[TEC] Dud torpedo chance mod?

[Sailor Steve]

Or, as a friend of mine used to say, "Dice have no memory".

Great answer, deicide, and welcome aboard!

[Sniper297]

"But, perhaps the game determines duds and malfunctions when we load the torps at base, so that changing files and replaying a save, might have no effect."

Probably. At first I was reloading the automatic save in base, that was the one where I got all the fish turning left 50 degrees off course. TDC problem unlikely, I was shooting at the KONGO that's loafing along at 1 knot in my "Gone Asiatic" mod - BB is steaming from left to right, so the usual TDC bug would have deviated the fish to the right rather than the left. Auto targeting is ON for all these tests. Now I'm deleting all saves and starting a new career after changing the data in the Torpedoes_US.sim file, but the suggestion about a single mission is probably the way to go - half a dozen YAMATO BBs at anchor maybe. My only concern there, does the game roll the dice the same way for careers as it does for single missions?

"Dice have no memory", unless they're loaded, of course!

deicide, welcome aboard, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. I've been to Las Vegas a few times in my misspent youth (even got married there once godhelpus) so I'm familiar with the science - flip a coin and it has a 50% chance of heads or tails, get heads 20 times in a row the chances of the next flip are still 50-50 it will be heads or tails. The law of averages still states that out of 1000 flips approximately half will be heads and half will be tails. The law of random chance means that there's always a possibility that the first 20 flips will all be heads, but since I'm from Chicago I want to examine that coin carefully to see if someone is cheating. Problem with a game is we don't have any way to check if the dice are loaded or the coin is weighted on one side, so we're stuck with guesswork.

I suspect I'll have to fire 1000 mark 14s and see what happens, all I know is in the past having duds on in a stock game career means an unreasonable number of failures. Which again, is historically accurate, but doesn't make for a fun game.

[Sniper297]

After editing a test mission to place half a dozen anchored Yamatos, ran the mission a few times and noted more duds from the stern tubes than from the bow tubes, dunno if that was random chance or not. Changed the circular run probability to 99%, set depth 40 feet, sub at 60 feet running at 2 knots - all fours shots (SARGO class) ran circular, two left and two right, in very tight circles. They ran around twice before the first two exploded over the sub on the third circle, the next two made one more circle for a total of four before getting close enough to wreck the sub.

Objections so far;

1. In real life WWII fleet subs had two different sonar sets with three different sound heads, one set was always designated to track the torpedoes "hot straight and normal" or otherwise, in game there's no warning from sonar that a fish is deviating from course or starting a circular run. First warning you have of a circular run in game is when the fish blows you up.

2. Same thing for a premature, in real life sonar would report the explosion of a premature if it was more than a few seconds from the estimated impact time. In game unless you are in external camera and see the splash, you have no idea what happened to the fish.

Duds are reported, but other failures are not, for any kind of realism that situation needs some kind of fix. There's also no variation in the gyro problems, a circular run is always the same diameter circle and a deviation from course is always exactly 50 degrees.

Summary, I'm not sure the dud programming is even worth trying to fix, whatever I do it will still be too lame for prime time.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

There's also no variation in the gyro problems, a circular run is always the same diameter circle...

I think this makes sense. The problem was likely caused by the rudder being jammed over hard, so the torpedo would make a tight circle; hence the danger - there was little time to react.

[Sniper297]

Problem in game is there's plenty of time to react, the circle is so tight it passes ahead of the sub twice before the sub forward movement puts it in the path of the torpedo on the third circuit. But unless you're in external cam or the attack map there's no warning to react to. This is yet another part of the failure of the crew AI to simulate what a real crew would do, notice and report things that a captain would need to know.

[TorpX]

Well, O'Kane's boat suffered that fate, in spite of the fact that it made a couple circles before it hit.

I don't agree that it is certain that the crew would know about a circle runner. Your sound man could be dutifully tracking the first two torpedoes you fire, oblivious to the third looping around and coming back.

[Sniper297]

Can't remember if it was THUNDER BELOW or some other book, but the author specifically said that each torpedo was tracked as it was fired, and any deviation in bearing was immediately reported.

"Your sound man could be dutifully tracking the first two torpedoes you fire, oblivious to the third looping around and coming back"

Doesn't work like that. He'd be sweeping back and forth across the bearing and would hear the first or second deviating even though they would be further away than the third, and it's hard to imagine a situation where the closest torpedo sound would be drowned out by ones further away.

It's a failure in the AI programming, similar to the squawking parrot repetition of reporting the same wing escort as a new target every time they lose sight for a second and reacquire it, but don't think it's important to mention when the previously reported escort suddenly turns toward you and increases to 38 knots. Or even bother to report he's opened fire until you actually get hit.

[kajonas]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Or, as a friend of mine used to say, "Dice have no memory".

Great answer, deicide, and welcome aboard!

I hate to say it.... but dice do have a memory. If you have ever experienced a great game of black jack at a casino, then had the house chge dealers. OMG does it change everything. Just guessing here, but I think its related to quantum effects (multiverse maybe??? who knows). "God does not play dice".

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by kajonas

I hate to say it.... but dice do have a memory. If you have ever experienced a great game of black jack at a casino, then had the house chge dealers. OMG does it change everything. Just guessing here, but I think its related to quantum effects (multiverse maybe??? who knows). "God does not play dice".

...but keep in mind that the game is not using dice. the game is using some sort of random number generator...which is determined by some half-a$$ed programmer working for Ubi. God only knows how they are applying the probabilities that are defined in the dotSim files.