A Small Convoy is sighted NE of Newfoundland: : "Convoy in sight!"
Proceed to attempt parallel course while just maintaining visual contact.
Using
Game Time, achieve a convincing heading in a Compressed period.
I am comfortable with this; speeding things up is purportedly only detrimental to our actual Attacks.
A period of
shadowing with deliberate course changes has no affect on the TDC reading; the Target Course and Speed surely must be affirmed!
Rrriiiight?
I place the Order for a
Contact Report.
Images of converging and swarming u-boats in a display of superior German Logistics swathe across the KM chart
behind my eyes....
....then Bernhard rears his ugly head.
I may still encroach upon a shadowed convoy, but how does a Wolfpack engage when the location reported has nothing to do with conditions of the immediate sighting? The transmission reports speed that may be accurate, yet course is often completely irrelevant!
Flustered? Certainly. I order the boat to further shadow, yet don't accrue benefits to tracking.
Despondent? Naturally! Closer to home, the response to
Contact Reports is immediate and devastating; irregardless of the report accuracy! The further West I have marched my boat, the more detached my
insist-on-comm Headquarters becomes; that is to say, the error factor increases and the involvement of other boats is reduced!
And this is only July of 1941!
With the advent of far superior u-boat software simulation coupled with enhanced processing power, this may be deemed as so much niggling. AOD was/is a product of its time. Yet issues depleting the performance of that program have definitely been considered in improving the genre through later programming.
Could there be a magic game time-frame of shadowing a convoy that produces an accurate
Contact Report? Why are wolfpacks only available close to the British Isles; at least as far as my experience shows? The program is Updated and Patched, runs like a dream in DOSBox Fullscreen. None of the program operations disappoint; it's the reenactments that seem to diminish. The manual gives so much sustenance, and Users usually provide esoteric operability. Thus, I may find tactics or key-codes on this forum that may have been omitted from the book.
I was never able to complete a Campaign of Aces of the Deep due to some
gremlin glitch, or some short-sightedness of the code. And this, after investing
bookoo bucks to make an Aptiva P30 fly like an interceptor.
The
Silent Hunters (1 through ?) are continuing to be a Mod-necessary commodity to fully enjoy them.
Aces of the Deep was the first for me; the reason I purchased a PC. I am currently involved with only this u-boat simulation, replete with all the aggravations we sub-simmers bore in hopes of a bigger and better boat. I am constricted to this program for now, but am suprisingly finding the tour of duty to be a rewarding one. I enjoin others familiar with the Ups-and-Downs of AOD Contact Reporting to be forthcoming in their suggestions, solutions, and experiences.
Sincerely,
Reverie
