WO McGoo and my airplane problem

[foster]

So I'm steaming at about 21 in Jan '42 and I get the aircraft spotted notice right as a solitary spitfire patrol of two planes are pulling out of an attack run in which they missed badly. Usually I would dive but there are only two of them and I have an appointment to make with a radio contact.

I man my two flak guns and Sr. Lt McGoo is the WO, he is a specialist in watch, flak gun and medic. We give the spitfires hell on the next pass and one is smoking like Cheech. The damaged spitfire circles out of range and proceeds to slowly do a sputtering fly over down the length of my boat dragging a huge smoke trail, yet my WO cannot see it.

I reorder my WO to fire at will, I toggle between flack guns to wake them up, I even point my binoculars at the plane and hit the spacebar but my crew simple cannot see it even though it is close enough I could probably throw my binoculars and hit it at this point. This has happened to me several times.

My question is has anyone else experienced this problem and is there a solution to it other than taking manual control of a flak gun? Also, once the green efficiency bar of a station is completely full is there any benefit to adding more medals or qualified crew to that station?

Thanks and good hunting,
Red Casey

[Tinman764]

Are your gunners set to only engage closing aircraft? I don't normally stick around to shoot at them but that's the only situation I've ever had where my gunner wouldn't shoot.

[foster]

No. I can usually manually select which airplane to fire upon by using my binoculars but these ghost planes don't give me the chance.

[Mittelwaechter]

If you can't lock on a target any further it's dead - but maybe still floating or in your case flying. It should sink or crash later, without further interaction and count for your patrol report.

There are reports of unlockable targets that don't sink and don't count in your statistics either. This may be a bug.

Personally I think it may be possible to shoot the hitpoints down to exactly 0 (zero) - resulting in no negative damage to destroy the target, keeping it functional - but with 0 hitpoints not recognizable as valid target for the game.

[Osmium Steele]

I had this happen with a swordfish. It just kept circling overhead getting lower with each pass. Took almost 10 minutes game time to crash.

We all just stood there pointing and laughing.

[postalbyke]

Usually my WO doesn't even tell me when there's a plane, I "wake up" to the sounds of bullets missing (or hitting) my boat... my first sign is a sudden unexplained drop in tc :P

[foster]

If you can't lock on a target any further it's dead - but maybe still floating or in your case flying. It should sink or crash later, without further interaction and count for your patrol report.

There are reports of unlockable targets that don't sink and don't count in your statistics either. This may be a bug.

Personally I think it may be possible to shoot the hitpoints down to exactly 0 (zero) - resulting in no negative damage to destroy the target, keeping it functional - but with 0 hitpoints not recognizable as valid target for the game.

Thanks for the info. This is by far the most elegant explanation to the phenomenon I have heard. It would also explain while I get "Enemy Unit Destroyed" messages some time after the engagement has ended.

I would also like to posit that the zig-zag maneuver is counter productive when dealing with air attack. The boat is so slow to maneuver compared to aircraft that I don't believe changing course is anywhere near the trade off in speed. In my humble experience I have escaped run ins with multiple aircraft with only superficial damage by keeping my steam up to 21 kts. Everytime I try evasive maneuvers however, I get my boat bombed into a convertible due to dropping down to 16 kts when changing course.

I know it is SOP to dive after the enemy makes a first attack run. However if I have a recent save to revert to I often enjoy standing on the bridge and watching the three flak stations on my XI stage reenactments from the movie "Midway" :03:

[Gargamel]

iirc, none of the "classic" WWII boats will go that fast, Only the late war models. At least none I have played yet. Most of them barely get over 16 kts as is. So when the bomber makes hat final dive, I turn into him, forcing him to steepen his dive, and hope fully overshoot, if not crash entirely. Anyway you do it, changing your vector throws off his aim just a bit. Otherwise, your called a sitting duck.

And most people here play DiD, where reverting to a previous save is not an option.

[andwii]

idk every time I play later in the war at bergen my crew neglects to attack the air raids that come through, even though they are close enough for my untrained self to make them smoke, Its a tad confusing.