My review and general thoughts abt this event:
The Submarine-
It looks great ! The Xray view of the internals was especially well done, w/ it 's various modules and indications of where the different compartments are. Crew members manning the guns and conning tower when surfaced was the only thing really obviously missing.
The periscope was very interesting mechanically, it 's torpedo lead calculator especially. A similar mechanic for surface ships would be very welcome.
The field of view was often too limited to use the in-environment lead indication for targets traveling abeam while keeping them centered in the crosshair, it might be useful to have an indicator on the toolbar for when the torpedo tube is in line w/ it, similar to the grey/green circle used for gun turret readiness.
It felt too easy to lock onto periscopes even when a submarine was traveling slow or stopped while having it above water, but the combat ranges in the event were very short so I cannot fully say that they were inappropriately noticeable. At ranges further than those here, though, the periscope should not be so easy to attack.
The mobility of the submarine seems to have been greatly boosted due to the Arcade mode the event ran in. Whether despite or because of this, the inertia of the submarine ( especially when coming to a stop or accelerating while fully surfaced ) seemed to have a great deal of resistance to overcome, which felt unwieldy compared to the behavior of surface ships.
The automated control of depth was useful for holding position at specific depth while otherwise occupied, though it usually caused the submarine to run one (1) metre deeper than set. The lack of a manual pitch control was the reason I missed a few close-range torpedoing opportunities, but that 's very situational.
The gunplay was unfortunately very poor, there was no option to re-range via mousewheel which made keeping targets in view while leading them more difficult than surface ships. Locking targets from binocular view or 3PV while surfaced was awkward due to needing to wait for torpedo lead calculation to complete before the lock would not be lost while moving the crosshair off of the target to lead the guns.
Using the deck guns was very awkward against aircraft, since they still had the issue of waiting on " torpedo calculation " to properly lock/lead the target, and the guns also did not always align w/ the cursor at high( above ~40 degrees ) angles when no target was locked.
The differing traverse arcs and ballistic behavior of the 20mm and 37mm guns, and the small ammunition pool available to the latter, leads me to suggest that these should have been assigned to separate gunnery groups - secondary and primary respectively would have been better.
The ability of the submarine to dive to depth seemed to be greatly less than what was indicated on the statcard, and while there was some kind of progressive damaging while approaching it present, receiving that damage felt inconsistent, which made attempting to use deeper depths as an escape feel more troublesome than the risk was worth.
Third-person view while submerged was very well done, the effects of bubble trails left by propellers and torpedoes looked nice. The transitional effects on surface vessels above moving out of view was good too. Friendly submarine 's nametags probably could’ve been left visible while submerged, since they stay visible on the minimap. It becomes difficult to see the submarine when deeply submerged, an illuminated outline or aura similar to the one aircraft receive when flying through thick clouds would help w/ navigation.
The acoustic signature " detectable radius " being visible on the minimap was very functional, but seemed too simple. An acoustic output measured in decibels, in combination w/ appropriate/accurate sensitivity ranges by surface-ship hydrophones, might have had more room to develop gameplay and countertactics. The submarine lacking hydrophone/passive SONAR equipment of it 's own was disappointing, that would’ve added opportunities to play around roughly knowing surface ship locations and when the player sub was being detected by their active SONAR.
The mine armament was very helpful in warding off surprise attacks, though it 's effectiveness was hurt somewhat by it 's easy visibility owning to markers, and lengthy deployment time from depth. Hopefully we’ll see some differences between moored-contact and bottom-influences types modeled someday.
An option to replace the mines in the rear torpedo tube w/ torpedoes, or select a specific ratio of mines to torpedoes as one does between shell types for guns, would be welcome too.
The Surface Ships-
Probably the easier side of the event to play, though perhaps owing to being more familiar w/ playing them.
Gunnery against submarines felt off at times. On one hand, the ability to continue damaging a submarine due to shrapnel being able to strike it 's external modules while it sat around periscope depth made it easier to force them to continuously repair( thus bleeding them of crew ) than perhaps really justified. The ability to keep the sub fully locked at that depth did not help the submarine in that regard.
