Am I right? Merchant don't hear pings?
 

Hi.

I'm trying to up my game after a break to finally understand TMA and sonar detection in Dangerous Waters, and have come back to SH4.

Many thanks to WenerSober <sp?> and RockinRobbins for all the tutorials and info.

However, I'm seeing a pattern that both rely on sonar quite a lot. I thought even early in the war, a civvies ship can audible detect if they've been pinged just be the noise in the hull heard by the crew using their own ears, so how come in SH4 {and I'm ASSUMING it's true in SH5 too right?} that they don't seem to take any action despite numerous pings.

Even if this is a bug in the stock game(s) then surely it would have been addressed in a mega mod like TMO or Wolves Of Steel right?

Any thoughts?

You are right it seems.
I ping at will on merchants.
There was post here some time ago that said even DD's won't pick up a ping. (OH my!)

I tried pinging a convoy and even pinging a DD with no bad results, so now I just ping when I need to figure out their actual position.

(I'm running 1.5 no mods.)

Almost all Japanese ships did not have sonar. With the engine noise vibrating the entire ship like a bell, there's no chance the crew would hear a submarine's sonar ping.

Even if they could hear the ping, what's the score? The ship would know there's a sub out there somewhere. The sub knows the location, speed and heading of the ship. That's a fair trade!

Sometimes when things aren't going your way, the thing to do is to introduce a little chaos to the mix and see what happens. Commander Enright of the Archerfish, stalking a bunch of DDs and the carrier Shinano, elected to run his radar in the face of certain knowledge that the Japanese could detect his radar.

Again, let's keep score here. It's Japanese 1, they know there's a sub out there somewhere, against Submarine 5++, they know the position, speed and heading of every Japanese ship. They know instantly when they change course and speed and what the new numbers are.

But most importantly, the chaos introduced with the clear radar signal was this: why would a submarine fully exposed to several DDs stay on the surface and run his radar for all to hear? Could it be because he was coordinating a wolfpack stalking their new carrier? That must be it! They're out there waiting. Time to stop the fast direct run to shelter and institute a slower zig-zag to foil all those subs.

Had they kept to their 30 knot blitz to shelter, Archerfish could never have fired a single torpedo. At best they could have radioed a position and heading, then left the area for other targets. Instead, the Japanese admiral slowed and zigged.....directly in front of Archerfish.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, glug, glug, glug. Draw your own conclusions!:D:D:D

Are you the same Elphaba that makes awesome scenarios for Train Simulator?

I'm afraid not. Sorry :Kaleun_Salute:

As always, thanks so much for your intelligent, detailed and interesting answer. I can now feel more comfortable pinging like a Chinese phonebook! ;) :haha: