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Q: You are also simulating the air environment. What kind of
aircraft are a threat to my ships in the Atlantic campaign?
Troy: In general, we've modeled fighters, high level bombers, dive
bombers and torpedo bombers and made sure that each of the major
combatants represented in the game (US, Japan, Germany) have at
least one example of each. In the Atlantic, we've got the
following German planes:
- Fw200 "Kondor"
- ME 109
- Ju-88
- Ju-87 "Stuka"
How does weather effect with my missions in Destroyer
Command?
Troy: Two ways, primarily:
1) High sea states result in lower speed for ships and convoys. 2) Atmospheric conditions and precipitation affect the ability of lookouts to detect and track other ships.
We've also modeled moving weather fronts, so it's possible for
ships to slip inside of such a weather front in order to hide.
Q: Tell us about Intel. How do we receive intelligence updates
while on a mission, and from what sources?
Troy: Intel is primarily a function of the initial briefing. However,
sightings of enemy shipping and aircraft may occur as radio
events in the game, either from scout planes, coast watchers or
other ships in a task force.
Q: How much is the radio of use to us, and is there a separate
radio-room station?
Sonar Station
Troy: We opted not to provide an actual radio room, but instead to
provide a message log which appears on every station. In the
words of one of our consultants, "It's just a room where a guy
sits with a typewriter that has only capital letters and
transcribes incoming morse code, decrypts it and rushes it to
the appropriate recipient." Didn't sound like very much fun to
us.
In addition, US Navy doctrine was to avoid transmitting
long-range signals from ships to avoid the possibility of the
enemy intercepting the messages and determining the location of
the group from the signals. Since the radio was primarily seen
as a source of incoming messages, we felt that the message log
was the best way to handle it.
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Radar Station
Q: What kinds of messages can we initiate from the radio? Can we
call in air support in some locations? Can we report on a
battle group position?
Troy: I was thinking that Destroyers never had control of aircraft,
but then I remembered the hunter-killer groups formed in the
North Atlantic. I'll need to research this a bit. You may have
made a good case for having a radio room...
As to reporting enemy sightings, this is something we already do
behind the scenes without the player's intervention. We really
felt that the player would want to concentrate on fighting his
ships, so we leave these details to the AI.
Q: You are modeling both radar and sonar. There were significant
changes in these systems through WWII. How do these changes
affect game play?
Troy: Sensor effectiveness is something we are very keen on modeling
accurately. To that end we've included both SC and SG radar sets
and players won't get the more accurate SG surface search radar
until early '43. This parallels the radar options in the
original Silent Hunter, which featured the submarine variants of
these two radar sets.
Actually, sonar didn't improve that much on US Navy ships until
near the end of the war. The bulk of the US destroyer forces
used the QC "searchlight" sonar for most of the war, which had
an effective range of maybe 2000 yards.
Q: In the same way changes in weapon systems forced changes in
tactics throughout the war. Tell us improvements and changes
you have modeled in torpedoes through the campaigns.
Troy: American torpedoes are one of the great tragedies of the war and
the ineffectiveness of early models really prevented destroyers
from realizing their potential as offensive weapons. Of course,
US Navy doctrine didn't help and it took guys like Fred
Moosbrugger and Arleigh Burke to show them the potential of the
destroyer in this role.
That said, if you leave the realism settings on maximum,
American torpedoes will basically suck until 1943. You'll see
depth-keeping errors and faulty detonators as was the case in
real life. However, we will allow the player to turn off
realistic torpedo settings as a means of avoiding that
particular frustration.
Go to Part V
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