AI detection in TMO for sh4 ver 1.5

[Ducimus]

:hmm: Well, my goal is "near atlantic difficulty", but not full blown atlantic difficulty. Japanese ASW wasnt as good as the allies, but they weren't all that bad either. So this is one of those things where it try and balance realism and historical accuracy with what makes a fun game. That said, i cannot in good concious make the ASW as difficult as the allies. (although id love to, and could if i wanted. :p )

At any rate , dumb escorts.. are dull. Increase their ability to detect the player and at the begining things are overwhelming to a new player. However assuming one sticks with the game or mod long enough - old hat.

Still the question remains, just how far do i want to, (or how far should i) push AI detection? In terms of active, and passive sonar. Visual detection i think is close enough.

[Factor]

could this be released as an optional AI mod pack? That way, you could make a hard core mod,(atlantic style), and what you are looking at now. 2 options that the user could decide on?:hmm:

[mlp071]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

:hmm: Well, my goal is "near atlantic difficulty", but not full blown atlantic difficulty. Japanese ASW wasnt as good as the allies, but they weren't all that bad either. So this is one of those things where it try and balance realism and historical accuracy with what makes a fun game. That said, i cannot in good concious make the ASW as difficult as the allies. (although id love to, and could if i wanted. :p )

At any rate , dumb escorts.. are dull. Increase their ability to detect the player and at the begining things are overwhelming to a new player. However assuming one sticks with the game or mod long enough - old hat.

Still the question remains, just how far do i want to, (or how far should i) push AI detection? In terms of active, and passive sonar. Visual detection i think is close enough.

If i may suggest, from my limited expirience with TMO.

It is not just escorts being dumb, also players having very accurate tools(sonars with small error margin, for example) at hand to(maybe to accurate IMHO) and quite potent torpedoes( even bad placed torpedo can sink big ship).

PTO IRL was not easy by any means, only very few USS patrols in whole war had more then 30k tonnage:

http://www.valoratsea.com/records1.htm

and only small amount of US Subs managed to sink more the 30k in whole war.

I am not saying that it should be that way literaly, but you have right now players sinking , at least, double those numbers on regular basis, with no sweat.

so you draw the conclusion.

And as for having patrols without any tonnage, maybe you can look at this. U-212 UBoat had 15 patrols and 1 ship sunk total :

http://uboat.net/boats/u212.htm

And Germans far more exceded tonnage per patrol in comparison to USS during the war.

Maybe 2 ways to do:

- 2 versions of mod , eg. casual and hardcore.That could be nightmare to maintain for you though(sort of like 1.4 and 1.5 )

- Gradually improving IJN sensors, and IJN crew expirience as time goes, to represent "improvements that they made".
If those "improvements" could be added randomised factor of detection ranging from present detection level to some high one(+/- 5-10% random difference) , you will never know are you getting easy shot or you are in for it when you run into convoy(still gonna have easy shots though).Same with escort crew expirience.In addition make USS sonars/hydrophones little bit less accurate, TL less protective and torpedoes less deadly.