On the other hand, it did feel sometimes that the damage effect to the submarine was not especially reactive, specially in regards to hits causing major perforation to the submarine 's hull or ballast tanks.
The SONAR and hydrophone detection was really effective ! Maybe too much so.
Overlaying the passive sound detection onto the minimap made too easy to locate submarines exact location, since it provided that w/ exact references to surfaced objects w/ which to navigate by. And the submarine marker icon becoming visible in the center of the " field " of sound it generated ( since the map information was overlaid ) when the sub was at shallow depths did not allow the uncertainty abt exact location that larger detection " patch " to come to be. Would recommend instead to have a separated scope for sound-detection, like the radar uses.
The active SONAR information being overlaid into the game-environment was very interesting, but it would have been difficult to read if the submarines could have dived much deeper. Another scope like the one the passive SONAR should be using could be useful as an option for this too. It also seemed like it was possible to use sound-based detection devices at too high of a speed range compared to real life, but that might’ve been a result of the event being in Arcade mode.
I noticed the depth charges did not have any timer settings available in the spawn menu, not sure if they’re being permanently set to a time or if they’re automatically updating based on some kind of range projection. The regular depth charge rails were very effective, mortars and the Hedgehog on USS Tacoma less so. Lacking an aiming reticule for them made it difficult to apply them to specific locations compared to the stern-mounted rails. Having an aiming interface, especially one which allows the player to set the depth/time to detonation while in the match, would provide more opportunities to employ them.
The rear rails on USS Tacoma and the projectors on USS Fletcher started to launch all of their depth charges at key press partway through the event, while the effect was somewhat minimized by those being able to reload since Arcade rules were in effect, it was unwelcome and this player would prefer to be launching them one at a time at key press, for most effective employment.
The launch and detonation of depth charges seemed to have little to no effect on the SONAR detection of targets, which is questionable from a historic viewpoint.
Damage from performing a ram attack was disappointingly low for the effort and luck needed to achieve one.
The Aircraft-
PBY-5 really shined in this event. It probably did not need to have submarine markers visible on the minimap to perform in it 's role though, especially not for submerged ones. The depth at which a player could see a submarine beneath the surface was maybe too much also.
The torpedoes were not very useful in this situation, but bombs could be made to work very effectively through use of the fuze timer. I would’ve liked to know how it 's mines could have performed here.
The He 111 was not very useful, it spawned almost already inside the range of enemy antiaircraft targeting and not high enough to toss bombs. If ignored there was the possibility of assisting to make a turnaround ticket play using it, but this was not consistent.
The Mission-
Dynamic spawn locations w/ a moving objective area ? Fantastic !
The submarine spawning at a depth too great to employ it 's guns, but also too shallow to avoid gunfire was awkward - would be better to spawn fully surfaced.
Airborne reloading locations for bombers instead of self-reloads or an airfield zone felt like a balance between keeping them in the fight enough to justify their spawncost, and not having them constantly overhead making attacks - something like this might be useful in regular battles. The large-enough bombloads of the aircraft provided meant that it was used little here though.
The composition of the convoy being entirely large cargo ships was very limiting on the submarines - these required the torpedoes or mines to destroy, but those were also necessary for self-defence against the other team 's players. Some smaller ship targets which could have been destroyed through use of the deck guns could have been interspersed w/ the larger ones, an example the Isles-class, or the small freighter Norbis used in Air EC.
The overall asymmetric format of the event was interesting, but it also felt like it made matches where challenging the other team became impossible long before they officially won due to this. The setup where only one team needed to complete an objective other than fighting the players of the other team contributed to that.
The attack/defend convoy mission would probably become much more fair as one objective of many in a larger scale mission, or as part of a multi-stage match like those found in WWM or the Advance event.
Overall-
Very enjoyable, showcasing new mechanics and new kinds of gameplay ! I hope we can see these new kinds of vessel and their counterplay in regular matches very soon !
