Merchant ships are too weak, generally

[Proposition Joe]

I feel like merchant ships should have at least some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little gun on it. I know in SH3 GWX mod that sometimes you'd come across a merchant ship that had a big enough gun to make you think twice about surfacing and using your deck gun, but this game seems to not have any unless it's a corvette or something.

Especially in 1941. From what I understand, historically, I'm pretty sure that merchant ships had guns on them at this time in the war. Maybe I'm wrong though, I'm no expert.

[Skeletybob]

There are merchant ships in game which have guns e.g. Liberty class freighter

[Ruby]

HI,

C3 ships have guns.

Cheers Ruby

[Proposition Joe]

Originally posted by Ruby:

HI,

C3 ships have guns.

Cheers Ruby

I always seem to run into the Empire bell and stuff. Never seem to run into the fun ones. Must be unlucky!

[NettiWelho]

They need to add Q-ships with hidden weapons that can turn the tables on careless u-boat captain who thinks they will get easy deck gun kill :)

[Deerool]

Originally posted by RDM:

Originally posted by Ruby:

HI,

C3 ships have guns.

Cheers Ruby

I always seem to run into the Empire bell and stuff. Never seem to run into the fun ones. Must be unlucky!

Or lucky. The Liberty and C3 freighters are pretty tough opponents. Don't try to mess with them on the surface. But they a little bit rare. The backbone of the convoys were the Empire class freighters in reality as well as in the game.

[El Rushbo]

As the war progresses there should be more armament on merchant ships, making lone, unarmed ships a rare sight. Not willing to take a chance I'll try to engage submerged at least until I can establish whether they are armed or not. If not, then I'll surface and use the guns. More than once I've had to evade gunfire from a merchant, repair damage, then press my attack.

[Delle(DK)]

just a little historical info about the trade ships.
In the start of the war the hull of the ships where thicker than at the end of the war when there was a lack of resources/materials to build new one..
About 3500 cargo ships and 75000 sailors on these ships where killed during the war so it was an enormous amount of iron and steel + sailors that was lost + millions of tons of cargo during the war.

[Luckycharms]

Originally posted by NettiWelho:

They need to add Q-ships with hidden weapons that can turn the tables on careless u-boat captain who thinks they will get easy deck gun kill :)

+one trillion omg i would love to see Q ships in game.

[david.mortier]

Originally posted by El Rushbo:

As the war progresses there should be more armament on merchant ships, making lone, unarmed ships a rare sight.

I 200% agree.
Sinking up to 21 ships in 1 patrol is absolutely unrealistic, moreover in 1943 (14 was the U-boat most in WW2).
By mid-41, there shouldn't be any unarmed 4000GRT+ merchant.
Just by taking a look at the navigation map from above and you can clearly see if the enemy vessel is armed or not, the latter being the most frequent.
I even caught a small convoy of 4 ships, including 1 oiler, and took them to the bottom using a mix 8.8/flak (to spare shells).

[Proposition Joe]

Originally posted by david.mortier:

Originally posted by El Rushbo:

As the war progresses there should be more armament on merchant ships, making lone, unarmed ships a rare sight.

I 200% agree.
Sinking up to 21 ships in 1 patrol is absolutely unrealistic, moreover in 1943 (14 was the U-boat most in WW2).
By mid-41, there shouldn't be any unarmed 4000GRT+ merchant.
Just by taking a look at the navigation map from above and you can clearly see if the enemy vessel is armed or not, the latter being the most frequent.
I even caught a small convoy of 4 ships, including 1 oiler, and took them to the bottom using a mix 8.8/flak (to spare shells).

Yeah, we need to see an overhaul of the map so that we can't easily identify armed and unarmed ships without looking ourselves, we need "suprise mother%%cker" ships that flip up a gun and start shooting, and we need almost all merchants to be armed at a certain point in the war.

Seems a bit silly that I could be strolling along in 1943 and find 3 cargos and a tanker all alone together with no escort and no ta single ship packing a gun. If that's historically accurate, they really didn't know what they were doing back then, PUT A GUN ON THEM BAD BOIS!

[Deerool]

Oh come on. Not every vessel come from NY or Halifax or was part of a convoy. Of cause there are freighters that come from different locations like India, Australia, China, South America, Africa and so on. And they mostly were not protected or escorted. The British Empire has ports and colonies around the whole world. But the Royal Navy was not big enough to protect all the ships that going to or come from England. In the early years of WW2 they don't even had enough ships to protect the Convoys that came from US the whole way across the Atlantic Ocean. They started protecting the convoys with their escort groups on 12° West. Later than they stretched their escort area to longitude 15° West. And in 1940 the Royal Navy expand their escort area again to 20° W. But that was the farthest distant they could get. In 1940 the HX convoys from NY and Halifax were unprotected the most part of the route. It wasn't until 1941 that the English managed to cover the entire HX route with Royal Navy ships using a relay system.
But even after that date there were vessels underway that were going to England and were not protected by anyone cause they come from a location where no escort route was established.

