Surface Ship Engagement Tactics

[CrazyIan]

I am just playing Cold Waters again, and have to confess, even on Medium difficulty I am finding the Surface Warships particularly ridiculous.

On initiating an encounter in the '84 Campaign using an LA (either using close to 25kyds or Man Battlestations on detection of the target), using 1:1 distance and 1:1 time settings, I am what feels like almost immediately plonked in range of all the escorts, who immediately get returns on their active sonars usually due to no layer being present, or even if able to get below layer or change to a better own ship aspect, fairly shortly after, then have four or five torps dropped on me with unerring accuracy, resulting in me having to knuckle for as long as I can till either (i) I disengage (failing the mission) or (ii) one of the torps finally gets me. Generally, the only way I feel that I can succeed is by spam launching Harpoons down their bearing the moment I detect them.

For context, I'm no spring chicken when it comes to Sub games, and I have never felt so challenged by surface ships, even in games like Dangerous Waters.

What am I doing wrong?

[Aktungbby]

Crazylan!... back on the surface after 6 years, 8 months, and 8 day's 'silent running'??!

[FPSchazly]

Originally Posted by CrazyIan

I am just playing Cold Waters again, and have to confess, even on Medium difficulty I am finding the Surface Warships particularly ridiculous.

On initiating an encounter in the '84 Campaign using an LA (either using close to 25kyds or Man Battlestations on detection of the target), using 1:1 distance and 1:1 time settings, I am what feels like almost immediately plonked in range of all the escorts, who immediately get returns on their active sonars usually due to no layer being present, or even if able to get below layer or change to a better own ship aspect, fairly shortly after, then have four or five torps dropped on me with unerring accuracy, resulting in me having to knuckle for as long as I can till either (i) I disengage (failing the mission) or (ii) one of the torps finally gets me. Generally, the only way I feel that I can succeed is by spam launching Harpoons down their bearing the moment I detect them.

For context, I'm no spring chicken when it comes to Sub games, and I have never felt so challenged by surface ships, even in games like Dangerous Waters.

What am I doing wrong?

I understand the desire to use the 1:1 scale, I tried to for the longest time, but the game is really meant for 1:2 scale. As far as I remember, the others were added towards the end of development and, for example, torpedo evasion is basically broken in 1:1. Now, I don't recall there being separate values for distance and time, but try it again with it set to defaults.



I have to ask, but how are you encountering the formations? Going fast on the overworld map or slow? If you're going fast, yeah you're gonna be in for a fight because they've likely already detected you. But a good thing to do is just immediately go to ultra quiet when the mission starts and get a sense of the enemy's presence before you start really doing the mission.



Encounter distance is definitely on the "borked" side in the stock game. As I understand it, it basically chooses a random ship in the mission to base the distance off of and can result in something like a fishing boat on the far side of the enemy surface group determining what the encounter distance is. I'd recommend something like Dot Mod which helps on that front a lot and can add much greater encounter distance for surface formations.

[CrazyIan]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

Crazylan!... back on the surface after 6 years, 8 months, and 8 day's 'silent running'??!

Cheers Aktung, hope all is well with yourself. That can't be right, I'm sure I posted on here during my last seatrip, which was only 9 months ago :/

Originally Posted by FPSchazly

I understand the desire to use the 1:1 scale, I tried to for the longest time, but the game is really meant for 1:2 scale. As far as I remember, the others were added towards the end of development and, for example, torpedo evasion is basically broken in 1:1. Now, I don't recall there being separate values for distance and time, but try it again with it set to defaults.

I have to ask, but how are you encountering the formations? Going fast on the overworld map or slow? If you're going fast, yeah you're gonna be in for a fight because they've likely already detected you. But a good thing to do is just immediately go to ultra quiet when the mission starts and get a sense of the enemy's presence before you start really doing the mission.

Encounter distance is definitely on the "borked" side in the stock game. As I understand it, it basically chooses a random ship in the mission to base the distance off of and can result in something like a fishing boat on the far side of the enemy surface group determining what the encounter distance is. I'd recommend something like Dot Mod which helps on that front a lot and can add much greater encounter distance for surface formations.

Thanks for the advice and questions.

It's interesting that the game seems to be better scaled for 1:2 scale. What sort of differences will I potentially see if I change the scale?

When I'm encountering these Surface groups, I tend to be the other side of a SOSU or NATO MPA line, and have positioned myself so I'm either static or moving at the RMB 'Slower' speed. If I was charging around at full revs, I could maybe understand how I'm blundering danger close into these groups.

Just had a thought, is this detection range to initiate an encounter tied to Broadband Passive, and doesn't account for Active Intercept of a group that seems to be pinging 24/7 from the moment it leaves Murmansk.

I am playing Vanilla at the moment, I really should install DotMod (I'll look into it once I get some decent broadband signal), I'll do a deep dive into it in a month or so.

Many thanks!

[Furia]

I do highly recommend the DOT Mod. It was a game changer for me for the saqme reasons that you mentioned above.
Besides that I like driving surface ships and I am having a blast with the Perry and the Burke