RuB 1.45 - Why are single ship contacts back?

[runyan99]

Originally Posted by Stiebler

To remove the single-ship contacts, go to data\cfg\contacts and change the line:
Display Range to Opportunity Contacts=300
to another suitable value (eg, =10, ship will be nearly visible anyway, to =50 allows simulated accurate DF-ing).

I've done that in the past, but doing so will also disable the reporting of whole convoys, and I don't want that.

Somehow I was never getting single ship info in RuB 1.43, but still getting convoy info.

I checked the file you mention above in 1.43, and it still has a setting of 300. So, something else must have been different.

[Stiebler]

Runyan99 said:

I've done that in the past, but doing so will also disable the reporting of whole convoys, and I don't want that.

I believe that you are confusing "Opportunity Radio Contacts" (single ships) and "Important Radio Contacts" (convoys) in the cfg file.

[runyan99]

Maybe.

I thought that both single ships and convoys were opportunity contacts, and only the task forces were important radio contacts.

My main reason for believing this is that if the setting for opportunity contacts is set to 300km, I never get convoy info farther away than this, while I get task force info from far far away.

[Krupp]

About that direction finding again. Dönitz has descriped the situation during the "Paukenschlag" operation, that US (who were totally unprapered for a warfare like this at that time) merchant ships used their wireless messages "freely" and often told their locations in messages. So it was easy for those few U-Boats to find their targets. I'm not sure, but I understand that they were able to point the aproximate location without coordinates too (with the D/F aerial).

The range must have been pretty short when this method was used , perhaps no more than 20-30 km? The HF/DF High Frequency Direction Finders in allied escort ships (from autumn 42 -->) were able to locate U-Boats at range of 25 nautical miles when they were sending their "kurzsignals". So if huffduff's range was "only" about 50 km (more than enough since the U-Boats needed to group up near the convoys), then surely (I assume) the german U-Boat DF couldn't do the same and the range must have been shorter and the location unaccurate (but near enough to be found visually or by hydrophones).

When Dönitz moved from Wilhelmshaven to France Kerneval, in summer 1940, he brought a lot of D/F and code braker experts and equipment with him. Germans were able to read the british messages sended from the middle of the Atlantic and the coded orders sent to the ships. This information (the target location) were then sent to operational U-Boats. The allied cypher was changed in summer 1943, after that germans were unable to break it.

Kriegsmarine had no own airforces thanks to Herring...err Göring. The few reconnaissance planes that were in use mostly had difficulties to pin point the exact location of the ships they spotted. THe error could be 150 km. Too much for U-Boats. And the code was different between the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine. This brought another problem in communication.

There should be single ship radio contacts in the game. But in what quantities then? German reconnaissance from air was pretty much null like the moves of their surface fleet or single ships. German surface vessel (warship or merchant) wouldn't brake up radio silence very easily due to the effecient D/F system brits had for controlling the area near their home island (Bismarck example above. Dangerous area for D/F against U-Boats was considered to be within 200 km from british coast). And if a U-Boat saw or located a target, it would most likely destroy it. So the only way to explain radio contacts is the D/F in U-Boats (which should be limited to no more than 50 km like mentioned before by stiebler) and the B-Dienst codebrakers in mainland (France), and after summer 43 the method was pretty much useless due the new allied cypher.

Edit:

I mentioned earlier in this topic:

Can you imagine how much supplies can be fitted inside of a 5000 tons ships for exaple. Change it to truck loads or train box cars and you can see the importance to sink all of them...

convoy PQ 16 lost 7 ships =
32 400 tons of war material
147 tanks
77 airplanes
770 vehicles

That is only seven ships and the material losses are huge!

Originally Posted by runyan99

When I was playing under 1.43, I never got any single ship contacts. I had to luck into them, or I had to hunt for convoys. This was as it should be.

I just started my new patrol under 1.45 and I'm getting single ship contact information. Why?

Please take it out. U-boats didn't get single ship contact reports. They got convoy reports. Other U-boats didn't report single ship contacts to other boats, they sunk them. Condors didn't regularly report much of anything to u-boats. Where exactly is this information coming from? It's garbage.

Take these single contacts out. It isn't historical.

I don't know who Runyon is, but I just love this old post!!!

Originally Posted by runyan99

Then please, find me an example of a U-boat using this information to sink a lone merchant. It should be easy.

I don't think you'll find many.

