Convoy approach and visibility

[Rosco74]

Hello. In my campaign it is mid 1940, still on happy time period. I am following a convoy in a light fog, I am deck awash and maybe 2500m from them on teir side. I can clearly see few boats and the destroyer ahead of the convoy.
They do not see me, and I continue on a parallel route a bit faster to position myself for a perpendicular attack, as the Dale Oiler is my only single big target (17500tons), and he is on the side.

So when the destroyer is in my 250 degrees and the oiler in my 200s, I order a turn toward the convoy for the 90° attack and order periscope depth at the same time.

Problem, is that the destroyer just start to rush toward me at max speed...
I don't know why he suddenly spot me.. is that because I turn? probably not as my surface exposed should reduce as I turn toward them.. Maybe because his sonar can now spot me as I dive to periscope depth at high speed? maybe... I need to try again by reducing my speed before goinf periscope depth..

1 detail strange : I am deck awash and stopped. I want to calculate the convoy speed so I use my attack periscope and I time the target to pass through my scope, you know the drill. But as soon as I raise a few millimeter my scope I immediatly receive a message "periscope sighted with coords"...
The convoy continue like nothing happened but the message clearly indicates they saw me. I guess it is a bug and that I should not use this feature?

ps : I use The Wolves of Steel mod full realism btw

Thanks for your feeback

[KaleunMarco]

Hello. In my campaign it is mid 1940, still on happy time period. I am following a convoy in a light fog, I am deck awash and maybe 2500m from them on teir side. I can clearly see few boats and the destroyer ahead of the convoy.
They do not see me, and I continue on a parallel route a bit faster to position myself for a perpendicular attack, as the Dale Oiler is my only single big target (17500tons), and he is on the side.

So when the destroyer is in my 250 degrees and the oiler in my 200s, I order a turn toward the convoy for the 90° attack and order periscope depth at the same time.

Problem, is that the destroyer just start to rush toward me at max speed...
I don't know why he suddenly spot me.. is that because I turn? probably not as my surface exposed should reduce as I turn toward them.. Maybe because his sonar can now spot me as I dive to periscope depth at high speed? maybe... I need to try again by reducing my speed before goinf periscope depth..

1 detail strange : I am deck awash and stopped. I want to calculate the convoy speed so I use my attack periscope and I time the target to pass through my scope, you know the drill. But as soon as I raise a few millimeter my scope I immediatly receive a message "periscope sighted with coords"...
The convoy continue like nothing happened but the message clearly indicates they saw me. I guess it is a bug and that I should not use this feature?

ps : I use The Wolves of Steel mod full realism btw

Thanks for your feeback

i can answer your first question: the escort cannot see you at 2500m but he can probably hear you when you dive at that range.
yes, slow down when you dive and you may not be detected so quickly. although, 2500m is close enough for them to hear you on ASDIC.

[Rosco74]

Second try. In fact I stop my diesel engine before ordering periscope depth, when the speed was below 5kts. They didn't spot me. I managed to sink one of the Dale Oiler (17500 tons!). It was my only one target but I spotted another Dale Oiler at the back of the small convoy, so after avoiding the escort, 3 destroyers searching me for half an hour, I followed them deck awash when they left me to join the convoy.. I checked on wikipedia and only 6 Dale Oiler were built so I am not sure it is really historical accurate to have 2 of them in the same convoy.

This time I went past them and tried to infiltrate the convoy for head-on, facing them to offer the least surface to the escort, engine stopped and periscope death. The only problem is that the convoy esscort was too close.. I had one on each side at 40 degrees approaching and they got me on asdic before they went past my sides. I though hey would escort the convoy from the side but they were just ahead and 2000 meters from each other.
I had to escape but I remained periscope death to shoot my two last torpedoes at the last Dale Oiler that turned and offered me his 140 meters wide flank. My solution was really inaccurate but one torp at the back killed it. Might be lucky to sink a 17500 tons ship in a single torp ^^
I then left the convoy.
The subsighted message should be desactivated as it is probably bugged, I keep receiving them while the convoy escort doest not react, and it is received as soon as my scope exit the coning tower, even when I am surfaced..

[Bilge_Rat]

it is always hard to answer these questions since you are playing a heavily modded version, so difficult to say if the issue is with the game or the mod.

The AI in SH5 has 3 states: "passive" it does not know you are there (small detection circle), "alert" it suspects something is there, but has not detected you (larger detection circle) and "detection", you are spotted and all escorts are gunning for you (largest detection circle). By turning on detection circles in the settings, you should get a better idea what the issue is.

The other problem is that you are running "decks awash", presumably the deck is underwater and only the conning tower sticks out. The issue there is that the game treats your sub as if you are underwater so the AI will never "see" you, it can only detect you through its hydrophones. Running decks awash is a gamey tactics that the Devs never anticipated so results in game may be strange.

If you still feel you are being detected too far out, the issue may be with the sensors or sim.cfg which you could modify or revert to the stock ones although that may require some digging in the files to see what was modded.

[Rosco74]

Ok thank you for the reply. I don't have this circles, maybe because I use real navigation, no I have nothing on my map except what I draw.
For the deck awash tactic, yes the game was not developped with this in mind so I understand the game might have some strange behavior, but if I remember well, I already was spotted by the escort while too close on deck awash.
I am not a fan of changing the sensor files, like Sim.cfg as I am totally noob and I am scared to fail my savegames.

[KaleunMarco]

Ok thank you for the reply. I don't have this circles, maybe because I use real navigation, no I have nothing on my map except what I draw.
For the deck awash tactic, yes the game was not developped with this in mind so I understand the game might have some strange behavior, but if I remember well, I already was spotted by the escort while too close on deck awash.
I am not a fan of changing the sensor files, like Sim.cfg as I am totally noob and I am scared to fail my savegames.

that is a good thought.

when you DO decide to make your own mods, create a separate mod folder under JSGME and apply it only when you are between campaigns.