I must say, Bingo_Pete, these guys are dead on in their responses. For a playable realistic submarine simulation video game, this game strikes a near perfect balance. Nothing is broken. There is no bug nor a glitch. As aggravating as it is to you, what you are requesting, demanding, is the equivalent of a "Wait, wait, I have to reload," when playing a shooter game in which you made a bad tactical error.

I, along with many here, have blown ballast for one reason or another while playing this game -- usually with full rise on the planes and at flank speed. Usually it works. Usually. However, I know it's a gamble as I'm going straight to the top for a time. I also know I made tactically unsound decisions when that happens. Just a game. Learn from your error and move on.

yeah, despite how it always appears in movies, Emergency Blow is not really a good tactic for torpedo evasion, it should leave you vulnerable on the surface.

It should be noted that you can drive yourself back under on the planes, you just can't use the automatic depth controls to do it. Ring flank speed and full down on the planes, you'll sink like a rock.

American SSN's do not use AIR to change the buoyancy (weight) of the ship. Using air is NOISY evolution in most circumstances and that's why is it not normally used. In the real world, after an EMBT blow and you wanted to re-submerge, you would just open the main ballast tank vents.

If a sub were to dive in this state (i.e. opening the vents to re-flood the tanks after the blow before recharging the compressed air tank) wouldn't that still be quite dangerous since the emergency blow system would be inoperative (little to no air) along with the torpedo tubes (assuming we're not talking about swim-out weapons)?

You are confusing peace time operational procedures with war time realities.

US Submarines do not use the EMBT blow system to routinely surface the ship. They drive to the surface and start the Low Pressure (LP) blower to blow the water out of the ballast tanks.
So, if in a war time scenario, you actuated the EMBT blow system, got the casualty under control, you can now re-submerge and start an air charge. You most likely will not 'blow until equalized'. You are going to have some air left in the tanks. Plus, unless absolutely necessary, you are not going to go back into battle.

You can also do the blow, decide that you do not need to surface and vent (open the MBT vents) on the way up.

With the air charge going, you are drawing air from the 'people tank' and when necessary, go to Periscope Depth (PD), raise the snorkel mast and 'equalize ship pressure', bringing vacuum down and putting a small pressure in the ship, and go deep again. We do this all the time.

You CANNOT pull air from the ballast tanks.

it would be nice if the ships had a snorkel in game, for just that kind of event. Also, the ability to partial blow the MBT would be useful.

Useful how?

Very useful during some operations.

Surfacing through the ice.
Jump 50

and so on...

The 637 class had a normal blow system which blew the MBT's from air bank five only.

During normal evolutions sure, but we're not surfacing at the North Pole here. How would it be useful in a tactical situation?

In the approach to a target, not very useful.
But in some scenarios trying to infiltrate someplace, a Jump50 would save you from grounding and damaging your ship. You are just risking an air transient.

In the game, not very useful...

Tell the Quartermaster to wake up if you're in danger on grounding.:haha:

But aren't the dive planes above the water and useless once your surfaced ?

Stern Planes are underwater still.

not so much in normal evolutions, but in emergencies, such as flooding casualties, or if the pumps are damaged it could be useful to quickly burp out some ballast without blowing the tanks completely dry.

I'm trying to think of more specific scenarios, They seem to do it all the time in the military submarine thrillers I read. IDK, maybe this game just isn't in-depth enough for such a tactic to be useful.

You control depth primarily with ANGLE. You use the stern planes to set the angle on the ship.

The fairwater planes are used for fine depth control.

Forth flight (BLK4) 688's (751+) do not have fair water planes, neither do SSN-21's or 774 class.

Well you learn something every day - Thx :Kaleun_Salute:

Well this is one that really pissed me off.Doing my usual skipjack campaigns having the best one yet,when I die I start over.Any way just doing great confident as hell.So command hits me with intercept order I roll my eyes
I have only 2 mk 37's left novembers and friends,well guess who his friend is...thats right a victor turns out I got perfect angle We are both at700feet
he's doing 20knots pinging away i am sitting still 0 knots head on at 2.1 yards he fires I do my now standard bop up to 30 knots an go right at the torpedo in this case him too! dude did not like that he fires another one and then one more and one more to boot.Now something weird happens i go to 3d map and we are head on well almost,now I thought collisions were not modeled then i heard that hull scraping sound when subs are on on the bottom trying to move.I digress....I got three set65's on my ass. He takes one them which does not sink him (amazed!) and then he blurts out another 180 (i am behind him now) any way to wrap this up he gets slammed by two more of his eel's but I got one on my ass and im done so i blow ballast,and i cannot out turn a set65 on the surface.This was another cool moment in this game...but it sucked because of this common refrain
...UNABLE TO TO DIVE BECAUSE OF RECHARGING EMERGENCY AIR BANKS


The End.

Why are you blowing emergency ballast?

+1

If the blowing ballast tactic comes from The Hunt for Red October movie, please take note that the Dallas was very much out of the fight once it did that :03:

I'm not about to call it a valid or realistic tactic but I have been able to use emergency blow to avoid torpedoes in the past by quickly changing depth (unsure if the large amount of air bubbles released helps decoy the torpedo or not) the big thing is you will need to keep your boat at either flank or all ahead full and a very unhealthy -20 on the planes just to maintain depth (even after this you'll be yo-yoing back and forth between rising and sinking) and she handles like a pig afterwords.

It also puts you at a severe disadvantage if there are surface assets around (when you finally do have to come up to recharge the system) and really only should be used when you have had a fish chasing you for some time, its nearly caught you and you think its probably running low on fuel / remaining charge.