Hydrophone Range?
 

Hi all,

Just wondering what the range of the early and late war hydrophones are in RFB + 1.5? I've not had a sound contact show up more than ~10nm but they don't go out of range until ~15-20nm. So are my sound guys just deaf? or are these bugs I should worry about? or is it just a fact of the game that you detect at a shorter range than you can actually hear?

Thanks,
Greg

It's your soundman. Hes deaf as a post until he gets some experience.

Your sonar man will not detect unknown contacts, only warships and merchantmen. If you notice your computer will lag out, start slowing down before a contact. Actually contact has been made. When you get a slow down, take over Sonar and you'll hear the targets easily twice as far as your soundman.

Many times people will get the slowdown but never find a contact. You may not be heading in the right direction and go out of range before you get a contact report and your PC speeds back up, not checking you may have just missed a large TF. So check yourself and you can get a bearing.

The same thing with visual contacts. You can see ships twice as far. So when my PC slows down, I check sonar and get a bearing. I will then go look and usually see the ships and can often start plotting an attack long before my crew gives a contact report.

my pc never slows down with SH4, even when I get a real contact on a large TF, is there any other way I can tell? Or do I really need to just relegate myself to manually checking the sonar every hour or so? I get fairly bored of doing this, not because it takes time, but because I end up coming off of TC every hour just to listen to water for a min, and go right back.

Is this something I'll only have to deal with early in my career? You make it sound like the sonar men will get better with time, so that eventually they will be good at what they are doing and I won't have to constantly check myself...

Here's two more questions I just came up with:

1: Will the green contact light on the sonar station light up for sound contacts that I can hear but the sonar man can't? The reason I ask this is that I can't turn the volume of my computer up loud enough that I can easily hear the background noise, and hence, any differences that might be present (thanks to no door on the computer room and the fact that the wife goes to bed earlier than I), so that little green light is usually my first indication something is there...

2: What is the real effect of the "realistic sensors" option in the gameplay settings? How much does it degrade or improve the range of the sensors?

Thanks,
Greg

Yes, the green light will come on even though your crewman won't do a report. You can even use some mild TC to hurry it up.

Yes, they get better, but you can also buy better sonar as the game goe's on.

Strange, I have a fairly uber PC and still get some slowdown when I come in contact with a large group. Never heard of anyone that didn't.

They may not notice. Easiest way to tell is to turn the watch on and watch the sweep minute hand. It normally sweeps smoothly (unless your at an ungodly rate of TC). However when you get into areas with traffic the minute hand will hesitate briefly a number of times as it sweeps around the dial.

I consider this a bit of a cheat BTW but I know alot of folks use it so what the heck.

I'll have to check that out, it may lag with the watch, but not the other graphics, so maybe that will be a good indicator.

I have a new question now... Why do the hydrophones work (for me, not for the crew) while on the surface in some mods not others? TMO has this ability (or bug), but RFB doesn't. Is this something that can be turned on or off fairly easily? I know that it may not be realistic, but it helps to speed things up a little bit when searching.

When I say lag...yes, just a slowdown, your graphics remain fine. If you have an uber system you do have to be careful. My older system is slowed down for one merchant, now I just get a small hiccup.

You will notice with any contact you PC starts lighting up working as it gathers and computes all the contacts. If you ever run into 50 contacts or more...you'll notice.

I once had over 100 contacts, US and Jap surface fleets fighting it out with 50 planes in the air. With all the shooting slowed my PC down to where it was hard to line up a shot.

Here is something I've not experienced before...

I was able to hear and find the bearing to a sound contact, but the game won't let me send the bearing to the TDC, an action which used to notify the sonar man to the contact and get him to at least acknowledge its existence, if not start tracking it. Is this something thats been changed by RFB in the past few months? Or is this something that only works with TMO (I must admit I keep swapping back and forth for some reason as I can't decided which is better for me)? Or even with stock?

Thanks,
Greg