Idiot plane behavior
 

August 1945 TMO RSRD

Departed Subic Bay on 28 July 1945 for patrol in Gulf of Siam.After a few boring days in the Gulf, caught a convoy of 3 ships and 3 escorts leaving Bangkok and heading down the Thai/Indochina coast at night, attacked, sinking one small freighter(Taihosan Maru) , moved ahead, attacked again, while turning away the escort detected me, put me in his spotlight, scored some hits with machine guns, cannons missed then as speeding away, boom, not good but we escape. Moved in and finished off, sinking all 3 small ships for 5200 tons lol.Daybreak came, we had a nice hole in the pressure hull.With this damage, we headed for Fremantle(want test mod i created where could end at fremantle even in late war) where heavy repairs would be needed.Transiting we avoided even shallow diving except to scope depth when a plane neared.

On August 11, 1945 while transiting Lombok Strait, 3 dive bombers surprised us(SD did not pick them up early, mountains interfere?) and attacked, ordered a crash while to 100 feet.The first dive bomber had us, but in an idiotic move, he dove but did not drop his bomb! Otherwise he probably would have had us.The other two dropped of course they missed.

I have seen planes with perfect setups make dry runs.Anyone know why they do this when if they dropped, they would cause heavy damage or maybe even get a kill.

War ended while were 300 miles from Fremantle.Thus ended a pretty good career that began in Feb 45, about 35k tons down, not for 1945 as targets were scarce.

I have a Love/Hate relationship with the AI planes and the dry runs they do. I should have died at least 10 time but survived due to them not dropping the bomb.

Yep, just does not make any sense.I was at 55 feet when he pulled out of drive, should have dropped, if he had, depending on where bomb landed, could have been over

Off topic but do you think you could figure out a way to recreate August 6th and 9th in your mod?

I have no clue. I always figured it could probably be done or simulated by creating it as a random object to appear at right time and place.Of course someone with the skill would have to create a large visible fireball to show up. People have added dolphins, icebergs, etc over the years.Sure someone could create the animation , make it where can be placed as a random object, have it show up at right time and place.

Problem is, can make it visible from the coast, so player does not have to be(unrealistically) inside the inland sea to see Hiroshima.Nagasaki would probably be easier to see .

I've always thought having Mount Fuji modded into the game as some sort of terrain object would be nice. :cool: Perfect thing to take a picture of through the periscope.

maybe that one plane spawned without any bombs, there is a random factor built into the game so anything generated can be different.

more then the bombs, what bugs me is they fly like toy planes hanging on a string often going sideways even.

I always wished I had spent time trying to "fix" the way they fly in the game so they would act more real in the way they move

The "Val" had a bomb clearly visible, these were not random planes but planes I placed(as a random object) guarding Lombok Strait in late war, they fly low, 50% chance of spawning twice a day, patroling, the have a night flier with a mild chance of spawning as well .This was meant to simulate the planes that got the USS Bullhead in August 45 while she transited the strait coming from Fremantle, being last US sub lost in the war.Interesting thing is the route they travel worked how I wanted, flying fairly low over Bali then the strait, my air radar did not detect them until they were close(which is speculated as the cause for the loss of Bullhead, the terrain of Bali etc interfered with SD radar) their pattern is random so player can't predict.Did this for my forthcoming mod.

I agree, how they fly drives me nuts as well.The dry runs drives me crazy, i've seen us planes do it as well, make 5 dry runs on a enemy ship before dropping lol

I've always considered the loss of the Bullhead the submarine equivalent of the loss of the Indianapolis. A new US sub with a modern radar suite sunk by a obsolete Japanese Army bomber with the war almost over. Shows you can never be too careful

Same here. Have you read the book "Overdue and Presumed Lost" by Martin Sheridan? Great book about the Bullhead.

Haven't read it yet. Hope to soon. :cool:

Sheridan was the only correspondent allowed to make a war patrol during WW II on a submarine, he went on Bullhead's second patrol I believe it was.Of course no much was happening by that point in the war but still a good read.

even an unarmed plane will be textured to look like it has a bomb or torpedo, the textured bomb image is not tied to the planes bomb load.

I think you misunderstood what I meant, the game itself treats "all" traffic by throwing in randomness. its like the gunners are set to force them to miss to add randomness to accuracy and I think attacking forces are also somehow forced to act that way so as you say, two out of the three planes attack or in the case of DD you might have 4 or 5 DD but one or two never drop charges on you unless you sink one to change the odds.

the same way the planes act the ships will also do that. lots of times with a group of DD hovering over you 3 or 4 drop charges but one will not drop charges on you.

I cant put my finger on it but its like sometimes some enemies aren't triggered to finish the attack almost like they were ordered to hold fire even though they take aggressive action towards you so you know they are alerted to you so its not just the planes that do it but ships do it to "if" they are in a group. it seams to be tied to a group thing.

Just confused because I added these planes myself and assigned them all a bomb, other two obviously had them.

I dont recall seeing this in TMO alone, I wish could figure out how to get TMO's planes back for RSRD. Robbin's mod works well, makes them a bit more deadly but still need fixing.