In general, it seems to me that there should be more of the subchasers, and fewer DDs seen as escorts.

One thing I might be inclined to tweak would be to really push the VISUAL spotting skills of the IJN DDs in particular. They were very very well trained for night operations.

tater

And this clearly isn't modeled in SH4. My sub was flooded with light, so much so that I couldn't actually see the tankers I was shelling but rather simply hurled rounds into the bright light, and the destroyer only got a single shot off...which missed.

BTW, great info on Japanese convoy operations and escort assignments from a historical standpoint. Much Thanks!

I made my own mission from the editor for testing purposes in learning
more about how the enemy DDs work. In my first attempt, no mods,
there I was at PD with scope up watching a DD come within 288 (yards or meters?)
of me. Nothing, he didn't see me or detect me?? I sank the Seaplane Tender
he was escorting. All 4 DDs stopped and all I saw was blinking lights and a few
star shells fired. I waited, still doing 5 kts at PD with scope up. After about 10
minutes with nothing happening, I sank a Lt. Cruiser (1 torp was all it took).
Still nothing ?? The DDs didn't seem to know what to do. I was NOT detected
so I assume they were clueless on what action to take. I had set them all to
Veteran in the mission editor. This was on May 5, 1942 at 730 AM in the Coral Sea.
Sun was already up. Another time I tried to stay on the surface till seen and
then went under. This time they acted more like they should. They started
looking for me and dropped DCs in some areas but not close (I was at 200 ft.,
under thermal layer and silent running) At one time, one darted over the top
of me and I thought here it comes but he didn't drop. I was NOT detected.
As of now, I think DETECTION is the KEY element here. Without that, I don't
think the DDs know what to do !! I will continue further testing on this and
will use some of the mods that are supposed to increase DD agression...

JIM

I don't know, think about it. You are an escort and out of no where a ship explodes, you know a sub is out there, maybe what side he is on, that's it. Stopping and listening isn't a bad idea, and from the literature I have seen Japanese ASW doctrine and sonar was pretty poor. Maybe they should have been more aggressive. I ran upon a TF of Java with 3 flat tops, set up about 1200 yds off, 4 fish on slow, dove to 200ft and started to motor off. 2 hits, and she sank. 3 DDs and 2 Cruisers came after me while the other kept on. Picked me up for a second, DCed near me, I fired off a decoy and made a speed run to clear datum. Slowed down. The 3 DDs were all over my noise maker, then planes showed up and they bombed it to. Eventually they moved off, but I made a mistake and kicked up the speed too soo, had a DD turn around and come at me again. I slowed down and he lost me. Crept on for a while, and eventually went clear. Was a pretty good run I thought. I was impressed by A.I. I have noticed however that they seem pretty lax when in formation, but when they come after you they can be tought to shake. I think without external view it would have been much harder. I am going to try it again like that and see.

Patches from the devs are needed to fix bugs and make changes to the game engine & hard-coded elements.
Everything else (plain text files) can & will be addressed by the modders but they almost have to wait till the
devs release the patches first. From what I have observed so far: the AI DDs don't have the detection down
pat in SH4 like the Brit. DDs did in SH3 (actually this could be historical) and I can see that happening early in the
war years. The thing that irks me the most is when you do torp and sink a ship in the convoy they are guarding, the DDs don't seem to have a search plan they impliment in order to find you. Detection is one thing but looking for an enemy sub that just attacked the convoy the DD was guarding is lacking here. In plain words, the DDs in SH4 are just NOT doing their
job right. This may be hard-coded and a patch is needed to fix it. American Sub Doctrine at the start of WW2 in the
pacific was to protect the BB TFs and sink enemy warships (same as Japans). Adm Nimitz changed all that when he
figured that Japan, like England, was an island nation and needed to ship in all the resources to sustain itself. So he
used the German approach to go after the merchant & tanker ships (or convoys later) doing the resupply. I think that
caught Japan off-guard in relation to what American Subs would be doing till at least late in 1942 when they finally
started to catch on....

JIM

The first thing the devs need to do is to remove decoys from the game. I have never ever read about a US sub using decoys in WW2.

It's totally unrealistic to give US subs something they never had or used. But then,considering how screwed up this game seems to be with historical things (Australians with Lancasters AND with upside down US insignias),I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

It's a shame Microprose went out of business. SH1 was the only game in the series to get everything right.

No kidding! It's almost like they took SH3 and just modded it over to SH4 with a few changes.

