I think it's the last half of the war in the SCR layer, not the RND layer, that's the problem. 1943,44,45 = about 95% 'Elite' Destroyers/escorts. Meaning that from 1943 till the end of the war, that 95% of the warship encountered will be 'Elite'... I think this figure is WAY too high and perhaps only 15%-25% should be elite and the rest should be Novie or Veteran crews.

But my point is that the scripted layer may not account for much of the population anyway. It's not true that 95% of the warships encountered will be elite. There are a bunch of non-elite warships in the RND layer. We can't ignore these and pretend that the SCR layer contains all of the game's warships. It doesn't. It may be that the SCR layer only contains hunter-killer groups, in which case it makes perfect sense for 95% of them to be elite. If it turns out that this isn't the case, and that the SCR layer contains a very large percentage of the game's DDs and DEs, then I will definitely want to nerf them, but that's not clear right now.

I would say that the SCR contains around 85-90% of all local defenses in coastal areas- single DD/DE, patrol boats and only a few small H/K groups patroling a sometimes small area. Check it yourself with the ME, there are only a small number of patrols in RND.

The problem is, the RND layer's ships respawn constantly, whereas the SCR ones don't. Even if there are a lot more ships listed in the SCR layer it doesn't necessarily translate into more ships than the RND layer generates. As I understand it (and maybe I'm wrong, since I don't know these files very well), each single listing in the SCR layer is a one-time patrol. In the RND layer, on the other hand, one listing equals many patrols. So in that sense we're comparing apples to oranges. Even if there were twice as many ship listings in the SCR layer as there were in the RND layer, the ships in the RND layer may still outnumber those in the SCR layer by a factor of ten. It's not a simple one-to-one comparison.

As I said, open the RND with the ME and check it yourself, let the simulation run! A huge number of RND patrol groups have a group spawn probability of 10% or less, they rarely show up at all. Some others are set to 40%.

When you compare the areas where SCR ships are active with the RND you´ll see that there are indeed almost no RND patrols in that area in later years. SCR does most of the work there.

But doesn't the scripted layer regenerate every patrol? So if I sank a DD off the coast of Italy, most likely he will be back again if I return to port and the game loads up my next mission to go somewhere different but I choose to go back where I was in the previous mission. The DD will have been re-loaded and will be out patrolling that same scripted course again. It's almost like virtual reencarnation! :-j

Now lets say the RND layer has approximity a 9/1 ratio of there being more novice and veteran crews to every 1 elite crew, then I would call that about right(accurate/real/historical). That means for every 10 DDs I encounter I will only see 1 remarkable DD that will have my number (cause I suck against them). But I would say that is fair overall because I know that I have good odds of never even seeing a crew like that during the whole war.

Now, if the scripted layer has a 8 or 9 to 1 ratio but the 8 or 9 equals elite DDs and the 1 represents a novice or veteran DD then something is VERY wrong.

I understand that you want to average the two layers together and come out with a simple statisic but it is too complex to figure it that way and besides if you play this game the right way with limited fuel and ammo then you will have to go back to port and reload the next mission which in return resets the whole game in a sense...

I would suggest making the scripted layer DD ratio to that of the RND ratio with more Novice/Veteran crews than Elite crews, that way the player doesn't see a change in how DD behavior is, since most of the scripted layer DDs are located in around or near ports. Also, most of the DDs in the scripted layer are elite (about 85-90%. That means that I have a much higher rate of survival attacking a RND convoy with 9 RND DDs out in the middle of the sea somewhere than I have attacking a single RND ship that spawns up near a port where 1 SCR elite DD will eventually find me and sink my U-boat.

I can understand that perhaps a port would want to have the best of the best DDs protecting the ships within it, but in a historical sense, I think very few U-boats ever sank ships in a port (minus of course Scapa Flow and perhaps another) Mostly U-boats in historic terms encountered single ships out on the high seas and a few convoys. These single ships were unescorted and easy prey for any U-boat. But in the later years the allies did use more convoy tatics protected by escorts. However, most of these convoys made it to their final destination without a single incident, thus the escorts of the convoy were in a sense still novice. Why? Because they had never seen or been attacked by a U-boat, nor was the convoy that they were protecting. If a crew has never been up against a U-boat then how can they become profficent hunter/killers. You may say training, I say hock of crap! There was minimal training exercises performed and the whole allied forces played the same game that Germany did and that was build em with Quantity not Quality, thus forcing as many surface ships out to sea to find and kill U-boats.

That means that most of the skippers of these Allied surface ships were VERY green and unexperienced and most likely had just graduated from a college or university and trained on basic navigation and handling of surface ships and gone through a commissioning program to become a commander. Some of them had-had some training and experience that carried over from the first world war, but this training and experience was practically useless against the fast growing technology that was coming about. Attacking a U-boat from WWI was a totally different experience than attacking a U-boat during WWII. The allies had to rely heavily on technology and how to use it properly to even find a U-boat.

