Indeed, I'm well aware of Koji's superb work. I'm just casting some bread upon the waters as to how playable escorts/Convoy commander might work out as a "competitive game" between the two "sides". And what other gameplay wrinkles need to be thought out for playable escorts to be a success.
I forgot to add that when considering the victory conditions, the time spent in game by all players should be recorded, and summed for each side at the end of the game, at which point the ratio of these times be employed to adjust the required score for a "win". So, if you've 4 fully manned U-boats, but only one player in escorts, then the victory conditions would be heavily biased against the U-boats, as they are effectively playing versus AI rather than manned escorts....
Last time I discussed this with Koji, he was not in favour of escort players being able to "teleport" between ships. So we differ in that respect. I - and Gurudennis - thought that this is a gameplay necessity to strike the right balance between "fun" and time expended in play. I think it's more or less self-evident, that spending 2-3 hours in game as an escort captain, with the Asdic continuously pinging, but by happenstance being on the "wrong side of the convoy" - and therefore having no opportunity to prosecute a search/DC attack - is a fairly surefire way of making escort play deeply unattractive.
The important thing here is to greatly improve the "intelligence" of the escorts from the current cretinous AI. With players able to move between escorts, no U-boat captain will be able to assume any escort is AI directed, and therefore every escort has the potential to move at speed into asdic range, and therefore he'll need to keep an eye on all visible escorts, not just one where he can be certain he's out of visual range.
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