[Proposition Joe]

Originally posted by Deerool:

Oh come on. Not every vessel come from NY or Halifax or was part of a convoy. Of cause there are freighters that come from different locations like India, Australia, China, South America, Africa and so on. And they mostly were not protected or escorted. The British Empire has ports and colonies around the whole world. But the Royal Navy was not big enough to protect all the ships that going to or come from England. In the early years of WW2 they don't even had enough ships to protect the Convoys that came from US the whole way across the Atlantic Ocean. They started protecting the convoys with their escort groups on 12° West. Later than they stretched their escort area to longitude 15° West. And in 1940 the Royal Navy expand their escort area again to 20° W. But that was the farthest distant they could get. In 1940 the HX convoys from NY and Halifax were unprotected the most part of the route. It wasn't until 1941 that the English managed to cover the entire HX route with Royal Navy ships using a relay system.
But even after that date there were vessels underway that were going to England and were not protected by anyone cause they come from a location where no escort route was established.

I'm not saying every convoy should have an escort, but if you're running a merchant ship through Uboat infested waters during the 1940's, you'd had better have at least one gun on that boat, right?

[Deerool]

Yes. But not every ship was in military service. There were many civilian ships on the water. And these civilian shipping companies have no access to heavy weapons. It's not that you can just go to Walmart and buy a 105mm cannon. In addition, a cannon also requires trained weapon personnel. The normal sailor will not do this in addition to his usual ship duties. They are seafarers, not trained soldiers.

[Proposition Joe]

Originally posted by Deerool:

Yes. But not every ship was in military service. There were many civilian ships on the water. And these civilian shipping companies have no access to heavy weapons. It's not that you can just go to Walmart and buy a 105mm cannon. In addition, a cannon also requires trained weapon personnel. The normal sailor will not do this in addition to his usual ship duties. They are seafarers, not trained soldiers.

Right, right. I guess I just figured any sort of cargo ship going in and out of Europe during world war two would have had a gun on it. I mean, what were they shipping if not supplies for the war? I just figured every cargo+ ship would have a gun on it during world war two.

I'm not even talking a huge 105mm cannon, but like, something? Idk I just figured that if I had a cargo boat during ww2 and was shipping into the UK or something, I'd put a gun on my boat or I wouldn't go.

But yeah, I don't really know the historical facts, I just had assumed that all ships would have been somewhat armed during the 1940's

[david.mortier]

First thing I would like to say, is that I'm not here to make reproaches, like whims, only because the game doesn't suit my way of playing.
I think this is already amazing, with a huge potential, and I hope to see one day features that weren't possible in SH previous games.
So I'm trying to be constructive.
And the first thing above all that matter to me, is historical accuracy.
Secondly, the period that interests me most, is mid-war onward, when U-boats where as much preys as predators. I would like "to feel the pressure" when having to surface.
That said...

Originally posted by Deerool:

there are freighters that come from different locations like India, Australia, China, South America, Africa and so on. And they mostly were not protected or escorted.

They would gather together, far away from England (remember we're talking about 1941 onward).

Originally posted by Deerool:

They started protecting the convoys with their escort groups on 12° West. Later than they stretched their escort area to longitude 15° West. And in 1940 the Royal Navy expand their escort area again to 20° W. But that was the farthest distant they could get. In 1940 the HX convoys from NY and Halifax were unprotected the most part of the route. It wasn't until 1941 that the English managed to cover the entire HX route with Royal Navy ships using a relay system.

True, interesting, and so worth to mention :-)

Originally posted by Deerool:

But even after that date there were vessels underway that were going to England and were not protected by anyone cause they come from a location where no escort route was established.

Sure there would have been lonely ships coming from remote areas, but they were picked up by escorts at some point (indeed, sometimes not so far away to their destination), and proceeded to specific routes to avoid minefields.
Same as for their U-boat counterparts : each one coming from/going to a french port was escorted by a Speerbrecher and/or a Vorpostenboot, and it would be even more relevant to draw a parallel with the german blockade-runners.

But dude, here I was talking of a small convoy of 4 big ships, unarmed and unescorted, in the middle of the Biscay Bay, the "happy times" in may 43...

Originally posted by Deerool:

Yes. But not every ship was in military service. There were many civilian ships on the water. And these civilian shipping companies have no access to heavy weapons. It's not that you can just go to Walmart and buy a 105mm cannon. In addition, a cannon also requires trained weapon personnel. The normal sailor will not do this in addition to his usual ship duties. They are seafarers, not trained soldiers.

Indeed, that wasn't the ordinary crew that manned the gun, there was a gunnery part aboard the armed ships, about 10 persons.
There were merchants even equipped with depth charge launchers (not talking about 'Q-ships').
I still wonder how this could have been useful...

Originally posted by RDM:

I just had assumed that all ships would have been somewhat armed during the 1940's

I tend to agree with this assertion, obviously above a certain tonnage, insomuch that deck guns were eventually removed on U-boats (which made them submerge a little bit faster by the way).

So I'm left to hope that there will be drastic evolutions to this game, considerably increasing the difficulty for the period beginning in 42, eg. that make me ♥♥♥♥ my pant having to cross the Biscay (HF/DF, Leigh light, minefields, etc, etc).
Coming back to port having been unable to sink even a single ship during a patrol wouldn't shock me.