A few new ideas

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Actually, British Sonar was very effective from the very beginning. There were 4 encounters between U-Boats and DDs in September 1939. All 4 U-Boats were found and held on Sonar, were depth charged and damaged and 2 were sunk.

Current behaviour seems about right in game. Ship/U-Boat damage review is already on the roadmap, so no doubt this will be tweaked further.

Based on memoires of surviving submariners from WW2, DC's seem to be very much too effective, with a very brief period in which the escort persists with hunting and attacks. Boats often reported 50-100 DC's being expended on a single u-boat plus 2-4 barrages with Hedge-hogs. The effect of DC's was fairly often a loss of depth control, as even-though the misses were far enough away to only cause minor damage, the effects on the u-boat's bouyancy at any given instant could be profound, especially with charges that exploded above or below the u-boats depth. This "dynamic-instabilty", ie instability caused by movement of the boat, magnifying tbe effect of any brief changes to the water-pressure or aeration of the water-column above the boat, could result in either the boat passing or approaching crush-depth or accidentally broaching the surface.

So, IMHO, DC attacks (as opposed to pinging, should be far more numerous but far less effective. This would also allow for progressive damage to be fixed by the crew when more detailed damage models follow.

Self evidently, we cannot have escorts prosecuting attacks for hours, so there's a balance to be struck. Personally I think DC attacks should last for 30-40 minutes.