Introduction to Wolfpack - a note to new captains.

Wolfpack delivers to its players an opportunity for the greatest glory without the seasickness, boredom, bad food, and body odor that historically plagued submarine crews between engagements. Having evaded enemy air cover, you spawn outside detection range in hydrophone or visual contact with an enemy convoy on a date, in a location, at a time and in weather conditions literally of your own choosing. You even have the option of selecting a quick encounter, which increases your chance of spawning ahead of the convoy rather than behind it. You have all of the initiative. You choose your targets. You choose the time and method of your approach, attack, and escape.

Your boat, unlike a real one, is in perfect working order. It has a full complement of 14 torpedoes that, unlike the real ones, are guaranteed to run hot, straight, and normal. Until the merchant ship damage model is updated, which is scheduled for version 0.27, one torpedo will sink one target ship, regardless of size.

The latest date is December 31, 1941, so there are no surface radar, hedgehog, or K-gun challenges. The enemy escorts are dangerous only if they spot you. They spot you if you stray into visual range on the surface, if they hear you while you are submerged, or if you are stupid enough to open up with the deck gun. Either way, the moment you are spotted you lose all or nearly all your initiative, and you must escape, usually by crash diving. This maneuver is generally executed by the dive officer. While he does this, you have several minutes to consider what combination of failures placed you in this unenviable position. Survival is hardly guaranteed, especially in the shallows. Alerted escorts, regardless of type, prosecute submarines with remarkable tenacity for a long time. Some players enjoy being depth charged. Sane players do not.

The game provides no content. All it gives you is a weapon and targets. The captain and the good attitude, competence, and military bearing of the crew create the content. A good captain will know what he is doing, will issue calm, crisp, deliberate orders, and delegate as much of the work to the crew as he can based on their skill level. (If you are captain, presumably you can solo this game. You should not be soloing while you have players aboard to do the work everyone knows or assumes you can already do.) The crew are essentially playing for the sound of torpedoes hitting enemy hulls. If you do all of the work, then the crew will become bored and restless. Generally speaking, if there is an easy way and a hard way, you should choose the hard way, making sure to engage the crew in the core function of the game, which is to put torpedoes on hulls.

As of the February 18, 2021, and for the foreseeable future, Wolfpack is purely tactical. There are no operational or strategic considerations apart from the overall object, which is to deprive the enemy of its merchant shipping.

Generally speaking, there is no combat, tactical or otherwise, without maneuver. Daylight limits maneuverability. Conversely, darkness extends it. U-Boats lay in wait during the day. They hunt at night. Keep that in mind when you choose the scenario parameters.

The Type VIIC U-Boat has a maximum surface speed of 18 knots and a maximum submerged speed of 7.4 knots. That said, you cannot maneuver to attack at full speed submerged because you will be heard and attacked by the escorts long before you can engage. Submerged and in proximity to the enemy, safety limits you to slow speed, or 2.7 knots or thereabout. Convoy speeds range between 2 and 10 knots. Anecdotally, the average convoy speed is 5.5 knots. Once you dive in proximity to the convoy, you lose your ability to maneuver and a substantial portion of your initiative. In daylight, you have no choice but to overhaul the convoy, dive in front of it, and wait for it to come to you. (Ho hum.) At night, you should consider remaining on the surface as long as you can so as to retain speed, maneuverability, and initiative.

The crew control resources of varying value to you. The stations work, though some, particularly the dive controls, and TDC are simplified. The physics works. The math works. You can use the hydrophone (while submerged, of course) to locate an enemy convoy that is too distant to see or that is obscured by atmospheric conditions, i.e., darkness, overcast or fog. Once you have found the enemy on hydro, you can turn toward them and proceed on the surface. Once they are in visual range, chances are they will never leave it. That leaves the hydrophone operator with little to do unless the game is multi-boat and you need to exchange messages with the other boats or you attract the unwanted attention of angry escorts. The captain needs to engage that crewman some other way - preferably in the identification, selection, and destruction of targets.

The navigator has a fully functional map table. However, take my word for it, the map table is of precious little practical value in combat. Your navigator, through skill and determination, got you to the spawn point. Operational movement ended at the moment you spawned. Now the navigator needs to do something else. He should be the First Watch Officer, and he should be engaged in the identification, selection, and destruction of targets.

The helmsman is likely always engaged. His job technically also includes operation of the TDC. You might want to assign that job to someone else out of fairness.

If you are preserving your initiative by remaining on the surface during a night attack, you will need to engage your dive officer. He has the observation periscope near his station. He, too, should be engaged in the identification, selection, and destruction of targets.

In a perfect world the captain should be sitting at the attack periscope watching the escorts, looking for convoy zigs, and issuing the occasional movement order while the rest of the crew plans and executes the attack. (This is my ideal world, anyway, nearly always honored in the breach rather than the observance.)

As a new or solo player you might be tempted to use the bots. Don’t. Nothing happens so fast that you cannot get where you need to go in the boat to do whatever you need to do. The more you work the controls - the more you fail at working the controls - the better you understand them. Failure is the mother of learning.

Finally, do not judge this game by the quality of your captain. Some captains suck. Some are mediocre. Some are excellent, and even the excellent ones have bad days. When you are captain, try to emulate the ones who don’t suck. The level of play is highly variable. Even long time players, who ought to be innovating, fail to do so, even if the tactical situation cries out for something different than they did the last fifty times. Sometimes captains will do what they are used to doing because they do not want to be embarrassed by the potential failure of some new tactic. It’s human nature, particularly among gamers, who fear failure in public above all things. This game is about overcoming failure. Hitting 14 for 14 on hard mode is difficult. You must risk failure to overcome it.

Colonel Frost - February 2021