DD not responding to attacks?
 

My next little harp I have. Anyone notice that the DD protecting convoys do nothing when one of the ships they are protecting blow up. they just keep steaming full speed ahead.

the only way I got a DD to respond to me was when I surfaced and thought they were far enough away for I could shell a burning Merchant ship. But once I surfaced they finally came running for me.

So anyone notice any real DD action vs you? I know its early in the war still and maybe they are green crews and all... But usually when a ship goes boom... you would think they would at least change course to look for you. LOL. wow.

check the mission editor and see what skill level they are set to(if you can in SH 5) I know in SH 4 I found out one reason enemy DD's were usually so easy, 90% were set to novice or poor skill level.They prob did it again.

Yea, I just experienced something similar as I blasted through the middle of a convoy with guns blazing :cool:

The DD DID hit me after awhile, though, so I got to experience some flooding. Neat!

Yeah, the AI Escorts need some serious tuning. I can just walk into a convoy, blow up half the stuff, and leave, without the escorts doing anything. And harbor defenses need ramping up... Trust me when I say that its REALLY easy to get into Scapa Flow.

Planes also don't seem to respond well to the player ship.

Had tones fly over me but not do anything.

Something is certainly wrong with the AI I think. Don't think we can chalk it up to green crews.

I've been digging through the script files in the game and there's some stuff that strikes me as odd in the AI scripting. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these scripts are half-finished and not working as intended, and actually AI skill level setting may be having something to do with it.

For what it's worth, all the reports I'm getting suggest that at least novice-level air AI isn't working, while the mechanism that forces DD AI to go into alert mode and search the area where the attack happened is broken. Both could easily be down to broken scripts and I hope the devs look at this quickly for the next patch.

I don't understand how something so gamebreaking as DD AI could have been not tested before release. I thought the AI was supposed to be much more robust and intuitive in this new title.

Maybe the devs have the same mantra lots of people on these boards have....

Oh the Modders will fix it.:rotfl2:

early war 39-40 was it not the case that navy cover for merchants was only from 200+miles out and the early equipment as they say could hardly find an elephant in a room.

I understand that DD should be tweaked but not to jump to overpowering in the early years just becuase it doesn't feel right.

could be based on skill levels. In the Narvik single mission, DD's spotted my periscope and started firing at it from a fairly long range.

Excellent point sir. Recall the devs felt the uboat war ended in 43 when it was damn near impossible to survive a patrol. Should the escort be killers at this point?

I understand the point of the early war guys... But seriously... Do you think that if your a destroyer captain in the early years and all of a sudden your merchant that your escorting blows up.. That maybe you should at least change course, slow down and start to at least try? Even if its futile?

In my 3 examples the destroyers just kept going straight and did not blink an eye.

LOL.:rock: Rock on sailor dudes. We have 2 others that are still moving.:rotfl2:

Well, while overall the escort effectiveness shouldn't be too great in '39, it's worth pointing out that on a per-patrol/per-uboat basis, the first few months of the war were in fact some of the deadliest of the war for U-boats.

CCIP, does the game offer rookie up to elite like SH4 does with warships?

yeah. I've not looked into it too deep, but the "levels" look to be identical. And the vast majority of everything in early game is rookie.

ASDIC comprised a transducer housed in a dome beneath the ship that sent out a narrow beam of sound in a series of pulses that would reflect back from a submerged object within a maximum range of about 3,000 yards (2,700 m). The dome was open to the sea and was to ensure the water around the transducer was relatively still as fast moving water would destroy any signal. The echo produced an accurate range and bearing to the target. But differences in the temperatures at different depths could create false echoes, as could currents, eddies and schools of fish, so ASDIC needed experienced operators to be effective. ASDIC was only effective at low speeds. Above 15 knots (28 km/h) or so, the noise of the ship going through the water drowned out the echoes.

The early wartime Royal Navy procedure was to sweep the ASDIC in an arc from one side of the ship's course to the other, stopping the transducer every few degrees to send out a signal. Several ships searching together would be used in a line, a mile or a mile and a half apart. If an echo was detected, and if the operator identified it as a submarine, the ship would be pointed towards the target and would close at a moderate speed, the submarine's range and bearing would be plotted over time to determine course and speed as the ship closed to within 1,000 yards (910 m).

Once it was decided to attack the ship would close more rapidly, using the target's course and speed data to adjust the course. The intention was for the ship to pass a little way ahead of the submarine, then depth charges would be rolled from chutes in the stern at even intervals and depth-charge throwers would fire further charges some forty meters out on either side. The intention was to lay a depth charge 'pattern' like an elongated diamond, hopefully with the submarine somewhere inside the pattern. But to effectively disable a submarine a depth charge would have to explode within about six meters, in depth as well as in plane. Since early ASDIC equipment was poor on determining depth it was usual to vary the depth settings on part of the pattern.


There were disadvantages to the early versions of this system. Exercises in anti-submarine warfare had been restricted to one or two destroyers hunting a single submarine whose starting position was known in daylight and calm weather, rather than stormy conditions. German U-boats could dive far deeper than British or American submarines, to well below the deepest setting on the British depth charges (A dive depth of over 700 feet (210 m) against a maximum depth charge setting of 350 feet).

More importantly, early ASDIC sets could not look directly down, so the operator lost 'sight' of the U-Boat during the final stages of the attack, a time when the submarine would certainly be manoeuvring rapidly. The explosion of a depth-charge also disturbed the water so that ASDIC contact was very difficult to regain if the first attack had failed.

Heh, i wonder if the DD's have proper sonar, hydrophone nodes. That would do alot to break things. SH5 used Sh4 as a base. In SH4, not all ships had ALL the proper nodes assigned to them.

edit:
another item might be thermal layer effects being carried over from SH4. Check the sim.cfg and make sure they're aren't any. If those variables are high enough, you become invisible underwater for all intents and purposes.

Just what I thought. SH4 was the same I believe when fresh out of the box. Ducimus is very familiar with SH4 workings and nodes as he notes. DD will needs some help then.

I have been a little concerned about the enemy AI too.
My watch crew seem a little bit myopic. They only see aircraft at about 3000 meters at the moment (may be something to do with morale or experience? dunno yet). By the time I order a crash dive the planes are pretty much flying right over me.
But - this is the thing.
The aircraft never seem to actually spot me, even though the nearest pass was about 400 meters.
Tried a single mission attacking a convoy. Instead of attacking I decided to get noticed and see how easy it was to evade.
Flank speed to the convoy until I got a visual.
Then ran at flank speed at periscope depth at the nearest DD.
Circled around at flank speed till I got the attention of 3 of 'em.
Admittedly is was ****ty weather.
But still.
There was three of 'em. I evaded them pretty easily.

Couple of things spring to mind.

1. I have played SH3 and SH4 extensively so I am conversant in sub evasion techniques.
This may have helped me out here.

2. I remember in STOCK SH3 and SH4 the escorts being a bit of a pushover.
I suspect that this is more the case here.

Good point, I'll have a look.
Looking at the folder and file structure of the game, it seems like a lot of stuff has been recycled from SH4, which in turn had a lot of stuff recycled from SH3. (I remember making a Soviet Office mod for SH4, and whilst I was looking for office textures, finding all the graphics for the SH3 office!)
It could well be that I easily evaded those 3 destroyers because of the thermal layer attenuation. I'll have a look.