Hell's Bell's... They couldn't even get something simple like the medals and Officer's uniforms right. How the heck can we expect them to have gotten escort AI or the fact that the Japanese didn't do convoys in the early war right? :damn:

The stopping of a convoy as the first ship being hit could be a way to model confusion. Since the japaneese would not consider it honorable to attack a noncom while a combatant was visable. Maybe early on in the war they tacked up alot of merchants losses do to mines. In the army you stop then find your way out. Could the japaneese have had the same doctrine at sea?

I played that convoy attack over again tonight after getting the "1 fps" bug sorted out, and it played out even funnier!

Restarting it before my 1st shot, the convoy was steaming along at aroud 8-9 kts. I crippled a merchant in the 2nd row, broke her back but she wouldn't sink, and just like before, the entire convoy came to a screeching halt.

This time there was a Fubuki DD stopped dead astern of me at about 600 yds. Just sitting there, showing no interest in me or anything else. No pinging, no searchlights, no nothing! That bit gets interesting, a little later...

So I set up a shot on a Large Modern Composite Freighter in the 3rd row and sent her to the bottom with a single torp.

After that 2nd attack, the DD suddenly woke up! Started pinging crap out of me, searchlights came on and sweeping the ocean but on the wrong side. (I was between her and the convoy) But she still didn't move an inch.

Don't know what I'm talking about of course, but with the DD knowing the position of the 2 ships I hit, seems she should have been able to triangulate my position pretty accurately. But nope, she just sat there!

I can hear the DD skipper now, doing his best Elmer Fudd impersonation:

"Be vewwy vewwy qwiet!!! I'm hunting submaweens!!!"

Then that "wascally submaween" outdid Bugs Bunny even ;) I had a textbook shot from the stern tubes, target dead astern at 600 yds, about 85 port AOB, target speed 0, my speed 0, can't miss!

I fired a fish, perfect shot and no dud, big explosion and Mr <fu>DD suddenly woke up and went to flank speed! Instead of coming after me though, he high-tailed it west as fast as he could, to put max distance between me and him asap :D

If I hadn't paid good money for this sim, it would have been hilarious. Think something is seriously broken here...

Except the japanese didn't do convoys much (before '43, and even then usually unescorted til '44), sure. ;)

As for japanese "honor" it was doctrine, not a sense of honor. They saw their role for what it was in their doctrine, they existed to whittle down the US fleet in preparation for the "decisive battle" with the Combined Fleet. All other goals were secondary. They fought like they trained, and they trained to attack warships towards the goal of decisive battle.

tater

Followup to my "Looney Tunes" convoy encounter.

I decided to get daring, and surface to take down that crippled freighter, a "Small Old Split Freighter", 2,436 tons, with my deck gun. Soon as I surfaced, another DD opened up on me from less than 1/2 mile, I could hear the shells whizzing overhead. Not a single hit! Had plenty of time to put 10 or 12 rounds of HE into the hulk and sink her, then crash dive without a scratch.

If I'd been playing SH3, those escorts would have been all over me like flies on sh*t from the start and I'd be lucky to get the 1st kill...

Total kills for the 1st part of this attack run:

1 - Small Old Split Freighter, 2,436 tons (1 mk 14, 12 HE rounds)
1 - Fubuki DD, 1,680 tons (1 mk 14)
1 - Large Modern Composite Freighter, 7189 tons (1 mk 14)

For a total of 11,305 tons for 10 minutes work. And I've got hits on 2 other freighters, one fish each, both in steering gear that will be easy kills in the morning.

I should really have to work harder than this...

hey tater
this question probably belongs in the mod forum, but i'm curious if you're pushing ahead with tweaking the visual detection parameters, and if so which values you are adjusting?

cheers
hc

I know squat about the sensor files, so no. As a mod noob, I was trying to stick to the ridiculously easy stuff first (like setting bombloads to "NULL"), lol.

Anyone else think that this makes sense?

The funny thing is that (as others have observed) the quality of escorts is so amazingly variable. I made a mission of the Midway CV force last night and every ship was set to veteran. The DDs were pathetic. I never ran silent, I rarely slowed down to 1/3 (all submerged). They didn't drop a single DC, though 1 DD pinged around. It was getting late and I couldn't catch up submerged so i surfaced the boat a few thousand yards from 2 DDs and a CV. Only then did I get attacked. I decied to duke it out with the deck gun (hehehe). I was sunk, of course, but I also took a DD with me---he wasn't listed as destroyed, but was furiously burning as the death-cam spun around. I think the DDs are a little too easy to take out with gun fire, frankly.

'best way to learn is to dive on in and not be afraid of breaking stuff along the way... ;)

but could you please then point me to some source readings that indicate the sort of visual acuity on the part of the ijn forces that you're talking about?

many thanks!

I certainly agree!:up: