[Fidd]

95. It further occurs to me that a similar "analogue detection ranges" could also be applied to ASDIC, so that if one uboat is detected on asdic, a number of nearby escorts join the hunt, with both the lateral and vertical depth of such searches being influenced by the number of escorts joining the hunt for a particular boat. This would likely make evading laterally increasingly more difficult, especially if the escorts joining the hunt are fast-moving. It would also complicate staying undetected, as it would no longer be a sure-fire evasion to CD to 185m. Instead, with one escort above you, the asdic "floor" might be 160m, with (say) 15m deeper per escort joining, so if there's 4 in all, then one would have to dive to 220m (gulp!) to be sure to evade Asdic. Randon crush-depths would ratchet-up the tension!

A nice side benefit of this is that attacking a convoy where the nearest escorts are slow-moving corvettes would be fairly safe, one with sloops and corvettes less so, and one with more destroyers than corvettes downright dangerous, because the escorts could combine more quickly than would occur if the nearby corvettes the only close escorts..... This would in effect, simulate (ish) the "creeping attack" where 1 escort maintained asdic contact, and joining escorts fired/released DC's on command from the stationary escort. This made it very difficult for the uboat to manoeuvre whilst the attacking escort was in the dead area for it's asdic. It proved fairly effective, and whilst the advent of "hedgehogs" and "squid" rendered it less necessary, it was used until the end of the war, as it was a more certain means of destroying a u-boat than simply having two escorts conducting individual attacks. This method would likely be a lot simpler to model in terms of AI behaviour, than formally coding AI cooperative hunts as movements?

EDIT - addition: Another nice aspect of this is that because the current certainty of safety at 185m is off the table, once a second escort joins the first, it's no longer possible to know when escorts have ceased attacking, meaning that bursts of speed and turns would serve to make re-detections more likely, and precipitate further attacks, with safety only being gained once at least one of the joined escorts have lost contact....