Wolfpack: Project Escorts

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by Caseck

I'm hoping SEA POWER goes multiplayer, but they're still mulling the idea around. Since DW and before that HARPOON the pickings are slim.

This is my number 1 hope for the game, simply because the behaviour, "intelligence" if you will, of players operating according to orders from a convoy commander, is going to be far far less predictable and dangerous to U-boat players than an AI will ever be. I can forsee some very prolonged DC attacks for a start, where marshalling the u-boat's battery power, dealing with damage (a hopefully more nuanced and detailed damage model) will provide some really memorable games.

[AKD]

There is a bit of technical information on Hedgehog (and ASDIC / SONAR use generally) in this post-war USN sonarman training manual (mind you some aspects only concern tech that was deployed at the very end or after the war):

https://play.google.com/books/reader...en&pg=GBS.PA44

[skipjack578]

Nice find ...i also found this on waky page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog

[Fearless]

Awesome stuff. Looking forward to commanding the escort.

[Captain_AJ]

Id Say a good way to not be in public and out of the way of the damm mask commies .. Great Work

[Fidd]

any movement on playable escorts?

[Fidd]

This is by way of a bump. I cannot over-emphasise how much I'd enjoy playing wolf-pack in battles were all, or some, of various escorts are playable, with crew-positions for the Bridge, gunnery turrets or positions, Asdic, Helmsman etc. The game experience of being hunted after an attack, knowing that's it's a real human player trying to out-wit you would be utterly different to that of being briefly hunted by an AI ship.

We'd need the Corvettes obviously, but also a small range of destroyers, ideally with a "convoy commander" playable position who can cause the convoy to make course/speed changes and attach escorts to an Asdic hunt or detach them to take up positions around the convoy.

There's a tremendous amount of extra interest that could be added to the game in this way, from various usable weapons such as hedge-hogs, to use of star-shells, and actual human observation rather than simple range-driven visual ranges.

[Sirjonkey]

would be awesome,
would love to send air support above those submarines

[mia389]

This would be excellent! I love wolf pack so far. I recently purchased destroyer - the uboat hunter and had a blast being on the other side. This would be an amazing addition to wolfpack. Not sure how it will be implemented when the time comes but I would buy it!

The pictures look great!

[Fidd]

Replayability. That's absolutely key to sand-box shooters, of which both Wolfpack and Destroyer - The U-boat hunter are BOTH examples of. Both also suffer from the same problem, namely that once you've mastered aiming torpedoes and evading escorts, there's nothing else to learn, and little replayability. This is chiefly because AI always sucks, and AI actions, be they of the convoy itself, or of AI escorts are always, relatively speaking, as dumb as a fence-post.

Wolfpack seriously needs PVP via player operable escorts, and likewise Destroyer needs human operated Uboats for either game to be able to retain players in the long-term. The addition of all crew-compartments has been good, and I look forward to learning to operate the engines and e-motors, however, in my personal view, it was an error not to move quicker to the PVP playable escorts instead. YMMV of course.

[PL_Andrev]

Originally Posted by Fidd

The addition of all crew-compartments has been good, and I look forward to learning to operate the engines and e-motors, however, in my personal view, it was an error not to move quicker to the PVP playable escorts instead. YMMV of course.

You can't have a cake and eat it too
I agree with you 100% but Wolfpack focuses on multicrew operations.
Nowadays it is hard to play SUB vs DDs when it is problem to meet 4 people together to play one sub...
Now I don't believe PvP is joining to Wolfpack, even corvette model is ready.

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by PL_Andrev

You can't have a cake and eat it too
I agree with you 100% but Wolfpack focuses on multicrew operations.
Nowadays it is hard to play SUB vs DDs when it is problem to meet 4 people together to play one sub...
Now I don't believe PvP is joining to Wolfpack, even corvette model is ready.

I play 4 times a week for 3 hours a time, always on a full, or near full boat, and almost invariably with 3-4 boats a game. Look for Duyfken and Frost games, first find the discord channels for them, where you can enlist for each game. Frost games are circa midnight GMT, and Duyfken 18:00 or 19:00 dependant on the day of the week.

As things stand, DC's are wildly too lethal, and the evasion portion of a mission for a u-boat is usually limited to one pattern of DC's, if it occurs at all. That means that the most dramatic and nerve-wracking, and fairly common, aspect of being a u-boat crewman is essentially absent from the game, as is a physics-model to more accurately portray the difficulties of keeping the boat and trim and at PD, and likewise a damage-model for crew to repair or stop leaks with isolation valves. Finally, the AI is woefully poor, relative to the decision-making a human being would apply in relation to an asdic contact. Even the "dive to 185m and you're safe" is a construct that necessarily limits dc attacks to a single pattern.

Playable escorts would put a great deal of that "content" back in the game where it belongs, not to mention make the duel between the u-boat skipper above much more personal! It's a no-brainer that this should have been in the game years ago, if only with human-directed AI ships initially, of the "Go here and prosecute an asdic search for 30 minutes, attacking when you have a fix, and readopting the search unless you see debris" variety; with players able to jump onto escorts who gain a contact coming later?

