Lack of escorts in the Indian Ocean
 

I've noticed that most of the convoys crossing the Indian ocean, even the very large ones, usually have no destroyer escort at all.

Is it historically accurate for us to have such a feast of free enemy tonnage laid before us, and, if so, why? Were Indian Ocean convoys and transports not considered very high priority or were they considered to not be at very much risk or was it a combination of both?

The Indian Ocean except for the period in 1942 when the Japanese carrier fleet rampaged through it, was a relative backwater compared to the Atlantic where the British devoted most of their resources. One of the reasons Doenitz sent the Type IXs and Italian boats there was the lack of Allied ASW assets in the area. That's not to say it was completely unguarded, but it was considered far safer for shipping than the North Atlantic run.

If you're playing
stock... bothering to compare to reality is a waste of time :) Heck, stock has the wrong number of CVs in Nagumo's Midway force, lol.

Yeah, I play it unmodded, and I was getting kinda curious myself as to why in 3 patrols I had only encountered, and sumarily sent to the bottom of the ocean, two british J-Classes out of many merchant convoys.

I'm fairly new and still learning the game, but I defeated a J-Class with what I thought was an insane feat of awesomeness (but I highly doubt that since many of you other captains have probably done this lotsa times). Basically I surfaced right in front of her and essentially mooned the jerk. They instantly cranked that ship full rudder and gunned her straight at my face at flank speed.

In the time it took her to cross that expanse of water, I went to periscope depth, calculated two torp shots straight at her bow, and let em rip...

Lucky for me, she saw them, tried to evade and went hard starboard. Both torps struck her midships...Kersploosh, one soggy J-Class...

Captain must've been greener than me, LOL!

Erm...back to the present topic, thank you Wolfhound for asking this question, I was begining to wonder myself if historically there weren't many escorts around. :salute:

The stock campaign is arguably the worst part of the SH4 game. All other flaws pale in comparison to how thrown together the campaigns are. That's saying something.

I will admit right now that I am completely unaware of the entire affair of naval warfare during WWII. I know some stuff on the land battles, and just general random facts that frankly every one who ever went to highschool should know, but I have to say I really enjoy the game. I really think they did a great job, and I haven't had too many problems with it. I think I run version 1.5 (whatever the '07 Gold Edition is) and I don't notice any bugs that I read about in these forums...

The only problem I seem to have is a lack of paintjobs on most of the aircraft in the musem mode...but that's likely because I run Vista 32 Bit, and I have graphical settings kinda low because of my 128 MB Radeon Graphics Card...