[Pillar]

1 hour from now game starts (10pm est)

Host will be up at 9:45

24.43.23.28 is the IP address.

Everyone is welcome, expected to be between 10 and 24 players.

[Pillar]

PS -- Bring your custom multiplay scenarios!

[Pillar]

Getting started soon!

[Sea Demon]

I have to go back to work tonight.

Sea Demon

[cwchute]

Grrrrrr. I got in, and my game CTD within 3 -4 min, but I could still hear the guys on TS..... painful.......

[-moose-]

hmm.. it says 'no sessions found' but im in the lobby? ive never tried DW multi, i really want to!

[laglos]

thanks for hosting, pillar!

[Pillar]

Well, it was a success. We got 10 players. I highly recommend more people try this kind of advanced scheduling. I gave it an hour ahead of time, but 2 hours might be better. I'd like to see more hosts setting up events.

Sorry to those who didn't make it in. We waited until about 10:15 before starting, but if you didn't get in before the game launched you couldn't get in after.

We ended up with 10 people, which was fine, the scenario we used was a 10-player scenario so nobody had to share platforms. I played as a Kilo, and it was a bluewater operation.

I'll give a little aar of my experience tonight. Firstly, be warned, the Kilo in "blue water" (meaning in the middle of the ocean) isn't much fun. Well, kinda. Maybe. :hmm: You can't go very far, very quickly. Your weapons are limited to about 10nm against surface ships, tops. You need to be much closer than that to launch, of course, because they can run after they detect the torpedo. Against other subs you can use your rocket assisted torpedoes.

At least I didn't have to worry about being detected. - lol

This was primarily a surface ship/aircraft vs. submarines scenario, with the Russians controlling the submarines. We had a bunch of boomers and a loud Victor III controlled by the AI, but they failed to bait our American adversaries very effectively.

Whales, boy there were a lot of whales! Added a nice immersive touch to the scenario and frustrated the helo drivers... I was quite fond of that.

I had an AI OHP to my south, but he was about 25nm away. I set an intercept course and set speed for 12 kts, to keep my sphere from washing out. Soon the OHP, proving that I am a born loser, turned and drove directly away from me at about 16 kts. :doh:

So, instead, I set course for the whales. Well, I don't have to tell you they were moving away from me at 10kts. So I had an intercept time of..... excellent: 15 hours.

So I accepted my fate to be alone, all skippers must really one way or another. But Kilo drivers must not only accept it, they must worship it and thrive on it.

I listened with interest to the chat and watched as my russian submariners were sunk, one after the other. Don't get me wrong, they were good players. But the time was on the side of the air assets, who were fairly invulnerable.

A fairly exciting event took place shortly into the scenario - a Backfire raid. They attacked the OHP that was to the south of me. This was good news, it wasn't very fast anymore. I decided to go for it after all, just expecting it to take a long long time.

I told you we started at 10:15 or so. At about 2:00am the air guys were still looking for me, and it was pretty hopeless. I couldn't attack much because of my limited range, and they couldn't find me.

The solution? Launching torpedoes of course. At the very edge of my range envelope I launched 4 USET-80's at the frigate, hoping to get lucky, but really just giving the guys in the air a chance in hell.

They did well after that. About 15 minutes past and they had dropped active buoys near my position, but nothing really close. I went up to PD figuring I'd try and launch a SAM at one of the choppers, if the opportunity would arise. I was only up there for about a minute when I got an active buoy pinging me within about 3nm. It only took the efficient helo driver (TLAM Strike I believe it was) to get a torp in the water.

Torp dropped right on top of me, snapped me up and I hardly got to 80m at 20kts before it hit me. Now that's an efficient helo driver. Yikes.

So, it was fun. Not much to report from my end. Stay away from the Kilo in scenarios where the ranges are high and the water is deep, you'll be hard-pressed to do much of anything Good way to learn though, your opponents will never find you!




Adam



PS -- If you're wondering what happened to my torps, the FFG heard them and turned away, easily out-distancing them. They ran out of fuel before getting too close, I think they got to within 4nm before expiring.

[JamesT73J]

Pillar,

Sounds like you had a great time. I can't wait to get stuck in! I'm really pleased you had a game this size with no reported problems and had great fun.

Your comments about the Kilo are interesting. I've found that - for multiplayer games of Sub Command - you need a particular mindset, because your game will be 90% trying to find contacts and 10% actually moving anywhere, such are the constraints of being stuck in something you cannot actually move about quickly in over a 2-3 hr period. I've had a few MP games where nothing has happened the whole game, and some where it's been incredibly tense for the whole match - really exciting stuff.

This places particular importance on scenario design, and it's not easy to get right. Assets have to be positioned carefully or some players won't ever get into the fight.

Look forward to catching you in game soon!

[cwchute]

Well, *I* had a problem. CTD when switching between TS window and the game, early into it.

Shiver me timbers, you guys went until after 0200?!?!?!?!?! With so little action? Thats about 2 hours too long for me.....LOL

If you had played multistation (which I am a big fan of), you'd have had some company at least..... you coulda played cards in the galley ........

[TLAM Strike]

Well I thought I post a few observations from my end. As Pillar said I was one of the MH-60 pilots. Before going after Pillar I took down a Kilo that belonged to a player who dropped and an AI Delta IV. Oh and a very unlucky whale.

When I found Pillar I didn't realize I had found him!! At about 200 yards away my dipping sonar didn't detect it passively, my active had him fine. MaHuJa in his P-3C dropped some active buoys in the area of the contact I promoted then let fly a pair of MK 50s and took Pillar out.