[Fidd]

How I'd implement playable escorts, were I coding God! :

1. Make a playable "Convoy Commander" (CC) who is based on an escort destroyer or sloop.

2. The CC has the ability to:

1. send any escort(s) to either a point in relation to the moving convoy
   to a contact held by another escort
   to an area to maintain an asdic search relative to the moving convoy(for an interval of 5 mins to 3 hours)
   to an area in relation to the moving convoy (as above)
   to detach an escort to occupy the nearest opening in the screen
   to cease an asdic search and reposition to nearest open escort slot
   to come to all stop and listen with hydrophones
   to relocate to another escorts position, on reaching, the replaced escort may be directed to a new location, otherwise it moves to nearest one

Otherwise all escort actions are AI, until playable escorts come into game, thence:

Some 6(?) or so players would be able to play as escorts. They may not enter a u-boat and then join the allies in that lobby. Players may relocate to an AI destroyer or Corvette that acquires an ASDIC contact, or detects a u-boat on the surface. Once the last player leaves that escort, the escort then returns to the direct command of the CC. So, most of the boring patrol side of things is done by the AI as of routine, but any escort may be temporarily manned at any time, by players. When so manned, all AI detection modes are suppressed, meaning visual contact is by human sight, not "detection range", and asdic contact is by human manual use of the Asdic, rather than AI "use" of it. 2 players would be the minimum crew - skipper/helmsman and asdic operator. Optionally more could join as gunners/dc operators. The skipper decides on the DC depth and either sets them, or orders the player to do so if present. Boats operated by human players would shew with a distinct marking on the CC's map. The CC may direct players to a particular escort. Roles not occupied by human players would prosecute AI behaviour for that role.

The aim being to minimise the number of allied players required to mount an intelligent defence of the convoy, without recourse to highly predicatable AI behaviours, but instead to have (if a CC is in post) the AI carry the burden of the boring aspects of the patrol, but have human players tending to prosecute attacks, or to otherwise keep a u-boat at depth via asdic searches. The lethality of DC attacks could be dialled back, as more DC attacks would tend to occur one a uboat is detected. This would create the highly personal and dramatic contest of the u-boat captain trying to outwit the escort and vice versa.

[Fidd]

As an addition to the concept laid out in the previous post: It's important that if more prolonged DC attacks come into existence, eg with a human escort commander keeping DC attacks/asdic lost-contact searches going, that there's ALSO a change to the way "alerts" works, so that the other 3 uboats are not compelled to wait for an hour or more of the 1st uboat being detected/DC'd/reacquired on asdic. The simplest change would be for a convoy to alert as it does now, however, once a given u-boat has been detected, it ceases to be re-alert the convoy if re-detected or continuously detected by any or all of the escorts, past 5 minutes from the detection. At which point, the convoy would de-alert, even though AI or human player operating an escort had it detected. Naturally, AI escorts in asdic contact with that u-boat would continue to attack it until called back to the convoy by the convoy commander, or it is sunk.

In other words, after a fairly short alert, the convoy would settle to a heading and speed fairly smartly, allowing attacks to be resumed by the other u-boats, even though, one of their number remained detected and was being attacked. This would keep gameplay going for the 3 undetected u-boats, whilst the 4th was suffering a prolonged DC attack(s) from one or more escorts (as directed by the convoy-commander.

[Fidd]

As a further improvement of "convoy commander" (CC):

One of the problems with implementing AI escorts being directed to locations further afield than the default distribution and distance of escorts around the convoy, is that our CC is completely aware of when the game starts, and also knows the typical behaviour of u-boat captains in terms of gathering data prior to firing, both at night, and in daylight. This means an astute CC can reasonably forecast the approximate position and distance of u-boats, and were he accorded complete freedom to send escorts to (say) distances of 5km or so from the edge of the convoy could be reasonably certain of being able to disrupt most attacks by forcing most or all u-boats below the surface during the period we're usually gathering data for AOB and convoy speed, making subsequent attacks very difficult.

Consequently it seems to me that what's needed is he is limited to a numerical value that's small to start with, but which gradually expands over time. This value would be the sum of the values of distance for all of the escorts, from their nominal normal positions. It would present the CC with a limitation that he could send one escort a reasonable distance, or, many escorts a very short distance, away from their standard location relative to the convoy. Similarly, if he detects a uboat, and attacks it/remains in asdic contact with it to keep it down, as the escort and u-boat fall astern of the convoy the effect of this is to prevent him moving other escorts any distance away. So in order to start to be able to use escorts to look for other u-boats beyond the escorts usual patrol area, he'll need to pull the escort well astern back to the convoy in order to gain the ability for him to move other escorts to greater distances.

Similarly, over time, he gains more latitude to move escorts further away without hitting the limit.

This also suggests that if corvettes, then bitterns, then Tribals were used sequentially, each relieving the next, to attack a given u-boat as it fell astern, he could retain the maximum flexibility to deploy u-boats further out, because the slower escorts would be relieved first, thus reducing their distance to the convoy, and thus conferring the ability to range further out to other escorts; than if a single corvette was left a long way behind, and could only catch back up with the convoy very slowly.....

So, such a mechanism takes care of the predictable problem of CC's exploiting the known behaviour of u-boats, and known start-time of the game, but allows - within reason - CC's to attempt different permutations of escorts behaviour throughout the game.

Such a system would also make some escorts much more valuable than others: Tribals would tend to be further out, moving at speed to try and catch a u-boat on the surface, and/or periodically, doing an asdic search to clear a likely vector for an attack. Conversely, corvettes would tend to remain close in. If one were to sink all the Tribals early in the game, it would greatly affect the CC's ability to defend the convoy.....