Sub's a "Workable" Idea

[brady]

As I mentioned in the other thread, this may well be a workable idea for adding sub's to AH.

 Each country get's a few Convoy routs and convoys that sail along them.

 The Convoy's are like TF's in that players can go to them like bases and man gun's and Launch PT's, and new type of Ship, a SC.

 The "SC" is a sub chaser class, which is a smalish ship with depth charges, AA weapons and a Gun or two, which would have Sonar to use to hunt the Sub's.

 Japanese CH 13 class:

   16Knot's, 1 3inch, 3-25mm, and 2-13.2mm MG's depth charges and sonar.



  This is just an example their are tons of different clases with various gun packages and they generaly ranger in the 15 to 20 some odd knot range.


 The TF's would ply a AI controled rout althought it would vary somewhat and the ships would rebuild over a given amount of time.

 The TF ship's, would have some gun positions on them as most freighter's, certainly Japanese one's were armed to a degree.






  Japanese Merchent ships were by far and large very moden vessels at this time and they were required by law to built with hard points for gun positions should the nation go to war, so when WW2 hapened they were for the most part equiped with open mount guns similar to the 5 inch single on the CV's, althought the fit and calaiber of these weapons varied greatly, Light AA guns were also common.

 So now we have the a Convoy and a means to protect it, from Sub's and Air threat's.

 The Sub's could now be spawned from a base to interdict this shiping by going to various points along the "Shiping Lanes".

[Tilt]

Your merchant group could in effect be a mobile "strat object" (city, fuel, AA, grunts etc)which moves between pairs of ports and refreshes at its arrival at a port.

This would be set in the terrain.

Access to non AI guns could be via the port hanger or this strat object could carry with it a depot  ship object with its own tower/hanger etc.

The depot object could give access to the direct command of a group of sub hunters with an F6 sonar screen and depth charges.

These take up a fixed position with respect to the merchant group when not under player control and return to this position when no player is on board (they a faster top speed than the convoy) they would have a join function as does a buff. (this functionality could be added to cv group destroyers)

But what subs really mean is the introduction of flying boats..........

[brady]

Ya I was thinking along the same lines Tilt in terms of Strat object.

 Somthing else that occured to me was making the Convoys ply waters that would normaly be in the rear areas so as be somewhat removed from the mass air atacks they might undergo should they be closer to the front.

 Another idea might be to make striking them with sub's a variable on the rank equation for GV's, much like PT rockets and or torps are but in another way this would help to draw people to them.

 Sub's would be tough Nut's to crack Pristling with 20mm, 50cal, and 40mm guns and with some boats having 2 5 inch guns they would pack a decent punch to be shure.

 I would love to see Flying boats in AH and any excuse to add them is a good one by me:)

[Sabre]

From my interview with Dale at the 2001 AH Con (published on "The Wargamer" website)...

HITECH: Naval aspects? The biggest change I will be doing will be submarines in the next year.

SABRE: Wow! That is exciting!

HITECH: Submarines will basically use a fleet-type positioning system with the ability that, when the fleet of submarines, the wolfpack or whatever arrives [at the waypoint], you’ll be able to do the detailed control of it. You’ll get to aim the torpedo. You get to do all the fun stuff on the submarine; but the fact of the matter is, for a submarine to travel thirty miles at night is an immense amount of time. Nobody wants to spend that amount of time controlling a submarine. So what you’ll do is you’ll set down a waypoint [on the map] for the submarines, to get them into position to intercept a fleet, where you think they’re coming in. As they come into range, suddenly you get to jump into the simulation, the detailed fun part of the submarine element. That’s how the submarines will work.

On ground warfare, what I envision at some point is a first-person shooter run as a secondary item to base capture. What I’m sort of envisioning in the end is something that would run along the lines of a C-47 dropping a spawn point at the [enemy base’s] map room. The map room now is expanded to a full, underground bunker-warfare, first-person shooter. The defender always gets to spawn in the bunker. The attackers, now for the next thirty minutes, they can spawn people in the bunker, and there’s this big, first-person shooter war happening underground to do an actual [base] capture.

SABRE: So your going to take it basically all the way down to the individual with a rifle and some hand grenades?

HITECH: Absolutely!

In my interview with him last year, he said that AHII had pushed this stuff back, and that the 1st Person Shooter stuff would probably be next major task, then subs.  He also noted that the introduction of subs would also include by necessity ASW weapons (such as depth charges and sonar to target them with) and and some kind of seaborne ASW platform, such as a player-controlled version of the DE used in AH fleets today.

[brady]

Ya I remembered reading that sabre last year, you did a real nice job on that interview BTW.

[hazed-]

I recently bought an old game in the computer store...

silent hunter II !

what a fantastically simple but fun game! If AH manages to make the subs even half as fun as that game does AH will rock!

[brady]

Man U Never played it before?, I think I wore my disc out:), it rocked i still remember some great sorties I had in that game:)

[Sabre]

Originally posted by brady
Ya I remembered reading that sabre last year, you did a real nice job on that interview BTW.

Thanks, Brady.  Gonna try to rope-a-dope HiTech into another interview this year.  Maybe I can get some good dope on AHII (lord knows we're not getting much here:)).

Sabre
CT Staff, Reserve

[brady]

O ya thats right, the convention is comming up, will the HTC Crew be their? I know it's being held in the heartland this year right?

[brady]

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