What I was trying to explain was that whether a sub pinged, or not depended on the amount of threat the escort commanders believed there to be. It would also depend on the preference of the individual escort commanders. Some would ping for a huge amount of a voyage - even when screening. Others only when they felt that there was a real chance that a U-Boat was in the area. The skill of the hydrophone operators, who listened for and identified underwater sounds passively would also effect which method of detection was favoured.
The detection model in SH 3 is rather basic. It doesn't seem to take into account the very commonly used practice of pinging at 5-degree intervals and not transmitting the next ping until there was a "negative echo" from the previous one.
The average speed of sound in sea water is around 1500 metres per second, although it differs with temperature and salinity. The maximum range of an Asdic, or Sonar system depended on a great many factors, but was never more than 3,500 metres, so to ping and wait for an echo until a "negative" was recorded would take 4.7 ( say 5 seconds ). Add to this the time to move the transmitter through 5 degrees of arc ready for the next Ping, say another 3 to 5 seconds, and you have a "ping" every 8 to 10 seconds.
To cover the full 180-degree sweep ( from red 90 to Green 90 ) takes 36 pings at 5 - degree intervals, or between 5 and 6 minutes. To get back to the starting point of red 90 takes the same. So, a ping went down a 5 degree arc once every 10 minutes, or so. So, sweeping with Sonar was, perhaps, not a very sure, or efficient way of detecting submerged targets.
Sometimes, pinging was used simply to alert submarines to the fact that the hunters were around and ready for trouble. If a submarine commander heard a ping, he would be very foolhardy not to react to the threat of detection by slowing down, reducing the noise made by his boat and, or diving deep. All these actions reduced his effectiveness and opportunity to launch a successful torpedo attack.
I don't think the escorts' AI cheats. I think it simply isn't sophisticated enough to model real-life better than it does. This isn't surprising since their were so many variables involved and a computer game - which this is - has to make a great many compromises.
I am surprised at the number of people who seem to want to tweak the escorts AI to make them tougher ( i.e. make their powers of detection stronger ) which IMHO is non-realistic, but a game in which the chances of detection were realistic and, perhaps, in which a hunter would sit over a sub's position for 12 hours , or more, wouldn't be a great deal of fun to play - except for the total "absolute realism" buffs.
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