Randomizer

As a U-Boat captain, BdU expects you to find and attack convoys. At least one captain was condemned as a coward and sentenced to be shot for consistantly failing to do so (KL Heinz Hirsacker U-572).

http://uboat.net/men/commanders/495.html

SH3 is a bit more forgiving than real life and if you choose to hunt stragglers and lone ships and avoid convoys completely, there is nobody to know but yourself. An effective captain tries to select fights he has a reasonable prospect of winning.

Personally I find stalking convoys a challenge, even in 1944 and 45, but then I seldom get more than two late-war patrols out of a career without getting sunk along the way...

There were very very few cooperative U-Boat attacks in the Atlantic and a close reading of the narratives of convoy battles shows that most attacks were sequential and uncoordinated. There were execptions of course and where boats struck simultaneously it proved the best means to overwhelm the escorts but it did not happen all that frequently according to the records. Most convoy battles were, from any single boat's perspective, a pretty solitary activity regardless of the number of boats 'in contact'.