[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by Artur Salwarowski

Once again, I would like to thank everybody for the very insightful feedback. I have read through all of it and the way I see it, apart from fixes and corrections, the biggest task ahead of us is to improve U-boat AI. I am 100% on board with your observations, and I am happy to say that we've got all the necessary tools and procedures implemented - we just need to readjust them to achieve the effect you are after.

As for the AI, the biggest problem that we have had with it was when it was the other way round - whenever we turned U-boat aggression down too much, the game would appear pretty boring. But, as Onkel Neal has remarked, this is a tough thing to get 100% right, and that's also the main reason I have reached out for your help.

The problem here is that I have been playing this game for 2 years now, and it might be that my understanding of pace and intensity might have become blurred. After reading your remarks it occurred to me that I focused way too much on the sense of urgency and constant pressure that I wanted to achieve. It is now apparent that I overdid this, and I am very thankful that you have made this very clear.

In all honesty, I have actually nerfed the U-boats A LOT since the demo. As it appears, however, they need more of that and that is exactly what they are going to get

Therefore, the roadmap towards the release seems very clear: while the programming team continue working on the tutorial, save game, and bugs/fixes, I will focus on cranking up certain mechanisms that will make U-boats more reactive and more likely to take the defensive stance. After in-house testing over the weekend, we will update the project so that you can evaluate the changes and let us know whether things have changed for the better.

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?

Sounds great! Developers who focus on player feedback are always welcome, instead of pushing their own vision and you're either on board or not.

It's very refreshing to see.

Originally Posted by Furia

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 !!

Some really good feedback in here.

I agree with the points on making the sim more tactical in nature, instead of just immediately placing subs in melee range of the convoy, which is never more than 4,000-5,000 yards away.

4,000 yards is roughly 2 miles, and I can't imagine a destroyer that wouldn't notice a surfaced contact approaching the convoy until 2 miles. It seems a bit forced to immediately put pressure on the player to have the u-boat so close to the merchants right off the bat, instead of detecting the sub 10-20 miles away and intercepting it in more open waters before it can get closer to the convoy.

I also agree about the volume of subs in the easiest of the scenarios. 4 subs is a wolfpack, and the player shouldn't be fighting a wolfpack on the easiest difficulty. 1 or 2 at the most as suggested would be more in line with the easiest difficulty setting.

Originally Posted by mapuc

^ After having read the comment above an idea popped up in my head.

You have problem with the subs AI-Here's my idea

Why not remove AI and let a human control the submarine.

Here me thinking at the beginning of the game a player can choose sub or destroyer. (then the skill levels are not needed)

Thereby the skill of the sub will be based on the players skill.

Markus

This would effectively turn the game into a multiplayer game, and I believe the focus is fine tuning its single player capabilities right now. They would have to design a completely new interface for the sub and its controls and mechanics, which is a huge project.
Multiplayer introduces another level of coding to sync variables and states between both clients, and it's not something that is easily implemented this close to an Early Access release.