Sonar seems always off

[A-Ganger]

Example:
I'll have contacts at say 345 and I'm going course 230 or so on Sphere and/or TA. All seems good right? Well I turn on Truths (after I had shot a torpedo that never hit anything lmao) and all the contacts are down around the 170 - 210 or so.

I know on the Broadband how to course change and whichever lines move are false (or false-duplicate) contacts.
But that's not the issue.

For some reason tho I'm completely off in the Sonar. I know how it all works and have read all the manuals and watched videos but still an issue over here.

Take for instance the mission on RA called Barren Seas Loiter.
I know all the targets come in down at 180 ish, and you start off going 000.

When I start getting Sonar contacts they are all coming from around 230-270 while I'm going 180, so their on my right. Then after a long time they start showing up where they actually are.

As I'm typing this I just had a thought. When you turn and go 180, do you have to flip the switch that makes North - South?

Maybe that's why I'm messing up?

[Outeniqua]

Example:
I'll have contacts at say 345 and I'm going course 230 or so on Sphere and/or TA. All seems good right? Well I turn on Truths (after I had shot a torpedo that never hit anything lmao) and all the contacts are down around the 170 - 210 or so.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, aren't these reciprocal contacts you're referring to? With the TA you will have ambiguities. I.e. a real contact and a mirror, not real contact. The mirror contact will be perfectly-correlated, at the opposite angle of the incident of the real contact's angle. E.g. If you're travelling on a course of 000, and you detect a contact on the TA at 135, there will be mirror contact at 225.

This is why you try to resolve the ambiguities first of all, before your TMA, with a 30 degree or so course change, after you've detected both contacts. (You need to ensure that you do not put either contact in the baffles of the array.) The real contact's bearing will remain constant, the mirror contact's bearing will change rapidly. On the subs with waterfall displays, you will see the mirror contact's progression on the waterfall display turn with the TA. If you have both marked, and have trackers on them, you will see the mirror contact move around rapidly on the NAV map.

I'm not sure if that is the problem you're experiencing, but from what describe it seems you're firing your weapons down one bearing 345, but the contacts end up being at 170, which for a course of 230, would be the case.

[A-Ganger]

Outeniqua; Thanks for you reply.

I agree that it appears they are ambiguities, however, there are no ambiguities when I first get those contacts?
Or should I say, I cannot see them on Broadband or Narrow-band if they are in fact mirror contacts.
For instance Broadband will only show 1 line (if for example I only have 1 contact S1), so it then appears there is no ambiguous contact for S1.

RA 1.42 still has some bugs IMO;
1. When you go on Active Intercept and spin the cursor around, it disappears in some spots so you can't see where the cursor is until you move it again.

2. Which I found yesterday, I had bright visible Narrow-band contact lines, yet STILL had to click them multiple times before they would mark and give me a contact #

3. Along with #2, On Narrow-band screen, when you have contacts assigned S1, S2 etc., those contact numbers do not show up on the box that displays their number.

4. When using Daemon screen, it does not show correctly. I.e., if you have S1 on tracker 1 (A, E or J depending on which array they are on), it no longer shows as A-S1 etc. It used to do this I believe and/or I know the 688i H/K game does it this way.

I'll be playing again all day lol so I'm gonna try and capture some screen shots if I remember, and pay more attention to when I get the first contact and see if I'm just not seeing something.

Happy hunting

[p7p8]

ad 1) some players have problem with mouse. Check dangerouswaters.ini in editor and change string:

[Graphics]
.MapStretch No
.ScreenStretchQuality 3
.ParticleMax 500
.ParticleRate 5
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.WantRain Yes
.Disable3D No
.Want3DClouds Yes
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.Gamma ""
.SoftwareCursor No <- to opposite

ad 3) That box shows contacts with tracker only

ad 4) DEMON shows tracked contacts marked in Broadband (not working for NB)

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by A-Ganger

Example:
I'll have contacts at say 345 and I'm going course 230 or so on Sphere and/or TA. All seems good right? Well I turn on Truths (after I had shot a torpedo that never hit anything lmao) and all the contacts are down around the 170 - 210 or so.

Well no, that first line makes no sense at all. "Contacts at bearing 345..." Ok, you got signals at true bearing 345.
"I'm going course 230 or so on Sphere and/or TA." What the hell does that mean? You don't command your course in a sonar sensor, you do it at the helm. To take this supposed bug report serious you need to describe your situation a bit more clearer.

Take for instance the mission on RA called Barren Seas Loiter.
I know all the targets come in down at 180 ish, and you start off going 000.

When I start getting Sonar contacts they are all coming from around 230-270 while I'm going 180, so their on my right. Then after a long time they start showing up where they actually are.

