Convoy Behavior

[finchOU]

I"m still not sold on the way Convoys have been trucking along in this game. I've added mod after mod but the Convoys predictability still make the game somewhat scripted and dull

Examples being:

1: Radio Contact of Convoys (red marks that appear) always seem to be along their Radioed course and speed for 24 hours plus after the report. This makes it extremely easy to find convoys as they don't seem to vary their course and speed much until......

2: After an attack on the Convoy the Ships seems to just stop or mass confusion of ships not moving very fast while seemingly waiting for a ships to sink or burn ect. Ships didn't stop! They were under orders to leave get out of dodge and not even try and pick up survivors. Anyway...it's a buzz kill to be depth charged for several hours only to see the convoy still pretty close.

3: They are too easy to penetrate (early on). The escorts make GREAT targets as they steam along at convoy course and speed just begging to be sunk (I have to purposely avoid sinking them to maintain my sense of realism). As an AOTD noob back in the day I remember how much the escorts moved around and shifted positions and doubled back...constantly moving faster and more unpredictable then the actual convoy itself. They would race forward then do a couple of 360's then race to another position. It make it much more difficult to penetrate the screen.

4. Speaking of AOTD , the convoys would change course not only randomly, but when a uboat was decected almost always going 90 degrees in one direction or another (sometimes right into your path, sometime not).

I guess my biggest beef is that Convoys seem like they could be improved so much. The ridiculously predictable Escorts make things very dull.......whether they can be modded to do so is yet to be seen.

[finchOU]

Pardon my Rant.... but..... I guess what I was really was trying to ask is if there is any future for an AI or Convoy MOD coming out? I remember Ranting about this a year or two ago with someone saying the that Convoys are slightly difficult to MOD where each Convoy has a "leader" ship that everyone else sort of flys formation off of. If you sink that "leader" ship then they wait until it sinks (read: ships stop and wait) to reassign a new flag ship to follow. I really like the IRAI MOD, still feel the AI is somewhat lacking in SH5. Any hope or have we shot our wod on some of these Mods?

[tat501]

I feel your pain. But I don't know historically how accurate their behaviour is. I know they had random changes of course factored in etc, but the behaviour of the escorts seems to me to be quite normal.

For example - I'm in position ahead of an approaching convoy - at a 90 deg. angle to their course. The position of the escorts means that its quite difficult for me to scoot inbetween their ASDIC cone whilst avoiding being heard by passive sonar.

If they do as you suggest, and one escort closest to me does a 180 and runs away for 500m at 15 knots - then it gives me an excellent and very fortunate opportunity to head at full speed into an attack position without having to worry about their Asdic.

eg;
E E E
E C C C C C E
E E E

This (above) is basically the position of the escorts of a convoy no?

Now imagine I am here;
E E E
E C C C E
E E E
S

In this model - the lead escort on the port side of the convoy has doubled back on itself. My sub- positioned at S now has a gilt-edged opportunity to get into an ideal attack position because of this random maneuverer.

It seems to me that the unpredictability that you state you desire the escorts to show could in the long term of a war of attrition be detrimental to their efforts because it allows attack opportunities like shown above. Of course -it would require a bit of luck for the U-boat to be in the right position at the right time - but I don't think such an approach would be the optimal one from an escort commanders point of view. Better surely to ensure that all the approaches to a convoy are covered by ASDIC and passive sonar so that it is very difficult for a U-boat to penetrate.

In addition - it seems like it would require much more fuel to execute the manoeuvres you describe, and again, over a long war it wouldn't seem to me to be a very good approach to use fuel in this way.

Just my opinion - and of course as I say, I am not that clued up on WWII ASW tactics (aside from having read of the usual procedures that were used once a U-boat was detected -i.e. Operation Pineapple, Operation Rasberry etc) and the classic "creeping approach" pioneered by Gentleman "Johnnie" Walker and his sloop HMS Black Swan.

-EDIT

Ok - basically the "diagram" I drew didn't appear correctly. Essentially I was saying that if that lead port escort doubled back - there would be a sonar gap that the sub at S could easily penetrate before the second escort reached it.

[finchOU]

IMHO it wouldn't matter because I literally can just start sinking the escorts (slow and predictable) then after i'm done sink as much of the Convoy as possible until i'm out of Torps...then I can just surface and use the Deck Gun. People have done this in SH5 many times because it's there for the taking. Obviously not historically accurate (which is why I never do this).

If you ever played Aces of the Deep you would see that the Maneuvers the escorts were performing were to allow them to maintain an escorting position without slowing down. They can also cover more area thus be a more effective escort. After a 360 they might slow down and do a Passive Sonar check..then race ahead or back I think. They (all of them) would rotate positions as well. I guess the point is they were wiley and effective and just because one approach worked one time, didnt mean an escort wouldn't be there next time (unlike SH5). As for the long term "War of attrition argument" wasting of fuel/oil, that might be valid point, but I would say sacrificing your speed to match the convoy without maneuvering is suicide and a much bigger threat than using more fuel/oil.

In SH5 the escorts seem to just wait for something to happen before breaking their very predictable behavior. The point is I never really fear the Escorts early on because of that predictability and lack of patrolling.

I don't know what the historical accurate answer is to what I see is a problem. It was very hard to sink an escort in AOD. Its ridiculously easy in SH5. Another issue that I've point to in my first post was the fact that in AOD the Convoys would change course after a period of time (maybe random). So you would be stocking and or approaching the convoy and it would change course (sometime favorably sometimes not and not because you had been spotted). I guess it's just something to think about.

I'm specifically talking about escorts, not Hunter Killer group tactics. The former being to protect the convoy by just forcing the sub to submerge/slowdown and the later to kill the sub and all costs.

[GT182]

I get in front of a convoy and come to a complete stop or at 2knots and Silent running, and wait for the escorts to pass by. Or I nail them if they're close to the convoy before they pass. Then I head right for the convoy center and start sinking shipping. The escorts that are left have a harder time finding you by doing that.. but they will find you. In SH5 it seems they can find you even over the noise made by the cargo ships.

In SH3 you could actually hide under and cargo ship and not be spotted. Same with the thermal layers.... they'd hide you if you went deep enough.

[THE_MASK]

If you played with my latest full mega mod list on 100% realism then I guarantee your tonnage would go way down .

[GT182]

Sorry and no offence, but I'm not using your full list Sober. Tho I am using a very good and large portion of it. And I do understand that using your full mega mod will cut tonnage way down.

Other than TDWs UIs, I had a problem with one mod in it that I couldn't get answers to so I went back to an older version that gives me no problems. Nothing wrong with your mega mod, it's just pieces of it that I can't use right now. What I am using is making SH5 the simulation that it should be but not quite as good as it is for most others. And I am working to change mine for the better. But it's a long and difficult road for this old phart.