Danse, gut eater, starforce, welcome to Subsim, where we're all friendly (or we just rip you to shreds in a friendly way!) and just the most knowledgeable and friendly (did I say that?
) group of spam in the can anywhere on the planet. Would you believe anywhere under the waves? OK, the friendliest and most knowledgeable you'll meet before noon today.
As far as the escorts go, it all depends on what mods you are using. Ironically, the more viscious the escorts are, the more you may need to go on the offensive to be able to even get to the merchies.
Take Ducimus' nasty Trigger Maru Overhauled. Each escort has a cloned copy of Superman aboard. They can detect you silent running below the thermal layer without even pinging you. They can and will charge you at 30 knots when there's no way you should have been spotted. You see, Trigger Maru has nothing to do with reality. It is made to be damned challenging.
Now your late war RSRD convoy usually is six to nine merchies surrounded by four to six escorts. Your first approach you're going to get swarmed, so get in as close as you dare (about 3,000 yards!) and let loose with some shots at the biggest target, looking for overlap so your misses have a chance to tag somebody. Here come the escorts! Turn your tail and it's time to play tag.
One tactic of the TMO (and other) escorts is that one will stop to direct traffic while the others play ring around the rosy making your life miserable. You'll notice that one vanishes from your passive sonar. It's time to buy enough time to come to periscope depth and blast the traffic cop! Come up to periscope depth, take your shot, an almost 100% hit probability, and turn tail. You can probably break contact during the confusion.
Then do an end around out of sight and sonar range to the front of the convoy and do it again. I've had all night battles with five or six separate attacks on the same convoy before daybreak. It's a blast if you don't get greedy. If you do, say hi to St Peter for me, will you?
