GWX newbie questions

[DGJ]

Heippa!

First I'd like to congratulate the people behind GWX, great work!:up: The world feels much more alive with all the new sounds, ships, traffic, ports etc etc.

Now to the questions

1. In the newbie thread someone said that the escorts do not have unlimited depth charges and somewhere I read that all ships, even corvettes, have 240. Is this true and if it is, why? AFAIK in the beginning of the war corvettes had 40 and DD 80. Having 6 times as many seems a bit much...

2. About the ASDIC ping, in Aces you would hear one ping when the escorts searched and 2 pings when they found you. In SH2 and 3 you never hear 2 pings. In GWX, does 1 ping =found you, no sound = searching, or no sound = using only passive, 1 ping = searching or found you (you can't tell the difference)

3. Also the Aces manual said that (very?) early in the war the British underestimated the uboats' diving capabilities and therefore you could be almost completely safe from dc at 100 m. Is this true in GWX?

4. Some people say that escorts had better lookout optics than uboats, other that it was the same. I've got the impression that in gwx, during daytime the escorts spot you before you spot them but during nighttime it's the other way around. Am I correct?

5. How about merchant optics? Can they see as far as escorts?

6. Do merchants have any way of detecting you underwater? I guess they don't have hydrophones but can they see a wake if I'm at periscope depth? If yes, at which speed?

7. I read somewhere that in sh3 you can’t use the merchants sounds to hide in the middle of the convoy, the escort will act as if the merchants are totally silent and find you. Has this changed in gwx?


8. Can the sound man hear a sinking ship? I attacked a convoy and hit a small merchant but it didn't explode or split in half. I was the attacked by DDs and had to go deep. Several minutes later the crew started cheering and there was a sunk ship icon on the map. So obviously he can detect when it is sunk but can he detect a damaged ship about to sink(IRL he must have been able to)?

9. How do you detect dud torpedoes? A couple of times I have struck a ship and there was no water splash and the ship continued to move, but the sound was very explosion-like. (I shot from 600m so it had armed)

10. Why set SH4 in the pacific? They might as well make a RTS about the Prague Spring where you play as the soviets.

[Lzs von swe]

6. They will spot your scope, depending on weather an sea. But they do not seem to detect you in any way as long as you don´t breach the surface with any part of the boat. That goes for planes too, but let the conning tower show between the waves and they will come for you.

[NeonSamurai]

1. Yes though my answer in the newbie thread was for stock. I havent checked to see how many depth charges are carried in gwx. As i remember though the number of depth charges a ship carries in the game is dependant on how many racks it has (i belive the game counts for each rack/launcher) in the game. And your right 240 is not realistic.

2. In reality you would only hear one ping when the ping hit the sub. The rest im not sure.

3. No i dont think its true in gwx due to what can and cant be modded in the game.

4. Cant say, havent tried gwx yet, but from what ive read it seems to be true.

5. No idea, i havent looked at the sensors yet for gwx :)

6. what Lzs von swe said (in reality the only way merchants can detect a uboat is visualy. They didnt cary sonar or hydrophones, and i dont think any carried radar except maybe late war).

7. Probably not i dont think that is something that can be modded. But i might be wrong :)

8. Your hydrophone operator should be able to hear a sinking ship unless he is deaf (sinking ships are usualy very loud) however i belive your crew will react the same way even if he couldnt hear it. In reality it is possible to miss the sound if your being depthcharged as the explosions mess up the acoustics of the surrounding water for a bit, not to mention being distracted by attacking DD's, and the fact that the hydrophones are directional (i dont know if there was a way for the uboats to listen to all directions at once).

9. Most real duds i have encountered (where the torpedo should have detonated garanteed) give a small explosion sound, as if the primer went off, but the main charge didnt.

10. Different theater (and a popular one), sh1 was set in the pacific, 2 and 3 in the atlantic. In WW2 there were realy only 2 Submarine theaters that are worth simulating (due to the length and scope of submarine involvement), The atlantic uboat's and the americans in the pacific (the japanese did have a fairly large sub fleet, but they were largely ineffective in WW2 and were typicaly tasked to military convoys). The russians and the brits also didnt accomplish much with their submarines either. At least not enough to base an entire game on.

[hyperion2206]

@DGJ
Concerning question 2: I think when you hear 1 ping than a pause of several seconds and than another ping they're searching. If they found you they ping you constantly. But I'm not sure.

@NeonSamurai
A ping is a sound traveling through water, right? So you should hear the ping even if it does not hit the sub, or am I wrong? I mean today they don't ping like mad because you can hear active sonar very well even if you're far away.

[NeonSamurai]

To hear it the sound wave only has to reach the sub, for the ship sending the ping to hear it the ping has to bounce off and go all the way back. Which is why you can hear sonar pings about twice as far as they can be used to detect with.

So you can hear it with out being detected, but the sound wave still has to come to you to hear it. Sound is also very directional, and can be bent in water too among other things.