I return to the med and...

[Fenris_Wolf]

... I'm finding a vast abundance of vessels less than or equal to 2500 tons.

Coastal Freighters
Small merchants
Tramp steamers
Small freighters
V&W Destroyers
A&B Destroyers
Black Swans
Hunt I Class
Fishing Boats

"Verdammt! Is this what I was sent here for?"

I've set up ambushes along convoy routes, naval route choke points all over the mediterranean. Waited for days and each time I check the hydrophone to see what kind of a vessel we've just picked up, it's the accursed sound of a small merchant and the likes I have listed above. I've seen so many of them, and not a single convoy for over a month along the Liverpool - Alexandria route.

I feel disappointed too because quite often a single Coastal Freighter or similar junk is being escorted by up to three warships. :hmm: While one or two warship escort for a single small merchant is much more common, almost a norm. It was like this in GWX 1.3 but there were other, proper targets too which are no more. Taking these out time and again for absence of a better target, I feel like a carnivore forced to live on small rodents and refuse.

It's ultra rare to find anything bigger here in the med. I've bagged a couple of Liberty cargo vessels and that's it. So while I feel sincerely thankful for the pretty stuff and a great work by the GWX team for GWX 2.0, I find that my favorite playground has been ruined.

I guess I'll start over with a new carrier and head to the tropicanas where the sun is warm and so is the hoochie woochies.

[danlisa]

Keep hunting.

Due to all convoys being placed on the RND campaign layer, the contents of each convoy has a % chance of loading at the start of the game.

So the 'smaller' ships will have a (example) 75% chance of spawning but the larger ships have a 25% chance. During it's 'life' GWX has tried to reduce tonnage scores to something more akin to realife. This % chance spawn rate is one of the weapons used.

[Fenris_Wolf]

GWX has tried to reduce tonnage scores to something more akin to realife

Thanks for the clarification.

So the improvisational trick was to use small merchant vessels instead of larger ones which a U-boat captain would deem unworthy to attack (while giving it enough destroyer escort screen for deterrence).

Interesting.

Game-wise I would call it quite a nerf. Or atleast a new and clever time-sink for the whole game. Couple that with realistic torpedo behavior (a greater torpedo failure rate) and you'll see why I felt like pointing it out.

[danlisa]

Originally Posted by Fenris_Wolf

So the improvisational trick was to use small merchant vessels instead of larger ones which a U-boat captain would deem unworthy to attack...

Not exactly.

Do you know how the RND layer works?

Example:

In the campaign files/mission editor, you build a convoy which has either generic/specific entries.

Now, these entries have a percentage chance of being added to the convoy in game. So, all that's happened is that the smaller vessels have a greater chance of being loaded into the game, whereas the larger vessels have a lessened chance.

On you next reload, you may get larger vessels added to the same convoy which only had small vessels before. It's the way SH3 roles the dice.

Don't forget, not all convoys had large 10000+ton ships sailing with them.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Fenris_Wolf

Thanks for the clarification.

So the improvisational trick was to use small merchant vessels instead of larger ones which a U-boat captain would deem unworthy to attack (while giving it enough destroyer escort screen for deterrence).

Interesting.

Game-wise I would call it quite a nerf. Or atleast a new and clever time-sink for the whole game. Couple that with realistic torpedo behavior (a greater torpedo failure rate) and you'll see why I felt like pointing it out.

Not a 'nerf' at all, as you say, but a solution for not having a better variety of smaller-tonnage ships available at the time we built it. (dunno what the status is today on smaller tonnage ships available by the various 3D ship builders.)

In real life too, there are/were far more smaller ships available to merchant fleets for the simple fact that they were more inexpensive and less complicated to build.

Larger ships took longer and cost more. (usually... am not referring to the situations of mass production on the scale of the Liberty ships) nAturally they were not as common, and this fact should be reflected in-game.

Also, 3D ship modellers are typically interested in building large ships like liners, or more warships. (Because that's what everybody wants to sink! )

AG124 was good enough to basically make a series of small tonnage ships to order, to reflect our effort to inject a tonnage spread that made more sense/mirrors real life shipping by tonnage scale / availability more closely.

One of the worst things working against the 'simulator' aspect of SH3, has always been the enormous possible tonnage hauls players could drag down with little effort, even playing at 100% 'realism.'

GWX addresses that problem by making smaller ships far more common, and larger ships more rare based on their tonnage. This reduces the player tonnage haul, which pushes the average player tonnage haul down in the direction of being "more believable."

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Side note: we should rememeber that for a U-Boot commander there was no such idea like "unworthy target" - every merchant would be pursuited to kill on sight, no matter what size, even if a success would be unlikely.

EDIT:
Side note 2: I love sinking targets, but I feel strongly we have too many of them in the seas and oceans. I almost never (or even just never) come back to base with my torpedoes still in tubes - and that happened to U-Boot IRL.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Abd_von_Mumit

Side note: we should rememeber that for a U-Boot commander there was no such idea like "unworthy target" - every merchant would be pursuited to kill on sight, no matter what size, even if a success would be unlikely.

EDIT:
Side note 2: I love sinking targets, but I feel strongly we have too many of them in the seas and oceans. I almost never (or even just never) come back to base with my torpedoes still in tubes - and that happened to U-Boot IRL.

The problems is that SH3 takes no account of the Enigma code being broken and shipping being rerouted well away from known U-boat locations. Neither are you required to stay in contact and wait for other U-boats... or to hold your fire per BdU orders etc etc etc. There are many real life variables that cannot be effectively added in... that influence player tonnage ahuls in SH3.

If anything, there are fewer ships in SH3 waters than in real life.

Its just too easy to find ships in SH3.