Quote:
Originally Posted by Artur Salwarowski
Please remember, that we are making this game primarily for you - subsim and naval warfare afficionados. This is not supposed to be a frantic, action-oriented game, but if you say it appears as such, then we will do our best to step down the intensity 
Sounds like a plan? |
This is music to my ears and be sure I will support your project as much as I can.
I am really interested in escorts (Destroyers, Destroyers Escorts, frigates and Corvettes) and besides having read all that I could about it I have played countless hours with Destroyer Command and Dangerous Waters.
For a DD player the main characteristic of this subject is the "hunt" and with that I mean the detection and location of the enemy sub. You spend hours trying to figure out where the sub may come from, checking if you have deployed your other escorts properly to cover the convoy flanks.
You spend a lot of time listening to the passive hydrophones since this has more detection range and capabilities to detect the sub on initial contact than the narrow cone of the ASDIC.
Different speed, different water conditions, different capability and range to detect the enemy but this also works for the submarine.
You monitor your radar, listen to your lookouts, if enabled you get some "HUFF/DUFF bearings. Then you manage your convoy Zigzag plan to try to ruin any well planned submarine approach. Depending on the time of the day and visibility you spread your escorts or you order them to keep tight station with the convoy.
A successful convoy defense is not about sinking subs but preventing them from sinking anything.
If I manage to detect a sub in the radar at 10000 yards and I force him to submerge and evade, this sub its out of the combat. He need to wait for my DD to leave the area and then he needs to surface , by then the convoy is too far away for him.
As Neal mentioned, the sub must behave in accordance to "normal expectations" as realistic as possible but of course without being an “easy to predict bot"
The attractive part of the hunt is to try to outsmart the sub captain, anticipate his movements.
In Destroyer Command I have spent long hours searching for the submarines, sometimes maneuvering the convoy in a way that the sub could not engage them.
The most attractive game play was always against human sub captains that knew well our limitations and capacities and maneuver accordingly to destroy the convoy, but we the escort also knew they capabilities. That was the best part of the game.
Like Neal mentioned, the “Save Game" function is probably a great tool to allow us to have a more realistic and attractive scenario.
In Destroyer Command enemy subs went deep when the destroyer was on top, that made killing them extremely difficult, almost an art.
In the actual game the AI sub is staying most of the time shallow and all my kills have been on shallow subs.
Sub captains have a huge bag of tricks to confuse the DD and prevent an effective DC attack.
A scenario like the actual one in the game where you have have up to 5 subs in a one hour battle is too much for my taste. One sub or max 2 should be enough.
A smart sub captain maneuvers his sub undetected into a firing position where he could fire all his bow torpedoes and the first hint the DD captain would have that a sub is around would be the first torpedo explosion
respect for those captains. But not on my watch
Destroyer has an AWESOME potential!!!! Just give us the historical immersion of fighting subs commanded by captains that are not far more aggressive or smarter than Otto Krestchmer himself.
Thanks for bringing life to the Destroyer escort simulation !!
