Shark tactics?

[LoBlo]

Originally Posted by CCIP

II actually am starting to suspect that Shark is the most likely "real ACTUV" - i.e. its sensors are probably much closer to what's really likely to be deployed. Gator, by comparison, is pretty much "easy mode" with its all-seeing long-range HF sonar.

Yeah, the wide range of sonar capabilities is sortof baffling... how can active sonar have such widely variable speed/range capabilities... does this really simulate reality?...

... of course no one will ever tell.

[Gargamel]

No idea what I did, but I just used Gator on cat and Mouse to get a score just shy of 10k.

Really, TBH, I have no clue how to run this. Anybody got any good tips for this engine? Or should I peek over at the DW forum for a noob guide?

Nevermind.... found the manual.....

[CCIP]

World of difference between the sub's response to the Gator creeping in and the tactics necessitated by the Shark! In the 2nd mission, the night one, with the Gator I've been able to stay at low speed and follow the sub at close range with impunity while it continued snorting along happily on what seemed to be its general course from the start, with only regular turns. So it never even got wind of me for a whle, while I had it on not only HF sonar but also radar and visual.

With the shark, I have to ping to find the sub. It immediately stopped snorting, went deep, and turned about 130 degrees from its original course, eventually losing me. Never even got to the HF range...

[Gargamel]

Just looking at the different models, I think Seahorse may be the most user friendly.

It can use the MF at speeds equal to the SSK's top speed, so even in a spirnt, you'll never use lose it. And then you can 'paint' the SSK with the HF when you get close enough.

I'm thinking these different models are ones proposed by different contractors. And it's our job to figure out which ones work the best. But my question then is, why can't we have 360', High speed, MF AND HF on our drone? Why do we have to choose?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

I'm thinking these different models are ones proposed by different contractors. And it's our job to figure out which ones work the best. But my question then is, why can't we have 360', High speed, MF AND HF on our drone? Why do we have to choose?

Two things: I'm guessing here but, limited space on the drone, and 360' sensors would be too sensitive to use at high speeds.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Two things: I'm guessing here but, limited space on the drone, and 360' sensors would be too sensitive to use at high speeds.

My point was that some of the models had 360 this, or 120 that, but you couldnt get them both.

And the Seahorse has High speed 360 MF.

[Gargamel]

OK, back to the OP.

Shark Tactics.

I don't like how it's only got 'sidescan' MF.

You have to turn away from your target, ping, then sprint over, and ping again, just like you said.

I ended up burning a lot of fuel doing this. And apparently, from the scoring sheets, fuel is a major factor.

3.5 Scoring
You start the game with 2000 Bonus points: 1000 bonus points for MF High Frequency Active Sonar (MF) and 1000 bonus points for fuel.
• You LOSE a point for every MF Ping you emit.
•You LOSE a point for every 10 seconds you spend at full throttle. (This interval is scaled for progressively lower speeds. As speed decreases, the time between point deductions increases.)
• In most missions you RECEIVE 200 points for every minute you hold the SSK on MF /EO/IR/or Radar. 15
• In most missions you RECEIVE 300 points for every minute you hold the SSK on High Frequency Active Sonar (HF).
• If you hold the SSK on multiple sensors, you get the combined points for all sensors that hold the contact.
• 1000 points are deducted if you enter the exclusion zone for surface contacts. (Your brief will inform you how close you can get to a surface ship before penalties are incurred.) 1000 points are deducted for each additional 5 minutes you remain within the exclusion zone.

OK.... and reading this again, stealth is a concern, but not a major one. But I was wasting a lot of points at high speed, trying to sprint and ping on the target.

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

I'm thinking these different models are ones proposed by different contractors. And it's our job to figure out which ones work the best. But my question then is, why can't we have 360', High speed, MF AND HF on our drone? Why do we have to choose?

I'm sure a lot of things go into this! Money and practicality not the least of them. As with most research, some of it is promised but the 'customer' (i.e. the military) may not have the confidence that it will actually be delivered. In other cases, it may be possible, but at a cost to the vehicle's capacity or even just economic viability. I think one of the key things here is that the ACTUV has to be cheap and reliable - if it's lacking one of those qualities, it makes no sense to deploy it. I'm pretty sure all of these proposals are very early concepts. It makes sense to test out how all of them work and what ups/downs there are to the systems, just in case the one that's ideal on paper and in sim turns out to be terrible or even just too pricey in reality.

Of course this being a research project, it makes sense that we're kept in the dark, as subjects.


[edit]

GOOD LORD! I was tracking the thing happily in my gator, when out of nowhere, it surfaced about 200 yards from me! Somebody seems pissed

I like the "security" focus of this game, by the way. It makes things interesting. It's not about killing things, and you really don't know who you're up against and what their real goal is - and actually that makes reactions interesting and unpredictable sometimes.

[LoBlo]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I'm sure a lot of things go into this! Money and practicality not the least of them. As with most research, some of it is promised but the 'customer' (i.e. the military) may not have the confidence that it will actually be delivered.

Hm...there is one obvious reason that you alluded to earlier... most likely 4 of the 5 ACTUVs are completely fabricated with fictional capabilities with only 1 of them the real model. The other 4 or there are decoy's to keep the general public and ie enemy intelligence from guessing the real capabilities.

On a related note, I hate the way that the SSK doesn't respond or detect HF Sonar. DW had the same bug. In reality a real SSK would detect HF sonar pings and start evading just like MF sonar pings wouldn't you think?

