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Old 03-21-19, 10:00 AM   #5
Pisces
Silent Hunter
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: AN9771
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Caveat: I don't have the game yet. So I haven't tried this in practice yet.

I think it is proper to keep the negative tank filled when on the surface, and as such I think the default state of the tank is warranted. As far as I learned from comments here and in the discord channels the boat has positive buoyancy when the negative is filled and the ballast tanks are empty. So you can stay surfaced, or slowly rise, with the negative tank filled and the ballast tanks emptied and neutral dive-planes.

When somebody calls out the alarm to crash-dive you don't want to wait until the negative tank is filled. You don't have the time. You want as little positive buoyancy as possible at that point. So it is better to have it filled as a precaution and you only need to flood the ballast tanks to go down quickly.

When ever you are submerged you can empty the negative at an appropriate dept to arrest your dive rate and limit the air pressure use to empty the negative tank. If you want to go deep quickly you can keep the negative tank filled longer, but that will have consequences as to how much air pressure that requires to empty at deeper depth. It's a choice. I don't know if you can arrest the dive with filled ballast and negative tanks on dive-planes and speed alone. Either way, sooner or later you want to go slow, so the negative tank needs to be emptied to be neutrally buoyant.

In or after non-crash dive situations the enemy warships are less likely to be near the boat. So I don't think emptying the negative tank making noise is going to alert anyone. Maybe emptying it slowly produces less noise and you can avoid detection if it does make you detectable. As I said, I have no gameplay experience to substantiate that yet.
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