[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Nippelspanner

Assumptions how I play the game don't help here, especially if they are wrong.

I am not saying how you play the game, necessarily. My main point there is that there are three ways you start tactical combat, and in TWO of them you are very likely to have made some noise shortly prior to Game Start. In the third, you probably set your ambush in a certain place for a reason. So in all THREE scenarios the enemy actually has some reason to at least suspect you are there.

Whenever possible, wich is most of the time due to rather good recon everywhere, I ambush them, which sets your speed to 5kts. And no, I see no sign that the enemy detected me before or after pinging, so your assumption Ithat they ping because I was detected doesn't work out here.

I said the enemy suspected you are there, so they are doing active sonar searches. As you mention, active sonar searches aren't a panacea, so they don't always detect you, which is realistic.

Besides, while it is possible to set ambushes if they nicely tell you the guys are sending Commando Teams to Trondheim, if you are told that they are going to a larger area say the "Norwegian Sea", it is harder to say exactly which patch of Norwegian Sea it'll be, so you'll have to move. And since you never know exactly when they'll decide to tell you your mission forecloses, there's always the time pressure.

Originally Posted by Nippelspanner

Hope the US commander has a bad day, hope the odds are somehow in my favor?
I sure will not light a friggin emergency flare in the middle of the night hoping that I might coincidentally find something - while everything else dozens of miles away definitely now have found me.

In other words, you don't really have a plan.

Seriously, if they don't do active sonar searches, the game is reduced to a relatively simple detection/counter-detection game, which you must win because you have the better sonar and quieter ship. All you have to do is keep the passive sonar value at below 0 which you usually have the acoustic advantage to do. It is that active sonar component, which often covers that part you'll prefer to close to get off better shots, that creates the uncertainty.

Originally Posted by Nippelspanner

Just met two Victors in campaign, a Victor I and III.
Ambushed them, 5kts, stopped engines as soon as I was in-game.

Frankly, I remember my enemies being a bit smarter than this, but anyway, if they did not ping, the result would have been the same. Sooner or later you will simply pick them up on the passive sonar, and your tactic seems to basically consist of firing Launch-on-Bearing snapshots and there's no reason to believe they would have been less accurate.