Who said escorts were easy?
 

Last night I came across a liner escorted by 4 destroyers (odd task force makeup, but that is for another day), Lined up a perfect shot, and sunk the liner with 3 torps. Now the fun begins. I dove deep (below the thrermal layer, around 200 feet), and went to silent running. However, I keep getting detected and blown out of the water. I usually play "dead is dead", but am using this first patrol as a learning patrol, so I have reloaded a few times (saved after the liner sinking), with the same result. A few questions:

1) Is the thermal layer effective? If so, should I go to all stop until the destroyer goes over me?

2) Should I try to use a decoy, or is it too late now (already dove, moved away a bit). Will this give my position away too much?


Don't get me wrong, I am really pleased the escorts are tough, and I am using no mods, so it is the "stock toughness". I played the campaign on "very hard" difficulty, but turned on the external camera, because I wanted to see stuff blow up :)

Any help would be appreciated!

What year was this? The variety of AI behavior that people get is really weird. Oh, and I believe the thermal layer is VERY effective in stock.

PD

1941 start year, off the coast of Japan.

200 feet is too shallow. Go to 250-300 feet and you'll be safe(r).

After installing the "dealier escorts and aircraft" mod from the mod board, escorts sank me three times in a row. They also ping you now, which can be quite nerve wracking and thermal layers do not offer total protection anymore.
Regarding decoys, I am not sure wether they are historic. Maybe the US had decoys in 1944/45, but certainly not 1942.
With that mod it is suicide to go to flank speed submerged when encountering a task force, same goes for prolonged periscope exposure or radioing a contact report.

No mod, but they are pinging me like crazy. I'll try to run deeper, as I am in deep water. Also go slow or stop to prevent too much noise. Wasn't sure how deep I could go, as I'm not used to depths in feet yet.

I've had trouble with escorts also. Once or twice I've noticed some Destroyers doing next to nothing, but most of the time they do a real good job of hunting me down and depth charging the crap out of me.

edit: No mod here either, and I always get pinged.

I did a patrol in 1944 the other day and compeltely trashed a convoy the 4 escorts did nothing they couldn't find me at all...had periscope up nearly ALL the time and was at 1/3 speed. There seems to be a big variation in performance of the escorts.

Last night I came across a convoy of four Merchants and three DD´s.
I sank three of the Merchs. and crippled one who slipped away.
He managed to do that because I crashdived after the torpedo impacts.
I thought I was going to get a hard time with the DD´s, but what do the DD´s do? Absolutly nothing!
They steamed towards eachother, flashing there signallamps.
Then they lay nose to nose, about 50 m apart. Like they where talking to....
....eachother.......strange I thought. Then they steamed after the crippled one.

End of story!

Have yet to come across a DD who wants to kill me!
I´m on my 4th patrol, 1942!

/VV

Two nights ago this happened to me ...

I encountered a convoy of troop transports and 2 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser, and 4 Destroyers. I sat and watched them for a bit trying to formulate a plan when one of the DDs decided to come to a stop 1500m from my bow with his stern facin my scope. I sent 2 fish up his props and shortly there after he went down. I then lined up for a stern shot on one of the heavies and hit it with one fish and the ship proceeded to burn but just sat there. I then lined up for a midships shot on the second heavy, but as the fish were on their way, (fired 2 off,) the Cruiser got under way ... at that time I noticed that the DDs were starting to become more active. Next thing I know ....

I'm trying to outrun 3 DDs coming for my arse.

The first two were doing perfect sissors over a plotted path, and the third was zig zaggin within the sissors of the first two.

I had to keep an eye on my depth as I had sustained some damage from an earlier DC that got too close to my aa guns. (It seems that regardless of how minor the effect of any damage my boat starts collapsing and I end up in bed with Davey Jones). So making sure I was off flank speed and keeping at about 50 feet I was manually avoiding the DDs.

Part of my manouvering had caused a near miss collision with a couple of the DDs which threw them off track for a while but not being able to run at flank speed while submerged without the threat of sinking, it wasn't long before they got their act back together again and were on me like a dog on a coon.

The chase went on for the better part of two and a half hours, my palms were sweating and I was nervous as hell. Well it came to an end finally, the two sissoring DDs managed to time it that they crossed over me within feet of each other and they both DC'd me into oblivion.

This happened before I discovered the mod for more active escorts. I have yet to try a mission with the mod installed.

Escort Quality
 

In the mission editor one can select the quality of a ships crew.

Regarding the variability of escorts and their ability to find and kill is it possible that SH4 randomizes escort crew quality for eact encounter?

If so that would go a long ways towards explaining why some of them will hound you into hell itself and others just shrug off the fact that your sub just sank 100K tons worth of ships and go on about their business as if nothing happened.

I've seen both situations...

I would imagine that this is pretty realistic.

Some DDs would lock on to a sub and others would lose contact real fast.

I imagine that escort crews were like sub crews in that you had the good, the bad and me:p

One time, in the fog, I was approaching a convoy and the DD's were already pinging me. They had no idea I was even in the area, but the second I got close I was being pinged. Before I could dive to even 60ft a DD comes rushing at me and nukes me.

Stuff like that makes me wonder. Maybe there was a friendly sub in the area already attacking and you just got caught? I had something kind of similiar happen to me. Early war and Wake Island had just been lost so I went up from the Marshalls, to take the edge off an unremarkable patrol, and see what was what.

As I crept towards the harbor, periscope depth, the crew detected a destroyer. It was dark out but there was a full moon. I don't know how, there was no pinging, but that sucker somehow figured out I was there and after weaving a bit made a bee-line for me. I did notice him flashing the signal light to somebody. Could have been a shore position, later on when I surfaced they lit me up right away with machine guns and heavier stuff.

It's probably just my imagination but my rationalization for what happened was that someone on shore spotted my periscope in the moonlight and warned the destroyer?

Anyhow, given the shallowness where I was I just decided to play chicken with him. He came straight on at me, and I let him have it in the nose with two fish. My first kill in career mode. (I had to fix my CTD problem first.)

Great story! Maybe the Escort realism is not as bad as ererybody thought. Though, I believe it's needs some good old fashion tweaking.