Sonar Man Asleep?

[chrisp]

Playing 1.3 with TM 1.4.

My sonar man appears to be a complete idiot. I'm looking at a warship through the persicope, bearing, say, 150 degrees. I ask him to report nearest warship contact (or any contact for that matter), and he comes back and tells me there is no warship contact at bearing 315.

My, that's helpful. Like asking for 2+2 and being told it's not 45.6.

What's going on? If I drag the guy by the ear and turn the hydrophones manually to the contact he finally figures it out. It's like the hydrophones are "stuck" or not turned on.

What's up?

Chris P.

[THE_MASK]

Something is wrong there . I get the same thing . Is it a fatigue thing maybe .

[gonzlor]

I'm getting radar contacts without a radar.

[THE_MASK]

Originally Posted by gonzlor

I'm getting radar contacts without a radar.

What you have is air search radar . Its always on and detects planes when surfaced . In real life there was some sort of light bulb that illuminated when a radar contact was made i think . You cannot have the radar that you can see in your sub until it was historically available , even though you can see it in the sonar station , it wont work because it isnt installed until you upgrade with it . These will become available as an upgrade in the mission briefing room .

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by chrisp

Playing 1.3 with TM 1.4.

My sonar man appears to be a complete idiot. I'm looking at a warship through the persicope, bearing, say, 150 degrees. I ask him to report nearest warship contact (or any contact for that matter), and he comes back and tells me there is no warship contact at bearing 315.

That behavior is essentually the same thing that was going on with SH3. Basically the AI can only use one sensor at a time . The periscope, for some stupid reason, acutaly functions as a member of the watch crew. Proof of this is when you raise the periscpe, and you get "ship spotted bearing 150!"

What usually happends is you have sound contacts, your following them on your map, you raise your persicope, and after a moment they disappear from your map, and the sound man thinks they dont exist anymore. After lowering the periscope, sound contacts are usually restored after a moment or two.

Now, all said, ill take a look at the hydrophones again. Hydrophones for all boats but the S class will not function above 42-43 feet. Or in other words, for hydrophones to pick up a contact, you must be below 42-43 feet, which shouldnt be a problem as the shallowest periscope depth i beleive is the porpoise at around 52 feet. I did this to better facilitate "radar depth" and to fix the sound contacts while on the surface "bug".

As for radar contacts without radar, all boats have SD (air) radar equiped by default, its SJ (surface) radar that you don't get until 6/42

[SteamWake]

At periscope depth....

I thought the sonar was less effecient at PD. If the DD was coasting and listening he may have been very quiet indeed.

[Ducimus]

Well ive started working on 1.4a (or what may turn into 1.5) if theres a genuine issue, i could always raise the SensorHeight on hydrophones closer to the surface.

[Xelif]

If the ship was bearing 150 to you, that probably lies within the 'dead zone' the sonarman seems programmed not to find anything in. I never get contacts reports in about a 40 to 60 degree cone about the aft, due to engine noise. Going to the hydrophone station and listening manually, it's fairly easy to pick out the sound of the enemy ship. I can only assume sonarman will not report contacts near engine noise, regardless of actual noise the hydrophones pick up.

[John Channing]

Originally Posted by chrisp

Playing 1.3 with TM 1.4.

My sonar man appears to be a complete idiot. I'm looking at a warship through the persicope, bearing, say, 150 degrees. I ask him to report nearest warship contact (or any contact for that matter), and he comes back and tells me there is no warship contact at bearing 315.

My, that's helpful. Like asking for 2+2 and being told it's not 45.6.

What's going on? If I drag the guy by the ear and turn the hydrophones manually to the contact he finally figures it out. It's like the hydrophones are "stuck" or not turned on.

What's up?

Chris P.

I see this from time to time. First try a normal sweep. If that doesn't wake him up then I do exactly what you did.

Seems to be post 1.03.

I just chalk it up to the fact that you can't always get geniuses at what the military pays!

JCC

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Xelif

If the ship was bearing 150 to you, that probably lies within the 'dead zone' the sonarman seems programmed not to find anything in. I never get contacts reports in about a 40 to 60 degree cone about the aft, due to engine noise. Going to the hydrophone station and listening manually, it's fairly easy to pick out the sound of the enemy ship. I can only assume sonarman will not report contacts near engine noise, regardless of actual noise the hydrophones pick up.

I forgot all about that. Im so used to not relying on the sonar man to pick up anything in the baffles i never really give it much thought.

[chrisp]

Well, I pulled the 150 OOMA, as an example. In reality, lately, the ship has been well north of that.

I think it's a multiple sensor problem, now that I think of it. I get a bearing line after I drop the persicope and go to the attack map.

Chris P.

[chopped50ford]

Originally Posted by Xelif

If the ship was bearing 150 to you, that probably lies within the 'dead zone' the sonarman seems programmed not to find anything in. I never get contacts reports in about a 40 to 60 degree cone about the aft, due to engine noise. Going to the hydrophone station and listening manually, it's fairly easy to pick out the sound of the enemy ship. I can only assume sonarman will not report contacts near engine noise, regardless of actual noise the hydrophones pick up.

This is true, even in real subs...the cone behind the screws have a dead spot. That's why they do a 30 degree port/starboard turns to verify the aft is clear of contacts.

Try swapping out the watch stander w/ another crew member or trade him/them in when you pull into port. Relieve them of thier duties.

[Subject]

Help! We are deep into the bay at Davao, Mindanao...*) We were spotted by some airplanes as we got a little too confident they couldn't see us and of course they called in a nearby DD. Spend a couple of hours evading that *very* persisting DD. All cool and well!

Sonarman had reported "No contacts" for a while and I just wanted to have a listen myself - and there she was! Less than 5 nm away! Very loud and clear! Chocking!

In another life I learned zig-zagging to help sonar cover dead angles, so that's not the reason for the deafness. And we went from below 250 ft to 80 ft btw. so no scope viewing either. And no fatique, all men fresh.

What can we do? Call in Professor Rubini?

*) single mission Davao Gulf Recon by Jeff Johnson

[Ducimus]

Well, if you think the problem is TMaru, you can always delete the US_sub_sensor.sim file from the mod. Although im skeptical because my sonar seems to works fine, and if something was wrong with it, id have heard a cacaphony of complaints by now

[switch.dota]

Actually I think the sonar works just fine. Report nearest (warship) contact is a rather retarded button tho. I never seem to be able to use it properly. I just figured it's an engine issue not a mod issue. This has been around since 1.2 vanilla game. I can confirm TM 1.2, 1.3 and 1.3a also had such issues (the latter over patch 1.3). Nothing really new here (funny thing is I never got to install 1.4 due to a long overdue patrol :p). Yeah so it sucks but blame it one the sensor modelling ingame.

Ducimus, any ETA on next TM version? I'm not sure if I want to head for Brisbane just yet or stick with regular trips to Tulagi