Originally Posted by jimbuna (Post 1383870)

Either that or remain submerged and see the initial attck through whilst being prepared to crash dive deeper if the escorts go active and are headed in your direction.

Originally Posted by schlechter pfennig (Post 1383899)

I was under the impression that the reason they conducted nighttime surface attacks was that the view through the periscope wasn't anywhere near as clear as the view we have in-game, so I've tried doing night attacks on the surface and day ones submerged using the periscope.

It's not that I'm overly anal about 'realistic' (at least I hope I'm not! :doh:) but that no small part of the challenge, enjoyment and satisfaction I have playing SHIII is seeing what it was really like for them (well, less the moldy, mildewy food, no showers, sardine-can environment, etc. etc. :D) and seeing how successful I can be in similar circumstances.

Originally Posted by jimbuna (Post 1383911)

Your quite correct and it was the deviation from this principle which led to one famous Kaleun (Kretschmers demise)....his standing order was that the boat stayed surfaced and sprinted for a darkened area on it's diesels.

He was down below after one attack and a junior officer spotted an escort, panicked and dove.

Less than an hour later Kretschmer and his crew were POW's.

TBH as good as the game is I think we as players are severely limited by how 'anal' tha AI can be....with sensors that can 'see' you through land and ships etc.

With those parameters to contend with it will always be a challenging experience trying to emulate RL :DL

Originally Posted by Hitman (Post 1384090)

Actually, after some time playing the game I have found that there are three things that tend to cause irrealistic results:

1) Even if it were historically correct (Which I don't know), having almost ALL ships in early convoys in SH3 carrying searchlights ends up in unhistorical results. We positively know that the UBoats stayed surfaced and evaded that way. If we can't do that in the game because of searchlights, then it is obvious that searchlights didn't work like that in real life.

2) AI sensors are, as Jim said, quite weird. They look all the time in all directions, they do it with increased efficiency after a torpedo impact on any ship, and they SHARE that information in real time with the escorts. The crew of a real merchant ship in a convoy would nearly panic when knowing they were under attack, and use 99% of their attention in manning the ship and not getting rammed by others when doing evasive maneuvers as per convoy commander's orders.

3) In real life, corvettes -which were by far the most numerous ships- in battle worn conditions of travelling continuously in the atlantic would only rarely reach their maximum speed of 16 knots, whereas UBoats normally did get their 17 knots -and could add electric engines as extra power to the shafts for 18 knots. Add to that the fact that UBoats can pull against the big waves easier than escorts due to their narrow profile and lower center of gravity, and you get the picture: Most early war escorts simply were not suited to pursue UBoats around if they stayed surfaced.