I'm OK with the sonar searches. Still a bit put off by the superhuman DD visual spotting. I'm changing the Visual values back to where they were on 1.2.:)

Does anyone else get suddenly spotted by escorting DDs when at 0 knots, silent running if the DD gets close enough? I've been suddenly detected by DDs when they pass over me even though I'm reletively deep 100' 170' or 300'. Below the layer is much less likely though. They shouldn't have had a clue that I was there and suddenly they think "Hmmm, time to try a few practice pings, oh look what I found!"

Doesn't seem right to me.

How do they find you when you're "silent"?
 

Even when stopped, your boat makes some noise. Even at silent running with the crew away from battlestations you make some noise. But I do agree they seem a bit supernatural sometimes.

Can any of the modders work out how detectable you are when deep, stationary, and at silent running, assuming they're not actively looking for you? Do escorts engage active sonar as part of normal escorting?

If you are in the DD's active sonar cone for 5 seconds are more, and presenting him anything other then your bow or stern, he will start pinging you.

That's probably my #1 axe to grind with 1.3. Since I play "Dead is Dead" I've lost my two furthest along careers this week. Last night my first career I started in 1.1 with USS Wahoo 1942 went to Davy Jones Locker. First time playing it too with 1.3.

Started with getting a report about a convoy so I set course to intercept well ahead of the convoy. As the convoy came within radar range I dove and started my approach to my firing point. At this point the weather was pretty bad and the sun was going down.

My first observation with the scope was a water lapping quick look to see what I had as targets. Total exposure of the scope: 3 seconds. The column of the convoy closest to me was the only ones within range visually (no escorts visible either), so I kept my approach going. Waited about 5 minutes to take my second observation. Again, I didn’t raise the scope to full height, kept it as low to the water as I could and still see. The convoy had scattered and I’ve got 3 DDs coming right for me.

They pounded the hell out of me. They even picked me up on silent running at a dead stop down at 350 feet (below the thermal). I changed depth, course, and speed to no avail. By their third pass I knew I was a goner from the damage, and the following run they finished me off.

Now I don’t mind a challenge but to have a scope spotted at that range kind of range in foul weather is crazy. Nor do I think the laser guided depth charges are very realistic. Even in “Clear the Bridge” by Richard O’Kane he even stated that under ideal circumstances, it was difficult to spot a raised periscope unless it was right on top of you.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, however I never had this sort of problem is SH3 were the AI should be difficult with their radar and superb ASW. I don't expect the Pacific to be a walk in the park either, but it's gone from one extreme to the other. I don't even see how night surface attacks are possible now.

Edited for grammar

There was a time when it looked like the japanese air search radar was detecting ships like the pre-1.3 SD did for our subs.

We know the SD was fixed, but was the jap radar?

Might be interesting to make a mission where nightmare's example happens every time in stock 1.3, then play it with a mod that removes the type13 radar (I think that's what it is) from the same ship.

If the scope is still spotted, it's the visual AI, if it isn't, it's a radar problem.

That seems wrong to me. Active sonar only works when you actively ping. I could paint my sub bright pink but until they make their first ping they shouldn't know where I am. And they shouldn't ping until they where know where I am.

Is it really possible to hear a submarine as quiet as a doormouse at 350' while thundering overhead at 9 kts?

What the AI does, and RL are 2 separate things.

The AI doesn't detect you, then ping, your computer starts the AI pinging when you are within certain parameters, and the AI detects you, or it doesn't. In RL, many IJN escorts actualy drove around pinging most of the time, but the code is having them only bother when you are inside certain parameters I guess. It's kinda like spotting in TC. Imagine a TC mode where it would drop you out of TC when an enemy was just outside visual range, but the watch never spots them. You go to 1:1, then you have to look around and spot them yourself. I imagine the AI pinging parameters are kind of like that. Maybe I'm wrong.

As for the escort speed vs their hydrophone, yeah, I'm certainly curious about that myself.

