Hydrophone not working manually

[Potato42]

Hi folks,

First post after many a year of off-and-on playing.

So I just had an interesting encounter with a Large Modern Tanker NW of Truk. I came across said juicy target, first spotted by the deck watch. Followed it, plotted rough course, perfect setup. Nailed it with 3 shots up and down the stb side (after the first 3 were duds. Manual targeting thank-you-very-much).

Just one problem. The whole time I couldn't hear so much as a fart on the hydrophone. My Sonarman could hear her consistently (submerged or otherwise), and once she got close enough I could even manually ping her using the bearing given by the sonarman, but still couldn't hear the screws.

This was my first encounter with RFB installed (ran with stock for an embarrassingly long time, TMO + OTC since), so I'm wondering if this is an issue with RFB. Posted it here rather than the mod section since I have a hard time believing the RFB crew let that one slip through (nice mod, btw).

Never run in to this before though, so it begs the question...Anyone have any insight? I use my sonar a lot, so its a bit of a deal breaker if it's RFB related (I hope not. Fine mod).

[edit] I should say, sh4 1.5 steam version with (obviously) RFB 2.0 installed (no other mods with RFB). Tanker was roughly 6 knots, I believe. At her closest approach she was 700m away

[adrians69]

I have had this too, but it seems intermittent. It will not happen with every ship and there is nothing wrong with RFB, it's just a bug. It happens in TMO and stock game also.

[Pigboatcook]

I've also had this issue but very rarely. Usually a reload of the save solved it. It seems to be just a ghost in the machine for my system as 99.9% of the time my ears work as intended.

[Potato42]

Good to know, guys. Thanks.

[SilentPrey]

I'm pretty sure I remember reading about this happening if the target in question was making less than half of its maximum speed. I had an Akita Maru making 7 knots do that to me; max is 18 or 19.

IIRC, this is a hard-code bug that shows up worse with RSRDC because it has convoy route legs where all the ships are doing less than half of their maximum speed but it is present in every iteration of the game.

[CapnScurvy]

SilentPrey is correct in his memory. A ship traveling at less than half its rated MaxSpeed (found in its .sim file) will not be heard when you manually use the Hydrophone......even if it's within viewing distance. Your AI Sonar man will hear it, and report its position, but you won't hear a thing.

Mods that tinkered with ship speeds between waypoints didn't know this (I just found this out a few months ago) so, many times you won't hear the target when you should.

The stock game avoids this by not slowing down individual targets, or convoys as many mods do. The idea of changing a ships speed between waypoints put "unpredictability" into the game......but it also shoots you in the foot!! We sometimes don't know when to leave well enough alone.

[merc4ulfate]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

YEP

[Husksubsky]

The problem hangs around in sh5 too