By Fidd
This is a niche game, the nature of which is not widely popular in the way others have general appeal to the gameplaying public. It appeals therefore, I believe, to detail-oriented players, who prefer seeing good leadership and teamwork, and precision, and who value playing with a fairly regular but small number of friends as a single crew.
It is fairly usual for players to play around 2 or 4 times a week for 3 hours a session.
This means that variety of outcome, and being faced with new of unusual situations is critically important to retain players in the medium to long-term, else the repetitive nature of games ultimately leads to burnout and players turning to other games. We’ve all seen this, many many times over the years.
There are several ways to create this variety of outcome and game experience. They are:
1. PvP play via players manning escorts, and able to move from escort to escort.
2. AI escorts being directed to perform tasks at positions relative to the convoy, or to absolute positions.
3. Longer DC attacks (with less lethality) causing progressive damage.
4. Damage-control problems for the crew to prioritise and deal with.
5. Ability to operate optional tasks as a crewman at greater difficulty for reward.
I propose to lay out a suggested sequence for introducing these.
(1.) PVP. To start with, I’d create a single allied player, which we’ll call “Convoy Commander (henceforwards “CC). He will have a map view of the convoy shewing the positions and type of all escorts, and the merchants, which can be zoomed in and out from within the convoy out to circa 100km radius, defaulting to 20km radius. On this map he can click on an escort, then click on any position within the area covered by his zoomed view of the map. He then may choose “Position” or “Position relative to the convoy” and then selects a speed from “at convoy speed”, “at hydrophone speed”, “at asdic and hydrophone speed”, “at asdic speed”, “at half ahead” or “at full-speed”. The AI escort will then move to that position at the ordered speed, using as many sensors (visual, asdic and hydrophone) as that speed allows. On reaching the position, the escort then reports in, allowing the CC to set what he wants the AI to do, which might be remaining stationary, listening to hydrophones, conducting an asdic search etc.
So, you then have AI escorts being sent to locations to undertake tasks automatically, more or less as they do now, however, directed by a human mind, meaning that the players in the u-boats now are playing against human decision-making and planning, rather than AI. This makes best use of AI for the dull task, but improves it’s tactics and creates more varied outcomes for the U-boat players. If the CC is not efficient in exploiting the escorts different capabilities, then gaps may occur in the escort screen, which u-boat captains may use to close with the convoy. Similarly, if he detaches escorts at high speed, then he may be unable to use hydrophones or asdic – again conferring an advantage to a u-boat. Conversely, if he detaches them at moderate speed, then he may detect a u-boat that was unable to “get out of the way”. An AI escort making such a detection would preferentially attack the detected u-boat rather than continue with it’s previous order to go to another position.
The 2nd phase of PVP would be to add “playable escorts”. Unlike u-boat players, these players would be up to 4 or so per escort. Captain/Helm, asdic operator (also able to listen on hydrophones if no 3rd player), and hydrophones. These players can hop into any escort they please, and can see which escorts have detected a contact, and are notified when such a detection occurs. They then take-over the operation of that AI escort. If they then leave it unmanned, then it reverts to the last order it received from the CC.
The effect of this is that now a human player (CC) is responsible for the distribution of AI escorts, and directs them as he sees fit. Once an AI detection is made, or, a human player operating an asdic or hydrophone makes one, allied players can then take-over the nearest boats. They can see the orders given to the AI – “go here and do this”, and can communicate with the CC to amend the AI order if needbe, so that the CC is aware of what’s happening, and who may wish to redistribute AI escorts if the player operated escort needs more time to conduct an attack.
It follows from all this that two things need to change. Firstly it should no longer be possible to simply dive to 185m to be safe from detections, either from asdic or from hydrophones. However, if a u-boat goes deep, it will be safer, as it takes DC’s more time to descend, the asdic operator will be “blind” at a greater range, and the u-boat can use that delay to move, rendering the DC’s much less accurate. The accuracy of the DC attack will also be varied by the skill of the escort crew, rather than that of AI. Accordingly, I think the lethal proximity of a DC needs to come to circa 5m, rather than than 20m, but that DC’s between 5m and 20m confer damage to the u-boat in order to erode functionality of the boat and to generate problems for the crew to contend with. Sometimes the nature of such damage may mean the loss of the boat, if the sum of damage warrants it. For example, if the damage causes leaks, the weight of water in the bilge may cause the boat to sink to crush-depth, if there’s not a sufficiency of air to empty the bilge enough to arrest the descent…
Summary.
We now have a situation where every AI escort may actually be manned by players, but the u-boat captain cannot tell if it is – or isn’t. A human player is – or may be – directing the defence of the convoy, making the AI escorts less predictable in where they go, and what they do when they get to a position. The AI escorts may combine onto a detected u-boat and so have several escorts attacking it – or they may hold their relative positions to help keep others at bay.
Because DC attacks/ASDIC searches are now much more likely to persist for an unknown period, but are likely to be much longer than now, it’s also necessary that there’s a further change: The way alerts operate needs to change, in order that a prolonged DC attack does not keep the convoy alerted for long periods, as in a multi-boat game this would mean the other boats not having a settled convoy to attack for that long period. I suggest that alerting and de-alerting be handled thus:
A u-boat is detected by an escort (AI or Human). Once the returning ASDIC echo or noise on hydrophones exceeds the value at which it would detect a u-boat, then the ability to drop DC’s or other weapons is unlocked. The convoy then alerts for circa 6+ minutes, with a total of 17 minutes or so before it’s settled on a new course and de-alerted. When an AI escort loses a contact, it resumes an ASDIC “lost contact” search. If it re-detects it – or detects another u-boat – within 10 minutes, the convoy continues it’s de-alerting count-down, as the u-boat is no immediate threat to the convoy. The exceptions to this would be if the u-boat either hits the escort, or, if a torpedo wake is seen, or if the u-boat is seen to be at or near the surface.
So now, with all the changes laid out, any given u-boat being detected only alerts and “muddles” the convoy for a similar period than it is now, but, for the crew of the detected boat, they may be in for a protracted period of asdic searches and DC attacks/ During this, they will suffer non-lethal damage, possibly involving some loss of functionality – eg loss of electric rudder operation, or loss of ‘planes (ditto). They may have taken on water, used unusual amounts of air to purge the bilge, lost instruments, and possible been presented with damage-control sequences and/or lost the boat. If they’re undetected, they will have to assume that every escort may be human manned, and that therefore may be capable of guile and subterfuge. For example, if a human crew detects a momentary noise on the hydrophones, they may ask the CC to send a 2nd escort slowly towards where they think the u-boat is, “quietly”, to that when they turn and rapidly acquire the u-boat on ASDIC, they may fairly quickly have a 2nd AI escort, or a now-manned 2nd Human Escort, to attack the contact with 2 escorts, and really slather it with DC’s! – or conduct a “creeping attack”.
