airbases

[Stiebler]

Cobalt said:

ive had the trouble of not having any aircraft attack me so i switched from gw to nygm to see if that made any changes. im in the middle of 43 and it seemed to of worked well at first, but the aircraft in biscay would never drop their bombs. i searched the forums and found the elite airbase bug and i changed the biscay airbase to veteran, and now it seems the planes are less frequent and still dont drop their bombs unless im completely stopped on the surface. i sure hope theres a way to fix this or sh3 will be much less enjoyable.

If I understand correctly, you found with NYGM that aircraft generally dropped their bombs after 1943, but not in the Bay of Biscay. You say later that you have the NYGM 2.0 double Biscay airbases, with Biscay1V (veteran) and Biscay1E (elite). Also that you are playing at time compression=256.

This is very strange, since the airbases certainly work for most people - in fact, there were a lot of early complaints that there was too much air coverage of the Bay of Biscay! I personally spent hours and hours testing the combination. The veteran aircraft carry the punch. They are seen much less rarely than the elite aircraft, but you never know which bomber will drop its bombs. Are you playing in late 1943 (June or later)? That is when the air attacks really start to become painful.

The elite aircraft provide the frequent air coverage, but rarely drop their bombs. This is the so-called 'scarecrow effect'. You must not hang around on the surface to satisfy your curiosity as to whether the aircraft will actually bomb, since it might be from the veteran base. (However, for some reason, you have chosen to do so - risky, very risky.)

To get an idea of scale, real U-boats in late 1943 reported up to four encounters with aircraft per night, while on the surface recharging. Usually their radar detector would give plenty of warning, so the aircraft were not actually engaged. So if you run on the surface during the whole day, you should expect to experience around eight aircraft encounters per day. However, NYGM is scaled back a little from that, owing to the complaints and other deficiencies in the stock game.

There is one other issue that we identified. Apparently stock SH3 decides whether its aircraft will attack you frequently/sometimes/often at power-up. You can see this by making a game save in aircraft-infested waters. Keep reloading the saved position, and you will always get roughly the same frequency of attack. Reboot the computer, and reload the same postion, and often you will see a different frequency of attack.

Finally, aircraft often will not bomb, even if veteran, if your evasive manoeuvres are violent enough. They turn away to try again.

I hope this provides some help. Sooner or later, if you continue to try to fight it out with aircraft, you will be well and truly smashed.

The possibility that you have a file defect, and may need to re-install NYGM (or SH3) remains.

[NYGM 2.2 is going to provide an even better solution.]

Stiebler.

NYGM Tonnage War Mod - Leading Edge Realism