Is there any mod, that changes this nightmare?

It is always a pleasure reading your posts tater. I'm aware that many IJN escorts pinged just for the sake of pinging but it doesn't seem fair to have "silent pinging" that is only heard once they get a whiff of you and you can't use it to track them down, etc. Also I doubt that the game devs would model the IJN pinging away randomly but only let you hear once they are close. The devs do screwy things but not that screwy.

Honestly if someone were to come and slap me upside the back of the head with a sentence like "Even at dead quiet a submarine's hydrophone signature achieves a minimum that can be detected under the best of conditions" then I would reluctantly conceed that concept as probable.

Yep, my first career mission was to photograph port assets with the stock Visual settings.

A DD came charging out of the fog at me while I was surfaced. He had spotted me before my crew .. and most notably I could even see them through the binos or TBT. WTF? That's gettin' adjusted.:hmm:

No, I agree, it'd be great to have a waypoint toggle that would force escorts to bang away starting at that waypoint, ending at the next. RL subs homed on it, lol, it didn;t work for them the way they expected, LOL.

tater

Is it possible to speed up to Flank when the escort's right on top of you, change course and depth, and escape?

With one DD this is theoretically possible. When the DD is right over you he cannot use his active sonar as it doesn't aim that far down and his hydrophones have a very limited range when moving fast (plus the rear blind spot).

So if you're lucky and have good timing you might displace a good distance when between when the DD loses active sonar contact and make into his blind spot to get away (he'll be spinning like a top so you won't be in his blind spot for long).

He might find you again but then again he might not. You want to use flank sparingly because he's either deaf to it or you're just shouting your lat/long to him.

I've been experimenting with a DC mod. When finished, it will change, well, all the DC armed ship eqp files, and a few of their dats as well, possibly.

SH4 has 1 DC. It is roughly an IJN Type 2 (1943+) 162kg 3m/s fall speed DC. The Y and K guns fire it as well.

The IJN used the Type 95 early (100kg, and a 1.9m/s sink rate) on, and 3 warheads existed for the type 2, 105, 110, and 162kg. I think the warhead differences between 100-110kg are trivial, so we don't need each type.

One big way to mitigate IJN ASW capability given SH4 limitations is as follows. Note that max depth is not a parameter we can mess with, sadly (so no 60m cutoff for early IJN DCs):

One, the SH4 ships have GROSSLY too many DCs loaded. Akizuki carries 240 DCs in SH4, in RL she carried 72. Shiratsuyu has 80 in SH4, in RL she carried 16. The list goes on and on. The solution? Add a bunch of new DC racks with different ammo stocks, and drop the stock Rack, Y and K gun ammo stores to realistic numbers. The only downside is that I'll have to build new eqps for each escort. No biggie.

Two, the DC explosion radius needs to drop to realistic values from the insane stock value of 40m. Redwine's mod does, as does TM and RFB. A few of the new DC racks should drop type 95 DCs with smaller warheads---smaller destructive power as well as smaller radius than even the reduced radius stock weapons.

So far, in my experiments, it is much easier to evade 36 DCs dropped by a good escort with TM sensors enabled than 80 to 240 ;) Combined with smaller explosions and radii, you get hammered, then they run out. With an ~8-10m radius, they really need to shack your boat to hurt it. Right now I'm trying to tweak a few things like the depth precision so the escorts don't blow themselves up. Sadly, the detonation depth parameter doesn't work (it's overwritten by other AI things). If it worked as stated, I could make early IJN DCs blow up between 30 and 60m, then later 30 and 90m.

I think that DC "improvements" (meaning reduced effectiveness) go a long way to fixing IJN ASW to make it more realistic. It's a great fix because you still need to evade and fight the boat because if they DO hit, it's usually pretty ugly fast.

The only real issue left, IMO, is tweaking the AI visual to permit well executed night attacks without making them too easy.

tater