AOD Contact Reports?

[Reverie]

A Small Convoy is sighted NE of Newfoundland: : "Convoy in sight!"

Proceed to attempt parallel course while just maintaining visual contact.

Using Game Time, achieve a convincing heading in a Compressed period.
I am comfortable with this; speeding things up is purportedly only detrimental to our actual Attacks.

A period of shadowing with deliberate course changes has no affect on the TDC reading; the Target Course and Speed surely must be affirmed!

Rrriiiight?

I place the Order for a Contact Report.
Images of converging and swarming u-boats in a display of superior German Logistics swathe across the KM chart behind my eyes....

....then Bernhard rears his ugly head.

I may still encroach upon a shadowed convoy, but how does a Wolfpack engage when the location reported has nothing to do with conditions of the immediate sighting? The transmission reports speed that may be accurate, yet course is often completely irrelevant!

Flustered? Certainly. I order the boat to further shadow, yet don't accrue benefits to tracking.

Despondent? Naturally! Closer to home, the response to Contact Reports is immediate and devastating; irregardless of the report accuracy! The further West I have marched my boat, the more detached my insist-on-comm Headquarters becomes; that is to say, the error factor increases and the involvement of other boats is reduced! And this is only July of 1941!

With the advent of far superior u-boat software simulation coupled with enhanced processing power, this may be deemed as so much niggling. AOD was/is a product of its time. Yet issues depleting the performance of that program have definitely been considered in improving the genre through later programming.

Could there be a magic game time-frame of shadowing a convoy that produces an accurate Contact Report? Why are wolfpacks only available close to the British Isles; at least as far as my experience shows? The program is Updated and Patched, runs like a dream in DOSBox Fullscreen. None of the program operations disappoint; it's the reenactments that seem to diminish. The manual gives so much sustenance, and Users usually provide esoteric operability. Thus, I may find tactics or key-codes on this forum that may have been omitted from the book.

I was never able to complete a Campaign of Aces of the Deep due to some gremlin glitch, or some short-sightedness of the code. And this, after investing bookoo bucks to make an Aptiva P30 fly like an interceptor.

The Silent Hunters (1 through ?) are continuing to be a Mod-necessary commodity to fully enjoy them. Aces of the Deep was the first for me; the reason I purchased a PC. I am currently involved with only this u-boat simulation, replete with all the aggravations we sub-simmers bore in hopes of a bigger and better boat. I am constricted to this program for now, but am suprisingly finding the tour of duty to be a rewarding one. I enjoin others familiar with the Ups-and-Downs of AOD Contact Reporting to be forthcoming in their suggestions, solutions, and experiences.

Sincerely,
Reverie

[Sailor Steve]

I've played it a lot, but I never considered that to be a problem. Not that I think it isn't, I just never thought about it. Don't know what to say.

Sorry.

Are you working with AOD or AODCD, the Win95 friendly version?

I have found some things broken with the latter and binned it early.

With AOD only. Contact info improves with time and distance, closing the distance should produce better data over the same time period. At extreme ranges your reports will likely remain inaccurate.

Keeping the convoy locked in the red cross hairs in the TDC screen, pressing the space bar will change target course and speed displayed. Using the strategic map you can determine the convoy's approximate course and then cycle through the TDC target course until you get a match. This should help produce an more accurate contact report but not always at long ranges. However, it greatly speeds up the process of producing accurate targeting data.

AOD only places a handful of U-Boats in the Atlantic during 1941 and off Newfoundland it might not spawn enough to get a wolfpack. It sucks but it's also fairly accurate, most 1941 wolfpacks were in the eastern or central Atlantic and AOD reflects this.

If it was easy it would not be fun, AOD wolfpacks come into their own in 1942 and winter of '43. The summer of 1941 is a bit early for the game.

Good Luck and Good Hunting.

[Reverie]

Not to worry, R&R Grampy. I know that it's only a game....

Ah, Randomizer, repeated clicking to roulette my way to different and possibly more accurate results? Very good; I'll try that. Sounds a lot like the Fast Attack tracking modus operandi.

I am using the 3.5 hard drive install of AOD, only because I haven't bothered to make a virtual image of my AODCD to spare the DVD drive. Plus, I have the patched and upgraded AOD directory copied to a CD alongside a DOSBox installer. Ready to go in minutes.

I tossed out Command AOD because, regardless of the system, the sound kept dropping out. The AODCD is still popular with me because of the interviews.

Thank you for your suggestion. I'll try not to sink them all.

Sincerely,
Reverie