Convoy shrinkage and the HEL
 

Several times in 1945 on mostly stock 1.5, reported large convoys on the map became simple convoys as they came within sensor range. Always, or virtually always, they had zero escorts. Part of me suspects it's the devs' way of reflecting a late-war escort shortage, but then I encountered a BB/CV task force on 8/14/45, so who knows?

Possibly related: a CV/CA task group encountered a week before Leyte that had only three DDs. Given the numbers present at Samar, I assume it's intentional.

HEL: Twice in this career, I've spotted the Huge European Liner at close range on the intel map but could not locate it on radar or sonar, despite being less than 25 km away. Is this a remnant from 1.3 that the designers overlooked when they virtually removed the type from 1.5?

The "size" reported in the game is controlled by the "Contacts.cfg" file, and in stock are Single Contact Min Size=1, Small Contact Min Size=2, Medium Contact Min Size=4, and Large Contact Min Size=9. Mods will change that, such as FotRSU has Single Contact Min Size=1, Small Contact Min Size=2, Medium Contact Min Size=4, and Large Contact Min Size=6, since there were not that many convoys with more than 6 ships, especially early in the war. Some of the whale hunting groups represented are larger, and are not escorted late in the war, but the actual level of escort varied considerably in real life, with convoys sometimes having no escorts, and other times having more escorts than convoy ships. This was due to IJN and IJA operational "priorities", and inefficiencies of inter-service rivalries. Basically, they thought "escorting" merchants beneath them, and did not think it important until it was too late to implement until after they couldn't replace what had been sunk.

But there are a lot of things in the Stock game that are "generalized", as far as traffic goes, in that there is little differentiation in traffic levels from 1941 to 1945 in the groups the game has, other than the territory in which they operate. This includes the Task Forces, of which you really should find it very difficult to find a Task Force in 1945 of anything more than a few small moves from Singapore to the Inland Sea. There just wasn't any fuel to operate the ships with. The European Liner in the Stock game, named "Rare", really isn't that "rare" in the game. Originally Italian ocean liners, there were two of them in the world, operational during the war, with the Conte Rosso being torpedoed and sunk in May 1941, and the Conte Verde, used as a repatriation ship in May 1942, then went to Shanghai, and was scuttled in 1943 after the Italian Armistice, refloated in 1944, and then taken to Japan, which was an eventful trip, then beached after being bombed... See the Combined Fleet site Kotobuki Maru for its "Record of Movement". There isn't much there... :salute:

Thanks for the background, especially on the whale ships. The shrunken convoys were all, or almost all, six merchant ships of varying sizes in two rows of three.


Anyone else encounter these shrinking convoy and invisible HEL glitches?