[WIP] U-Boat Killer AI Mod

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by The General

...And that's just what I did.

I reloaded my Campaign in which I was on my way home from the Western Approaches. Roughly 150 miles South-West of Plymouth I stumbled upon a Carrier Taskforce for the first time in SH5 . I had no torpedos left

I decided to go anyway and ordered an intercept course at flank speed. An aircraft passed lazily overhead. I paid it no mind as I'd received good intel that the Devs had simply copy & pasted the Aircraft.cfg file from SH4, which is known to be broken and thus the Aircraft had orders not to fire on me. So complacent was I, I didn't even bother to order a man to to the AA guns. "No" I said, "Finish your tea."

I got as close as I could to the Taskforce with the decks awash before opening up on the Carrier with my Deck gun. This was a mistake . The Carrier was surrounded by about 10 escorts, and all of them on the side closest to me immedietly opened fire. I ran around on Deck like a headless chicken, trying to get down the bloody hatch and order a Crash dive. The sky darkened with the number of shells headed my way.

By some miracle, I had made it to 20 meters without a scratch and ordered Periscope depth. When the head of the Observation scope broke the surface I was greeted by a terrible sight for a sober man; six Escorts headed my way at what looked like 20+ knots. Another first for SH5. Having had to evade a Destroyer or two in previous SH5 missions, I knew that I'd be safe at anything below 50 meters. Luckily I was in 100m of water, so there'd be no problem right? Wrong. I received a pounding from the Tommies that made me wish my Mother had never met my Father . Damage reports were coming in like I was working the floor of the Stock Exchange and I think I began to cry .

In between the tears, I managed to make an order that saved all our lives. For the time being. I put the Boat on the Ocean floor and ordered All-stop-quick-quiet. We were taking on water slowly in the Forward Torpedo Compartment, but nothing too serious.

ASDIC came and went and I could hear DC's being dropped off to the South, a half-mile away. After a while I felt brave enough to ascend to Periscope depth. On the way up I allowed the men to make what repairs they felt they could manage.

Even though it was One O'clock in the afternoon, I used the Observation scope to look around. Afterall, it'd never been a problem before. This time was different. Three of the original six escorts had decided to sit and wait for me to come up. That wasn't all. I counted atleast a half-dozen aircraft peforming dive-bombing and straffing runs. The nearest Destroyer soon spotted the large head of the Obs. scope and immedietly headed my way, calling on his friends to join the party. At seeing this I.......[Message Breaks Off]

This isn't finished yet... keep us updated.

I also use the Plane attack mod and during one attack two planes quickly joined the hunt and would spot me out every time I peeped with the scope. Well the destroyers must have been in contact with them because here they came... updating the last contact.

[Bilge_Rat]

well that was exciting.

PQ-17 mission. I snuck around the escorts, fired 4 torpedoes at 2 freighters. 2 hit, one ship sank at 21:55.

I start to sneak out of the area at 108 meters, silent running. My sound man starts giving me warnings about escorts coming my way. I listen and can hear 2 escorts heading my way, very fast.

at 22:25 they arrive, 2 escorts pinging away furiously, launching DCs, 28 in total over 20 mins. 3 are close enough to show up on the event camera. 2 explode behind and under me and damage various systems:













I then go deep first to 155 meters, then to 165, change course. They gradually lose me.

at 22:50, the pinging slows down. At 23:05, it stops, although I can hear them behind me for several hours circling around.

I sneak out of the area, repair the damage, surface at dawn, 04:00 in a medium fog and leave the area at high speed:




nice mod!

[7thSeal]

Crap....



I've already taken damage and now this, 50m down and have two of 'em on me which I'm having a hard time shaking. Currently saved it and taking a break for now.

[Nisgeis]

OK good, the aim is that you get a beating, rather than a tickling, but you don't get sudden death and you can make it back. Possibly the damage you take makes you limp home and end your patrol early, but I never had fun when I wasn't getting any attention from the escorts or when I did and was suddenly dead. You should also be able to elude the destroyers if you can out manouver them and get outside their sensor range so they lose you. Also if they don't know where you are, they shouldn't be able to pick you up on sensors when they have no realistic ability to.