The single ship contact information in SHIII is a game invention by the designers to increase the action for the player, and to avoid long fruitless patrols.

You're twisting historical reality to conform to SHIII.

U-boats were not able to use radio intercepts to reliably locate and sink merchant vessels. Far and away most of the single ship contacts were chance encounters detected by the eyeball of the watchmen.

P.S. What pages are you referring to in Clay Blair? I'll re-read it.

This one is even better...!!!!

[bigboywooly]

@ Magua

If you dont like single contacts take them out
No need to bang on about then in different posts

ie;
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...t=95660&page=4

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=95281

Thats the second mod you have had a go at for this - if you dont like it dont use it or make your own

No pleasing some people

[Ducimus]

Source:
The Battle of the Atlantic: The allies submarine fight against Hitlers Grey Wolves of the sea. By Andrew WIlliams.

Page 165, Chapter 8, paragraph 4.



Whlist Doniz hoped for favoruble conditions on the American coast, he could never have imagned just howe favoruable they would be. The westword progress of the Drumbeat boats had been monitored carefully by U-boat command. On 2 January, Doniz decided to break his own orders and authorized U-123 to search for a Greek steamer drifting some 200 miles east of Newfoundland with a broken rudder. Hardegen remebers: 'There was a pea-souper of a fog when we arrived there. It was a sudden suprise to see the shadowy outline of a ship. I could see there were two tugs in the process of taking on lines. I coudlnt really shoot - i was too close. And then the fog lifed and suddenly i saw two destroyers. I turned around immediatly and the fog closed in again. They couldnt see me'.

Donitz's message to Hardegen had been intercepted by Bletchley, decrypted and passed to the Tracking room. The two Canadian destroyers were lying in wait for him. 'I said to myself, "if i sink this freighter, and perhaps one destroyer, theres still the second one. It's shallow water and i can't escape, so theres a good chance of my boat being sunk." My mission was to get to New York, so i let the ship go, though i felt very bad about it.'

The U-boat trap did not close but it took U-123 300 miles off course and wasted a great deal of fuel

[CWorth]

Can we please get a lock on this thread as well.Lets nip this one in the bud before it turns the corner like the last thread.

If you do not like the single contacts then TURN THEM OFF!!!!Or better yet..simply stop playing the game and sell it to someone who will appreciate it and the work that these modders put into the game to get it where it is now.
Dont go digging up an 8 months old thread just to start the same argument and crap that got the last thread locked.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Source:
The Battle of the Atlantic: The allies submarine fight against Hitlers Grey Wolves of the sea. By Andrew WIlliams.

Page 165, Chapter 8, paragraph 4.



Whlist Doniz hoped for favoruble conditions on the American coast, he could never have imagned just howe favoruable they would be. The westword progress of the Drumbeat boats had been monitored carefully by U-boat command. On 2 January, Doniz decided to break his own orders and authorized U-123 to search for a Greek steamer drifting some 200 miles east of Newfoundland with a broken rudder. Hardegen remebers: 'There was a pea-souper of a fog when we arrived there. It was a sudden suprise to see the shadowy outline of a ship. I could see there were two tugs in the process of taking on lines. I coudlnt really shoot - i was too close. And then the fog lifed and suddenly i saw two destroyers. I turned around immediatly and the fog closed in again. They couldnt see me'.

Donitz's message to Hardegen had been intercepted by Bletchley, decrypted and passed to the Tracking room. The two Canadian destroyers were lying in wait for him. 'I said to myself, "if i sink this freighter, and perhaps one destroyer, theres still the second one. It's shallow water and i can't escape, so theres a good chance of my boat being sunk." My mission was to get to New York, so i let the ship go, though i felt very bad about it.'

The U-boat trap did not close but it took U-123 300 miles off course and wasted a great deal of fuel

yes, I already mentioned this one in the other thread (the NYGM vs GW one). It is the only documented case in the six years of the war. Now if you're looking for the opposite then you'll find countless descriptions.

Originally Posted by bigboywooly

@ Magua

If you dont like single contacts take them out
No need to bang on about then in different posts

ie;
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...t=95660&page=4

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=95281

Thats the second mod you have had a go at for this - if you dont like it dont use it or make your own

No pleasing some people

Oh, I love the RUB Mods. It set the standard for all those mega mods that came after it. I will be keeping RUB for a loooongggg time..

My point was to applaud the Historical Argument the Poster Made (Runyon)

Originally Posted by CWorth

Can we please get a lock on this thread as well.Lets nip this one in the bud before it turns the corner like the last thread.

