Armed Merchant ships
 

Last night I attacked a large merchant just off the spanish coast- as the weather conditions permitted, I thought I would save some torps and take it out with the deck gun. Very quickly I realised that the ship in question was firing back at me, fortunately I managed to deal with him before he caused me any serious damage.
Having not played the game long enough yet to have encountered many different types of merchant ships, I was wondering how many of them are likely to be equipped with guns? Are there certain types of ship that are more likely to be armed? It turned out that this ship was carrying military vehicles so perhaps it has something to do with it's cargo- or do particular types of merchant ships carry guns regardless?

what year?

As Timmy mentioned, it depends on what year you are playing in. In the the early stages of the war, it was rare to have an armed merchant.

As the war progressed, merchant ships on both sides saw the rising threat of enemy suface ships, submarines and u-boats and had to defend themselves.

As the war progresses, it will be the rare merchant that isn't armed.

Good point- I love the depth of this game!
August 1941, and I'm running GWX gold.

My career is at March of '41 and Merchants are armed, well all the ones I ran into which means no more fun speedboat style charges with a torpedo lob :down:

39 into 40 it's fill your boots with the deck gun By 41 armed merchies are fairly common, by 43 everything is armed

Righto then. Thanks guys, learning a new thing every day!

Very true:yep:

It has been my experience that any time after December 1940 all large and medium ships are armed.
By mid 1941 all are armed.

After 43' the only things that don't have a gun on them is the sail boats and other micro ships!

Hehe, look out pleasure sailors and fishermen and anyone else in a dinghy!
U-527 coming to a grid ref. near you soon!

Beware-many of the gun crews on merchants are pretty eagle eyed and are quite accurate.

I try to avoid gunning it out with merchants anymore late war. In fact, I usually unbolt my deck gun and chuck it over the side to remove that temptation.

:)

Can you specifically target the gun on the merchant and take it out first? Or does it carry on firing?

(newbie question I know)

You can try, if you get it then it will stop, but first you do have to get it! :nope:

You can order your gun crew to aim for specific targets. Waterline, hull, weapons, bridge are the options I think. There are icons that come up when you access the gun commands.

In theory taking out the bridge - or maybe it's the control room, I can't remember exactly how it's worded - anyway, taking that out would destroy the ship's communications center (so they can't call for help and give away your position). Poking holes in the ship along the waterline will make her sink faster.

If she's armed I guess going for her weapons is a no-brainer but I usually just submerge again as quickly as possible and rely on eels if she doesn't seem likely to sink from whatever damage I've already done.

Ah no, I'm aware of that - I meant specifically if I take manual control and aim for the gun crew on the merchants deck will it not kill them pretty sharpish?

I mean I'm quite a good shot, I would ahve thought putting a HE round within 10 feet of a gun crew would be the end of them.

If the weaponry itself is destroyed, I assume it's destroyed and they can't return fire, no matter who was aiming your gun when the shot was fired. I don't think the game would give you the option of ordering your men to target another vessel's weapons if actually hitting them didn't make any difference.

But I do suspect you would have to destroy the weapons themselves, or do enough damage for the AI to consider them no longer operable, regardless of how many enemy crew would (in theory) be taken out by any near misses on the weapons themselves.

Also, be aware that an armed enemy, if its weapons are operable, will continue to fire on you even if it's sinking. I think there are some screenshots floating around of enemy ships still firing shells at a uboat even as the decks slip below the surface.

Yeah, but somewhere on here there is a pic of a U-boat underwater with it's deck gun still manned, so two can play that game! :D

Oh, this happens on a regular basis on my boat. I have a bad habit of ordering my men to finish off wounded prey with the deck gun, then watching the victim sink and retiring to my bunk with a great sense of satisfaction from a job well done... without remembering to order the men to stand down from the gun and return to the bridge for their usual watch duty.

Last time I did this I returned to the bridge a few hours later to find my WO standing watch on the tower all by his lonesome in a vicious storm, on account of the rest of the lads were fully occupied with holding their breath for minutes at a time and clinging to the gun for all they were worth. :yeah: