I decided to look into the effects that weather, time of day and time compression have on SH3's AI crew's ability to spot a target versus the range to target once SH3 has dropped straight back down to 1x TC.
I created
4 simple missions. The date for all 4 is set to January 1, 1943. All 4 missions are the same except for their time of day and weather conditions. Two of the missions take place at 00:00 - midnight. One of these missions has the weather set for as clear as possible. The other mission has the weather set for as foggy and rainy as possible.
Similarly, the remaining 2 missions have the same weather extremes but both missions have their time set for 12:00 - midday.
In all of the missions, the player's type VIIC UBoat's waypoint cuts right through the path of a stationary C3 merchant ship some 25km or so due south. Also, the UBoat's AI crew is defined in all missions as being "ELITE", the highest possible level.
Immediately upon each mission's start, I would set the UBoat's speed to ahead flank on surface, meaning it would travel at 18-19kph. The watch officer was always present in his tower position.
I played each mission 4 times, at the following time compression speeds: 1x, 256x, 1024x and 2048x. My SH3 configuration is set up so that when a ship is spotted, time compression automatically drops back down to 1x.
My SH3 installation is patched to version 1.4b. It includes several mods that may possibly affect the outcome of these benchmark tests, though I believe that the results would be similar for someone running SH3 v1.4b without any mods.
Here are the results, showing the UBoat's approximate distance from the ship spotted under the various scenarios. The distance to ship spotted was determined by switching to Uzo view immediately after receiving the AI's "SHIP SPOTTED" message.
