[gap]

Originally Posted by finchOU

hmmm... i'd heard the opposite with the surface attacks...and tired it myself. Conditions must be perfect I guess.

Of course they must be perfect

By the way, here's a good reading on the topic of surfaced night attacks, and allied countermeasures:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...-51/ASW-2.html

Originally Posted by finchOU

Thanks for the Discovery Channel version of Hunter verse Prey. But I do recall that bait fish in a bait ball....once detected by predators....get wiped out pretty quickly, especially in the open ocean....hehe.

sorry, blame my "Discovery Channel" excursus on my educational background. Being a biologist I am more than sure that hunter/prey group strategies are based on long-term advantages. Nature doesn't make discounts and, as sad as it sounds, "wrong tactics" are wiped-out in the span of few generations. Escort and wolf pack strategies were blatantly borrowed from natural models and they were adopted because, under the right conditions, they worked

Originally Posted by finchOU

Sorry I wasn't clear on the first part.....I do know that reinforcements are in the game.............but only if they are close...aka...escorting the convoy... again i've attacked a convoy (early war) for three days straight....with no escorts to the rescue from out of nowhere/over the horizon (anyone seen different).... and I've never seen a convoy scatter (tho think I read somewhere that they do in the game).

Until mid-war there weren't that many escorts patrolling the Atlantic, and air coverage was pretty sparse. If you want to make your life harder, try following sober's suggestions:

Originally Posted by sober

IRAI is really difficult regarding escorts , combine this with my sobers bad weather deck gun V5 http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=3521 and it gets really hard to get tonnage with escorts around . Bring on the mod People really need to use sobers mega mod list on 100% difficulty to see how hard the game really is to get tonnage .

Originally Posted by finchOU

I guess the general ...send more patrols in the area or convoy reinforcement.... no matter how long you've lost contact (both of which happened IRL). The early war shortage of escorts was a problem obviously...convoys would be escorted in and out of port but would be abandoned to proceed on their own when they got a couple of days out of port (they thought initially that the Uboats range was limited...and a limited amount of escorts).....(side rant)..but the over compensating DC party later on is a bit unrealistic....as pretty much all of the escorts leave the convoy...minus one to pound your position...and a DD or three literally stops on the surface for long periods of times. I know they did the sneaky all stop sneaky on the surface thing...waiting for a uboat to think they are safe. But i'm sure that was the exception...not the rule. I guess I disagree with the time factor that SH5 uses for breaking contact as well......as it's too cut and dry and seemingly not dependent of other factors. I like randomness within the confines of historical realism/believability. Anyway...am I complaining enough? haha

IIRC, IRAI set the lost contact time parameter to 20 minutes, but you can increase it at wish, if you think that 20 min aren't enough.

As for your other complaints on ASW strategies, if you think they are so wrong, you should discuss them in IRAI's thread.

Originally Posted by finchOU

One last comment..... I like the idea of raiding ships or taking them prize...by making them stop...search them etc. Obviously it would be dependent on where you intercepted the ship...etc. I know it happened during the early part of the war...

yes ship's seizing would be a cool feature. Unfortunately it is not modelled in game

Originally Posted by finchOU

but obviously exposed the Uboat to counterattack if their position was radioed before being able to disable the radio..... I've also heard about the few shots to disable the radio.....but i thought it was more of warning shots......for the ship not to radio in for fear of being sunk. I don't know how often this tactic happened or when it was abandoned during the war. unfortunately my reading of books 10 years ago on the battle of the Atlantic is fading from my memory.

yes, probably the main purpose of command room-aimed shots was to create panic, and to dissuade enemy commanders from any counter-attack or radio calling attempt. I have also read that, with the same intent, German cruisers often aimed their first shots at the deck rather than aiming straight to the hull. This was especially true for attacks aimed against valuable ships, that they hoped to seize without causing them too much damage.

Originally Posted by finchOU

Thanks for the link....I'll check it out.

My pleasure