For those of you that have escaped though... I'll get you next version!

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

OK good, the aim is that you get a beating, Possibly the damage you take makes you limp home and end your patrol early

That I've recieved.

You should also be able to elude the destroyers if you can out manouver them and get outside their sensor range so they lose you. Also if they don't know where you are, they shouldn't be able to pick you up on sensors when they have no realistic ability to.

that I'm currently working on.... takes planning which I didn't do....

For those of you that have escaped though... I'll get you next version!

This I'm looking forward too... you've added so much more to the excitement already... and I'm enjoying it very much... keep it coming!

[Sgtmonkeynads]

Originally Posted by 7thSeal

Crap....

" Dang man, That is one HUGE depthcharge !!"

[Westbroek]

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

For those of you that have escaped though... I'll get you next version!

we'll see...

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by Sgtmonkeynads

" Dang man, That is one HUGE depthcharge !!"

Yeah I brought the camera in a bit close... it exploded just after I took the shot and somebody began yelling out more damages.

Don't know why I'm laughing, its not funny.... seriously...

[doomlordis]

Thanks for this mod, i am now scared of the destroyers. Best mod yet.

[sirbum69]

I concur with the above poster. Before i placed this mod in, I had just finished downing 2 tankers that were being escorted by 4 destroyers. Course, soon as i hit the two ships in the middle, The destroyers did nothing at all...

They just kept on sailing as if nothing had even happened. Needless to say i was a liitle upset at UBI cause it felt non life like at all....Anyways i went ahead hit the TC up to about 512 to start sailing towards refit port.

I was on the surface...I saved the game at that point, then went looking for a mod like this...I found this one so i downloaded it, pluged it into the game.."While i was still at sea" Restarted the game...

Anyways i turned the TC back down to about 4...was sailing along and just happen to go to external camera only to find that 3 of the Destroyers that had sailed past before the mod out to about 9KM, had turned around and were already firing on me...LOL...Gues cause i was sailing at flank speed on the surface i made myself real well known...Anyways the moral was that, with this mod installed, the AI actully freaking did something instead of acting like nothing had occured..

Big props to you for this addition to the game...Now i have to actully sneek up on convoys and dive when they see me....

Now if i could only get it so the dam planes would do something...I mean it is annoying that it makes my game go from 1240 TC down to 8 cause there flying over, but for now thats all they do...i can just keep going and not do anything as the planes never do nothing..

I have a mod installed that i thought would change there behaviour but it doesnt seem to...

Oh well anyways great mod...

[Nisgeis]

Thanks for the comments.

I can make the planes attack, but they are quite nasty. Two hurricanes with guns only reduced my pressure hull to a collander in short order and I was dead. I'm waiting for the patch before doing anything else though. Hopefully the patch will fix everything .Well, perhaps not, but there's always hope.

[sirbum69]

earlier today i took out a battlecruiser...Dont remember her name, but after i sunk her, All and i mean all 8 of her escorts came barreling down on me.

Well that was to be expected, so i dove down to about 70M and went 1KNT ahead. Those dam DD's stayed with me till they sunk me. I sat there for about 4 hours game time with them following me, going around and around me, depth charging lol...

I even went all stop a few times and still they stayed, they never left. So im wandering if maybe they are a little too good. I mean i thought if you went deep and all stop that they would lose me...not the case...

Now im not sure if i can continue my campaign lol, cause i saved it while i was in the middle of all this....instead of just before i downed the battle cruiser

Edit: Well after going back into game, going to 80M and sitting all stop for 12 hours game time, which omg was what felt like 5 hours real time, 5 of the 9 DD's left...But 4 are still there above me...wont leave....So

Im thinking this is a little to much tweaked...I mean if im sitting all stop silent running on the bottom of the sea floor, they should have lost contact with me already.

