find next ship, sink it, find next ship, sink it" loop you've mentioned.


From the disaster at Narvik, "The skippers had carried out a total of 38 attacks: four against Battleshiops, 14 against Cruisers, then against destroyers and 10 against transports. Discounting marginal attacks from long range targets in poor light or otherwise unfavorable conditions Donitz concluded had the torpedoes not failed, "certain hits" (and probably sinkings or severe damage) would have occurred in one of the attacks on the battleships, seven on the cruiser, five on the transports. In summary he calculated that about 20 enemy warships escaped almost certain destruction due to torpedo failure.

Donitz used this damming information data to mobilize internal political pressure against the torpedo beuracrats, and he won over Admiral Raeder and the OKM:"

[somedude88]

Even with the realistic dud torpedo options on, I rarely encounter a dud torpedo or a premature detonation. I think it's around 10 or 15% dud rate. This may be due to my tactics. I never fire a torpedo at a high angle target. 90 degrees attacks are my thing and I attack at a distance around 500 meters... rarely above 1000 meters. I also keep the magnetic fuses on until ordered by FdU to switch to impact. I use deck guns to take care of those high angle targets.

That said, I think the dud rate should be higher, no? If 3 eels failed to detonate against the same target, then a 10,15% dud rate seems too low. Either that or the skipper angered some higher power...

Also, I haven't made it to 1942-43 yet... but I was watching this BBC special on U-boat warfare and learned the Allies tactics against U-boat spotting and attacks.

I may be getting my hopes up, but do the escorts in GWX+SH3 commander use these tactics? Like "Pineapple" and "Operation Plaster"?

[Gargamel]

Well, they found the colder temps in Norway had a serious affect on the eels, so the dud rate was much higher than in temperate and tropical waters.

Not sure what the overal dud rate was though, but during the Norwegian Campaign, it was nearing 100%.

[Gargamel]

Another thought on this....

In actual reports, U-boat commanders would, on average it seem, over estimate their tonnage sunk by about a factor of 1.5-2. The totals you see listed on the aces page is the actual number confirmed, and that only occurred years after the war was over when they could compare the Axis and Allied naval logs side by side. There were numerous reports from u-boats about sinking multiple ships in a convoy, but logs from the convoy only show one small freighter getting damaged.

So think of it as your over zealous attempts to sound good to BDU and your fellow skippers.

[kapuhy]

The totals you see listed on the aces page is the actual number confirmed, and that only occurred years after the war was over when they could compare the Axis and Allied naval logs side by side.

It would be fun to have a little mod for the in-game aces page so it shows tonnage as it was reported by the captains instead. It would be a bit harder to become a greatest hero of the Kriegsmarine.

[VONHARRIS]

It would be fun to have a little mod for the in-game aces page so it shows tonnage as it was reported by the captains instead. It would be a bit harder to become a greatest hero of the Kriegsmarine.

I agree with this.

[Missing Name]

From the disaster at Narvik, "The skippers had carried out a total of 38 attacks: four against Battleshiops, 14 against Cruisers, then against destroyers and 10 against transports. Discounting marginal attacks from long range targets in poor light or otherwise unfavorable conditions Donitz concluded had the torpedoes not failed, "certain hits" (and probably sinkings or severe damage) would have occurred in one of the attacks on the battleships, seven on the cruiser, five on the transports. In summary he calculated that about 20 enemy warships escaped almost certain destruction due to torpedo failure.

Donitz used this damming information data to mobilize internal political pressure against the torpedo beuracrats, and he won over Admiral Raeder and the OKM:"

I was shadowing the HMS Nelson on her way to support Norway. Torpedoes were duds.

But yeah, the game can make you get unrealistic tonnage. My last career had something like 1.5 million tons.

[desirableroasted]

Aren't we comparing apples and kangaroos?

I'd like to see a GWX n00b sit down and, after a fair number of single misson patrols, start a career Jan 1 1942. 100% realism. And then take down an average of 39K tons per patrol over his/her four first patrols over 1942-1943?

I sure couldn't have done it... anyone here want to claim they did?

Yet Georg Lassen did pretty much just that, in real life, in a pitching boat, and everything to lose. (http://www.uboat.net/men/lassen.htm)

Now, give me an experienced GWX player, with 40 careers, 400 patrols, 4000-6000 attacks of experience. Even in 1942, he/she will make Kretschmer, Lüth and Lassen look like tender babes up way past their bedtime.

In the game, only, of course.

My point being it's useless to compare your scores to the U-Boat aces after you have been playing the game awhile. Your experience simply overwhelms whatever disadvantages and barriers the game throws at you, and exaggerates the advantages.

