Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Wood
In stock, TMO, FOTRS and FOTRS Ulimate, hydrophones work just fine on the surface.
In RFB hydrophones do not work on the surface.
Can any one who still plays RFB, if such are still extant, tell me why?
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With the boat submerged while running silent, the QB and QC heads (
one is acitve, the other is passive listening, don't remember which is which) already had very limited tactical ranges. With the boat running on the surface at patrol speeds the listening head would be rendered useless by ship's own noise emitting from the hull (
main engines, generators, pumps running in the pump room, etc.), as well as noise of the hull driving through the water (
bow wave splashing, the noise of the hydrophone itself moving through the water, etc.).
The only way to listen effectively with the WCA set while surfaced would be to have the boat sitting dead in the water with all machinery turned off, in a calm sea. With the boat surfaced at patrol speeds and in a typical sea state the lookouts would spot a target long before the sonarman listening with the WCA would hear it.
Then you have the old S-boats whose hydrophone was installed on the deck, so you would have to submerge to use it anyway. Same is true with the JP installation on fleet boats, though the JP had much better passive sensitivity than the passive head of the WCA set.
As far as the game itself is concerned and considering it's own technical limitations, and regardless of conditions, operations, or the equipment installed on a boat, if one type of boat can listen while running on the surface, then all boats can. So given the real-world impracticability of using such equipment of the period on the surface in operational conditions, it was likely a deliberate decision made by the RFB modding team to make it so that no boat can listen while surfaced.