Tides of War

Even just putting 1 fish in them slows them down and makes it harder for them to out manuever you.

Be sure to go DEEP.

hey jesper or east.....i heard a buzz about making the subs a little stealthy in the future .... is this true? by the way i didnt know a torp slows down the ship...cool. ill try that!.... i like the cat and mouse idea of hiding thats why i try to evade all the time....i guess the game isnt geared for that! thats why i ask if they will make changes for sub stealth in the future.

Mandingo, that is exactly what Im hoping they will do

OOOH PLEASE PLEASE>>>>>I HOPE THEY DO.....IF THEY DO THIS GAME WILL BE A PERFECT TEN......please east work your magic!

As long as the game remains balanced..... 8)

-- A Surface Driver

Come multiplayer nothing will save you bottom dwellers! I will drop cans on you till your dead or I' out then I will sit and wait with tubes loaded and all turrets manned. You may die fast you may die slow but......YOU WILL DIE!

Hmmm I have been able to evade to some degree. I am useing a fast sub, moving fast and turning when charges are dropped. Then either diving deeper and cutting engines, or if the de\dd does not appear to follow staying deep (150-200+) and runing at 1/3 untill well away (1000m +). If u come up too soon you will hear a ping, I am assumeing this means the ai has heard u as they usually turn towards me right after the ping. Trying to hide from asdic by sitting under a ship at close range does not seem to work as it should, also in real life the angle of the subs bow in relation to the hunter makes a big difference in the strength of the echo he (the sub) gives off when pinged. Does the game model this East I can`t tell? If the sub faces directly strait at the hunter he should be harder to "see", as his siloette is much less also the screws sound is slightly masked by the boats hull.

Another very important tactic for a sub in shallow water, a sub in the middle of a panicing, zigzagging, convoy is very hard to find, think of all those engine sounds and echos crossing each other and over lapping. A sonar man`s night mare, especialy once things start expoding and sinking adding even more contacts.

I find it helps me to think of the "radar" as a plotting table, being updated by the Ops O and his team of plotters. Such tables are central in any WW2 era Ops room, and this is where the fight realy takes place. The skill of these few men is critical to a commanders descision making, every thing depends on the acuraccy of his ops team`s plotting. For that matter, I wonder how many merchant ships where lost simply because a lowwly OD lookout was sneaking a smoke and lost his night vision at the wrong time...a captain was only ever as good as his crew.

WildBill,

That is how we intended the Tactical Displays to be used. They are updated by your crewmen. You have also found the correct tactics to use with your sub. The biggest killer in the game is impatience with wanting to kill the attacking ship. Modern games teach us that we are only victorious if we KILL all the enemy. In real live naval, just surviving to be a threat is a victory.

The AI know about search patterns and when there is a group of ships on you, you can almost never get away. They will send 1 or more ships out past 1500 meters to start sweeping for you and 1 or more in close to listen for you and attack when spotted. They also try to predict your movement based on last known information.

From the time the first depthcharge goes off you become invisible to the hydrophone guy on the pursuing ship. This means you can turn and burn out of there (sorry to mix service metaphores there). The blackout lasts for 15 seconds from the last depth charge explosion. We currently don't model noise clutter in the game, but that is a refinement that is on the way.

--East

This is an interesting thread. I have to review it thoroughly to get things down pat.

In the meantime, until I get the game delivered, I've been playing all the demos. I usually don't have too much of a problem evanding ships. I head for 200 meters at flank and shift hard to port and starboard numerous times.

I most often get away, manage to fast surface to periscope depth at least 300+ meters ahead of the nearest enemy ship, lure them to follow me, and hit them with the rear torpedos when they're oh so close. Almost never fails.

My intent with turning and moveing fast at the sound of the charges being released is simple...now I know where the charges are it safe just go around them , by the time he reloads he has lost me. The clutter would be nice, but personaly I think it more important to model the silloette of the sub. If the sub faces directly at the hunter his ping is much weaker than if he is broadside. It is the area that sound can reflect from. Early asdic and was no where near as powerfull as modern sonar, the cone was short and shallow, really only good for picking up subs very near surface or just below periscope depth. Used with mortar (hedgehogs) it was effective. What it did do however was force the subs to run deeper where they could not launch thier fish as accurately if at all. To me a victory in asw is when the sub is prevented from attacking his intended target.(In reality most german uboats CO would not have wasted a fish on a corvette) If the sub is actually killed then that is gravy, most early ww2 sub kills where by aircraft (the subs haveing to surface to charge batteries before the snorkle came to be).

Some thing else was used that is not in the game I guess. There where large mortars like a depth charge with different depth settings. These could fire out to about 3000 feet or so. The ones I have seen have 3 tubes some DDE had 2 sets for a total of 6 in a covered well on the quarter deck. Reloading was by hand and very slow, but a single DDE could make a bigger pattern this way.