Tactics when engaging convoys

[Silence]

Hitman,
I applaud your purity of thought concerning submarine simulations. You have a valid point about what is realistic, and what works in a simulation that only pretend to be real. Would love to hear more about the US Navy protocol for approaching and sinking enemy combatants. Thanks for keeping it real!

[Ducimus]

Here's what i do:

First thing i don't do is sit ahead of the convoy, near the track of the lead escort. If you fall into his active sonars beam, he will find you most of the time.




What ill do is sit ahead off the convoys track, but slighly off of it, to keep clear of the lead escort. My intent is to move in closer to the convoy, once the lead escort has crossed my bow, before the side guarding escort happens up on my current position:



Like so...

By staying out of the lead escorts path by a 2,000-3,000 meters or so, ive avoided him detecting me, and ive slipped in behind him. Timing here is crucial, as you also have the side escort to worry about. You need to move, but not so fast that you make alot of noise. Do this right, and you'll have the lead escort way ahead of the convoy somewhere, the side escort somewhere behind you, but effectly a non factor until your torpedos start hitting, and a nice field of fire with overlapping targets.


Naturally this varies. If the side escort has pulled in closer to the convoy , then you have a problem. Sometimes ill improvise and point my bow at the lead escort to minimize my profile,(cause ill be in his sonar beam) and then swing a hard port or starboard the instant he passes me so i can bring my tubes to bear on the convoys track. Which also puts me in a position similar to the picture above, only its alot more risky since the escorts are much closer in that scenario.

[jhelix70]

I have yet to write a long and throughout essay on the "realism" matter

I'm sure we all await that with baited breath.

Its so nice we have people like you to tell us how to play the game, we would be so lost otherwise.

[Snuffy]

I usually take the defense out first. One or two well placed fish in the DD takes care of them for the most part. Then, it's to the surface and duke it out with the merchants with the 4.5.

Last night I took out a convoy in really heavy seas. I would occasionally get thrown back to the interior of the boat if the waves got too deep. And the sea action threw a lot of my shots off, I had to let one merchant who was extremely damgaged go cuz I was out of ammo for the 4.5 and out of fish as well.

This convoy had 4 DDs for escort. I came in from the front of the convoy and took the lead out with a fish in his nose, it was an instant destroyed target. I went under the convoy and headed for the right flanker and after a good long dance got to a point where he didn't exist after 3 shots. I had one dud and a miss before I landed square in the midships. The rear DD came over to inspect what was happening to the right flanker and made an easy target of himself and I sent him to the bottom with one shot midships.

The left flanker was kind of aloof not paying too much attention to what was going on and I had to surface and give chase to catch him. As I closed he decided to go see what happened to the other escorts, so I chased him back to where I came from. He did an immediate 180 and went back to his previous position and I had to chase him back there again. Caught up with him finally and landed my second fish in his starboard nose and he rolled over and capsized.

Catching up with the merchants I launched early on a couple of them and wasted my shots. I then decided on the 4.5 and chased them down one by one and in between getting submerged and waves so high I couldn't see the target I finally managed to take 7 of the 8 out. Number 8 was burning and listing badly but I had to let him go.

Reported my efforts to Base and got a "Good Job ... come on home."

[U-Bones]

I do an approach like Ducimus describes and then I fire a spread at one or two selected targets. I then immediately dive as deep as possible and go silent.

I never even dream of wasting torps on convoy escorts, or hanging around anywhere near the surface, or making any kind of noise.

[Hitman]

I'm sure we all await that with baited breath.

Its so nice we have people like you to tell us how to play the game, we would be so lost otherwise.

EDITED:

Nah, forget it. I'll send you a copy of the essay when it is ready. Autographed, of course. Thanks for your support

[jtm55]

Hi All,

Hitman, you are correct about Tactics used by Submariners during WWII. Way back when I first became interested in SubSims, I'm talking about Silent Service on the NES Platform. I saw the names Mush Morton, Dick Okane & the like. I read up on them & studied their tactics & to a Man none of them ever talked about going deep to approach a target.

Ducimus, your diagrams are textbook as to how one should position themself for a convoy attack.

While I rarely post I'm a frequent visitor.

[jhelix70]

EDITED:

Nah, forget it. I'll send you a copy of the essay when it is ready.

What's this? Restraint?

I obviously misjudged you. I hereby withdraw my earlier sarcasm. I should go back and edit my post to make it more polite.

Seriously, maybe you should write that essay and send it into the devs in time for the next patch. They have some serious unrealistic AI behavior problems to work out.

[Hitman]

What's this? Restraint?

I obviously misjudged you. I hereby withdraw my earlier sarcasm. I should go back and edit my post to make it more polite.

Seriously, maybe you should write that essay and send it into the devs in time for the next patch. They have some serious unrealistic AI behavior problems to work out.

It was just a bit of irony . I think you misunderstood my earlier posts, as they were not intended to be a personal attack against your tactics when playing the game or a "bible" to tell people how to play. Probably my fault, since quickly writing replies "on the fly" in cyberforums does not always end up with the impression you would like to transmit.

I have been playing sims a lot of time, not just naval but also racing sims. And in racing sims is where the discussions have gone deeper and angrier when it comes to realism. You can learn a lot from racing sims in that respect, and about how well it translates into PC gaming, but as I said, that is something that would require a much longer and throughout text, thus the "essay" joke I made.

The bottom line I wanted to highlight is that someone will always find ways to trick the sim, and thus no modder or programmer can pretend to make a program code so perfect as to give always real life results to real life actions. But for years and years I have been seeing people here waste thousands of hours of efforts modding a game into something others couldn't cheat, instead of modding it into something that rewards a certain way of playing. :hmm: That's a battle lost even before the start.

I always rate sims or mods for what I get when I employ historic tactics, not for what I get when playing arcade style. I know I could trick the game sometimes, but that's not the fun of playing a sim for me. For others, the fun might be simply beating the machine, no matter what means you use for it -which is very respectable-, but not for me.

Cheers