The planes in the sky made this task the easiest by 'giving away' a U-boats position, then the hunter/killers would move in and try to located him, knowing that a U-boat was only so fast and could only remaining submerged for so long.

It limited the playing field that a U-boat commander could play on once a plane had detected him. There are only four directions here on earth (North, South, East, West) and four planes running sweeps in those directions and covering the (NNE, SSE, NNW, SSW) courses could and would eventually find that same U-boat again when it came up for breath. Not to mention a bunch of hunter/killer DDs on there way just to finish off anything that the planes didn't. Thus, one novice pilot who spotted a plane contacted a novice DD and gave the position of the U-boat away. Now that DD heads to the position and begins to hunt, eventually finding the U-boat. Now that DD has the ball in his court because the U-boat Captain has two choices. Attack the DD or save my Torps for a larger ship? Most of them tried to hide and wait out the DD hoping that the DD would think they had gotten the U-boat or that the U-boat had managed to escape. With the newer technology a novice DD was just as efficient as an elite one since he had nowhere to go and wasn't going to leave till he found/killed that U-boat. So anyways, there are too many elites in this game and there should be more novice ones with at least a 9 novice to 1 elite ratio ALL around, SCR and RND campaing layers.

Only the H/K groups should be elite imo. If there's a list of them around the place...

BTW, I think only a few units should be novices. I have the feeling through playing that there's just a bit too crap at doing anything.

The real problem is that there's very little difference between elite and veteran AI - they're both very deadly indeed. If we only change the elites to veterans I'm not sure it will make all that much difference. I think it would be necessary to change veterans to average (3s to 2s) first, then change the elites to veterans (4s to 3s). But in doing that we may be going too far in the opposite direction. We need to have it be possible to get killed in any time period, and it needs to be very dangerous indeed in 1944-45. The major problem, as I see it, is that the game CURRENTLY does this pretty well. I fear we're talking about a change for the sake of survivability rather than for the sake of realism. The fact is, the U-boat war in 1944-45 was virtual suicide. When you get to 1944, the chances of survival should be very low.

YEs, I agree with Beery's statement. Most U-boat captains died anyways, so for the sake of realism, why do we want to improve our survivability? Isn't it more realistic to be killed easily?



Ok, but if we are talking less about realism and more about game playability, then that changes everything... Some people might want to have it easier than others.

But personally, I don't think I would mess with any of the campaign and difficulty settings. Having a challenge is not necessarily a bad thing. That'll make you think twice about going point blank with a heavily defended convoy (a definate no-no) or driving gung-ho right into the heart of Scapa (a super no-no-no-no). In that way, elites do make the game more realistic... DUH! if they are sooooo good, then the real solution is not to tango with them.

Well, I´ve already said that it´s not the right way to change all elite ships after 9/1943, but it just doesn´t seem right that all 391 SCR units (more than 200 DD/DE) that appear sometime between 9/1943 and 1945 are elite. There should be a healthy mix of Elite, Veteran and Competent/Novice units.

Roger that, I agree... but much heavier on the veteran/regular range. The novice crews are too stupid and the elites too elite.

Veterans if not handled with care will kill you quite dead.

Ya know, one thing I've noticed a recent trend in lately on these forums...

Is one heck of a lot of WHINING. :roll:

"Whaaah, my DD's are too powerful"
"Whaaah, my DD's are too weak"
"Whaaah, I have to get up from my chair to take a ****"

Sheesh.

Stop trolling...

I would tend to agree, but the only thing holding me back is the fact that I recently had a commander who survived throughout 1943. Even if I had 10 other commanders in 1943-45 who were killed on their first or second patrol, the one long-term survival argues that the game is well balanced as it is. Look at the statistics for late-war careers - they are very depressing for the German side. In the book 'U-boat Operations' there are pages and pages of boats that went out on, at most, one or two patrols in 1943-45, and which end with "There were no survivors".

Playability has been mentioned, and while playabilty is definitely an important issue, RUb has to consider realism as job #1. If players want survivability, there's no reason why they shouldn't choose an early war career. If they want an early war career that lasts into 1945 they probably shouldn't be using a realism-focused mod like RUb anyway, since realistically, no career lasted that long.

Is only a issue of Rub 1.44 or the same of the 1.43. ?? :roll:


The solution could be a mod that reduce the huge numbers of elite subs with more veterans DD and let the people decide what option use....100 % 70 % or 20 % elite DDs...

or explain to the people what files or mod are included, for rollback easily to a previous file or version.

i remember the discussion about the deck gun reload time and it was the solution.

too much elite could be realist but could destroy the playabilty unless you don´t want to patrol in the later years.

some people wants realism but play the whole campaign and have a chance to survive in the lasts years. while others prefer only do a couple of patrols and finish the career at 1943...or die in 1944.

thanks