That is a clear indication that you have marked the ambiguous mirror contact (instead of the real one) on the towed array. And perhaps you made a left turn through the mirror contacts shifting to the other side of your bow. There are no other (false, civilian or biologic) contacts in that scenario. Unless the surface ships lobbed some torpedo missiles in your vicinity you must have been fooled by mirror contacts and their drift during your course change. I've never seen (in stock or modded) the towed sonar tracker mixing up the real with the mirror contact when both are near the tail of the towed array, or crossing through it to the other side. (Which makes you wonder why not if the bearing rate is really slow. But that is a different discussion)

As I'm typing this I just had a thought. When you turn and go 180, do you have to flip the switch that makes North - South?

Maybe that's why I'm messing up?

You don't need to flip north an south when you change course to the other side. It is just a visual thing. I guess a help for those lacking spatial reasoning. I mean, I don't see why north-south is special. Why is there not a east or west setting? A bow-stern display setting would make more sense to me. Either way the bearing scale is correctly displayed to read the right bearing the cursor is reading to at that time.

Maybe that north or south setting confused you with reading the scale in broadband of older data. When you flick that switch you'll notice the waterfall of the previous setting is still displaying the old data but lower. But during pause it obviously doesn't drop and might fool you reading the bearing. Narrowband does not have this problem. As the bearing-amplitude curse is redrawn every instant.

As Outeniqua said, it is better to make a less drastic course change to determine what the mirror contacts are. It takes a lot less time also. In fact, a 180 turn just makes the real and mirror contacts flip places. Telling you nothing exactly.

With the contacts being SSE (say 160) at the start, the mirror contacts would be found at 200-ish. After turn to the right by 30 degrees would make the true contacts stay at 160-ish (maybe drifting to 165), but the mirror contacts shift to 260-270.

Mirror contacts shift twice the angle of your course change, in the same direction. So the course change should be more or less (meaning "not equal to", not meaning "about the same as") to the distance a contact is to the bow/TA line direction. Or else they are flipping sides again.

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by A-Ganger

Outeniqua; Thanks for you reply.

I agree that it appears they are ambiguities, however, there are no ambiguities when I first get those contacts?
Or should I say, I cannot see them on Broadband or Narrow-band if they are in fact mirror contacts.
For instance Broadband will only show 1 line (if for example I only have 1 contact S1), so it then appears there is no ambiguous contact for S1.

Spherical or flank arrays do not suffer from ambiguous contacts. So you must have selected the Spherical array when you only saw 1 line in broadband. That said, a mirror contact on the towed array in broadband during the course change phase could be smeared out over many pixels making them more faint in the display. Perhaps not noticeable even. But after the TA has straightened it would show brighter again on the new mirror contact bearing.

When I tried the mission just yet I couldn't get any clear line in the TA broadband display. Only on long time averaging could I see a signal. Your best tool would be narrowband in this case.

[A-Ganger]

Originally Posted by Pisces

Well no, that first line makes no sense at all. "Contacts at bearing 345..." Ok, you got signals at true bearing 345.
"I'm going course 230 or so on Sphere and/or TA." What the hell does that mean? You don't command your course in a sonar sensor, you do it at the helm. To take this supposed bug report serious you need to describe your situation a bit more clearer.

Should have been; I'll have contacts at say 345 (and I'm going course 230 or so) on Sphere and/or TA. Read between the lines..geeze lol
It is very tricky to say the least and I say it IS buggy. Some examples.

S1 on Narrowband on TA. Will not show up in tracker until I click it a million times, then I have 4 tracker letters on the same contact, yet none of the trackers show S1 on Daemon nor do they show ABCD/EFGH/JKLM.
The whole reason sonar assigns tracker letters is to easily identify which array the contact is on.. ABCD - TA, EFGH sphere etc..

Just now had a contact show on 010 Narrowband TA. 2 bright lines. Hit Assign target, nothing happens. A few second later the Sonar Crew (which is off) says new contact on 006?? And 006 has 2 bearing lines are half as bright as they are on 010. Crew is turned off and contact gets logged/reported on different bearing.

New contact on 169 Narrowband TA. Click Designate target, nothing happens. Few seconds later, it has a J on top window on freq line (still nothing on Daemon). Few more seconds later, now it's S3 and now has letters, JKL all on same contact. Still nothing on Daemon and it was never reported by the crew voice.

Now I hit Tracker review. Have S3 and S4 on map. Now there is nothing on tracker review?

Another scenario with images:

Check these images, should be in order as I state below:

S7 @ 307 broadband TA
S8 @ 192 broadband TA
S8 @ 192 narrowband TA
Pressing Tracker review, and there is NO S7 now on narrowband?
Yet clicking down in narrowband search and there is S7?

