ORIGINAL: Terminus
ORIGINAL: Raverdave
Will tonnage sunk be tracked for individual subs and will this contribute to more skill for the crew as it does for pilots?
No, the current system continues. Subs do gain experience, you know...
As a "subfanboy" I've always thought WITP was far too air-centric (GG's roots all the way back to USAAF?), and under-modeled the vast contribution USN subs made to the war effort. Patrol areas will be a huge improvement and finally allow sub skippers to hunt rather than squat in single-hex duck blinds. A great improvement.
While I woold also like tonnage to be tracked I understand it's a low-payback proposition to gameplay.
But one suggestion I'd make (probably for a patch list at this point) is add a sub crew fatigue variable to each vessel. As it is now a sub can turn-around after a three-month patrol in a single day. No R&R, no refit unless there's system damage. Of all vessel types subs absolutely need some crew time ashore for basic health and efficiency. Lack of this, coupled with forward basing, makes for VAST numbers of on-station USN boats in 1944 and 1945, far more than historic.
An easy way to incorporate fatigue, if room can be found for the variable in the DB, is just to make it a negative against crew experience. If the player wants to turn a low-damage boat around with no R&R he can, but the fatigue gets subtracted from the experience level in the attack algorithm. Similar to pilots.
On the sub AI front, if there could be limits on how subs get stacked north of the PI and south of Osaka/Tokyo it would improve things a great deal. Now, by 1943, Japanese merchants have to run gauntlets of 20-30 subs in 480 miles. Not realistic. Subs spent a lot more time in island chains and on the China coast than they do in AI WITP. The Japanese merchant marine evaporates once the torpedoes begin to work in 1943. Just a suggestion.