airborne radar mod-is it worth it?

[HEMISENT]

I'm playing a campaign mission right now Nov 1943. My VIIC has the usual assortment of radar/radar detector equipment installed.
I find that I normally get the "Detecting Radar Signals" message when the
source is a loooong way off giving ample time to dive safely.

Every book I've read dealing with later war years describes aircraft attacks to often be a sudden totally unexpected experience. Sometimes the detector gave enough advance notice to dive out of harms way and sometimes it worked only when the boat was already in visual range resulting in a panic dive. This commonly found the boat taking heavy damage as it attempted to claw its way
down. Night time ac attacks were even more devestating especially when
Leigh Lights were used.

Poking around the SNS files for PBY and Sunderland aircraft to see what airborn radars are employed it shows different versions of the ASV series.
Looking thru the AI_Sensors .dat file I find that there are 5 different ASV
radars available depending on year. These all have a MaxRange= setting
between 8000 and 16000m. That's a pretty fair distance and if picked up by the detector on the boat allows plenty of time for diving.

What I am thinking of is editing 5 MaxRange= files from 2500m to 6000m
plugging these into SH3 Commander Random folders so that we may
occasionally experience a truly unexpected air attack which may result in
devestating consequences.

Is this thought worth pursuing and are there enough people out there who are using Commanders Random function to make it worthwhile?

[Kpt. Lehmann]

I think this issue holds hands with all of the other sensor issues in a way.

I also think your idea to use SH3 Cmdr is a great one!

The only thing that I don't like is the fact that RWR failure chances aren't already randomized by SH3 itself.

Furthermore, everyone should be appropriately afraid of air attack. Your proposed mod would contribute to that and maybe shake loose a bit of complacency.

RWR should be an augmentation... not a cure-all.

GO FOR IT!!! :up: :up: :up:

[Clyde00]

Sounds like a plan worth pursuing.

Maybe the "detect radar" ranges can also be randomized a little in the sensors.cfg. I noticed that it uses crew efficiency also.

[HEMISENT]

And then instead, your radar now picks up the inbound and you dive still any way.

I don't know about you but after nearly a year of playing SHIII my radar has proven to be nearly worthless. So this wasn't a consideration in my original thinking on the issue


Maybe the way to look at it is NOT with the AC's radar but the range's of the RWR. Plus make it crew efficient dependent with variables. see the RWR has set range's (depending on type), thats where you need to look, not at the AC radar units.
Why hamstring the AC from finding you ?
After all its about us detecting them, not them detecting us.

Good point, we want the AC to be able to locate us as normal but a decrease in advance notice is the desired effect. I need to locate the RWR settings. I've not run across them yet any clues on their location?

[Kpt. Lehmann]

:doh: Sorry Hemisent and guys... I thought he was referring to RWR in the first post.

I guess I should read a little more slowly next time.

[HEMISENT]

Cdre Gibs
Thanks, found them in Sensors_dat. not AI_Sensors. Looks like the named RWR units have ranges between 20,000 and 30,000m
Same theory using random files reducing down to drastically close in ranges.

[panthercules]

And then instead, your radar now picks up the inbound and you dive still any way.

I don't know about you but after nearly a year of playing SHIII my radar has proven to be nearly worthless. So this wasn't a consideration in my original thinking on the issue


Maybe the way to look at it is NOT with the AC's radar but the range's of the RWR. Plus make it crew efficient dependent with variables. see the RWR has set range's (depending on type), thats where you need to look, not at the AC radar units.
Why hamstring the AC from finding you ?
After all its about us detecting them, not them detecting us.

Good point, we want the AC to be able to locate us as normal but a decrease in advance notice is the desired effect. I need to locate the RWR settings. I've not run across them yet any clues on their location?

I must be missing something about the theory behind this approach. If the airplanes need to (and do) use their radar to find the u-boat from a long range, why wouldn't the u-boat's radar detector then to be able to detect the plane's radar at that same long range the plane was using its radar from, and give time to dive? UNLESS the plane was using a type of radar that the u-boat's detector could not detect, in which event wouldn't you expect the u-boat's detector not to give any warning at all and for the plane to surprise the uboat (or at least only be subject to visual detection per the usual parameters for that).

So, is that what you're trying to simulate here, i.e., some % chance that the plane will be using an undetectable radar type and therefore not be detectable by the uboat with much if any warning? Is the difference in airplane radar types vs u-boat detector types not modeled in the game, so you want to simulate it with this approach?

