[Fidd]

204. The reasons why PVP needs to have allied players able to drop into Bitterns, Tribals AND Flower class corvettes.

It seems to me that the PVP aspect of playable escorts is going to be most important in two respects:

1. To allow for more varied outcomes of games, which helps in player retention.
2. To make the current AI less bovine in its stupidity. (such as abandoning a firm asdic contact because another uboat 5 miles away fires its deck-gun).

There are other benefits:

3. It introduces the psychological aspect to the game, where as a uboat crewman you know a real player is tormenting you by ongoing asdic searches and attacks, or conversely that your crew has possibly outwitted the escort players by breaking out if his clutches and sinking tonnage.

4. It blurs the line between AI and PVP, insofar as you won't know if the escort you see, and which is perhaps pinging, is manned by AI, and therefore pretty predictable, or, if it is player-manned, and therefore potentially more dangerous.

Here's the problem, if the only escorts players can man is the Flower Class Corvette, then any Bittern or Tribal cannot be player manned, meaning that it's behaviour and tenacity of searching is definitely AI driven, and therefore predictable.

As I see it, it would be better if all escort types could be manned, ideally with players being able to drop into, or leave, any ship at will. This would render it much harder to discriminate between a PVP escort, and an AI one. It would also allow for either the nearest - or the fastest - escort to be joined in order to conduct asdic searches, and attacks, or carry out lost-contact asdic searches for longer.

There are a few wrinkles that need to be addressed also:

a) No more 185m and you're safe from asdic or hydrophone, or DC.
b) Convoy de-alerts even if a u-boat is held by an asdic search, IF it's depth is 130m or more. An AI or human PVP escort may continue to hold it on asdic or hydrophones, but a re-alert only happens if the u-boat rises to less than 130m whilst being pinged. A HUGE advantage of this, is that escorts could go quiet, follow the contact at dead slow, without asdic, then turn on it's asdic after the blowing of the MBT's is heard and the uboat ascends above 130m. Greatly improving the "cat and mouse" game. This would also mean that a detected boat over a long period would not cause other players in other undetected boats long delays whilst the detected u-boat is too deep to be a threat.

Naturally any such PVP with all types would require play-testing, but it seems to me that if the playable locations on a u-boat are a gun-sight view from a turret, asdic and hydrophone positions, and helm and Captain (on the bridge), then all of these positions could be generic, aside from the Bridge/helm positions, and possibly the main-armament gun-sight? I do not see it as necessary to render the PVP escorts to the same fidelity, for now, as the u-boats are made. The important aspects are 1-4 above, in particular blurring the perception of an escort being AI driven, or a PVP one, which could greatly increase the risk of an approaching escort being known to be AI driven, or, a human-directed one capable of guile and more potential lethality. This suggests that part of the design is going to need to be able to fettle the AI and player sensors of the escorts, in game set-up so it can be played at a level suitable for those on both sides, or in flotillas where they do not wish to be troubled unduly by PVP escorts.