Community projects?

[keysersoze]

Originally Posted by gap

currently, logs generated by my spreadsheet contain two numbers which are related to torpedoes available onboard at any given date; they are: 'ships attacked so far' and 'torpedo loadout at the beginning of the patrol'. Based on the information you have provided, I think that we should increase the latter by a fixed amount (4 [?]) each time the given boat was refitted. Do you agree?

Agreed

Originally Posted by gap

Okay, it seems reasonable to me.
For maximum range I will use the information on surface range provided by uboat.net for each U-boat type, and I will increase it by 50% after each refit; 'distance travelled so far' will be calculated automatically based on input coordinates. We will need to redo the previously generated logs though.

Redoing the logs shouldn't be too difficult since we already have stored copies of most of the essential data. I assume we could copy and past the coordinates information, making minor adjustments for any refits (although there shouldn't have been any at that stage of the war).

Originally Posted by gap

As we are at it, I remember you once suggested to use commander's personal successes and awards, besides their rank, for calculating boat's veterancy level. If you provide further detail on your idea, I could try implementing it, but I suggest to use only the information which we can obtain directly from our sources, without complicating too much the whole data input process

I have been trying to formulate a simple but effective way to determine commander skill level (for the sake of simplicity, I think we should ignore crew ability). The ideal method would be to calculate veterancy level based on tonnage sunk by date, thereby simulating the commander "learning" the business of U-boat warfare by experience. However, this method seems completely impractical since it would require recalculating tonnage at the beginning of every patrol. I don't think we should impose these burdensome requirements on our volunteers. Calculating veterancy based on commander's awards is also not an ideal solution: the requirements to receive a Knight's Cross declined steadily as Allied ASW increased in lethality, so that they were occasionally being awarded after sinking just one or two merchants by 1944.

In view of these obstacles, I think the best solution would be to have a one-time calculation of veterancy based on the total tonnage sunk by the commander over the course of his career. We would not be able to simulate "learning," but I think this method would greatly reduce the difficulty of determining skill level. For example, any commander that sank 75,000 GRT or more could be considered a "veteran," even from the beginning of the war. This would be about 64 commanders, according to a quick check of uboat.net.

Before assigning specific numbers, though, it would be important to know to what extent veterancy affects AI ability. Has this been tested?