[Rip]

Definately was a lot of fun guys. I was commanding an improved Akula I. I was the first human player launched on I believe but evaded and lasted to near end game. The other Akula was launched on at about the same time but was unable to evade.

After evading the torpedo I went deep and fast to slide away from the active bouy fields, which were literally almost everywhere. Eventually late in the game I got a sniff on the LA, and decided to snapshot a Shkval and a 53cm that way. Turns out it was a CZ contact and he was far away. Of course those pesky Americans heard the launch and were finally able to launch a torpedo I was unable to evade.

Caught hell for it this morning, but enjoyed it very much. My first play in an Akula and just like all the others I enjoyed it more than expected.

[sonar732]

I might suggest that when future MP sessions are scheduled, to place the date and time in the subject so everyone will know right away their availability. Also, use GMT and post a link for time zone conversions. Sounds like y'all had an awesome game!

[laglos]

Figured I'd go ahead and add my report as well, incomplete as it is...but we may have tickled a couple of bugs in this mission.

From my perspective (688 driver), in retrospect it appears that I began almost in the center of the battlespace. Meaning that one or two enemies were ~25nm northish of me, our host in a kilo was ~30nm westish of me, someone else was about 30nm s-se and the guy who shot the squall was about 30 or so eastish. Or so it appeared. The only thing I had good contact on for the entirety of the game was the 10 or so whales that were scattered around.

I began by going to PD to access link and xmit my position (unnecessary in this exact scenario because it was a "show allied" game), but I still feel more comfortable doing it that way. Whenever I wanted to promote a link or say something in the chat with real tactical value, I did an excusion to PD. (although I did chat plenty while at depth, I did *try* to refrain from saying things of tactical value unless I was at PD). It does underscore the need for chat to be available even when a sub is at depth. Sure, it depends on the honor of the player involved, but this scenario would have been excruciatingly boring for me had I not had the chance to do some banter with my team.

Anyway, I popped off an XBT and began a BB sonar sweep, promoted the contacts I saw, then id'ed them as biologics and re-promoted so the flyboys wouldn't waste their time. Then I did a NB sweep, didn't see anything, and proceeded to 1/2 the layer depth for another quick NB sweep. Then went to just under the layer for another NB sweep (which in retrospect was a waste of time; had I read the SSP properly I would've noticed that the layer was the best place to transmit sound, not hear it. Then I went to about 200ft below the layer and did another NB sweep. Never saw anything except the whales on BB. In NB, I only got a few hits on the frigates (which I already knew about from the link)

At this point I was still (carelessly) clueless about being in a CZ SSP. I simply wasn't paying proper attention. In retrospect, the TMA on the frigates which matched the link data and placed them clearly outside of my normal detection range should've clued me in.

Then, during a NB sweep, I suddenly got a bright three-line hit with the first being 50Hz. Aha! Nothing on BB, so then I started thinking about CZs. I marked it, then was waiting a couple of minutes to get one more fix before heading back to PD to promote him...and my contact marker vanished! Nothing to indicate that it had even been there. I quickly began my ascent to PD while guessing at the range and placing a manual solution on the map. At some point here, we got the message that a player had dropped from the game. I got to PD, promoted the link, mentioning that the range was wrong, and the flyboys rolled in, localized him, and snapped him up (and it was a player who had dropped, so I wonder if that contact marker vanishing act was a bug).

After another while of not hearing anything and finally realizing that we were in a CZ with widely-separated enemies, I decided to get a little provocative...I went to a depth with good sound transmitting properties and increased speed. Sure enough, within a few minutes I got two TIW calls. Checked NB, they seemed really loud, so I decided to start evasion just in case, but quickly went up and promoted the contacts I'd marked and told everyone about my TIW calls. One of our helos had dropped from the game, and TLAM was on deck, probably cussing at his loaders for being slow. I originally decided against firing a snapshot as I suspected a CZ event, but I started getting good traces and screwy TMA, so I assumed that whoever shot was trying to clear datum, so I shot back. In retrospect, it was just a torp (but my shot flushed out a SSBN which TLAM then had for breakfast. I'm convinced that TLAM needs to change his name to Seahawk Strike or something).

Then more boredom while looking for our host in the kilo (who was mercilessly taunting us). Finally heard him when he launched four torps (actually, I just heard the torps, not him).

At one point in the endgame here, our P3C pilot dropped a DICASS and a VLAD near me, and I was able to learn a couple things about buoy detections. They were deep (400ft), I was deep (1250ft) @ 4kts. The DICASS couldn't hear me at 1.9mi range. The VLAD heard me at 2.3mi range. Upon slowing to 2kts, the VLAD lost me too. This little experiment revealed a possible bug, though....Buoy numbering was off by one on TLAM's screens....the P3 and myself had the same buoy numbers, but TLAM showed different numbers. Caused a bit o confusion until we figured that out.

[MaHuJa]

Doing the P-3 in this mission, my tasks were rather diverse. One of the tasks I performed, was AEW - I was the first to detect the backfires coming in. (Though I thought civilian air until TLAM pointed me to the ESM )

The next part was laying the buoy net. Before the game ended we had reached the grand total of 71 buoys. If a contact was detected anywhere, I was usually the first on site, sending mr. mk50 to knock on their hatches.

As we began going active on the buoys, a problem appeared: How do we separate between the whales and the submarines? No NB lines is a common phenomenon with silent subs at a little range. Solution: MAD runs. Which said none of the possubs where subs.

In the end, I had dropped an active buoy on top of the last sub, I was the one that dropped the torpedo that hit the last sub we took within 20 seconds of hitting the water. (My record is <5 seconds)

By that time I had one torpedo, three mines and 6 Mavs left, and a total buoy count of about 20-25. A resupply trip would have taken 30 minutes each way.