If you do not like the single contacts then TURN THEM OFF!!!!Or better yet..simply stop playing the game and sell it to someone who will appreciate it and the work that these modders put into the game to get it where it is now.
Dont go digging up an 8 months old thread just to start the same argument and crap that got the last thread locked.

Oh. I see. if someone does not agree with your analysis the solution is to just lock the thread?

[Ducimus]

Someone here's very good at this:

Ok Mr self appointed expert who seems to think we should all bow to your superior intellectual accumen. SInce everybody else is wrong, and your so right, and since you hate and detest single merchants so much, here's what you do, and ONLY YOU will have to do this, because i highly doubt much anyone cares as passionatly about this "issue" that you do, and you can do this in one of two ways.

1.) Load the mission editor. Load the Campaign.RND file. Find every instance of a single merchant contact, in the explorer window, right click on it, go to group properties and where the section of contact reports is, put in -1, and 0%.

or you an

2.) Open the the campaign.RND file in MS wordpad, look for whatever the contact report variable is called, then do something like find "ContactReporttime =" and replace it with ContactReporttime=-1, do the same for probably, and reset them all to 0%.
do that for the entire freaking file. If i have this backwards in this descrption all you have to do is find an HK group entry, and look at its its contact probably as you do not receive contact reports for them. Emulate those settings for all your single merchants.

Of course that will kill your convoy contract reports as well, so you'll have to go back and put those back in through the editor.

Since your so smart, im sure you can handle it. If you hate other peoples work so much, then do some of your own work, half the people here mod their own game, and probably can't comprehend why you just dont do this change yourself, rather then sit here and bitch about it.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Someone here's very good at this:

Ok Mr self appointed expert who seems to think we should all bow to your superior intellectual accumen. SInce everybody else is wrong, and your so right, and since you hate and detest single merchants so much, here's what you do, and ONLY YOU will have to do this, because i highly doubt much anyone cares as passionatly about this "issue" that you do, and you can do this in one of two ways.

1.) Load the mission editor. Load the Campaign.RND file. Find every instance of a single merchant contact, in the explorer window, right click on it, go to group properties and where the section of contact reports is, put in -1, and 0%.

or you an

2.) Open the the campaign.RND file in MS wordpad, look for whatever the contact report variable is called, then do something like find "ContactReporttime =" and replace it with ContactReporttime=-1, do the same for probably, and reset them all to 0%.
do that for the entire freaking file. If i have this backwards in this descrption all you have to do is find an HK group entry, and look at its its contact probably as you do not receive contact reports for them. Emulate those settings for all your single merchants.

Of course that will kill your convoy contract reports as well, so you'll have to go back and put those back in through the editor.

Since your so smart, im sure you can handle it. If you hate other peoples work so much, then do some of your own work, half the people here mod their own game, and probably can't comprehend why you just dont do this change yourself, rather then sit here and bitch about it.

Or. I could just install the mod that gives me a choice already..... I don't want to name what that mod is since there is such an explosive rivalry.

I love the photo by the way! :rotfl:

[CWorth]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Someone here's very good at this:

Ok Mr self appointed expert who seems to think we should all bow to your superior intellectual accumen. SInce everybody else is wrong, and your so right, and since you hate and detest single merchants so much, here's what you do, and ONLY YOU will have to do this, because i highly doubt much anyone cares as passionatly about this "issue" that you do, and you can do this in one of two ways.

1.) Load the mission editor. Load the Campaign.RND file. Find every instance of a single merchant contact, in the explorer window, right click on it, go to group properties and where the section of contact reports is, put in -1, and 0%.

or you an

2.) Open the the campaign.RND file in MS wordpad, look for whatever the contact report variable is called, then do something like find "ContactReporttime =" and replace it with ContactReporttime=-1, do the same for probably, and reset them all to 0%.
do that for the entire freaking file.
Of course that will kill your convoy contract reports as well, so you'll have to go back and put those back in through the editor.

There now you have a complete explanation how to do it.So hopefully this will be the last we hear from you on this subject.At least for awhile anyway,as that will be quite alot of work to get each and every one of them.

Since your so smart, im sure you can handle it. If you hate other peoples work so much, then do some of your own work, half the people here mod their own game, and probably can't comprehend why you just dont do this change yourself, rather then sit here and bitch about it.

EXACTLY!!!!!!!