Convoy escorts...Be more agressive
 

Been playing SH4 ~22 hrs and just had a comment...

May 1942...I was patroling in the Java Sea in the USS Shark(horribly shallow) and ran across a convoy in box formation...2 large tankers leading the "box" and 3 destroyers on escort duty. The destroyers were arranged ahead, port, & starboard of the box at ~1500 yd seperation each.

To make a long story short, one taker took 3 torps to starboard and the other tanker, 2. Neither one was sinking and I was out of torps.

Escort problem 1: All the time I was pumping torps into these tankers, all the escorts did was shine their spotlights across the water in my direction.

Aggrivated, and wanting to test the SH4 AI somewhat, I decided to surface in between the 2 tankers and open up with the deck gun. Not being entirely reckless, I knew that each tanker would shield the sub from the destroyers to port & starboard...but the one ahead of the convoy would have a clear shot at me.

Once I hit the surface and fired the 1st shot, shotlights and starshells exploded all around. 7 shots later the first tanker was down and not a single shot had been fired at my sub. The destroyer forward, had come around and was making flank speed at me...range ~1,200 yds. I fired 9 shells into the 2nd tanker and she exploded. About this time the destroyer had closed to ~800 yards and it's first shot landed hopelessly beyond the sub. I ordered flank speed, full right rudder, and crashed dive to 120ft. Once on the bottom, I went to silent running and crept away from the clueless destroyers.

Escort Problem 2: I don't want to jump on the "Well SHIII w/ GWX did it this way and SH4 sucks...." bandwagon, becuase I like SH4 alot. That being said, if I had tried to do the antics above in real life or in SHIII I'm 95% certain I would be dead, dead, dead, dead...

Anyone else notice these passive escorts?

Yeah, I had a similar issue with the lethargic convoy escorts as well. I was in the Java Sea on my third patrol in an S-boat. I had four torpedos’ left and I had gotten into a good position ahead of a convoy. I made sure I found a spot deep enough to hide from the escort. I came up to periscope depth and decided to target two small ships and one large one with my four remaining fish. I wanted to make sure I got at least one or two more kills before going back to port. The first target, a small old tanker exploded and split in half seconds before the other small merchant was hit. The second ship listed badly to the port but you could tell it wasn’t going to sink. The third ship, a large euro merchant took both fish with a bad list to port as well. The sea was annoyingly calm so it wasn’t like Mother Nature would help me sink these two boats.
I did about the same thing you did; I went back deep, waited for the convoy to sail off a bit and then surfaced between the ships. I started punching holes in the larger ships water line and how cool is that! I love seeing the holes in the hull, Its one of my favorite features in the game. I took out the large merchant and had already begun firing on the other small ship before the first volley from one of the three Fubuki class DD’s zipped over my head. I increased speed to flank, started changing my course, and began firing AP at him. I killed him before he could ram or shoot me. I was astonished and since the second boat had just started engaging me I began firing on it too. I also sung that boat without taking too much damage but the 3rd DD damaged me so badly I couldn’t submerge. I went on and finished off all but one of the convoys ships before I ran out of ammo and limped home to Australia. The Fubukis are fast. The manual says 38 knots. There is no way I should have had that much time. Also, can someone tell me if my 5’’ deck gun destroy the destroyers turrets? With my first few shots I was able to set fire to the first two destroyers turrets. They didn’t explode off the ship like the small guns on merchants do when you hit them but I didn’t seem to receive as much fire from them after I hit their turrets.
I am playing on the basic medium level that’s the default. I’d figure if I put it on a harder setting the enemy cannon fire would have been far deadlier. I hope??
This is a great game. I love the detail. I played SH3 but I like this game better. I didn't give SH3 much of a chance because I hated playing as the Nazi's. I was really hoping SH4 would have some British or Japanese missions too. Oh well.... maybe in SH5.

Just finished my third patrol, and I've only been depth charged once. Usually they just look around with their searchlights and then move on. I wouldn't mind a little more danger...

same thing here. was on a patrol in the South China Seas last night when I attacked a convoy with 3 destoyers escorts. I pumped torpedo after torpedo into the tankers and all the destoyers did was shine their lights around. Even in SH3 vanilla the destroyers would go nuts and depth charge the crap out of you if you got near the convoy. :damn:

Look at the pluss side, in RL the Combined Fleet would never have tasked 3 real DDs to escort anything non-naval. Fleet oilers, yes, merchant tankers, no.

tater

"realistic escorts" should be a difficulty option in this game. Passive escorts will certainly limit how much I play and enjoy the game.

