That's been fixed.

Err, you say you go to silent running and begin 'beaming' the enemy?

You mean active sonar?

Don't use it. It just shows everyone your position unless they are close- probably 15kyds or less.

Stay at 5-10 knots, move in one direction, then another and rely on passive sonar and towed array.

Avoid making very acute course changes or depth changes as it would degrade tower array performance.

Change depth slowly and with the planes only.

I can kill enemy subs without them ever knowing the direction it was fired from.

With the risk of being obvious, repeat what has already been said and/or you already know, i'll give you my two cents.

I'll focus on enemy sensors.

I'll start by saying that their passive sensor is linked mainly by these factors:
1 - Noise produced by your ship
2 - Whether or not you are within their operational angle arc
3 - Your distance
4 - Your depth
5 - If the path between both is clear (any ship between can create enough disturb to destroy the signal

What you can do to decrease their passive signal is to put some distance, reduce or kill your speed, activate silent running, put some other ship between, change the layer and most important stay in its shadow zone.
Decrease your depth will be effective only if you can go pretty deep like beyond 1000 ft (works pretty well against choppers)

The active sensor on the other hand are linked to:
1 - Your distance
2 - Your profile exposure

So what you can do is put some distance and try to limit your exposure (having the target directly on your bow or stern) and again stay in the shadow zone.

So first of all please do not beam the target unless the active value is low, otherwise you will just make easier for them to spot you once the value increase. Second decrease any noise generated by your sub as much as possible (or at least the necessary amount in order to avoid finding yourself moving too slow to maneuver in time). Third, try to understand as soon as possible whether there is a safe shadow zone but beware of choppers, if choppers presence are already confirmed then you will have to consider going deep. Fourth, try to use their own sensor limits against them.

Devs already said that limiting your aspect can cut the value by up to 25%. I'll give some examples, if you beam the target with an active value of 10 and he pings you then be sure he will start to track you. On the other hand, if you aim perfectly toward the enemy or away from the enemy, to detect you they will need four time the normal value (10/0.25 = 40). Can you take this as a safe value? No! Because once they are simply too close, like below 3000yrds, they will at least move toward you, maybe without engaging you. It happened more than once that i got a ping from a target about 2.5kyds but the relative bearing was 0 and he simply did not see me.

For last but not least, in theory the active sonar should be disturbed when you are close to the bottom but after many test i can confirm that it is not working like this in this game or at least how the AI reacts to this dirty value. In the best scenario i saw them just parking above me for a long time, but usually they will just stay there and attack you.

Ambient noise and flow noise greatly affect the sonar detection, as well.

No, I mean presenting the broadside of the sub to the contact to get a better passive return.

Hi NightEagle, thanks for you post.

My main issue was I was starting missions where the enemy sub already had over +10 on his passive return to me before I'd even had a chance to take any action.
I don't know if this was because I was using the distance scale set to 1/1 because it didn't happen every time, but since changing it back to the default setting of 1/2 it hasn't happened at all.

Something is still off about how the AI subs target you. One active ping(from your ship) is all it takes most of the time for them to know exactly where you are and do a launch, while for you it takes a lot of pings from the enemy before you know with a high confidence. This is excluding them picking you up on passive or already having a partial solution from active pinging. I believe you mentioned before that they will not fire before an 80% solution is reached?

Still need to fix ships. They know your speed and bearing when launching counter-missiles after detected an incoming missile, even tho you change course and speed significantly after launch while being too far out for any detection(outside the obvious smoke-trail).

Also, were helicopters this useless in real life? First off they detect sound up until the point the microphone reaches the heli, not when it comes above surface. Minor, don't really care too much just an FYI. But, I'm able to easily get away from them even while cavitating above layer. Just need a mayor course change when the heli lifts to a new spot, and about 6-7 times out of 10 they loose you even tho ships 10k+ yards away are able to pick you up.

Ah but if you notice their active sonar strength does go up when you present your broadside. If you face towards them it goes down. so you have to watch that too.

Thank you for posting this. Since it came up in the video: what I think really needs fixing ASAP is that this magic value of 10 on active is something I had to look up on forums. Such information should be available in game, preferably in a tutorial. Players should never have to rummage around in game files or forums to get such crucial information.

I agree. It was the same video you linked that helped me out too.

I think maybe changing the numbers to a more descriptive (and hopefully immersive) system like detection levels of "unlikely" "probable" "likely" etc... would be good?

Actually, I think that's a very good idea. Especially if for example a level of "almost certain" would be equivalent to current 8 to 12.
I'd keep the numbers for ownship data though as the crew knows exactly the parameters of their own sonar.