So....If you say this isn't broken, please explain in detail please. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

Maybe it is just happening in this map? So someone else would have to go play it and see what you get

[FPSchazly]

Not sure if you know this or are already doing this, but in narrowband, you need to mark a specific frequency of a contact up in the frequency spectrum. Just marking the bearing down there on the bottom broadband (Narrowband Search) is not sufficient.

[A-Ganger]

Yes of course. Without doing that you will never get the contact type/class etc.

Thanks tho

[FPSchazly]

Having said that, sometimes after clicking to apply a tracker on a frequency, go back down to Narrowband Search and then click and drag the bearing cursor across the bearing of the contact a few times and it should apply a tracker then. If nothing else, try a different frequency in the spectrum, too, if possible.

[A-Ganger]

Ok will do and yes I had noticed that as well.

Just sometimes it seems difficult to get it to assign a tracker and I keep clicking, then all a sudden I now have 3-4 tracker letters all on top of each other.

I have noticed that the Sonar crew (when turned off) is very slow in voicing the new contact. It sometimes takes maybe 3-5 seconds before it says anything.

I wonder if when you hit the assign contact button, in the background, the Sonar suite is doing some manipulating..like moving a tad bit to a closer/better frequency before it states; Conn/Sonar, I have a new contact bearing .. Designate S... etc.

Thanks everyone for the comments/suggestions, very helpful

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by A-Ganger

Should have been; I'll have contacts at say 345 (and I'm going course 230 or so) on Sphere and/or TA. Read between the lines..geeze lol
It is very tricky to say the least and I say it IS buggy. Some examples.

S1 on Narrowband on TA. Will not show up in tracker until I click it a million times, then I have 4 tracker letters on the same contact, yet none of the trackers show S1 on Daemon nor do they show ABCD/EFGH/JKLM.
The whole reason sonar assigns tracker letters is to easily identify which array the contact is on.. ABCD - TA, EFGH sphere etc..

As has been said already, deamon only works with trackers assigned to contact in broadband. Narrowband trackers will not show up in deamon display.

Just now had a contact show on 010 Narrowband TA. 2 bright lines. Hit Assign target, nothing happens. A few second later the Sonar Crew (which is off) says new contact on 006?? And 006 has 2 bearing lines are half as bright as they are on 010. Crew is turned off and contact gets logged/reported on different bearing.

Are you sure that new contact wasn't an active intercept received at the same time? It surprised me yesterday as I played this scenario. I got a new S-contact without tagging it. Also note that the bearings of the active intercept do seem to be a bit buggy. The bearing is recorded at the edge of the beam instead of the center. Or atleast it's display on the screen is buggy. But in my experience this bearing offset is carried over to the TMA screen. Yellow line solutions by the TMA crew never seem to match with show truth exactly.

New contact on 169 Narrowband TA. Click Designate target, nothing happens. Few seconds later, it has a J on top window on freq line (still nothing on Daemon). Few more seconds later, now it's S3 and now has letters, JKL all on same contact. Still nothing on Daemon and it was never reported by the crew voice.

Now I hit Tracker review. Have S3 and S4 on map. Now there is nothing on tracker review?

I will admit it takes the sonar crew a bit of time to respond to your tracker designations and report a new contact issued. (Not very strange if you have time compression going on at 4x.) You seemingly can also assign more than one trackers to the same contact (even frequency). It that a bug? Maybe, might also be a legitimate function as-designed. You can run out of them soon with only 4. And other contacts loose their tracker if you clicked too often and there are no free trackers left. I will also admit that this tracker user interface is a bit wonky. With I,J,K and L it is easy to mistake them as they overlap the same frequency line or bearing. The I is easily hidden by the J and L. And there is no sure way to select the tracker you want to untag from a contact on a bearing in broadband or frequency in narrowband. But it does what it needs to do and stick to contacts. It doesn't go awol and wander off to a whole different bearing, unless there is a mirror among the signals or a faint signal that got the tracker assigned instead. Trackers are reliable to keep bearings.

Another scenario with images:

Check these images, should be in order as I state below:

S7 @ 307 broadband TA
S8 @ 192 broadband TA
S8 @ 192 narrowband TA
Pressing Tracker review, and there is NO S7 now on narrowband?
Yet clicking down in narrowband search and there is S7?

So....If you say this isn't broken, please explain in detail please. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

Maybe it is just happening in this map? So someone else would have to go play it and see what you get

Ok, but the button does what it says. It reviews the trackers assigned in narrowband. If you search the bottom B(earing)-scan display it shows the sonar contacts it knows at that bearing. Even if that has a broadband tracker. Is that a bug? I'd rather call it a feature to enhance situational awareness.

And no, this does not only happen in this scenario map. The contact locations are such that a bunch can be found on nearly the same bearing. Because they are still far way. Making it hard to differentiate the signals from eachother. But many scenarios have this curve-ball built into them.

[A-Ganger]

Thanks for clearing those issues up Pisces!!