TWOS: So, about convoys, stealth and AI...

[Spraki]

'ello Kaleuns.

NEW questions! Yay.
I've decided to repurpose this thread for my noobquestions. So I don't clutter the main page with my indulgences.



#7 The "magnetic vs impact" subject

I read that there were bugs regarding pistons. I've also read that there is an angle-of-impact rule as well, which I understood quite well. I also understand that rough waters will cause magnetic torps to explode prematurely. Nonetheless, is there still a bug?



# 8 Related to magnetic pistons

Ok, so in other words: using magnetic postons actually deals "moar dmg", effectively allowing one to sink a ship with one torpedo alone?

So far, one torpedo hit has been doing it for me, but I've been only hitting poor DDs and freighter/tanker/troop rubber ducklings of 1939 so far.
How deep should I set the torp in relation to their overall keel under water?



# 9 Gyro and "aiming to hit the ship at the stern, mid or bow"

Took me a darn while to figure that the periscope/gyro actually means they program the torp to alter it's course to that particular bearing. You see, I've pretty much came from SH1 (and SH2, which felt more like a mess) and your TDC had a 360° offset ring for you to select the actual gyro. Tutorials did not quite nail that part imo. I'm most likely wrong .

As for my question or comment.
Ok, I know you can offset with shift Q/E, which I thoroughly use to narrow a bit the error margins. Which is great.
So far, I've "sorta mastered" the RAOBF workflow, which should allow me - I think - also reverse engineer the target's course(?). I still have to do a bit more with the actual attack disk, I suppose.

My actual question - or where I am lost:

I use the RAOBF + TDC's assumed 0° gyro position to hit the target, I guess.
How do I actually decide if I want to hit the bow or stern of the ship?
Does that even do much, if I were to hit ships at a different spot that is not the mid-section? At some point, they do seem to flood and slow down anyways.

I suppose hitting the ship once already does a lot, but I don't know if this applies for even bigger ships or late-war vessels.



#10 Target AOB and it's course

So RAOBF helps find the AOB, obviously.

Would I have to pull out the attack disc?
...Presuming I want to get all the true bearing/target course correctly.

I mean, somewhere, I've been eyeballing the target's course, even it's AoB.

(though at that time, I thought i had to set the AoB to "the angle of bow it would have by the time the torp hits". Boy was I wrong).



# 11 Deck Gun ammo

I googled older subsim threads. I read them and I... still dunno.

I am aware of
- shooting AP shells at the waterline at closer ranges
- shooting HE at the superstructure and decks
(Is this correct? It applied in World of Warships *Ugh xD*)

But what about the SS shells?
which are I assume Anti air shells? I could've sworn that is what the mouseover tooltip said, but I could be wrong.

I know they do a lot of secondary bangbangbangs, and I've noticed a few times that they've started actual fires (and people screaming lol) much faster than actual HE. I'm probably wrong here.

Can somebody fill me in on the three shell as of today, as many threads are super old and often say things about bugs?



PS: anybody remember the three sea shells...

_________________________________________________

Old questions

So I finally, if not magically, found myself in front of a convoy. It is night.

I managed to quickly steam to a 90° esque position to do some "torp training via save scumming". My questions are not about how to torp, as this is well-covered in various tutorials.

More importantly, I wanted to ask about stealth vs detection and AI.



1. Do freighters actually have hydrophones? Or do they only have searchlights?


2. Related to #1, how can you really tell if a freighter is "armed"? I can't remember which one it was, but IIRC, I identified a freighter, thought I could go close and then bullets flung towards my general direction. I also couldn't spot any deck guns .

Then again, transports probably have soldiers on board.

I'm not sure if that "Armed *Indian-sounding name* Transport" is the only armed vessel.

I probably confused the freighters for refitted transports. Maybe. Nonetheless, hard to tell who can shoot, and who can't.



3. I read other players able to actually to get within convoys like a wolf in a sheep suit, even with escorts around.

My question: Obviously, you can't keep silent running forever, as the surface vessel will steam off eventually. Does that mean that you can actually go Ahead-Flank or is there even a way to "stay in the shadow of freighter screws" so that escorts cannot detect you?


4. I tend to be spotted by spotlights. Do I just cheese them by putting the periscope down?

I know escorts will start going full sonar. But I don't know if they actually detected me.


5. Since there are escorts, I suppose surface attack is out of the question, unless I try long range sniping with G7a?


6. About refitting, I frequently noticed that refitting tends to just randomize the setup of torps, often putting two electric and two steam torps ,_,. Is there a way to set them correspondingly?

Or would I have to shoot one torp, so I can drag-drop-swap things accordingly?

Suppose steam torps are fine for night assaults.
Hope the questions are not too crazy.

[Fifi]

Hi Spraki,

1) no hydrophones on freighters, some have search lights

2) at the beginning of war, freighters were not armed. Do not remember the starting year for them to be armed though

3) silent running is necessary only within a close radius of escorts.
By night, escort can’t see you even surfaced if not too close. You can run decks awash too, to avoid detection also. Escort can’t hear you when you are behind them ( they hear their own prop)
Best is to anticipate the convoy path, and wait all stopped submerged…if possible 90 degrés from the path.

