Where Cold Waters Drops the Ball

[Julhelm]

I've been told from submariners that saturating the area with fire is about what they expected from a surface group that has trouble detecting the submarine to begin with. And it's not that different from a WW2 escort screen saturating your position with depth charge barrages.

During the Cold War the homing torpedoes were considered to have such low PK that standard doctrine was to use a nuclear tipped depth bomb.

The aircraft have passive and active sonobouys as well as MAD. They can drop a field of passive bouys and you will not be aware that you've been counterdetected until they drop a torpedo on you. Remember that you have to perform TMA while the surface group only needs two good bearings with enough geographical separation to get an instant fix on your position, courtesy of datalinks.

Consider Fleet Command where often the first indication of a submarine is torpedoes coming out of nowhere, and so the reaction is to send what helicopters and aircraft you have to drop sonobouys in the direction of the reciprocal bearing. The Cold Waters AI does the same. When it detects incoming weapons, it estimates a distance where it thinks they originated from, then brackets that area with missiles or fire a salvo down the reciprocal bearing. It is entirely possible to counter this behavior by doglegging your own torpedoes, and shoot from 15-20.000 yards.

If you ever played Fast Attack, there are several scenarios in that sim where aircraft will drop large numbers of airdropped torpedoes on your position.

To counter aircraft, you can use the MOSS decoys as a contact breaker.

[GoldenRivet]

Its a consistency issue with the AI.

Went back and repeated my tactic on Junks on Parade.

obliterated their surface group and this time they never knew what hit them

never even put a torpedo within miles of me.

doubt they could have detected salt in the water.

i did nothing differently than i did in the first run. so what gives?

why is it that in two virtually identical engagements, the enemy AI is flawless and super-saturates my area with torpedoes and depth charges, and in the next i take out their entire fleet without so much as a glance in my direction?

EDIT:

i understand that AI is probably the hardest thing to simulate and get ironed out in any game, its just hard to replicate human behavior in a simulator, let alone the human behavior of a whole crew

[Julhelm]

I think a lot comes down to being detected early by MPA or helicopters. Sometimes you just have bad luck. The single missions have a nasty tendency of spawning too close to the enemies. Try using the close-to button instead.

[GoldenRivet]

dont anybody get me wrong.

Cold Waters is fun. This is my only complaint about an otherwise excellent game.

If you get a good starting position you'll rock and roll, but it only takes one out of place parameter or bad shot and your arse is grass and the enemy is the lawn mower

[Julhelm]

In the campaign missions you can usually choose where to engage the enemy, which makes a huge difference. The single missions are much more randomly generated for variety - there are no prescripted positions or parameters like in DW or Silent Hunter. The only exception being the land strikes and insertions.

[AllQuiet]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

Its a consistency issue with the AI.....
i did nothing differently than i did in the first run. so what gives?

why is it that in two virtually identical engagements, the enemy AI is flawless and super-saturates my area with torpedoes and depth charges, and in the next i take out their entire fleet without so much as a glance in my direction?....

I wish to ask what the environment conditions were....and if you were running the oem JunksOParade or a modded mission. Check and see if your Junks mission file substitutes fixed weather conditions with random conditions. I feel certain the ducts and thermals varied, and wish to ask how you used the ducts/layers when you engaged/launched your attack.....

The modded files I installed shows that the author edited out most of the helo and airplane occurrences...but the campaigns still offer those threats.

I'm stumped on a simple matter where I construct a mission to include a Moskva, I have to also select whether or not I want a helo or airplane included in the event. I wish the developers would construct the coding that anytime a Moskva is part of an engagement, there is automatically helos in the area searching once an attack or a radio signal has been discovered.

[SaltiDawg]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

...

During the Cold War the homing torpedoes were considered to have such low PK that standard doctrine was to use a nuclear tipped depth bomb. ...

Obviously we are talking simulated doctrine here, but this is not the doctrine that we used during the Cold War. If we had simply "plopped" missiles and nuclear torps out there and FINEX-ed the excercise, this would not have provided any real world training for a NON-NUCLEAR escalation into wartime.


We always did ops using exercise non-nuclear weapons.

[Julhelm]

That makes perfect sense actually. However, I from what I've read, both sides thought they could wage a limited nuclear war at sea without escalating the overall conflict, to a greater extent than with land-based tactical nukes. What are your thoughts on this?

[SaltiDawg]

Just my personal opinion - at the time a lowly Lieutenant - but it was my belief that if either we or the Soviets starting using nuclear weapons that the ICBMs would have to be employed and my wife and family were home at one of the ground zeros.


That's a weighty burden, but it is one that anyone in those positions needed to look at and accept. Again, in my opinion.


It is a lot easier to shoot an exercise weapon at a target than to accept the notion that you just just killed 100 fellow Submariners - whatever their nationality.


When Kursk was lost, I was saddened for a significant period of time and indeed contributed to a Memorial. In my readings of WWII in the pacific there was an immediate gladness followed by a sense of remorse following the sinking of an enemy Submarine.

[nikimcbee]

Have you played it recently GR? I hadn't played it since it came out a year ago. I love the changes they made, I find it much more playable now. I had the same thought as you, plus I found the keyboard controls awkward, but with the new China campaign, I totally see the improvement to playability.

[Delgard]

SaltiDawg,
PRP required a strong set of morals, expressed by values. Teamwork in most cases was not due to the workload, but to not be alone in such a difficult situation. Focus on the exact moment and have faith. Faith relieves us of the burden.

[Geoff then]

Now, I have come across this detection issue quite a few times.


And I guess I am not the only one.
I get a sonar contact and order "close to 25kyards"
But when the action starts, the whole convoi of ships is about 10kyards away, and I am already in their active sonar range. And even before i could order anything, they already fired at me. This should not happen. I mean it is a fast closing surface group, not some silent-running submarine.
And sadly this occurs quite often. Mind you, I wasnt approaching fast, I was on "right-click mode" and when the sonar contact screen popped, I was at 5 knots.
So, what is this about?