Problem with hydrophone in TMO 2.5
 

My sonarguy picks up contacts far away even though Im running flank speed on the surface. Sometimes I cant even detect the contact manually.
Im guessing thats not how it is supposed to work.
Are you even supposed to be able to use sonar while on surface?

Here is the mods I have :

1_TriggerMaru_Overhaul_2-5
1_TMO_25_small_patch
RSRDC_TMO_V502
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1
1.5_Optical Targeting Correction 031312 for RSRDCv502
1.5_OTC_Realistic Scopes for 16 to 9 RSRDCv502
1.5_OTC_Metric Tools

Sonar = / = Hydrophone

Sonar is the active "ping", hydrophones are passive listening. And yes US fleetboats are supposed to be able to detect while on the surface as the hydrophones are placed on the hull (underside) of the ship and are still in the water. U-boats by contrast have the hydrophones on the deck of the ship making them ineffective while surfaced.

Is not passive sonar = hydrophone?
ok any how, its just that he is so effective it takes allot of the fun out of it.
And I seriously doubt the us submarines were able to pick up contacts running with the diesel on flank speed.

I installed the Travellermod 2.6 and it seems to change/fix it

I expect someone will be along to correct my mistakes shortly, but as I understand it a great deal of the sound environment - for want of a better word - is hard coded. so yeah - Fleetboats had hydrophones below the waterline and could listen on the surface, but the game doesn't allow for flow noise or surface interference - I'm no expert, but I'd be prepared to put money on there being no way to mod these issues away, because given the effort that the modding community has put in tweaking the realism settings, there's no way that this would have gone unaltered if it were possible to fix - That's just my thinking and I may be wrong.

So you're left with the situation that you, the player, at the hydrophone station, can hear sounds that your sonar guy will ignore, because they're outside of the detection range of the gear he's using. There's also a quirk [and I may have this wrong] that if a ship is making less than half of its rated top speed, you won't hear anything at the hydrophone station, but your sound guy will, once it comes within the range of the gear he's using.

I think the way that Ubisoft did it, is that you hear anything that's making noise inside of the maximum detection radius of the best gear available in the whole time period that the game covers, regardless of where on the actual timeline you are. Your sound guy only gets to hear stuff that falls into the detection evelope that he would have had at the time.

To be honest I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's a limit to the realism you can get from a PC game - I'm sure the ex military will get that there's no way to replicate the tingling in the naughty bits that you get when the guy with the scythe is close by. The people who've written these mods have done a wonderful job with a rather flawed product, but folks who want maximum realism need to be playing in a steel box, with their friends in there with them and ten million gallons of seawater ready to pour in and say "Game over"....

Best tactic for optimum game experience? Pick your mod set and make the best of what it gives you. Don't fret about what isn't there :)

Ok thanks!
If thats the way the game works then I can live with it. Just wanted to make sure it was not because of me installing in the wrong order or something like that

To answer your last question.......yes, you'll pick up hydrophone sounds with most later American sub classes while on the surface, but not the earlier ones. On the S-Class, or even the early Porpoise, Salmon classes, the hydrophone/sonar antenna are mounted on the deck. You'll need to submerge to have them work as expected. Later on, the "Ball" type antenna was mounted on the bottom of the hull (except for the S Class), allowing for listening while on the surface. If your used to the German side of play, all hydrophone antennas were mounted on the deck.....requiring you to be submerged, but not the American's, they developed a better system as the war progressed.

Your first question, "Sometimes I cant even detect the contact manually", is due to a flaw in the game, and the mods you're using. RSRDC changes most ship routes, adding multiple waypoints (multiple times the number compared to stock), within the routes. Lurker's idea was to vary the ships speed between these many waypoints, making it harder to manually target the ship if it consistently changed speeds, unexpectantly. That's all fine and good, except the game doesn't allow for manual hydrophone use if a ship drops below half its rated maximum speed stated in its .dat file! Your sonar/hydrophone man will still pick up the target....announcing it over the Message Board. But, you won't hear a thing if you try to find it yourself. If the target picks up its speed above half its rated maximum speed....you'll hear it just fine. Occasionally, RSRDC drops a ships speed to less than 5 knots....if its rated maximum speed is 11 knots....you hear nothing.

The stock game has most freighter targets traveling at 9 knots or higher, through out the route. This will allow for a player to use the hydrophone station as expected....using RSRDC, not so much. I didn't find out this problem before releasing OTC, or I could have corrected it myself. My plan is to release a new mega mod addressing this issue, and other things on my list.

Sounds interesting :hmmm: . Do you have already a changes list of what will be included in this mod?

Great answers thanks!
I was a bit skeptical to sh4 but with the mods I really like it

Hey guys,

Is there a mod for RSRD that fixes the hydrophone thing? I read something about a mod by webster?

Thanks in advance!