Another older thread here but anyone playing the game with dud torpedo's will still feel the pain.
Yes, it's true early on in the war, both American and German sub crews experienced a large percentage of duds, especially relating to the magnetic exploders. The Germans identified and corrected the issue by getting rid of them long before the American subs did, partly thanks to Christie's reluctance in having BUORD address the issue until Nimitz got involved.
I tend to agree that there seems to be a larger than expected amount of duds on these early patrols and it really makes one contemplate playing the game with that option selected. I could tolerate 1-2 duds in a loadout but 50-75% is a bit much IMO.
A couple of observations;
First Murphy's Law; if you're going to get a dud, it will probably happen on the warship or large troop transport/tanker you're going after. It can happen on smaller targets but the game seems to high percentage on these larger, more desirable targets in my experience.
Second, the game has a limited amount of variation in scenarios, if you save the game prior to attack and then commence your attack run, you might get all duds this time but if you replay it, next time you might not. This is true on all parts of the game, whether regarding convoys or single ships.
Sometimes the entire convoy makeup changes between saves if you are not careful, so if the convoy has an escorting battleship and several large twin-stack transports, the next time it may not or the ships positions in the formation will be different. But you can go back until the desired variation returns, hopefully.
Torpedo's arm around 300M. I have got hits at 290M and down to 270M with the homing (blue) and FAT homing (gray) versions. It depends on closing distance to the target, if the target is parallel or going away, that distance opens up but, if the ship is coming towards you the closing distance is fast enough you need to fire NLT 400M or they will dud, whether playing with dud features or not.
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