4) don’T leave your periscope too long out the water!

5) surface attack with escorts is suicide

6) you can manually choose the torpedo type for refitting imho

Cheers

[Spraki]

Originally Posted by Fifi

Hi Spraki,

1) no hydrophones on freighters, some have search lights

2) at the beginning of war, freighters were not armed. Do not remember the starting year for them to be armed though

3) silent running is necessary only within a close radius of escorts.
By night, escort can’t see you even surfaced if not too close. You can run decks awash too, to avoid detection also. Escort can’t hear you when you are behind them ( they hear their own prop)
Best is to anticipate the convoy path, and wait all stopped submerged…if possible 90 degrés from the path.

4) don’T leave your periscope too long out the water!

5) surface attack with escorts is suicide

6) you can manually choose the torpedo type for refitting imho

Cheers

Thanks.

About #6
Hmm, I will have to check that. Last I tried, it wouldn't let me drag drop anything.
I will check again though!


edit:
Provided admins won't mind, I've just repurposed the thread with new newbie questions. Hope it is ok to do a little bump.

[XenonSurf]

#7:

Torpedos with magnetic detonators will easily fail early in the war by not exploding if they don't hit the target at a 90° angle. TWoS reflects that as well as other torpedo failures, so dud torpedos have orverall a realistic percentage in your actions. Late in the war this percentage should be sensibly lower (but is it? I don't know...)

[Captain_AJ]

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

#7:

Torpedos with magnetic detonators will easily fail early in the war by not exploding if they don't hit the target at a 90° angle. TWoS reflects that as well as other torpedo failures, so dud torpedos have overall a realistic percentage in your actions. Late in the war this percentage should be sensibly lower (but is it? I don't know...)

This I totally disagree. What is the difference between a magnetic detonator and impact?

magnetic detonators as implied will go off near the vicinity of the ship keel. It does not matter if the ship is at a 90-degree OR A 1 AOB ANGLE. btw THE WAy USING AMAGNETIC DETONATOR ON A ON COMING DESTROYER IS VERY USEFUL AT 0 -1 AOB ANGLE any torpedo for that matter will destroy a ship if IF ALL THE VARIABLE ARE Correct, AOB. Speed, Distance. An impact will need to contact the ships hull .

[XenonSurf]

Maybe you are right, excuse my horrible mistake
If I'm well informed, the German U-Boats were about to wipe out a big part of the English fleet in the Norvegian Sea at the beginning of the war. If the torpedos were not so terribly faulty this would have succeeded and I think that as a result England would not have played any further role in the war, forced into a disadvantageous peace treaty with Germany.

We all know that History is different - indeed by a very close call IMO, due to defective torpedos - what an irony.

Now, what was the technical defects of the torpedos? Impact-type failures? Or failures of the first magnetic-type ones? I'm not an expert in this, and besides: it's not that I care very much about either, but what I know is: These torpedo defections were a turn-around in the European sea war.
In the Pacific region, the USA had similar problems with their torpedos at the start of hostilities. Magnetic torpedos or not? I would have to open a book and not learn very much, except that hitting ships full-broadside (90° angle as I said) was the best technique for minimizing duds; with German U-Boats or American ones!
The Kaleuns had their clock in their hand and gave the fire orders. I don't think they did care about this technical stuff, they didn't have to know, they were confident in their weapon engineers...

Back to SH5:
With the 2 torpedo types that I can chose from at the start of campaign, I'll chose to hit ships full-broadside and a little above the recommended keel depth for best results. If I don't do it, I will score a lot of misses, with magnetic, impact or whatever.

[XenonSurf]

#9:


According to the TWoS tips (for the moment I'm not going to risk my own opinion here - see above):


"Aim for engine room! Engine room on most merchants/warships is located slightly behind ships superstructure".


In Auto TDC this is a milkrun, but not so in Manual TDC. I'm not that good to make such an adjustment yet, if so it must be done at the last moment I guess, but I'm happy to deduce from it that torpedos can make more or less damages, and probably the nr. of torps to sink a ship will vary because of it. That's realism.


For you Spraki, and lovers of technical stuff: It's worth to read the SH3 WAC5 documentation about scenarios, or the SH3 GWX3 500+ pages manual. It contains most of the details you ask in your thread, plus a lot of historical background. Then there a lot of docs in the TWoS mod itself, located in the game folder.

[Spraki]

Originally Posted by XenonSurf

#9:


According to the TWoS tips (for the moment I'm not going to risk my own opinion here - see above):


"Aim for engine room! Engine room on most merchants/warships is located slightly behind ships superstructure".


In Auto TDC this is a milkrun, but not so in Manual TDC. I'm not that good to make such an adjustment yet, if so it must be done at the last moment I guess, but I'm happy to deduce from it that torpedos can make more or less damages, and probably the nr. of torps to sink a ship will vary because of it. That's realism.


For you Spraki, and lovers of technical stuff: It's worth to read the SH3 WAC5 documentation about scenarios, or the SH3 GWX3 500+ pages manual. It contains most of the details you ask in your thread, plus a lot of historical background. Then there a lot of docs in the TWoS mod itself, located in the game folder.

Thanks. I will check that 500page manual!

Still a whole bunch of questions to figure out !