Suggestion: AI Shadow Reports
 

To add more complexity to the radioman role, and to incentivize people to learn Morse code, it would be interesting to have the game send a “Fühlungshaltermeldung” (shadow report) as if from a fictitious shadower that BdU has designated. It would be Morsed, but the message itself could be plaintext until at some point standard Enigma keysheets are possibly implemented.

The report itself would contain approximate convoy data, subject to some small fudge factor, but at any rate it would be at a minimum base course and speed. So the incentive of course is for the radioman to help out the team by knowing Morse and transcribing the message to provide the skipper with reasonably accurate data. The message could be sent in the beginning, and it might not always be sent, maybe it’s random whether or not you even get such a message in the engagement.

Because the data is not 100% accurate in the message, skippers would need to still go through the exercise of obtaining their shooting data, just as in real life shadow reports were not relied on for shooting data but were simply for situational awareness, especially for base course, which is valuable info to have at the outset.

Along these lines, maybe the players’ boat gets designated by “AI BdU” as the contact holder, in which case it would be reversed. That radioman would have to send a contact report via Morse and the game would evaluate the accuracy of the Morse keying.

Thoughts?

To add to this, the more I think about it, the more I think there should be a relatively steady stream of AI messages for the radioman. If he is truly going to role play the radioman and not do other things on the boat, he needs things to do on the surface. So, some could be “Füllfunk” (filler messages), interspersed with messages from BdU that are of value for the present engagement (as outlined in last post). In other words, radioman needs to pay attention to everything he gets.

I’ve been thinking about this, because eventually, if huff duff is done right, the radioman will not have much to do during an engagement. Boat to boat communication was practically nonexistent in reality, and so it will be in game with huff duff. So I foresee issues with the radioman role as it relates to the radio portion of his job on the surface unless something like this is done. Submerged, he’s busy enough with the GHG.

He also has RDF capability, but in the scope of the game at this point, RDF is relatively irrelevant. You do not need to receive bearing signals from anybody, since you are already in the vicinity of the convoy.

Would love that...

You.could even get points for each right interpeted message..

Or even get your briefing by the morse code.

Like a heading or spesific warning about incoming planes..

Sorry for my bad english