ImprovedConvoys Beta and UnRealUBoat - Udated: 03-25

[pampanito]

Originally Posted by jasonb885

Which version did you use? The latest one I had tuned some of the contact report probabilities, so that should effect stuff some.

Version 200507052236. Latest one, I hope!

Originally Posted by jasonb885

I think later in the war the U.S. should have an increased amount of shipping in the Atlantic convoys, but I don't have any information on that presently. So right now the '42 convoys and the '45 convoys are very similar. From what I have read most ships should be liberty class by '44.

If this is of any help, in 1944/45 just 20 ships were torpedoed from HX / SC / ON / UGS convoys, they were:

7 USA (all Libertys)
8 British (5 freighters, 3 tankers)
4 Norwegian (3 freighters, 1 tanker)
1 Panamanian freighter

Originally Posted by jasonb885

And if anyone wants to abuse the Arctic convoys, please do. I spent a lot of time on those to find no one ever abuses them!

If only BdU decided to send me so far North in patrol...!

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by pampanito

...

If this is of any help, in 1944/45 just 20 ships were torpedoed from HX / SC / ON / UGS convoys, they were:

7 USA (all Libertys)
8 British (5 freighters, 3 tankers)
4 Norwegian (3 freighters, 1 tanker)
1 Panamanian freighter

Maybe that's why I have so little information.

I don't have much on early war OG/KX/HG either though.

I'd like to eventually take a shot at those convoys. The Med and convoys south of the equator get so little abuse tuning the appearance rate of the Atlantic convoys is more of a priority, though.

I still need to add a few TRs and PPLs to fast convoys in '43 and '44 for D-Day. Perhaps even in '42.

[joea]

Originally Posted by Lanzfeld

Does the improved convoy mod increase the spacing between ships?

Well read my post here: http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=39897

Got a liner finally on ship was so close it filled my UZO, a C2 at about 500-600 meters, it was stormy though, 15m/s wind and night. Got the passenger liner, but it was September 1940 and the liner was American.

Good work Jason, seems to be a good mod.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by joea

Well read my post here: http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=39897

Got a liner finally on ship was so close it filled my UZO, a C2 at about 500-600 meters, it was stormy though, 15m/s wind and night. Got the passenger liner, but it was September 1940 and the liner was American.

Good work Jason, seems to be a good mod.

Thanks.

None of my convoys have a PPL in them, though.

I wonder which convoy it was you ran into. It could've been OG/HG/KX one of which I think has a PPL in the default configuration. I haven't looked in a while though.

[rulle34]

Originally Posted by jasonb885

Sweet!

Which version did you use? The latest one I had tuned some of the contact report probabilities, so that should effect stuff some. I haven't had a chance to play around in '41 to see contact report frequency. I'm glad the FFs are spawning. I thought the convoys needed a few Black Swans!

I haven't gone through and seriously balanced the escort skill yet. Early in the war most are novice, regular, and veteran. In '44 I have a bias towards mostly veteran escorts. A few convoys that only run in '45 have 25% escorts elite.

Hopefully that'll work out well enough.

(With the sonar fix from SH3 v1.3 the elites will still kill you.)

I think later in the war the U.S. should have an increased amount of shipping in the Atlantic convoys, but I don't have any information on that presently. So right now the '42 convoys and the '45 convoys are very similar. From what I have read most ships should be liberty class by '44.

I just haven't gotten to reasonably playtesting past 1940 yet.



And if anyone wants to abuse the Arctic convoys, please do. I spent a lot of time on those to find no one ever abuses them!

I have done some patrols in 41 with your mod. It works very fine. I was facing a 9 columns convoy but It was only three ships in line in each column though?

I have tried both north Atlantic and south west of Africa coast.

The mod seem to work fine.

Have you changed the performance of the destroyers? I have this sonarmod just NOT to make them so uber! will I face this elite DD's later on??

/Rulle

[pampanito]

Hello again,

My second patrol with Improved Convoys, and it seems to work fine. Assigned area between Canary Islands and the African coast. When in the patrol area, convoy report received. Made contact (as usual, from dead astern! )
Convoy located at grid CF86, going NNE, speed 6.
To make it short (I spent five real-time hours struggling with the escorts, two Flowers and one Black Swan) I fired 13 torpedoes, sank the Black Swan and damaged two big C3s which refused to sink...

Convoy behaved in a most convincing way, the escorts were truly well-trained, they detected my periscope every time I made an approach and kept pinging me down to 150 metres deep. Many depth charges but no damage suffered.

No single ships found to date, but the area was not the best for that.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by rulle34

..
I have done some patrols in 41 with your mod. It works very fine. I was facing a 9 columns convoy but It was only three ships in line in each column though?

I have tried both north Atlantic and south west of Africa coast.

The mod seem to work fine.

Have you changed the performance of the destroyers? I have this sonarmod just NOT to make them so uber! will I face this elite DD's later on??

/Rulle

Neat. I was wondering if the nine columns would cause a crash. I'm pleased to see someone's tested that for me.



