Interesting. Yes, I agree that human lookouts are subject to stress when scanning the never-static ocean. You have suggested that those stresses and fatigue should be factored in, I agree.
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Spotting scores above 0 may trigger warships to get suspicions, and act accordingly.
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Can you explain what behaviors a suspicious warship would exhibit?
We have debated exactly what an alerted escort would do to a torpedo explosion. Of course, it would initiate more aggressive search patterns but since they are already searching while escorting the convoy before alerted, the difference would not be massive. I'm a fan of Fidd's idea, bumping up the escort's abilities after the first hit. Once alerted, they would be a bit more "alert", more capable.
Also discussed: when a ship blows up, we assume the escorts would race to a search box that is 3000m around the attacked ship and this would be realistic and pose the greatest challenge for the players. We have tweaked the night surface detection ranges to allow surface night attacks inside the convoy as the famed Kretschmer managed; but if the first attack produces flares and your surfaced sub is surrounded by ships 800m away, you are bound to be detected. Maybe our flares are currently too effective? Maybe our ships are spaced too closely together... but we used historical info for metrics such as spacing and range. We still are working on zig-zag behavior, as evident in patch .23 and we also want to have better damage/sinking behavior in the future. One hit should not equal an automatic sinking, and damaged ships should get left behind or struggle to stay in formation. Stuff we are going to work on.
Oscar has built an impressive visibility and detection system, it has been revised and balanced over the last year. It's the secret sauce of the AI. In every situation we ask, what would the enemy do in real life? How would the escort's systems fit into our game? What range can they detect you at, in any given conditions (clear, day, foggy, night, full moon, etc)? How often would they slow to listen? How do they handle search patterns? Likely areas to search? What range should flares illuminate? We still need to upgrade the periscope detection element, but that's on the list of to-do items. We've seen areas that need to be strengthened and received player feedback, and where necessary, tuning and improvements have been made. The goal: realistic AI so you can assume the enemy acts realistic, behaves in ways that makes sense so you can plan tactics accordingly. All fit in the scope of a real-time computer game that balances difficulty with fun.