Aces of the deep torpedo frustration
 

In celebration of me finally, after months of trying, getting Aces of the Deep's sound to working I decided to start a new campaign on the game that literally introduced me and got me hooked on subsims in the first place. The following is a true story of what happened during one of my patrols.

So it was patrol 5, August of 1940, the second patrol in my newly famed type VIIB. I had already taken out a Troop Carrier (11,000 tons.) and a tanker (9,000 tons) this patrol so I was in a good mood. BDU contacts me and tells me to intercept a convoy near scapa flow. So after an uneventful journey to the intercept point I take my first look at the convoy.

Small Convoy....
Heavily escorted.....
At Least Five Destroyers....
(Maybe more, hard to count them when you are busy dodging depth charges and trying to line up a good shot at the same time.)

Anyway, after I give the destroyers the slip I select my first target, the ship on the front left of the convoy, which happens to be a troop carrier (11,000 tons like the one before.) I'm a little over 2,000 meters away when a destroyer sees my periscope and begins his run.

Not having much time (The destroyer was under 600m away.) I fired all four of my front tubes at the troop carrier and ordered a crash dive down to 200m.

As I'm dodging the next onslaught of depth charges My sonar-man begins to speak to me.

...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....

Ugh, blasted torpedoes are acting up again, that's alright, I'll come back up and try the stern torpedo. A few minutes pass, I'm in a good position, much closer this time (a little over 1000m) The destroyer is still hot on my tail so I line my stern up with the troop carrier, fire the torpedo, and order a crash dive back down to 200m again.

Guess what?
...Torpedo Dud.....

Banging my head against the computer screen but not willing to give up yet, I set my course to be equal to that of the convoy and travel underneath them, effectively confusing the destroyers. After over 20 minutes of listening to destroyers pinging me, I finally get another fresh load of torpedoes in the tubes, I head up to periscope depth to see what's nearby.

:o A 36,000 ton battleship is about to pass right in front of me within 1000m.......:arrgh!:

Same routine, Line up shot, fire four tubes, crash dive 200m, and you guys are not going to believe what happened next.

...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....
...Torpedo Dud....

Back up to periscope depth, align stern, fire tube.

...Torpedo Dud....

By now I've pretty much given up, my torpedoes are depleted, my oxygen is running semi-low, and the destroyers have found me and have started having another field day with their depth charges. I dodge the destroyers for a few more hours until they finally took pity on my rotten torpedo shooting skills and drove off laughing. I returned with 20,000 tons under my belt. BDU (feeling sorry for me I guess.) decided to award me with a German Cross with Oak leaves.

All in all I guess I can't complain, I got away safe and sound, only one depth charge managed to hit me (and the damage was minor.) But ten of my torpedoes that patrol were duds. Now I know that the torpedoes were "faulty" back then but there is a line between "faulty" and just plain "do not work." :stare:

I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong, I usually like to get to around 700m and fire that way it reduces the chances of the torpedo missing/exploding randomly in the open water. But this method has worked well for me in the past. This is the first patrol I've had where every single torpedo I fired turned out to be duds. (Insert joke about Bernard messing with the torpedoes here :doh:)

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tl:dr version - I fired a bunch of torpedoes and they were all duds :damn:
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Bernard: Are you done ranting now? My head hurts.
Howard: What did you do to my torpedoes?
Bernard: Oh I forgot to tell you, I took the liberty of stocking our ship with the new eco-friendly torpedoes.
Howard: Eco.....Friendly?....?
Bernard: Yes, they are alot less harmful to the environment because the explosives have been removed.
Howard:..........
Bernard: Something wrong sir?
Howard: BERNARD!!!!!!!

AoD torpedoes
 

Ya, I used to play AoD years ago, and even tho I loved that subsim I always suspected that the dud % is well over what it was in the war. For a long time I didn't even know there was a serious problem with the torpedoes in real life. I racked my brain for hours, thinking that my trig was faulty :hmmm: , but finally found out that the torpedoes were the problem :stare: .

btw I love the, 'environmently friendly torpedoes', lol

I think this problem is based on the date. In 1940, a quite high number of torpedoes were duds. Even aces like Günther Prien or such were firing all their torpedoes without hitting the target. Maybe you should try to play in another period - then the problem should be solved. :salute:

Yep, torpedo problems can be extreme in the early part of the war. I can but sympathize. Well, no, actually I can empathize as well. No, actually I can join you in your misery.

Since I'm not playing anything at all until I can afford a new computer, I've decided to start playing AOD again. I HATE YOU HOWARD!!! :damn: :stare:

Watch for patrol reports to come soon. :D

Sub-scribed. :Kaleun_Cheers:

I hope they give you better torpedoes than they gave me, might as well open the torpedo tube and wave a little white flag with the word "BANG!" on it.

Welcome back to AOD, happy hunting. Now go sink something! :arrgh!:

Not for a bit. I'll be moving in a few days, and I'm not going to be playing anything until I get set up in my new place.

Okay, this is an old thread, but it piqued my interest. Is it possible that the torpedoes don't arm themselves until they've traveled a certain distance? The probability of getting 10 duds in a row is just incredibly small. Even if 50% of torpedoes are duds, you'd expect less than a 0.1% chance of having 10 failures in a row. For 20% duds, then it's like 0.00001%. (But that's assuming the game doesn't have a buggy random number generator...)

I think the torpedoes need about 300 meters to arm.

I try to get within 500 to 700 meters of my targets and I hardly ever miss that way. But the early war torpedo malfunctions are a pain. I remember a number of patrols in a type II where all of my torpedoes were duds.

Another older thread here but anyone playing the game with dud torpedo's will still feel the pain.


Yes, it's true early on in the war, both American and German sub crews experienced a large percentage of duds, especially relating to the magnetic exploders. The Germans identified and corrected the issue by getting rid of them long before the American subs did, partly thanks to Christie's reluctance in having BUORD address the issue until Nimitz got involved.


I tend to agree that there seems to be a larger than expected amount of duds on these early patrols and it really makes one contemplate playing the game with that option selected. I could tolerate 1-2 duds in a loadout but 50-75% is a bit much IMO.


A couple of observations;


First Murphy's Law; if you're going to get a dud, it will probably happen on the warship or large troop transport/tanker you're going after. It can happen on smaller targets but the game seems to high percentage on these larger, more desirable targets in my experience.


Second, the game has a limited amount of variation in scenarios, if you save the game prior to attack and then commence your attack run, you might get all duds this time but if you replay it, next time you might not. This is true on all parts of the game, whether regarding convoys or single ships.


Sometimes the entire convoy makeup changes between saves if you are not careful, so if the convoy has an escorting battleship and several large twin-stack transports, the next time it may not or the ships positions in the formation will be different. But you can go back until the desired variation returns, hopefully.


Torpedo's arm around 300M. I have got hits at 290M and down to 270M with the homing (blue) and FAT homing (gray) versions. It depends on closing distance to the target, if the target is parallel or going away, that distance opens up but, if the ship is coming towards you the closing distance is fast enough you need to fire NLT 400M or they will dud, whether playing with dud features or not.