Enemy Range
 

Well I am earlier in the war. 1940 right now. And i'm wondering how close I can get to them and still go undected. I'd like to find out in km's what their range is when I am above water, and also submerged.

If anyone has a link to some place that I can go to learn more about this, that will do just fine.

Thanks in advance.

detection
 

On the map there are circles around the ship contact when you click on it. These are detection ranges.
irish1958

Yeah that's the thing. I know about them and know what they are, but ive been cruising within those circles and the enemy has no idea i'm there. At least they don't seem to know anyway.

range
 

Just because they could detect you doesn't mean they will. It depends on many factors. A destroyer will pick you out most of the time, but a tug boat probably won't until you ram them. Also fog, weather, time of day etc. are important.
irish1958

What if you are submerged, don't have visual contact and can't click on the icon to find it's visibility range? How do you know what it's range is then?

This also depends what mod you have...If you hear them,You know they are below 20km and you can also measure the black/red contact line with your scale stick with pretty good accurate on the nav map.

Surface the boat, then get in just close enough to where the merchant spots you and starts zig-zagging, then mark what the current range is, and then you'll know

Re: detection
 

What rings? You mean when i click on a unit (black, unknown) I only see very small circle around it, which is always the same size what ever scale I have on the map. Or is this something that only shows up when you have identified the ship, or playing with less realism?

But it would be nice with some figures in this thread, since I raced to a meeting point almost side by side on the surface without them starting to zig-zag. They were 2 kms away from me.

BTW, is it only hostile ships that starts to zig-zag? For instance Ive seen multiple norwegian ships that dont zig-zag!!?

I'm led to believe you could hear them at 34KM...the hydrophone operator can't but you can. Is this true ? Has anyone qualified this ?

Also, I believe the hydro operator starts to hear them at 20K and considers them long range.

From here it gets a little fuzzy but I think below 5K is medium range and below 1k is short range.

Can anyone qualify this ?

Cheers....

Don't know if you can edit those.... :hmm:

[ContactRange]
under the (right) value a contact is considered as:
Short=2000 ;[m]
Medium=3000 ;[m]
Long=20000 ;[m]

I have a good watch team(s) so this shouldn´t occur. But once they reported "Merchant spotted, short range!" And when I got to the bridge the only thing i saw was the huge hull of a C3 about 20 metres away... Luckily Norwegian (early 1940).
No extra drink for that team... :stare:

Ya it can be a bit strange at times, also depends on the fog, sometimes they spot stuff you cant even see, sometimes they dont see stuff you can untill practicaly in their faces. In heavy fog i almost got rammed a few times (which is actualy realistic many many ships have gone down to the locker because they collided with another ship or object due to heavy fog).

It gets anoying though when they repeatedly fail to spot aircraft till the very last second where you dont even have time to change course, turn, crash dive, or even man the guns before the bombs fall. This is in clear weather too.

Thank god for radar...lol If you don't have it, remember to always have a fresh crew up there and your watch officer.
It don't hurt if the crew has "watch" as special skill.

I love the words: Signal contact!