AI Sensors

[DCOg]

I'm alittle confused about AI sensors.
When being tracked (pinged), is it noise - from engine;
movement of the sub or the mass of the sub (pings bouncing off the sub and returning to enemy sonar) that helps them find me.

I have been very unsuccessful in sneaking up on anything without the DD being right on top waiting for me.

Thanks
DCOg

PS - I love this game!

[Bane]

The sonar pings use the mass of your sub. They send a ping from the DD, the sound waves travel to your sub and are reflected back to the DD. They can calculate your postion by using the time it takes for the sound waves to return.

The best defenses against this are to go deep, preferably under a thermal layer which will bend the sound waves like a prism, and to present the smallest profile to the DD as possible.

[SteamWake]

Ill refer you to this excellent article re the AI sensors.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=104377

It was written for SH3 however the concepts are very much the same.

They can calculate your postion by using the time it takes for the sound waves to return.

Time gives them range.

Early sonars could not determine position other than "we pointed it this way and got an echo so it must be this way"

[DCOg]

Thanks for the help - very helpful.

A great game is made great by forums like this.

DCOg

[Seaman_Hornsby]

A great game is made great by forums like this.

:up::up::up:

[SteamWake]

Glad to help makes me feel all warm and fuzzy :p

[nattydread]

Its not exactly mass, its cross-section/frontal area exposed to the ping.

Smaller subs tend to be a tad harder to find using active sonar not becuase its composed of less matter, but because it has a smaller cross-section so less sound bounces back.

In general smaller is better, fleet subs where much easier to find using active sonar compared to smaller earlier subs.

When they go passive its engine sounds and other noise caused by the sub, size may not matter as much, whats most important is design and technology used to reduce the subs sound signature and speed.

What ive learned is this, if he is pinging you damn being quiet, get moving. If he is pinging he cant use passive anymore anyway, if he is moving fast he cant use passive(plus he likly has found you anyway). Keep your speed up keeping in mind battery life and evade. Once your found the only thing that can save your from depth charges is speed, maneurving out of the plane of the depth charge drop pattern and depth.

They will try and pass over you nose to tail when they drop, if you cant get away from the DD or the drop what you want to do is keep crossing their path as close to 90 degrees as possible. This will hopefully limit the number od DC that even have a chance to hit you. If your fast enough you can throw off his timing with the DCs and they'll blow before or after you've crossed their path.

So basically if you cant get away, keep him at a bearing of 90 or 270 degrees, this may mean lots of turning and circles. But i'd rather have 3 dcs to my left and 3 to my right then 6 right along the spine of the sub.