mk27 slightly destroying gameplay experience...
 

have you tried mk27 torpedoes? they are equipped with a passive sonar device that allows them to home on everything which makes noise, even you!

though they are quite slow compared to other torpedoes, they are so easy to use on closing dds (or other targets) that it somehow ruins the experience of manual targeting. when a dd is closing on you, all you have to do is remain completely straight to the dd bearing, and fire away the little bugger. even when the mk27 turning ratio is quite low, unless you try to make them to turn on a dime, it will hit the target for sure.

dds are stunningly stupid too, they SHOULD hear through their passive sonar that a torpedo is closing in, but they do nothing to prevent that.:damn: :damn:


mk27s did exist late in the war, so is not an unrealistic option. But, as realistic as they might be, I prefet not to play with them.

I dont see how they are "ruining" your game experience. As you said no one forces you to use them.

Also a DD steaming at flank cant hear a damn thing plus they cant exactly turn on a dime either.

The dds I mentioned were not coming flank speed, but around 10knots or so (I suppose they saw something, like my periscope, and came to investigate a bit). What is the speed threshold where they can or can´t hear a "damn thing"?

I know its my choice not to play with them, never said is was obligatory to do either. What Im saying is that it seems mk27 have no dud parameters at all, I sank 2 dds and rendered useless another one in a row with little or no effort.

The hardcore torpedo mod might change their failure rate. You mightn want to look at it. Go to the end of the thread, jace added a new version that fixes a problem with the original.

I have no idea what the "threshold" is a modder could probably tell you. 10 knots is a pretty good clip though.

27's were a bit more reliable than the 14's ;)

Towards the end of the war failure rate was reduced quite a bit.

These homing torps were just point and shoot. Generally they would work up a solution with the TDC as if it was a regular torp. If solution was bad the homing device would handle the rest. I do not see a bad game experience with these torpedoes.

Woah... uhh what ? Fired a torpedo at 400 feet ?

Maybe its true but my game bitches at me if I try to adjust the settings on a tube below periscope depth "To deep to launch torpedos sir !". Duh... I just want you to adjust the speed not launch the damn thing.

Yeah, the too deep nonsense is bad. Early war a problem was that many skippers followed prewar doctrine and made sonar attacks from deep. Not only could US subs fire from deep, that was their doctrine until they realized it didn't work.

I have never tried launching a torp while submerged... Can it be done ?

It's not unbalancing or "ruining the experience" so much as a technological advancement...the whole point of using them is that even if your targeting solution was off, the torpedo would correct for it.

The Mk27s were designed as an anti-escort torpedo. Keep in mind that they were also designed to be quiet-running, and they used a swim-out mode when launched as opposed to standard compressed air. They would be MUCH harder for a destroyer to detect. It's no surprise that they make easy meat out of DD escorts, because that's what they were historically designed to do. I believe the success rate was around 33% (24 escorts destroyed and 9 damaged) for a total of 106 Mk27s fired. Instead of having to launch a salvo of four to six (depending on the sub) torpedos at different spread angles and praying that the DD maneuvers into one, you could launch one torpedo that would seek out the target.

The torpedo still had to be plotted so that it would get NEAR the target, but once it got into acoustic homing range, the torpedo did the rest. Instead of missing a fast-moving DD because you got the spread angle 1 degree off, or because it turned out of the path at the last second, the torpedo would alter its course during the last legs of its path.

Maybe the game does it differently, but historically they were far from "fire and forget" weapons that you just had to point in the general direction of a ship. You still had to plot a good enough solution to get the torpedo close to the target.

I enjoy having them because it gives you other options than running away and hiding if a DD escort detects you, and you can't get a perfect solution because the target is maneuvering all over the place.

I guess I should have been a little clearer.

I dont consider periscope depth as "submerged" altough it technically is.

I meant deeper than periscope depth.

USS Torsk was a Tench class. Commissioned in 1944. I blinked an eye when I saw 400 feet also. I will dig into this further. As far as 400 foot depth, no problem in the Tench. Sending out a torpedo at this depth:hmm:. Might be a problem.

I would think it would be damn near impossible to successfully engage anything other than a stationary target with a deep-launched torpedo, with WW2 era equipment. The acoustic torpedos improved the odds somewhat, but I would not expect a deep launch with a Mk14, for example, to achieve any reasonable chance of success.

I was under the impression that sub-to-sub combat was virtually impossible in World War 2 because they did not have a means of getting a targeting solution at anything under periscope depth.

Also, wouldn't opening the tube doors at 400 feet be a bad thing? I'm not sure if torpedos have a recorded crush depth, but I would think that the interior of a tube would be much more susceptible to the pressure.

From an engineering perspective a tube can take pressure on the inside pressing out a hellua lot better than the outside pressing in... But a breech would be disasterious.

Wait a minute... isint a sub basically a tube ? :rotfl:

I didn' say they hit anything, they didn't. But it was USN doctrine before the war to execute a deep, slow, sonar approach and fire. That was with early fleet boats. They executed such attacks... maybe a few would have worked with better fish, dunno.

tater