Feinder
Posts: 6589
Joined: 9/4/2002 From: Land o' Lakes, FL Status: offline
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Mid-ocean intercepts are possible in WitP, just fairly difficult. I do agree that a "follow (enemy) TF" function would be nice for our TFs. However, I'm betting that would be quite a bit a coding. I'm also positive that people would greatly over-estimate it's effectiveness. Consider the hair-raising, nail-biting chase that was the pursuit of the DKM Bismark. It was NOT easy. Royal Navy basically sortied everything it could, found, and lost, the Bismark several times. She went all the way from Norway to (almost) Brest before they finally nabbed her. "But she was a single ship! (after dispatching Prinz Eugen. I'm talking about a plodding convoy!" Also not easy. How many major convoys were intercepted by German surface ships. There were MANY of attempts, but very few successes (if any, none actually come to mind, but I could be wrong). Even PQ-17 was never spotted by the Tirpiz. All the damage was done by Condors and U-boats. So historically, it wasn't easy either. But let's just say Matrix caves, and agreed to code it. What does it entail (just from our surface view). You'd have to connect the search routines of the shadowing PBYs (separate units at separate bases), consider the detection levels of the target TF, how many hexes out you are, and then connect your TF to the enemy TF for course, and increase your TFs speed (indstead of the default "mission speed"), and/or change cource to intercept. Right now, all events are (appearently) separate. Your PBYs spot enemy TF, and it's assigned a DL. With each new spotting event, the DL is raised. If your TF is in the same hex, it also gets a chance at spotting either manually, by float planes or radar (thus raising the DL). If the DL is high enough, and you have an agressive enough leader, and you're the right kind of TF (SC), you get a shot a engaging them. Again, not a bad idea. I think it -should- be an option. But I think it's effectiveness would be greated over-estimated by players, and it would also probably be a b1tch to code. Regards, -F-
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"It is obvious that you have greatly over-estimated my regard for your opinion." - Me
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