Enemy Hydrophones
 

I cracked, after another near sinking i have activated the enemy hydrophone and Asdic ranges that appear on the map.

I am now in the Irish Sea 13km North of an enemy and I can see his hydrophone circle expand and shrink as I experiment with my underwater speed.

So my question is, how accurate are those circles and can I keep my speed up when outside of them?

These circles are damn accurate, and you can see that whatever your depth is, they will not shrink as they should, meaning there are all Supermen seated in the warships on their hydrophones who will hear you wether you are at 25m or 180m at slow speed. AI flaw in SH5 :timeout:


My unusual tactic with many escorts is now: Go at full speed in one direction for some time, so they detect you, then make a 60° direction change and just before you reach your heading, cut off your engines and stay where you are. Usually even when escorts are close they will not detect you if you are about 120-160m deep. Maybe they spot you with sonar if your aspect angle is too bad (watch these red arcs that indicate the enemy sonar, but you need to be not deeper than 70m to see them), but sometimes they don't use sonar, plus at some depth you get a 'non detection bonus' from SH5 AI :)


All this is very laughable, but with all these mods that's what happens in SH5, you will have to think around the corner and adopt unusual tactics. The enemy AI varies during your patrol, if you find some weak ones you can even escape at full speed submerged. With strong ones, you can get busy for 6 hours real-time in order to escape them (if you succeed).


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XS

It was pretty much the same in SH3 and 4 , although you didn't have those orange circles there. AI was always able to hear you while in silent running regardless of depth. That's why modders decided to keep unrealistic depth maintaining with 0 knots speed so that player can select all stop and avoid hydrophones detection.
So no, this isn't SH5 AI problem...It's SH AI problem in general. But at least, in SH5 we have engine man passive ability to silence the engines in order to somewhat ease this problem, which wasn't the case in previous versions...

OK Guys thanks for the replies. I have escaped a few times now by going deep, keeping my profile small and then shutting down engines and just waiting. I did wonder how I was maintaining my depth at 0 knts.

I also use the 55rpm silent speed to creep away.
But the question that I worded so badly should have been something like this. If I am traveling at slow speed 100 rpm and am 600 metres away from their hydrophone circle am I out of their sound range or should I shut down my engine?

Use F8 key to activate all "silent abilities" and observe how they effect orange detection circles radius in real time...Keep in mind that you 'll be able to see hydro circles only if the unit is detected by your sonarmen. Be extra careful about your hydrophone deaf zones...


Yes , you can rely on those circles...

My post above was of course not a critic of the modders who did what was possible to do , and even more :yep:
It's true that all SH series - except maybe SH1 - have some serious escort AI problems, but I like all the mods in SH5 100 times more than the buggy stockgame!

I am glad you posted the above, because without the MODS who made SH3 perhaps the greatest subsim game ever and then went on to first make SH5 playable then make it the great game it is today we would all have missed out on a real gaming experience. If I was mega rich the moders are the ones I would pay big bucks to make SH6.