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Originally Posted by irish1958
I agree with Berry. I get killed about 90% of the time. I think the destroyers are plenty strong. In the war weren't most of U-Boats sunk by air later in the war?
irish1958
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That's right. In the late war period U-boats were mostly victims of aircraft attack. The final tally for the entire war comes out about 50/50 with half of U-boats sunk by ships/mines and half sunk by aircraft. Also, a lot of confusion regarding the survival stats occurs because of the difference between a commander's chances of survival and that of the crew. Since a crew tended to stay with a boat for the duration of the war, their survival rate was much less than that of a commander, who retired from front-line duty after at most 16 patrols. So in the game, if you run a simulation of a crew's or boat's experience (by doing patrols until the war's end) the survival rate will be far lower than if you simulate a commander's experience (by retiring the career after a limited number of patrols). This is why we read that only 20% of crewmen survived the war, while 75% of commanders survived.
In the standard game the survival rate for a crew was close to zero. That of a commander (assuming the player limited patrols realistically) was around 10%. Using RUb the survival rate for a commander is more realistic (something like 20% to 40%), but it still needed work. With SH3 Commander's automated career limits, now that we have thermal layers in SH3 Commander as well as a variable time to lose track of a U-boat AND the possibility of surrendering while under attack it makes things far more realistic. We now have a realistic way of making the survival statistics of the game match reality exactly.
One problem we still haven't figured out is the aircraft attack issue. Aircraft in the game tend to be ineffective, and it's related to the time compression. At high TC aircraft are rarely generated, whereas at low TC they are generated too often. It seems ridiculous to me to balance air attacks by chugging along at 64x TC, but that is the only method that is effective at present, and it doesn't seem that this will ever be solved. I tend to think that the only way to resolve the issue to any level of satisfaction is to balance the game based on a general U-boat survivability factor rather than trying to balance aircraft to be as effective as ships, given the fact that aircraft effectiveness will always be governed by the time compression at which a player is running.