The scen was built with 3.6 some years ago and one of the objectives was to see how well it works in ANW
We used my PC as server. Herman played Russia, who have 3 submarines in the Western Approaches to the English channel and I played NATO, with a small convoy with 2 FFGs as escorts plus some land-based helicopters and and MPA.
One hour into the game, a Russian RORSAT Satellite passes North to South. In 3.6, the sat was on a Ferry mission from an airbase in the far North to one in the far South of the game. In 3.6 the sat rises instantanously to its High Altitude. In ANW however, the Ferry mission rises only slowly and never above 2001 m altitude, and goes down to 31m at its mid point. Therefore Herman and I had rebuilt the sat so that it has just enough fuel to fly on a Support mission from a base in the North to a refpoint in the South. We had programmed and invisible plane to destroy the sats base after takeoff, and in 370 the Sat flies high to the refpoint, runs out of fuel and drops into the sea. In this slightly complex way we had circumvented the issues of the low flying Ferry mission (and the resulting short range of the RORSAT radar.
However, the new damage model implemented in 390 does not kill a base outright, but only 'dooms' it; that actually meant that the sat after takeoff, when it reached Bingo, still had a base to go back to and thus it flew South and then North again.
Hopefully the behaviour of the Ferry mission can be rectified in future, making complex workarounds unneeded.
Anyway, after the sat pass (which I could track with ESM) I changed course to confuse the enemy and moved at full speed to Holyhead. I had set up sonobuoy patrols but noticed that my Oceanhawk helicopters would lay a line of buoys, hoover to monitor them, and would let the convoy get many miles ahead. In fact they never laid a second line.
Also, it is not possible in the Game Engine to 'Scrub launches'; i.e. to stop all formation patrols. Once set, the formation patrols are permanent. Interestingly, the Scenario Editor has a 'Scrub launches' command (under Edit - Unit). This command would be very usefull in the GE as well. Just selecting the helo and double clicking air-ops button will order the helo to land, but will not delete the formation air patrol mission it was on (so it will relaunch as soon as ready).
After a long transit I was just South of Ireland and picked up an enemy sub with my sonar. I fired a Bearing-only torpedo, and the Akula fired a full spread from about 11nm away. The spread included the giant 650mm antiship torpedo's, running at 30knots. My ships had to turn back and race aout 20nm before the torpedo's ran out of steam. the torpedoes never went to their max programmed speed (50 knots) even though they were clearly tracking my ships. Had the torps (as in 3.6) switched to max speed when they had acquired the targets I would have lost the game.
A few hours later I detected another sub at periscope depth. I fired torpedoes, but they did not launch, and Herman could also not fire torpedoes. This was another new 'bahaviour' (=bug). Torpedoes cannot be fired in ANW at -10m depth. Yet submarines can actually remain underwater at -10m depth. I believe both issues to be bugs, the 3.6 behaviour where subs would surface in water of -20m depth or less but could still fire torps or be fired upon was better.
The game ended in a draw; I killed one of hermans subs, he did not kill any of mine but I did not reach port in time as I had to avade Hermans torpedoes.
All of the bugs above have been reported before, I wanted to just illustrate how they affected an actual MP game.
Below image of the helicopter patrols falling behind my convoy. Freek
