There is always a "signature" of a submarine. Sort of like with camouflage paint, if you are patient enough, and look closely, you can see it, but it is definitely more difficult, and under certain circumstances nearly invisible, so the crew skill plays an important part. What we've been trying to do with FotRSU is to have it to where the Japanese are lackadaisical with their convoy protection early and only a few are "skilled" at their trade. Then about mid to late 42 they get concerned and start paying attention, but only a few are highly skilled. Then they get serious, and skilled by the end of 1943 through 1944. Then, since they are being rapidly eliminated with torpedoes and don't have the talent pool to fill vacancies, they get young and unskilled mixed with elite veterans, if you follow what I'm saying. Most of the mods have the skill level of the AI the same throughout the war.
Trying to balance all the different aspects of the AI, along with the skill level of the individual ships, which is done mostly in the campaign files, has been difficult. We can test a few scenarios prior to release of a version, but as has happened, there are highly-skilled airplanes everywhere in one version with ships that are just right. Then the next release, the planes are good, but now the ships are dum-dums. Then the next you have dum-dum planes falling from the sky ~and~ dum-sum ships. This last version, we turned up one AI, and lowered another. When you tweak the AI for the enemy, the sub suffers. When you adjust it for the sub, the enemy AI suffers. We hope this next mix will be really close, with the escorts maybe a bit too tough for most, but we'll see what happens, and be ready to adjust.
Bleiente did a really good job tweaking TMO and RSRDC with OTC. It is very playable as-is.
