[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Wolfstriked

You win about a subs non-ability to hover as it seems people are hell bent on this not happening.Not a perfect hover but it can be done with no speed.

I'm not trying to win anything. It's just a question that has been discussed in these forums for years, and every now and then someone comes along and wants to do it all over.

Can we agree that the negative tanks were blown out after submerging to ensure positive buoyancy.I see alot of people saying that at low speeds the subs sink but thats not what I have been finding online.For safety reasons you want a positive buoyancy,just in case something happens to your compressed air supply.

That is true, to a point. If you lose power you are suddenly faced with the question of sinking until you get crushed or rising to the surface and getting blown to pieces (or captured if you manage to surrender before they kill you). As I said, even if you set for positive buoyancy, sooner or later the boat is going to take on water and the buoyance will change. All of this is controllable, but you're not going to remain silent if you have to change anything, and the whole point of shutting down the motors is to be silent. It's much easier to run at the minimum speed required to maintain depth without having to run the pumps, and any change in any of the tanks will definitely make noise.

Aces Of The Deep modelled this very nicely. Even at slow speed if you set Silent Running sooner or later the LI would inform you "Sir, cannot maintain depth unless we run the pumps."

Yes blowing ballast means all in SH3 since its a simple model of a subs ballast system.It just models one tank.I have to disagree with you that it means blow all tanks in real life.Why would you want to rocket to surface to meet your maker when you can slowly use all the tanks you have at the subs disposal so that doesn't happen giving you time to stop the flooding.

Blowing ballast is for emergencies. If you just want to change your depth the easiest, most effecient and quietest way is to keep forward momentum and use the dive planes.

There should be a poll.....should ships sink or surface when at low speeds.

There has been, long before you were around. NYGM created the "Anti-Hummingbird Mod", which made the sub slowly sink. GWX, for a time, had the sub rise, but instead of rising to the surface it would only rise two or three meters, which meant the player had to take that into account but not really worry about it.

I long ago advocated a random factor, in which the sub might start rising, might start sinking or might stay where it was, and you would never know. Unfortunately this doesn't seem possible within the game's structure.