Atlantic Fleet: Anti-Submarine Warfare

[Onkel Neal]

VIDEO:

Its been a few weeks since our last post and as most of you know, that means we’ve been busy!
Today we have some exciting new footage of Type VII and Type IX u-boats being attacked by depth charges and Hedgehog. What’s most exciting about it is the new underwater camera…
That’s right! Atlantic Fleet has a full underwater camera which seamlessly transitions between the surface and underwater to reveal the action both above and below the waves.

[Killerfish Games]

VIDEO:

HMS Renown fires star shell at a RADAR contact to reveal the twins Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Hopelessly outmatched the Renown engages and well... you'll see.

Star Shells are now actual flares which can be fired and provide illumination of targets over several turns. Illumination reveals ships that might otherwise be beyond visual range, increasing gun accuracy.

[Sung]

Fantastic work!! I love it! (and i will buy it)

[CybrSlydr]

This looks pretty damn cool!

[schurem]

Busting subs is seriously hard! You need to time your destroyer runs very precisely to get hedgehog or depth charge salvos on target.

Anybody have some tips for this couch captain?

[Killerfish Games]

Originally Posted by schurem

Busting subs is seriously hard! You need to time your destroyer runs very precisely to get hedgehog or depth charge salvos on target.

Anybody have some tips for this couch captain?

With practice it gets easier.

Couple of tips that might be useful:
1) Don't approach a sub at periscope depth from the front... they can fire a spread and you're done for.
2) Use the Tactical Map to target the sonar contact and build a solution against it as you close in.
3) Close to 4000-5,000 yards. If the sub fires torpedoes you have room to evade.
4) SHOOT at it with HE shells at about this range, this can force the sub to dive (a bug makes subs very sensitive to surface fire, it might even sink!).
5) If the sub is at too long a range, it can escape once dived, so you want to get in close for a strong sonar contact, but not so close as to get torpedoed, 4000-6000 yards is about the sweet spot.

Now that it has dived and you are close, it can't fire torpedoes and it can't escape easily by diving deep. Drive over it and drop depth charges. Depth charges disrupt sonar, so if it doesn't get sunk, it does have a chance to escape with each depth charge attack. But with a bit of practice, you can line up depth charges very easily. Hedgehogs and squid make things even easier!!

Remember to take your time, you can back up your engines and just hover on top of the sub tweaking your rudder until you get the ASW lined up on top of it.

[schurem]

thanks! will give it a shot as soon as i have the time

[Niedowidek]

Yeap, I got one of my type IX subs destroyed by destroyer's gunfire. I was pretty surprised. But the convoy lost 80% of ships so I take it as a good exchange rate ;-)

Game is really great. Only thing that's a problem for me, but I think not for many others, is that battles (at least finishing all the merchants in convoy) takes about an hour and it's a bit too long for a guy with full time work and so, and putting app into background works for a while, but over the longer period and if I start another app in the meantime - I lose the game progress and battle is not saved in any way

I've got a problem with graphics also (ships in strategic map and explosions and water splashes drawn in wrong location) when starting app (and campaign) for the second time but forcing app to close and clearing cache helps in this problem.

Anyway, game is superb. I love both strategy and tactical layer. It's great that convoy routes change in time. Ships' AI seems pretty good to me. They are firing star shells in the night, try to surprise my cruisers with torpedo attack, retreat when overwhelmed, use smoke when running away. It's not so easy to finish wounded AI warship. And I've got beaten by HMS Hood and DD, losing Admiral Hipper, DD and having a cruiser damaged. All the mechanics of tactical combat are really satysfing - for me it seems to have good balance between realistic and arcade play. And great graphics (Unity engine rocks!), ship models are so detailed.

[Killerfish Games]

Thanks for the feedback and glad you're enjoying the game.

Submerged subs are far too sensitive to gunfire right now, it is a bug getting fixed in the next update.

Yeah, there are some strange memory issues when re-starting a game session. Very hard to troubleshoot... The game is somewhat memory intensive so clearing the cache and reloading each time will make it run smoother and more stable, so it is probably worthwhile doing this.

For those escaping merchants, you don't *have* to get them all. If you can hit them hard and fast to begin with, letting those stragglers go will hopefully not lose you the war. Unlike Pacific Fleet, you're not expected to sink everything that appears in combat

[Niedowidek]

Talking about this bug with gunfire sinking submerged u-boot:
At least once I believe I saw that a shell didn't hit a ship (merchant) directly (splash of water near its side) but it sank anyway, so I suppose it was hit under waterline (in other words, the engine simulates how shell is travelling underwater). Am I right? Or do I praise game engine too much? ;-)

[CCIP]

That, and I believe it also simulates splinters from HE ammunition. It's mostly noticable on the larger-caliber guns, but often you'll see that even near misses that wouldn't have hit the ship under the waterline still do damage.

[Killerfish Games]

Originally Posted by CCIP

That, and I believe it also simulates splinters from HE ammunition. It's mostly noticable on the larger-caliber guns, but often you'll see that even near misses that wouldn't have hit the ship under the waterline still do damage.

Correct, it models both splinter damage and shell penetration underwater.
It even calculates armour penetration based the on range of the shot (penetration decreases with range) as well as the angle of incidence of the shell as it strikes armour.

[nikimcbee]

Any news on the kindle version?

[Killerfish Games]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

Any news on the kindle version?

Might have it up on Amazon sometime this week.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Pacific Fleet

Might have it up on Amazon sometime this week.

Cool, look forward to it.