It just pisses me off when someone makes a crack like that about someone elses work. Especially when they are right. Almost non of the merchants were armed at the beginning of the war, if any. He was being , and I am being politicaly correct here in my choice of words, critical of your idea.

I can understand that, and thank you for your support good sir :salute:

Once again.. there are two realities - historic reality and game's reality.. in the game's reality - unarmed merchant = back to vanilla arcade

Which is more a reflection of other fixes that still need to be done. Pretty much what Gap was saying (I think) in that your tactics should determine enemy response in some cases. If you are spotted on the surface...your position should be radioed in....if any assets are in the area.....aka Air or Surface...they should provide aid. The intelligence you provide the enemy by giving away your position should lead to increased enemy patrols....etc. Maintaining your stealth and element of surprise (aka ambush tactics) and minimizing time exposed to the enemy...(aka time in contact they can radio

Now in regards to convoys......I think there are way too many unescorted convoys in the game early on. I know it happened...but there are a lot of them....but I don't see the tactic of unescorted convoys being sound at all. What's the point of grouping ships if they are unescorted? Would seem they would be sitting ducks.... anyway.. I digress. I get it..... ships the fire back will stop Uboats of deck gunning a whole convoy. But when did this happen in history? Specifically a unescorted convoy being shelled for hours by a lone U-boat?

I guess I have to hold back and try and simulate that tactics of the day to keep my own personal realism factor (again what Gap says)......

The other thing tho...as its kind of interesting. Is you can't do effective night surface attacks inside the convoy without being spotted. I know this would be very hard to simulate. Reading some memoirs about night surface attacks in very interesting in that they basically slipped in unnoticed (in the right Dark conditions)....passing extremely close to some escorts 500 meters or less. So who knows.....there are so many elements to the AI it would be impossible to get it 100% right...

This is already modelled in game (though I don't konow if it is a stock feature, or it was added by IRAI), and it is governed by the lost contact time setting in Sim.cfg. Let's say that lost contact time is set to x minutes; if you are detected in game, the spotting unit (be it a plane, a warship or a merchant) will alert nearby units which are within a range of x minutes from your last known position; they, on turn, are able to call in for more reinforcements once you are within the range of their sensors. The only way to stop this loop is to remain undetected for x minutes, after which your attackers would stop hunting you and reporting your last known position... :03:

You can check the frequency of unescorted convoys from the following website:

http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/index.html

I believe that when they set OH's convoy system, Zedi and Trevally checked many sources like the aforementioned. As for your question on the advantage ofunescorted convoys I have to remarks:

- until mid war, when the British launched the "War Emergency Programme", and the first destroyer escorts made their appearance in USN, Allies suffered a systematic shortage of escort units. Destroyers, sloops, corvettes, etc were simply not enough to escort every convoy.

- for merchants it was more convenient sailing in convoys, even though not escorted, rather than daring their dangerous passages completely alone. It is the same for shcooling fishes. They are probably detected by predators a bit more easily than a solitary fish. But, if detected, a schooling fish has much better chances to survive than if it was alone. This is because, however grouped are his preys, a single predator can only attack a limited number preys at a time while the rest of the group is escaping. Moreover, many preys have better chances to detect their predator in anticipation, and to frustrate his attack. :know:

SH ships have special zones which are connected with the functionality of their equipments. I believe that with a bit of luck the radio equipment of a single merchant can be neutralized with a few deckgun shots. This is not the case of convoys indeed and, granted that there is any enemy airbase/plane/warship in our area, they should rush toward our position as soon as we are detected by any of the attacked ships.

Never tried nigh-time surface attacks, but if memory serves me well, there are accounts of susbsim members who managed to sneak undetected within the rows of a convoy, during early campaigns :hmm2:

IRAI is really difficult regarding escorts , combine this with my sobers bad weather deck gun V5 http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=3521 and it gets really hard to get tonnage with escorts around . Bring on the mod :up: People really need to use sobers mega mod list on 100% difficulty to see how hard the game really is to get tonnage .

:yep:

Here is my bookmarks for OHII:-

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/795/59246885.jpg

:up:

hmmm... i'd heard the opposite with the surface attacks...and tired it myself. Conditions must be perfect I guess.

Thanks for the Discovery Channel version of Hunter verse Prey. But I do recall that bait fish in a bait ball....once detected by predators....get wiped out pretty quickly, especially in the open ocean....hehe. :)

Sorry I wasn't clear on the first part.....I do know that reinforcements are in the game.............but only if they are close...aka...escorting the convoy... again i've attacked a convoy (early war) for three days straight....with no escorts to the rescue from out of nowhere/over the horizon (anyone seen different).... and I've never seen a convoy scatter (tho think I read somewhere that they do in the game). I guess the general ...send more patrols in the area or convoy reinforcement.... no matter how long you've lost contact (both of which happened IRL). The early war shortage of escorts was a problem obviously...convoys would be escorted in and out of port but would be abandoned to proceed on their own when they got a couple of days out of port (they thought initially that the Uboats range was limited...and a limited amount of escorts).....(side rant)..but the over compensating DC party later on is a bit unrealistic....as pretty much all of the escorts leave the convoy...minus one to pound your position...and a DD or three literally stops on the surface for long periods of times. I know they did the sneaky all stop sneaky on the surface thing...waiting for a uboat to think they are safe. But i'm sure that was the exception...not the rule. I guess I disagree with the time factor that SH5 uses for breaking contact as well......as it's too cut and dry and seemingly not dependent of other factors. I like randomness within the confines of historical realism/believability. Anyway...am I complaining enough? haha


One last comment..... I like the idea of raiding ships or taking them prize...by making them stop...search them etc. Obviously it would be dependent on where you intercepted the ship...etc. I know it happened during the early part of the war... but obviously exposed the Uboat to counterattack if their position was radioed before being able to disable the radio..... I've also heard about the few shots to disable the radio.....but i thought it was more of warning shots......for the ship not to radio in for fear of being sunk. I don't know how often this tactic happened or when it was abandoned during the war. unfortunately my reading of books 10 years ago on the battle of the Atlantic is fading from my memory. :shifty:

Thanks for the link....I'll check it out.

Of course they must be perfect :D

By the way, here's a good reading on the topic of surfaced night attacks, and allied countermeasures:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...-51/ASW-2.html

:har:

sorry, blame my "Discovery Channel" excursus on my educational background. Being a biologist I am more than sure that hunter/prey group strategies are based on long-term advantages. Nature doesn't make discounts and, as sad as it sounds, "wrong tactics" are wiped-out in the span of few generations. Escort and wolf pack strategies were blatantly borrowed from natural models and they were adopted because, under the right conditions, they worked :know:

Until mid-war there weren't that many escorts patrolling the Atlantic, and air coverage was pretty sparse. If you want to make your life harder, try following sober's suggestions: :yep:

IIRC, IRAI set the lost contact time parameter to 20 minutes, but you can increase it at wish, if you think that 20 min aren't enough.

As for your other complaints on ASW strategies, if you think they are so wrong, you should discuss them in IRAI's thread. :03:

yes ship's seizing would be a cool feature. Unfortunately it is not modelled in game :-?

yes, probably the main purpose of command room-aimed shots was to create panic, and to dissuade enemy commanders from any counter-attack or radio calling attempt. I have also read that, with the same intent, German cruisers often aimed their first shots at the deck rather than aiming straight to the hull. This was especially true for attacks aimed against valuable ships, that they hoped to seize without causing them too much damage.

My pleasure :salute: