Which method do you use for your hydrophone checks?

[Drakken]

Nah, it is not a n00b's question. I know how to go to the sonar room :ping:

I'm curious, however, to know how other players perform their hydrophone routine (if any). Do you check at regular intervals? Doing it yourself or relying on your soundman?

For my part, I submerge at noon and midnight and stay at ahead 2/3 for two hours for hydrophone check. I used to do it myself, but now I let it in the hands of my soundman. Does it have an impact on the rate of success for a hydrophone check?

Thanks! :arrgh!:

[Arclight]

I just try to park my sub in the middle of a shipping lane, submerge the boat to radardepth and up the TC untill I get a sonar/radar/visual contact and move to engage. Works fine, but it is a fact that the sonarguy is completely incapable. Sonar has (theoretically) the longest detection range, but I often make contact with the radar first. Sometimes even visual, proving that the radarguy is just as incapable.

When I listen myself, I can hear contacts the AI did not detect. Likewise, if I look at the radar screen, I can see contacts the AI did not detect. If I'm desperate for a contact, I take a listen myself every 2 or 4 hours, on the hour. But I'm usually not that desperate. ;)

[SteamWake]

Often Ill get a notice that a convoy has been spotted at yadda yadda moving on such and such a course.

Ill do some rough math and steam at an appropriate speed to the proposed intercept location. More often than not Im wrong.

At that point Ill slow to ahead 1/3 and take her down to 80 feet or so and do a couple of sweeps around the dial myself. Often I can pick up distant unresolved contacts that my 'qualified' sonar man doesent. We make a note of the direction of the contact, mark it on the map surface, and steam in that general direction at flank at best guess of distance. By the way if you pick up a several distant contacts close to one another within a few degrees your are golden !

If there is still no sightings I will repeat the dip, listen, mark, surface and scoot. Often the lines of bearing of the distant contact will give me clues to the contacts course and speed. The tale of the tape as it were.

Not exactly scientific and often we miss the convoy outright due to the lost time taken to dip and listen. But often it does work.

For casual patrols Ill travel submerged at ahead slow for a period of a couple of hours typically at around 100 feet or so and leave it up to my soundman to notify me of any contacts.

[Diopos]

Gentelmen,
your sonar/radar men are not incapable, deaf or blind. It is an age old tradition of subsims for your sensor operators and bridge lookouts to be "slow" in their response so as to "reward" the players doing the actual job themselves. So no crew health problem! They are double agents working for Ubisoft !!!!!! Traitors !!!!!
AAhhh:gulp: Kill them all !!!!!

Ok, I'm calm now! Thanks for the pill doc!

[Diopos]

And to reply to Drakken:
My sonar practices are directly related to target availability. They're more relaxed when playing in a relative target rich situation (as I'm in now, playing stock 1.4, career mode, Nov/Dec 1943) and my general "scouting" is mostly based on long range radar sweeps and radio contacts. But when I "listen", in a low target density situation or want to avoid using radar, I usually do so for for 15-20 min going to a 40-50 m depth (avoiding to pass the thermal layer), engines stopped. In the begining and end of my listening period I always do the listening. I then surface and move to the next listening spot 10-15 miles away. That would be ~20min "listening" stops every 1-1.5 hour. Even in my radar based "scouting" routine, sonar is valuabale in the merchant/warship distinction of the target.

I heavily relly on sonar in convoy work. At present I try to enter and fire the torps from within the convoy taking shots from both bow and stern tubes (but take into account that I'm using auto_targeting, all other settings realistic, no cameras etc). This actually means lying in front of the convoy with its "middle" at 0 bearing.
So either by radio contact or by at least two long range radar observations I have a convoy route. I rush to my ambush area/point and place the sub verrtically so as to have the convoy coming generally at a 90 or 270 bearing. As soon as I have the convoy on sonar I go to periscope depth. I move and turn a bit as nessesary to keep the convoy on my 90 or 270 bearing. Take into account that I'm "listening" to the whole sonar signature of the convoy. So If I have the "outmost" contacts at 80 and 92 degrees I move ahead to obtain a more symmetric convoy "sonogramm" centerd at 90 degs. As the convoy approaches the convoy "sonogramm "becomes wider and you have specific contacts on the central and flanking escorts. Low speed, dive at 90m or at least below thermal and turn 90 degs to bring the convoy "sonogramm" at 0 bearing. Some adjustment maybe needed so this part of the manuver is better to be done before the convoy closes in. As the convoy approaches you observe the cental escort and the flanking ones. If you have the flanking escorts at ±45 degrees bearing (or more) it is time to get ready for the trip upwards. The signal is when the leading escort opasses over you and you "hear" it at your rear quadrant. Slow speed upwards turning to ±90degrees of your current heading maybe stopping the engines as you pass the thermal, pausing at 25m. "Listening" for merchants and extending the periscope mainly looking at your 90 degs trying to avoid a merchant ramming you. Then periscope depth and you know the drill from thereon. Your targets will be coming at favorable angles and ranges both from bow and stern:yep: (as long of course they haven't already rammed you:hmm: :hmm: )!!!!

[Pisces]

I see no reason to do 'extended' hydrophone checks. (SH3 experience only, but isn't any different, imho) If you can't find anything the first couple of minutes, there's no reason to think they will appear the next 10 minutes. Sure they might. But then why not wait another hour, or a full day for that matter. Same probability. Seeing as your hydrophone coverage is limited, I suspect there is more gain to be had in scanning new unscanned area's of the map. As your initial listening position may just be outside of the traffic lane. Most likely your have better luck if you set up your listening points across a suspected traffic lane and move back and forth. Based on the size of your hydrophone coverage and expected target speed you can figure out how much time a target needs to cross that. Your interval should be lower so you will detect him the second time if he was just outside detection range the moment before.

[kylania]

I usually cruise on the surface at Standard then as I reach say a turn in my search pattern or it's been "a while" I'll order periscope deapth and ahead 1/3 and stay under for an hour or so, then back up top to cover more ground.

Mind you this is at 256/512 TC. If I'm "live", I'll just do a sweep or two, then back to moving.