PS) love the signiture CCIP

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by LoBlo

Hm...there is one obvious reason that you alluded to earlier... most likely 4 of the 5 ACTUVs are completely fabricated with fictional capabilities with only 1 of them the real model. The other 4 or there are decoy's to keep the general public and ie enemy intelligence from guessing the real capabilities.

On a related note, I hate the way that the SSK doesn't respond or detect HF Sonar. DW had the same bug. In reality a real SSK would detect HF sonar pings and start evading just like MF sonar pings wouldn't you think?

PS) love the signiture CCIP

Thanks

After a few tries at the Shark, I think I got it down pat. It's definitely got some weaknesses, but I now have little trouble sticking to the sub even if it speeds up to 15-20 kt and starts evading - even when it pops decoys. I've come to the conclusion that yup, I do like the shark, although it's not a vehicle that can just passively stick to the target - you really do have to go in stops and starts. Otherwise I've been able to get over 20,000pt on every mission with it.

Also, forget the HF sonar 'stealth' - the sub doesn't react to radar or visual on the ACTUV, which I find odd - although perhaps it's just choosing to blatantly ignore you....

[Jamesrbird]

Originally Posted by LoBlo

Yeah, the wide range of sonar capabilities is sortof baffling... how can active sonar have such widely variable speed/range capabilities... does this really simulate reality?...

... of course no one will ever tell.

Hello, First time poster.

The various types of sonar exist because, based on the frequency of sound, you get various performance on Sonar.

Generally, the lower the frequency of sound, the farther the sound can travel in water before attenuating below usefull levels. Inversly, the higher frequency of sound, the better the resolution of the data obtained from the sonar. Thus, MF Sonar has pretty good range, but does not give you great data clarity (generally just contact bearing and range). High frequency sonar can have sufficent resolution to allow for a level of imaging (which is why side scan sonars used in underwater survey use this range), but they are only useful for very short ranges.

As for the directionality of sonars in the game, that is realistic. a Transducer element is directional, so, to gain 360 coverage, you will need multiple transducers. Also, The higher the frequency of the sonar, the smaller the transducer that is required to produce a coherent beam, so that plays in to the selection of frequency.

As for HF sonar stealth, I think that is also likely realistic. Submarines rely on passive sonar for detection, so their arrays would be focused on frequencys that propogate well in the water. HF sonar frequencys are so high as to not be particularly usefull for passive sonar to listen to because the noise would not travel very far from the sound source, so they are probably not listened for

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Jamesrbird

Hello, First time poster.

The various types of sonar exist because, based on the frequency of sound, you get various performance on Sonar.

Generally, the lower the frequency of sound, the farther the sound can travel in water before attenuating below usefull levels. Inversly, the higher frequency of sound, the better the resolution of the data obtained from the sonar. Thus, MF Sonar has pretty good range, but does not give you great data clarity (generally just contact bearing and range). High frequency sonar can have sufficent resolution to allow for a level of imaging (which is why side scan sonars used in underwater survey use this range), but they are only useful for very short ranges.

As for the directionality of sonars in the game, that is realistic. a Transducer element is directional, so, to gain 360 coverage, you will need multiple transducers. Also, The higher the frequency of the sonar, the smaller the transducer that is required to produce a coherent beam, so that plays in to the selection of frequency.

As for HF sonar stealth, I think that is also likely realistic. Submarines rely on passive sonar for detection, so their arrays would be focused on frequencys that propogate well in the water. HF sonar frequencys are so high as to not be particularly usefull for passive sonar to listen to because the noise would not travel very far from the sound source, so they are probably not listened for

I would assume most of us are familiar, at least the basics of sonar technology, but if not, that was a good primer.

But what I think he meant was why the weird combination of sensors? Some of the models have long range 360' MF, and crappy HF, while others have no MF and Long range, High speed 360' HF.

I really think these are proposals from the contractors bidding to build the drone, and SCS was tasked with coming up with AI tactics for each one.

My question then is, why couldnt they just build a bigger platform, and through the best of each sensor on it? Or at least a compromise of what we want. (LR High speed MF w/ a Mid range mid speed HF).

[Enigma738]

Hey guys, I finally came out of lurking on these boards to add my thoughts to the discussions.

So far I've just had a few runs with it tonight and have the game play down pat. Apart from my very first run, I've been in the Triton all this time, so I don't have much to add to the Shark discussion so far.

What I *can* bring to the table is a neat and relevant topic from the realms of artificial intelligence. No matter how 'smart' an AI agent may appear, it's often just doing the same thing we're doing - searching for the minimums and maximums for a problem. Understandably, a computer is much better suited for the raw calculations, hence why we trust in Excel to plot out our functions when we want to make sense of things.

The flip side to this is that we possess a HUGE advantage over a given computer in that we've been around for far longer and have thus gathered much more experience in life. All those hours of playing catch, watching traffic to know when it's safe to cross, those are all examples of us using the basic object tracking skills we have. We're way better than we give ourselves credit for!

... In fact, we're so good at making very quick and rational decisions with such reliability that it's common to collect data from human trials in complex scenarios to save the young and fresh AI agent from having to learn on its own. Collectively, we're striving for the top scores and figuring out tactics, consider it being a parent to the brains that will make ACTUV run. Without the help gathered from this software, it'd take a lot of resources to essentially re-invent the wheel.

After collecting enough data from us the computer can start to make use of its talent with numbers to smooth out our human mistakes, like hitting the wrong key, or selecting the best strategies to work with for each small part of the problem. Stitch those together and you have yourself a fairly well suited brain for tactical tracking!

Pretty neat stuff, I have to say, hope it's an enjoyable read!