I didn't mess with the destroyer's sonar. I know that mod is in RuB. It's probably available somewhere separately, too.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by pampanito

Hello again,

My second patrol with Improved Convoys, and it seems to work fine. Assigned area between Canary Islands and the African coast. When in the patrol area, convoy report received. Made contact (as usual, from dead astern! )
Convoy located at grid CF86, going NNE, speed 6.
To make it short (I spent five real-time hours struggling with the escorts, two Flowers and one Black Swan) I fired 13 torpedoes, sank the Black Swan and damaged two big C3s which refused to sink...
...

Excellent. That's probably one of mine as few original convoys had the Black Swan FF included. Many of mine do.

[jasonb885]

Okay, this puppy is ready to rock!

No Victory ships appear yet because of the few convoys defined in 1944, of which there are few, the % of American ships is so small or 0 such that % of Victory is rounded to 0. American Liberty and British Ocean class ships seem to be popping up, though. Additionally, columns are not 4 ships long and the bias is towards cargos, so you'll (strangely enough) a larger variety of tanker nations. (It has the opposite effect since Am and Br get gobbled up for cargos leaving slots more frequently for tankers of other nations.)



Things still left to do eventually:

a) Tune convoy contact reports appropriately (needs more testing)
b) Tune quantity of Regular/Veteran/Elite escorts
c) Tune quantity of American ships in convoys in 42-43+
d) Complete HG/OG/KX convoys (Only others abused by people)
e) Someday complete AS/MK*/KM*/GU*/UG* convoys

Stand by for upload baby!

[CCIP]

HG/OG/KX!

God I hate those suckers. I have no idea why, but they probably account for 3/4 of all my convoy encounters to date.

[jasonb885]

Originally Posted by CCIP

HG/OG/KX!

God I hate those suckers. I have no idea why, but they probably account for 3/4 of all my convoy encounters to date.

Yeah, I've gotten that impression. Too bad, since that information isn't useful in AARs.



You must spend a _ton_ of time off the coast of Spain dude.

[jasonb885]

w00p da d00p

New version out. Rebalanced nationalities for 1943+ along with composition and escort difficulty.

http://edseek.com/mirror/sh3/Improve...00507120036.7z

Playtest reports always welcome.

[Ishmael]

Just d'loaded new version. Tried mod 2236 with 2nd patrol,Oct 39. Got convoy report in BE31, was in position to go ahead of convoy track. 9 rows of 3 ships apiece, escorts, 1 Flower, 2 trawlers. Went silent as flower past abeam to port 2km away, no detection. Had no problems coming in range of convoy. Killed 1 t2 with 1 torp, 1 c3 with 2nd torp. 3rd went into 2nd t2 but she remained afloat. 4th missed a 2nd c2. Went 180 and put 5th in aux cruiser sinking her. dove deep(190 meters) while reloading and moved north along convoy axis. Came shallow, put 2 fish into another c2, sinking her, 2nd torp in another C2 making her DIW no sinking, and 4th into C3 sinking her, went 180 & polished off another c2, diving deep heading s then w back to T2 location. Came shallow after reload, finally got 2nd T2 with 3rd torp hit, missed small tanker & getting another C2. Went deep and evaded Flower for 3rd time heading WSW until clear of convoy. went to PD, spotted DIW C2. Surfaced after escorts rejoined convoy while I loaded external storage, then finished off last C2(Rough weather, no deck gun). Total tonnage, 59000 tons, no real problems evading escorts on this run.

[HMCS]

I have been playing with improved convoys for about four patrols now in my Type VIIc (now in June '41), and am LOVING it.


Playtest report: Playing at 60% realism:

I bagged my first capital ship (Fiji Class CA) escorting a convoy outbound from the UK in BF14.

Two patrols later, same grid and I bagged a Dido Class CL. My luck must be running high....

Plenty of radio reports on convoys. Sometimes 4 per patrol, which is plenty. Both inbound and outbound convoys. I am sometimes able to choose to go after either.

Size of convoys is an excellent feature- I have seen as many as 30 ships, of all sizes; escorts are generally comptetent, except for the last group I ran into - I sank a Black Swan Class F that presented her 90 to me at 500 yds (couldn't resist) and the others stood off (scared?), which let me run rampant (sinking 2 T2s, a T3 and a C3) before I had to dive and reload.

This was probably covered earlier, but will improved convoys work with RUB? My JSGME said it would conflict, so I had to bail on RUB, but I would like to use it....

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by HMCS

This was probably covered earlier, but will improved convoys work with RUB? My JSGME said it would conflict, so I had to bail on RUB, but I would like to use it....

Already answered:

Originally Posted by jasonb885

There's nothing to merge from RuB. RuB has an implementation of th 20/20 mod. I have a reimplementation based on the same concepts, but with different amounts of traffic. In RuB single merchant traffic is essentially the same very low level the entire campaign. I tried to tune my values to be more realistic as opposed to a simple reduction.

The only side effects I am aware of so far is the C Class destroyer now has depth charge racks in '39, which is good, and you will sometimes find C3 lone merchants in '39 and '40 because I altered the roster date for Britain. I consider them both positive.

The README.txt includes a detailed list of the features and changes.

Therefore, I installed Improved Convoys over RUb with the JSGME.