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Originally Posted by neilbyrne
and trying to find out what the sim/cfg values actually meant in the way of detection ranges.
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The IJN’s ASW record was, to me, no better than mediocre.
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I'll field this one since it appears im dealing with a career officer. First you should know that i was never in the Navy. I was a civil/combat engineeer in the Air Force. So you have an ex Airforce E-5, playing navy. :rotfl: Point is, most Navy acronyms go right over my head. Now if you want to talk about laying AM2 matting while doing 'Triple R', well, thats another story!
Anyway, i do however have a basic understanding of active and passive sonar. Learned by neccessity from tinkering with and playing submarine sim's for a number of years. First i must laydown my intent when i make changes. I do, as some else stated, walk the tightrope between "game" and "simulation". It sum, its just my personal beleif that attacking convoys with near impunity makes very dull after awhile. To me, part of the submarine sim experience is getting depth charged. Without upping the AI detections from stock, more often then not, this is an experience that is very rarely seen, or at the least, very brief. Which in the end, makes things dissappointing to me.
When i increased the AI, i had one thing in mind. "Better then stock, but less effective the allies ASW effort in the atlantic". I beleive that passive and active sonar in TM, is *JUST* below "atlantic level difficulty". At the most, its probably equal to allied early war ASW (circa 42, aka 'uboat happy time')
Now the thing about the AI in general, is you can only get it to do something, by increasing the stimulius it gets from its sensors. Otherwise it doesnt do much. How detection works, is rather mechanical in nature. For instance, silent running, is a boolean flag. Its either on, or off, no in between. If your within 2000 to 3000 yards (maybe even farther) to a unit equiped with hydrophones, without silent running on, chances are he will detect you.
Active sonar detection is also sort of mechanic. Typically the AI won't ping unless your
a.) giviing him a large surface area to ping off of (ie broadside to him)
b.) In his active sonar cone (ranges vary from 1200 meters for early war and i think 1900 or 2000 meters for late war, all active sonar have a downward angle of 112 degrees modded, stock is 100, by way of comprision allies has a 140 to 150ish downward angle on their active sonar beams)
c.) Doing A and B for X amount of time.
At any rate the point here is that to get the AI to behave at a desired intelligence level, all a modder can do is increase its sensors, in order to illiciet a response. Its a very hard thing to balance and takes alot of time to get it just right. The biggest problem here is that once you understand how AI detection routiines work, it often doesn't matter how sensitive you make the active or passive sonars for the simple reason that one learns how to work around or exploit their shortcomings. To the new player, the AI seems incredibly hard. To the "experienced" player, not hard enough.