Quote:
Originally Posted by Gray Lensman
I just did a reread of several sub books, O'Kane's Books, followed by Fluckey's Thunder Below and Calvert's Silent Running. I believe it was Calvert's book that mentioned that the Japanese habit of pinging continuously while escorting convoys helped him locate convoys that otherwise he would never have found.
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Yes, I recall Calvert(my favorite submarine memoir by the way) mentioning SOME convoys did active pinging regularly and it may have been searching or did this when they thought the heard something and was verifying. Calvert False contacts happened and it gave position away. However, read various reports and books, they were often able to slip inside the screen when submerged and came very close without being detected. In the sim, it is not like that.
Basically, under most conditions if you get within 1500-1200 yards of an escort submerged at periscope depth while approaching for an attack, especially if in in the "cone" or little lower(depending on stage of war etc) they will detect the sub. The game is set where the subs are always pinging, even if player does not hear it. Once alerted and and are pinging the player sub, you hear it.
One of the more annoying things with SH 4 is many of the parameters are all or nothing. , then some seem to have some gray area.
I recall using the AI mod fix.exe few years back with final version of TMO with no problem. Certainly did not nerf their detection abilities but did help with squeezing inside the screen to attack as us subs really did. Once alerted by explosion, passive sonar detection, aircraft spotting etc, escorts reverted back to "normal" and remained so until so much time passed since last contact. This really becomes important in later war when plenty of escorts around make it necessary to get inside the screen when submerged for a decent shot. Same reason I have tweaked the visual sensors, so that night surface attacks are possible and they are now. Final element is making the nights darker, far too light in TMO.