So is there a way that i can tweak this back some...I dont want to lose the mod, cause its nice to see them do something other then just sail on, but i mean come on, if everytime i attack a escorted convoy i have to restart the campaign then its a little bit ofa game breaker...

Hi, Nisgeis, I like your mod, too, but I had a nightmare experience with it a few days ago! Here's the AAR:

I was on the British Blockade patrol hunting for a carrier. I patrolled about 20 km's south of Plymouth (big mistake!) hoping to ambush the Arc Royal whenever it returned to port. The environmental conditions were perfect for prosecuting a u-boat: clear skies, no fog, and calm seas.

Well, I got lucky and intercepted the Ark Royal battlegroup (carrier plus 5 destroyers) heading back to Plymouth. The battlegroup was on top of me very quickly and I had little time to work up a firing solution and get in to position. So, I did the best I could. Firing a 4-eel shot at it from 1600 m, I got a 2-for-1 in the deal because just after I fired the torps a destroyer that was off the Arc Royal's port quarter sped up and raced alongside the carrier. Well, the first 2 torps obliterated the destroyer and the second two nailed the carrier. Both sank quickly.

I dove to 80m (the water depth was only 90 m) and headed south in to the Channel at 2 kts silent running. The 4 remaining destroyers were on top of me in less than 15 minutes pinging the hell out of me! I couldn't shake them for the life of me. I tried all-stop for a while, 1 kt, 2 kts, flank when being depth charged, different depths, etc. No luck. Their depth charges missed me everytime unless I used TC. The few times I went to 4x TC they nailed me, but damage was light (94% hull integrity). While all this was going on, every once in a while I'd get a hydrophone report saying that there was a new warship contact closing on me.

So, after 2 hours real time of constant pinging I decided to use the external cam to see what was above me. There were 9 destroyers circling me and making depth charge runs. After 3 hours I checked again and there were 14 destroyers circling me! After 4 hours and after traveling less than 10 km's from my original position there were 19 destroyers above me! 19!!! The were mainly circling in a counter-clockwise direction like a wheel and I was the axle. On top of all this there were 4 aircraft dive bombing me (I'm using Wamphyr's airplane mod). They weren't dropping ordinance, though. I guess they had already expended it beforehand.

I was down to 20% compressed air by then, so I felt like there was no hope of escaping. I really didn't want to die so young, so I uninstalled your mod and ran vanilla AI. After reloading my save I heard one ping and nothing thereafter! The silence after 4 hours of pinging was very strange. Anyway, I bumped up the TC to 8x and at 2 kts I left the 19 destroyers behind with no problems.

This isn't the end of the story, however, and the following has nothing to do with your mod. But When I was about 10 km's away I surfaced, shifted in to flank, and got the hell out of Dodge! Not much later I was on the conning tower when an aircraft dived towards us. I wasn't too worried about it because I thought he'd expended all his ordinance. My flak gunner decided that he didn't want to go to the trouble of firing on the plane, either. Well, all I know is that there was a very loud BOOM! All I could see was a brown cloud of smoke! After the shaking stopped and the smoke cleared I climbed back in to the boat to see flooding everywhere. Hull integrity dropped from 94% to 53%. I guess the explosion woke the gunner up because he fired on the plane that followed and actually destroyed it.

Sorry for the long post, but I thought it might be helpful. I'm not sure if the AI is too strong. I'm not the greatest u-boat Captain, so I probably brought most of this hell on myself and my poor crew due to being so close to a naval port and because of the good sub-hunting evironmental conditions!

[sirbum69]

Na i had the exact same experiance if you read just above your post. And i did the exact same thing you did so i could get out of it, without having to end my campaign...But it seems i have too anyhow because even tho i was able to surface again lol, all my engines were destroyed from the beating i took..

So i was stuck in the water....Anyways, i turned the mod back on again after i started the new campaign....I do think it may be a little to high on the settings, as all stop on the sea floor for 4 hours str8 should have made them go away...

Guess ill just be taking shots of 4KM and more lol so to give myself enougg time to get the hell out of dodge for when the escorts come my way