Gato baby. Oh yeah. :rock:

HELL YEAH! 62 year service life says all that needs to be said about the Gato/Balao/Tench class. :up:

inside the Papanikolis (South Korea's type 214)
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/8...nikolis7au.jpg
consoles of the ISUS 90-15 combat management and weapons control system
Attack Periscope SERO 400EO in the center

some thread from military photos net:
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...ad.php?t=68133

Actually the 212 and the 214 don't have much in common.
The 214 is a direct evolution of the 209/1400. It's a single hull boat, has the same pressure hull diameter and frames as the 209. The free flood upper casing is restyled but the bow is similar to the 209. It has a free flood lower casing that stretches roughly from bow to stern (which the 209 didn't have) where the metal hydrides containers (H2 storage) are placed. The LOX tank is inside the pressure hull.
The 212 and the italian 212A are quite different. They are partly single hulled (the aft section containing diesel engine room and propulsion engine is double hulled), the diameter is much larger than 214 (7 meters against 6.3 meters), the bow has nothing to do with 214 or 209 and both the metal hydrid containers for H2 and the LOX tanks are placed outside the pressure hull, aft of the sail.

How do they compare in terms of overall ability?

some production line graphics to illustrate aaken's post:

http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/7975/u2122145an.jpg
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/6985/family2ge.jpg

Not easy to find out. This is someones post from military photos net:

Ok, so in Mod terms, other than the basic parameters, the only real difference is that the 212 has no MAD signature at all.

Wow, that's a royal pain in the ass if you should happened to need to find these things. :o

Thanks!

Cheers,
David

They both have non magnetic steel hull (a German standard since the 60's), although the boats which are built in cooperation with the customer (like Greece or South Korea) may follow different materiel specification (you choose magnetic steel but acquire greater diving depth than the original), but the 214 has smaller underwater range on the AIP than the 212/212A (around 15 days at 5 kts against 25-28 days at same speed).
As for the only battery set used in 212, that's because there is not enogh space in the after part (the one with a smaller diameter) to accomodate both engine room and battery. Plus it would upset the trim since the metal hydride containers placed in the lower part of the aft section are already very heavy.
Also the U214, although being considerably longer than the 212, is not bigger. They are both around 1700 cubic meters dived.

Ok, so then very small MAD signature for both... :) :lol:

What is with the other 'german' diesels already in DW?

Brazil - TYPE 209/1400 mod 3, Germany - Type 206 SS etc.

Maybe somthing for LWAmi?

I would think that the MAD signature of the german Type206 is not correct.
Another thing would be manouverability. in LwAmi3.02 a lot of boats with extremely different size have the same manouverability parameter (maybe it's a turn radius or something of the like). I mean if an Akula has 500 turn radius, and it's something like 10-12000 tonns, how is it possible that a Kilo (1/4th of the size) has the same radius and the Type206 which is 6 times smaller than the Kilo plus has a big rudder aft of the propeller has the same turn radius? I think this could be also something to look into for the next LwAmi version.

EDIT: I spoke of tonnage when I should have spoken of length o.a. and diameter, but the reasoning is the same.

Sure, we can look into this. Keep in mind, I am limited as to what I can do with the player boats because the manoevering crew is expecting a certain turning rate from the database, and generally takes into account the maneovering differences between playable submarines at that level.

For strictly AI submarines this can probably be changed without problem, but that is one of those variables in the database that is integrally tied into the physics algorithms, and things can easily get messed up if the changes are made without careful attention.

Cheers,
David

Back in the days when I made the Toti SSK (47 m length o.a, 4.7 m diameter and 600 tonns) and tried it in the place of the chinese Kilo SS, I used values around 350 against the normal 500. The response was quite impressive compared with the very limited manouverability of the original Kilo. It didn't seem to make a big impact on longitudinal stability during sudden depth changes and tight turns. Or at least nothing comparable to the aft rising phenomenon in version 1.03 when coming shallow.

Thanks for the information, I'll seriously look into this. :)

For example, the 688i should probably be able to turn faster than the Akula by a small but noticable margin, although, someone as always please correct me if I'm wrong.