Trout

Should the Japanese even have a convoy system in the early war? I understand its important to have warships around to make the game harder and more fun but I always thought that was one of the Japanese flaws, they didn't protect their baggage train. I like the idea of realistic escorts for an option I also agree that there shouldn't be heavy cruisers or a destroyer squadron escorting some merchant ships. I'd like to see an option for aggressive escorts and another option for smaller escort ships. I really think there should be a lot more sub chasers, corvettes, gun boats, and so on escorting smaller early war merchants. Also, barges were very common in supplying smaller Japanese outposts. Most of the interdiction of these would have been by PT boats but submarines did go gun to gun with them as well.
Its a great game but I think its a bit overboard when you have a Mugami heavy cruiser, two Kumas, and a squadron of the IJNs heaviest destroyers as your default escort group for a modest sized convoy in 1942.

The more I play, the more I notice this. Most the esorts stop dead in the water allowing me to take a good shot before they decide to start hunting.

Hm.. whenever I surface in front of anything I usually get harrassed pretty hard. Planes will strafe/bomb.. continue to bomb after I submerge. Destroyers open their guns on me and depth charge. If I shake an escort and attack ships a little further away, the escorts will come speeding back in my direction. They try to hunt me down with their sonar and will keep depth charging me.

The game defaults to 'easy,' I assume you're turning it up?

Right! And unless I'm piloting a Gato filled with 24 torps I'm more likely to spend three or four fish on the escorts while they sit and ponder their situation so I can waste the convoy with my deck gun.
Does anyone else notice that fast or medium moving ships are a lot more alert than the ones that creep around at one knot?

No, they really shouldn't. Also, why use the term "realistic escorts" (not slamming you, specifically) when "realisitc" might be what they are now, or even worse as a total system.

The IJN did not task what they considered valuable, offensive platforms (DDs) as routine escorts. Many did escort or ASW patrol duty, but not all that often. You can look at the TROMs at combinedfleet.com. I should go through and count the total DD-days escort/patrol duty for the war by year. I bet it doesn't add up to many DDs per merchant ship per day.

<EDIT> BTW, looks like the Minikaze Class was used much more often as an escort/ASW platform than the other DD types. Something to keep in mind.

tater

I'm going through the DD TROMs systematically. Some DDs did loads od escort/patrol duty (usually not remarked), but many times the specific ships escorted are listed, and where they went. Amazing how many are a DD escorting 1 or 2 ships. The first "big" (~10 ships) convoys were not until 1943. 10-20 ship convoys were only routine from '44 on. Would be cool to make a map by month or week showing IJN ASW patrols/escorts. Daunting task with 134 DDs and 32 DEs (Matsu class) to deal with.

I found my 1st convoy last night in the East China Sea and experienced the same thing with the lazy DD's. Was a night approach, calm seas, no moon and very dark. 11 or 12 merchants, 3 DD's escorting.

I snuck inside the formation, fired 2 fish at a freighter, one hit, one miss. He went up in a massive explosion and sank. There was a DD no more than 600 yds off my bow, I took a quick look to see if he was headed my way but it's like he didn't even know anything had happened!!!

So I set up a few more shots then noticed something REALLY weird, all my shots were passing way in front of the targets??!?! What the #@@!@%??? Then I saw what was going on, the entire convoy had stopped dead in the water! And of course I still had the speed set at 9 kts or so on the TDC. There wasn't even a trace of bow wave on any of 'em, so I locked onto one with the periscope and just sat for a minute, no change in bearing.

I reloaded to see if it would happen again, but then I got hit by the dreaded "1fps" bug, couldn't even ESC out to the menu to quit gracefully. Had to alt-tab to desktop and kill SH4. I've turned off the EE to hopefully fix that bug, I'll try again tonight and see if it happens again.

True, I was just going with a prior posts comment for that option. Realistic wasn't a great choice but you got the jist. Who can say what a real escort would have been other than a vet or a historian.
Of course, like I said, you have to add warships for the fun factor. I mean blowing up or even finding one or two random cargo clunkers doesn't appeal to the masses. To keep things off the shelf and on your hard drive there needs to be cruisers and carriers zipping about for you to throw torps at.
I think a good mod would put almost all of the warships in task forces or small surface action groups, string out the cargo ships to small groups (like sampans and junks are in SH4) and limit their escort accordingly, and add a lot more gunboats, armed supply barges and small ships in the coastal waterways. Also, some Q ship style merch's would be nice too.

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