There were actually 34 boats present at Surigao Strait carrying a total of 136 torpedoes. Most of the boats launched all four carried. None scored a hit. The Japanese with 4 destroyers, 2 battleships, and 2 cruisers present hit 10 of the boats and sank one (PT 493). There were lots of actions with these kind of results. I suspect the Germans likewise had alot of nights were the hunting didn't go as well as it might too.
The basic problem here is one of fire control. Nobody's torpedo boat had any sort of torpedo fire control computer system like destroyers had. This meant that setting the spread, lead, course, etc., on the torpedos was basically a wet finger in the air sort of thing. A really hot boat captain might get decent results. One with limited experiance would not.