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Yesterday I played Herman MP using RC8

The Scenario was Plug The Gap (not released yet I think).

I started with three D/E Nordic subs and I was tasked to prevent some escorted merchants carrying WOMD from passing the Kattegat. Not much info I thought.

I started bringing two of my subs on E/W line to cover the gap, and moving the third South to give me early Intel. Detected small corvette type Russian warships in two groups but without merchants. My main challenge would be to to find and ID hostile merchants from the neutral ones. I would need to make persicope sweeps, and while the corvettes had poor sonar, they have OK radar!

I intercepted a few merchants coming ahead of the escorts just to calibrate my scope and found I needed to be within 2nm to classify them as neutral. That meant I'd have to ID the hostiles based on behaviour.

The corvette groups were approaching the exit to the Kattegat and my two Northern subs (having passed the third one) and I started seeing them move N/W to open sea at 20knots. Sonar also detected two merchants moving at 15 to 20 knots behind the corvettes. As neutrals generally don't move at more than cruise speed I decided these were my targets and ordered my forward sub to chase after them at 17 knots. A difficult intercept.

At this point the corvette contacts were jumping all around my Swedish sub, and I decided to stick up the periscope. Even before the ESM reported enemy radar emissions, Herman shouted 'Found you' on gertrude! I fired a spread of FFV wire guided torps in reply, turned north and raced away with torpedo's following in my wake. Three corvettes raced south, one straight to my Danish sub trying to intercept the targets. The Danish captain fired a further 2 Mk37s to that target. Heard 'Damn' on gertrude (one of the best sounds I believe). Hermans corvette turned east and fired BOL torps. I fired another FFV torp from the North at slow speed just in case one of the corvettes would avade my torpedo's and turn back.

Within minutes 3 corvettes sunk, unfortunately so did my Danish sub of which the 17 knot top speed was not enough.

I now realised that in spite of this carnage, what I thought were the two primary targets might escape West out of the Kattegat so the Swedish sub turned and moved in at 17 knots to intercept. It had to pass very close to 3 remaining corvettes and when sonar detected excited shouts from the targets I fired another group of torps at this group. Also fired my last two Bearing-only at the two merchants. I scored one hit on a corvette but obviously I had a torp in my baffles as suddenly I lost the second sub.

My third sub was on the East side of the Kattegat and had just ID'd another merchant as neutral. It went to flank speed to try to head off the merchants which were running full speed South with two FFV torps in persuit. I could not see the results of the torps but could see one enemy bearing turning back North and one remaining steady.

As I could not intercept the escaping merchie in time I fired 3 torps at her hoping to force her to flee south again. This ploy failed as the torps only had 35 knot speed and not enough range.

Game ended in a draw and I found I had killed one of the primary targets and 5 corvettes but lost two.

A great game and RC8 behaved well. Only issue was that anytime I went to persicope depth; when I resubmerged the speed would go to zero and I'd have to reorder speed/heading a few times.

Freek Schepers doesn’t play a lot of Multi-player games, but when he does, he always delivers a great challenge. Today, we met up on the HarpGamer ANW server and decided to play, “Plug the Gap”, made for the PlayersDB.

The scenario matches a NATO force of diesel submarines against a lightly defended convoy in transit. Although the Russian escorts are fairly numerous, their sonar is nearly useless. I played the Russians while Freek commanded the submarines.

As the escort commander, I tried to have my nearly deaf ships fairly far ahead of my transports. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but the only indication I would have of a submarine in the area would likely be the “Screeeeee….” sound of torpedoes in the water. With 6 corvettes, I certainly hoped that I had sufficient escorts to survive the first salvo.

“Luck” would be on my side. As the little corvettes pinged away with their puny sonar systems, it was a radar operator that rang the alarm bell. “Periscope detected bearing 053 degrees!” Unfortunately, the nearest corvettes were well out of range for their SET-72 torpedoes. It didn’t matter as the sonar room immediately reported torpedoes in the water. The nearest corvette responded by launching her own salvo of SET-72 on Bearing-Only-Launch mode. She could only hope that they would be smart enough to find the submarine on their own as she turn around and ran from the oncoming torpedoes at full throttle.

As one corvette was running from the torpedoes, more torpedoes suddenly appeared in front of her! Somehow, a diesel submarine had crept in behind them. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place! She launched a brace of her own torpedoes while being chased by four weapons. With so many torpedoes in the water, the outcome was pretty much inevitable. I lost 4 escorts within minutes, but my own torpedoes managed to claim both subs. The action was so hectic, that one errant torpedo actually ran right between my two transports. There were a lot of breaths being held as it passed between them.

Now, with only one surviving escort and the two transports, I made a run for the open sea. Unfortunately, the enemy commander seemed to read my mind as he raced with his sub to intercept. Once more, we exchanged torpedoes. The Tp62 ran straight and true. At first, I did not order my transports to turn away as I did not think that the torpedoes would be able to detect them. This turned out to be my undoing as they went into search mode and found my freighters. Now, when I turned away, it was too late. One vessel was able to escape, but the other one was caught by the Tp62 after a long chase. I was able to evade further attacks, but the loss of one freighter prevented me from achieving my victory conditions and the game was a draw.

This was a really super exhibition of game-play by Freek. Even though I designed the scenario, Freek managed to surprise me with some very innovative tactics. Many thanks for the game and to HarpGamer for the use of their server.

Anyone looking for an MP game can drop a line here or look for us on HarpGamer pHp chat room or the HG mIRC chat room.