Quote:
Originally Posted by Eesocks
I understand what you are all saying but having looked at the crew ratings in TMO I noticed they are all rated as 3. I would expect, at least in the early war, for there to be some less able crews around.
I think everyone has their own idea of realism so when I have time I'll change some of them in the early war to a lower level and a bit more random to try and simulate the learning curve the escorts would have gone through.
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In TMO the ASW capabilities of Japanese escorts were pumped up to frankly unrealistic levels. They can find you and depth charge you with pinpoint accuracy without active sonar pinging sometimes. They are extremely aggressive. If you run into an elite crew on a Japanese escort you are dead unless you kill him. The reasoning behind it is that the unrealistic AI behavior results in more cautious player behavior. You are operating in fear for your life. Therefore you do not take stupid chances. You cannot just duck below the thermal layer, turn on the silent running and call it a day. Makes the sim more of a challenge. It probably does do a good job of simulating the overwrought caution that some US skippers practiced in the early months of the war.
In the actual event, Japanese ASW was mediocre to poor to downright non-existent in some cases through the real war. There is speculation that some veteran US skippers like Sam Dealy may have lost their lives and crew because they had become careless, and too contemptuous of lackluster Japanese ASW and methods.