Or are you really trying to simulate a situation where the airplane's radar would be detectable but the plane wouldn't just be cruising around with it always on (and therefore always be detectable at long range) but would instead be turning it on occasionally and leaving it off the rest of the time, so you want to simulate situations where the plane sometimes first detects the u-boat (and vice versa) at relatively short range because it happened to turn on its radar when it happened to be fairly close to the u-boat? If this were the goal though, I assume you would want to mod the airplane radar 'cause you would not really want to airplane to locate the sub from any further out than it actually "turns on" its radar.

Would the approach you take to this, in terms of choosing whether to mod either the u-boat's sensors or the airplane's radars, differ depending upon which of the two theoretical "problems" described above you were trying to fix, or is it just a question of planes never surprising subs the way the game works now and you're trying to simulate surprise no matter what the reason?

(I'm just curious - I've never survived late enough into the war in my 3 careers so far to have radar detectors, and I'm always being "surprised" by aircraft anyway, even in the early war period, in that there is never any time to do anything (other than crash dive) between the time I first get an "aircraft sighted" warning and the time the bombs start falling, so I don't have any practical in-game experience to judge this issue by)

[HEMISENT]

Or are you really trying to simulate a situation where the airplane's radar would be detectable but the plane wouldn't just be cruising around with it always on (and therefore always be detectable at long range) but would instead be turning it on occasionally and leaving it off the rest of the time, so you want to simulate situations where the plane sometimes first detects the u-boat (and vice versa) at relatively short range because it happened to turn on its radar when it happened to be fairly close to the u-boat? If this were the goal though, I assume you would want to mod the airplane radar 'cause you would not really want to airplane to locate the sub from any further out than it actually "turns on" its radar.

Would the approach you take to this, in terms of choosing whether to mod either the u-boat's sensors or the airplane's radars, differ depending upon which of the two theoretical "problems" described above you were trying to fix, or is it just a question of planes never surprising subs the way the game works now and you're trying to simulate surprise no matter what the reason?


Panthercules, this was my original idea and after playing with the different RWR units I now have an idea of the results these would bring. I think I'm going to go back to the AC radar units and play with these to compare the two.
My theory was to mimick later war behaviour of a boat getting caught on the surface by AC. Aircraft attacks accounted for a huge amount of U Boat attrition in the later years. Right now playing in early 44 my radar warning is always giving me way too much advance notice that an AC is inbound. Early war gameplay however you are correct we get surprised all the time, but later years unless there's a surprise or unexpected attack it's too easy. In my current campaign patrol leaving St Naziere crossing the Bay of Biscay heading toward grid AK. Travelling surfaced as much as possible I have run into multiple inbound Aircraft daily. Each and every time I am able to dive to a safe depth with plenty of time to spare.

[Stiebler]

Hemisent said (of early 1944):
In my current campaign patrol leaving St Naziere crossing the Bay of Biscay heading toward grid AK. Travelling surfaced as much as possible I have run into multiple inbound Aircraft daily. Each and every time I am able to dive to a safe depth with plenty of time to spare.

But that's exactly how it should be! It was only in mid 1943 that Allied radar technology outstripped German counter-measures resulting in large U-boat losses to air attack. The only weakness in the SH3 simulation is that, often, real aircraft turned off their radar and relied on visual detection. Aircraft in SH3 always fly with radar turned on.

Stiebler.

[VonHelsching]

Also, I may add that in RL uboat Kaleuns often shut off the RWR, because the thought it might give away their position (which could not be done both in RL in WWII, and in SH3); resulting in surprise attacks.

These surpise attacks were further enhanced after a non-military consultant suggested that the u-boat air hunters would change their colors into sky-blue in order to be less visible by u-boats. And they indeed became less visible...

@ Cdre Gibs

Trying to survive in 1945 with an XXI patrolling close to the UK and using your snorkel fix, I have the gut feeling that the 3 cm (the original is 3mm?) radar is still way to accurate even in dead calm seas. I cannot snorkel more than ~20 minutes before being bombed to oblivion even travelling @ 16 m snorkeldepth using my global XXI fix.

Do you think this is realistic (hell I know it's not on the gameplay side, anyway)? These 3 cm radars didn't have false alarms? Do you think that further nerfing (say to 30 cm) is out of the question or not?

@Hemisent

After the thermal layers thing, I am conviced that you will provide again an excellent quality sensors randomizer. It is also a good opportunity (since you have Cdre Gibs and Stiebler hanging around this thread) to wrap this sensors affair up. I can beta-test if you want.