[Gargamel]

It would be fun to have a little mod for the in-game aces page so it shows tonnage as it was reported by the captains instead. It would be a bit harder to become a greatest hero of the Kriegsmarine.


It's actually very easy, it's just a CFG file change.

[Jimbuna]

Aren't we comparing apples and kangaroos?

I'd like to see a GWX n00b sit down and, after a fair number of single misson patrols, start a career Jan 1 1942. 100% realism. And then take down an average of 39K tons per patrol over his/her four first patrols over 1942-1943?

I sure couldn't have done it... anyone here want to claim they did?

Yet Georg Lassen did pretty much just that, in real life, in a pitching boat, and everything to lose. (http://www.uboat.net/men/lassen.htm)

Now, give me an experienced GWX player, with 40 careers, 400 patrols, 4000-6000 attacks of experience. Even in 1942, he/she will make Kretschmer, Lüth and Lassen look like tender babes up way past their bedtime.

In the game, only, of course.

My point being it's useless to compare your scores to the U-Boat aces after you have been playing the game awhile. Your experience simply overwhelms whatever disadvantages and barriers the game throws at you, and exaggerates the advantages.

Rgr that http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[Tessa]

Aren't we comparing apples and kangaroos?

I'd like to see a GWX n00b sit down and, after a fair number of single misson patrols, start a career Jan 1 1942. 100% realism. And then take down an average of 39K tons per patrol over his/her four first patrols over 1942-1943?

I sure couldn't have done it... anyone here want to claim they did?

Yet Georg Lassen did pretty much just that, in real life, in a pitching boat, and everything to lose. (http://www.uboat.net/men/lassen.htm)

Now, give me an experienced GWX player, with 40 careers, 400 patrols, 4000-6000 attacks of experience. Even in 1942, he/she will make Kretschmer, Lüth and Lassen look like tender babes up way past their bedtime.

In the game, only, of course.

My point being it's useless to compare your scores to the U-Boat aces after you have been playing the game awhile. Your experience simply overwhelms whatever disadvantages and barriers the game throws at you, and exaggerates the advantages.

After you've got a few careers under your belt and start focussing on game tactics vs learning the mechanics and gameplay over time you'll start to learn where all the chinks in the ships armor are. Obviously that was something the good captains and aces all learned, but it wasn't information they had the moment they set foot on the boat.

There are of course a lot of instances where captain sunk a ship with just 1 eel, while they were still green you would chalk it up to luck, once they knew what they were doing it was experience and aiming and specific parts of the ship that they knew where either vulnerable or otherwise a weak point. In 39' if you run across a tanker convoy you'll likely bag 3 or 4, maybe even 5 tankers with your first salvo already knowing where to aim your torpedoes. When the real men were out there on the sea they didn't have the huge repository of knowledge we have, or the pool of experienced people in which to gain wisdom from.

We have the enormous advantage of hindsight and better boats (there were too many patrols to try and count that got aborted on the first day or two because of mechanical failure) that don't break down so easily like the real ones did. Had the real boats back in the day functioned as well as the ones in the game, the best aces would have imho at least doubled their tonnage, maybe even triple it over their career.

[Gargamel]

Aren't we comparing apples and kangaroos?

I'd like to see a GWX n00b sit down and, after a fair number of single misson patrols, start a career Jan 1 1942. 100% realism. And then take down an average of 39K tons per patrol over his/her four first patrols over 1942-1943?

I sure couldn't have done it... anyone here want to claim they did?

Yet Georg Lassen did pretty much just that, in real life, in a pitching boat, and everything to lose. (http://www.uboat.net/men/lassen.htm)

Now, give me an experienced GWX player, with 40 careers, 400 patrols, 4000-6000 attacks of experience. Even in 1942, he/she will make Kretschmer, Lüth and Lassen look like tender babes up way past their bedtime.

But Lassen served on a very successful boat before getting his own command. I bet he still had those teething problems then, but his name wasn't on the line then.

Having finished reading the first blair book, it seems very few, if any, true rookie commanders ever had a great frist patrol. Some did go onto greatness, but there's always that first trip.

[Gargamel]

It's actually very easy, it's just a CFG file change.


err not so easy, just actually looked at the uboataces.cfg file. Well it would be easy to do, but kinda cumbersome. I had thought it just listed the tonnage per captain. It actually lists tonnage per captain per month, so as the war progresses, it increases.

I'm also having trouble finding a list of tonnage claims by each commander. Finding confirmed lists is easy, claims is not. There may be a chart somewhere in Blair, but since i have the kindle version, it's a real pain to flip through.

And oh boy, Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_von_Arnauld_de_la_Peri%C3%A8re)puts us all to shame.