Quote:
Originally Posted by jenrick
I actually really like the Skipjack in '68 over the other boats. I've made a few posts about tactics, that cover why. However in the '80's campaign the Skipjack should have been retrofitted the AN-BQQ-5 (I think it was) spherical array and now should have the angled tube issues.
-Jenrick
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I too like the Skipjack (really its about the only thing that I drive) but even as far back as 1968 it was regarded as a "second-line" boat. For its time it had amazing speed and maneuverability, its sonar (BQS-4 active and BQR-2 passive in the chin position) could be seen as "general purpose" at best even for when it was introduced in the late 50s.
For various reasons the Skipjacks never received many upgrades until they were retired in the late 80s and early 90s (there was talk of a sonar upgrade which had funding pulled, many of the boomers had a similar sonar system and which was eventually upgraded to BQR-21 which featured digital processing but was still short of what the spherical arrays could do). Small size was an issue. Another problem is that they were the last boats built without isolation mounts for machinery, so even if they had of received better sonar or newer fire control systems which would have enabled them to fire missiles, they'd still be at a disadvantage compared to newer boats.
As hard as it can be to play as the Skipjack, I shudder to think how a Skate class would fare, even in 1968! This only makes the idea of old one off boats like Halibut and Seawolf going on sneaky special ops even scarier.
This kind of brings up another point. I think they may already have aspects of this but I would assume, weather war came in 68 or 84, that they wouldn't treat all boats as equal and assign them the same types of tasks / missions. What I'm saying is that by the same token USS Narwhal, the quietest boat in the fleet would probably be asked to do some sneaky stuff (SEAL insertion and recon) your 25+ year old Skipjack is probably going to be put on some kind of barrier patrol vs. sneaking into Soviet waters. While I think this is worth bringing up, its true that game play has to be taken into account, can't imagine the game would be very popular if you just spent hours watching your old Skipjack rust and gather marine growth.