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Originally Posted by bartpl
Hello there my fellow Kaleuns!
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Hello! and welcome aboard shipmate!
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Originally Posted by bartpl
I hit really huge wall in mid-1943.
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Said every real life U-boat commander who ever saw mid 1943.
You see, GWX, among other things, is super realistic. In stock SH3, anyone could hop into Sh3 and make any number of rookie mistakes and survive the whole war as a U-boat ace. Now, thats all good and well except for the fact that its not very accurate.
Some 40,000 U-boat sailors went to fight in World War 2... 75% of them never saw daylight again.
Think about that for a moment. Go stand next to those other three gentlemen against that wall, and im going to just go ahead and shoot 3 of the 4 of you at random. The odds arent good.
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Originally Posted by bartpl
escaping escorts after convoy attack in mid-1943 and later gets harder and harder, and makes me think that the only good choice if one want to survive is... not to attack the convoy.
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And, this is more or less where the U-boat tactics went in reality. By mid 1943... convoy attacks were suicide, even for seasoned aces. It was a situation where the capabilities of destroyers and aircraft to hunt and destroy u-boats were so highly developed - the technology needed for u-boats to evade them just had not come along yet. Even operating at the maximum envelope of performance for the u-boats couldnt guarantee escape.
after the onset of 1943... you are no longer the hunter, you are the hunted wolf, but you still have a fearsome reputation. You are out manned, outnumbered and outgunned.
your tactics from this point on should be to avoid convoys, and prey on those merchants and warships still foolish enough to sail alone into your domain and pray that orders come to cease hostilities.
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Originally Posted by bartpl
The thing is most escorts are possible to evade using methods described in GWX manual. However there is always one or two destroyers which always know your position, and you cannot fool them anyway. No matter what you do, bottom the boat (it doesn't work in SH3, have anybody heard of any mod fixing this?) or go really deep, like 250-300 m (thermal layers also don't work here I suppose?)
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Thermal layers are simulated through the use of SH3 Commander which modifies the sensors file to limit the depth at which active and passive sonar can reach, this value is randomized every time you launch the game using SH3 commander... sometimes the thermal layer is far deeper than you can dive, other times it is down around 140 or 150 meters. it changes each time and it is up to you to find it.
at any rate, the maximum sensor depth for escorts is 300 meters. And depth charges will "un-spawn" ie disappear at 300 meters. so if you have one hell of a boat and can reach 305 meters and the depth charges arent set to explode at say... 295 meters... you might just make it out by exploiting this limitation of SH3's software.
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Originally Posted by bartpl
I mean OK, if two DDs follow you, one can track you and other attack. But if just one destroyer keep following and attacking you, alone, for 20, 30, 40 hours, keeping to do so even when it used up all of his depth charges... Is this really realistic behaviour? Or rather should it give up finally and get back to guard convoy, revealing U-boat position to HK group or allied air forces? I noticed for example, that when you stop your sub just in the middle of DD's circling pattern, it will circle around you endlessly, doing nothing but turning the same direction with constant speed (yesterday it was about 1 hour 15 minutes; when I bottomed the boat at about 120m depth - DD was still circling the same way; when 20 minutes later I stood up from the bottom, started engines again and left "the magic circle" I was instantly DCed). I suppose that in real life DD's skipper would at least change circling direction in order to regain sonar contact or get a proper position to drop depth charges. I mean real people don't act that way, they act with elasticity to changing conditions, they also sometimes make mistakes. "Veteran" DDs in GWX3 don't make mistakes - why?
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It has more to do with the way SH3 is coded, and not the way GWX is set up. When an escort looses you, it will try to re-acquire you. If it does re-acquire you it will renew its efforts to attack.
It will generally rejoin the convoy, but only after the convoy has gone outside a specific range (not sure the exact number)
GWX is meant to make the AI as aggressive and as realistic as possible to guarantee you a 75-80% change of failure all the while operating within the confines of SH3's hard code. yes, a person would behave with a certain degree of elasticity in their decision making, and in simulation games this has so far proven most impossible.
take flight simulators for example. In some flight simulators i can always count on a Me-109 rolling into a split S when i latch onto his six. is this normal behavior? probably not, is it realistic? again, probably not. is it a tactic in use by fighter pilots? sure it is.
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Originally Posted by bartpl
I mean I know Kriegsmarine lost the war but is it really fair? Historically accurate? If I can't escape, using external view, than I suppose it's like every single U-boat which tried to attack an allied convoy after 1943 and later got sunk.
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and that as they say, is the rub.
Lets look at statistics on U-boat losses
1939- 9 lost
1940- 24 lost
1941- 35 lost
1942- 86 lost
1943- 239 lost
In the first 6 months of 1943, the Kriegsmarine lost almost as many u-boats as they had lost - combined - over the first 4 years of war.
May 1943 - as it came to be called "black may", 40 U-boats were sent to the sea floor. it was around this time that the admiralty determined the losses were unsustainable and the u-boat war could no longer serve much purpose.
1943 in terms of boats and men lost, was the deadliest year for the U-boats. deadlier than even 44 and 45
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Originally Posted by bartpl
Oh, and one more thing. Sometimes weather could change in literally 5 minutes from clear blue sky to fog and heavy precipitation. It's so annoying when you approach your target. You take estimations to it's range and speed, hide the periscope and when you raise it five minutes later you can see nothing... I have never seen this kind of weather change in real life... Can anyone tell me is there any mod helping with this?
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There are some weather mods, search the download section of the forums. i personally just roll with the SH3 GWX weather. none of the mods has completely solved the weather problem 100%
to be honest it has been one of the number 1 complaints with SH3 since its release back in 2005
I wish you the best of luck out there!