Question of the day. Surprise torpedo evasion.

[Sgian Dubh]

Hi all,

After a long hiatus form SC, I am really enjoying coming ramping back up with DW.

I am running DW 1.03 + the L????? mod.

I have what I think are pretty good procedures for torp evasion, contact prosecution, etc.

The one procedure that I feel is insufficient is what to do when you get a TIW on a bearing for which you have no current contact information?

I always find myself waffling between immediate evasion, waiting a bit to see if I can track the torpedo to see if I am the target and any mixture of the above.

So I want to solicit opinions:

Here is the situation.

You get a TIW bearing 315 and the torp goes active almost immediately Up to that moment, you have no contact (other that the torpedo) with any of your sensors on that bearing. Checking now, you can't even get a whiff of a sonar contact on 315 or anything close.

The rub is, of course, that reacting blind is a very bad thing. But if you take the time to try and resolve the torpedoes track, and it is close and acquires you - then it may be too late to evade.

So you are completely blind. No range, no contact, no platform SWAG, and an active torpedo in the water.

What would you do?

And yes, I know the first answer - Never let yourself get caught in this situation. But it will happen to most, if not all of us, at some point.

I'll start:

I would assume the worst. I've been caught with my pants down and the hositle it close and has a good TMA on me. I would drop CMs, turn to put on an opening perpendicular course (say 115 degrees off the TIW bearing) and perhaps crank up to 10 or 12 knots. Enough that I am clearing datum as a reasonable pace, yet can still listen with the TA for the torpedo at the moment. If I have the room I might consider changing depth. I would definitely prepare two Snapshots torpedos, Active, initially set to 10 degrees on each side of the TIW bearing, flood and equalize the tubes. Since I have nothing on the TA on the bearing of the TIW, I would bet enable range to about 9 kYards. I would then hope that in the next few minutes I get some kind of data to refine the range SWAG and then consider shooting the Snapshots.

This question arose from an experience I had in DW. Here are the particulars:

Single Player quick battle in the Bering Sea. Ice cover. No layer as too shallow. I don't think there was 150 ft of water to play in.

I was in the game in a 688i moving at 4 kts. I had deployed my TA as much as the water/speed/iceberg situation seemed to safely allow. I initially had Autocrew on sonar, then switched it off to do my own sonar workup. After about 20 min game time, I got a TIW from 230. I had no sonar contact on that bearing other than the torpedo. The torpedo went active almost immediately. I dropped a CM and changed course apporpriately and increased speed to 6 kts. Maneuvering was hampered by icebergs.

Initial torpedo passed astern and was lost. I assumed the CM confused it and it never found me.

about this time I get another TIW from roughly the same bearing. Again I have not sonar contact on the bearing except the torpedo. Again the torpedo went active almost immediately.

I launched CM and changed course to what I SWAGed was an opening course while avoiding ice flows.

This time the torpedo acquired me and I was unable to shake it. I could not go to flank bells due to the icebergs being thick in the area I had to maneuver through.

After it was all over I turned truth on. I had been nailed by a diesel sub that was only about 11 kyards away. I never got so much as a hint of a trace on him on sonar, yet he had locked me up quite nicely.

So I was expending this to what if this happened in open water where you had more room to maneuver? In general, what else might I have done had I been able to do so.

I never fired a Snapshot in the game because I was a bit busy with the icebergs to do it.

[Kapitan]

If you play under ice and your playing a guy who doesnt know the canopy or topography too well then you got a good advantage normaly the torpedo will smash into an ice berg.

Hear a TIW warning under ice then 99% it is where the contact is, as they cannot fire missiles under ice.

So go to nav map click your sub then push and hold R then drag that range and bearing line out to about 15 miles place manual contact then snap shot at it with two torpedos one bearing slightly one way one slightly the other and enable them at around 8 miles.

So snap shot to a contact at 315 id shoot one torp 317 and one 313.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by Sgian Dubh

I never fired a Snapshot in the game because I was a bit busy with the icebergs to do it.

Always shoot a snapshot. You'd be surprised how often they'll hit SOMETHING. They may be a shot in the dark, but they they're sufficiently dangerous that the bad guy has to at least think about them. I'm convinced that fact alone makes your torpedo evasion much more effective, because while they're avoiding your torpedo they're NOT concentrating on where you are.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

Always shoot a snapshot. You'd be surprised how often they'll hit SOMETHING. They may be a shot in the dark, but they they're sufficiently dangerous that the bad guy has to at least think about them. I'm convinced that fact alone makes your torpedo evasion much more effective, because while they're avoiding your torpedo they're NOT concentrating on where you are.

No, fire a snapshot only when you're pretty sure the torpedo has been fired at you.
No sense in giving out your position if you're not in danger.

[TopTorp '92]

Originally Posted by Sgian Dubh

Hi all,

After a long hiatus form SC, I am really enjoying coming ramping back up with DW.

I am running DW 1.03 + the L????? mod.

I have what I think are pretty good procedures for torp evasion, contact prosecution, etc.

The one procedure that I feel is insufficient is what to do when you get a TIW on a bearing for which you have no current contact information?

I always find myself waffling between immediate evasion, waiting a bit to see if I can track the torpedo to see if I am the target and any mixture of the above.

So I want to solicit opinions:

Here is the situation.

You get a TIW bearing 315 and the torp goes active almost immediately Up to that moment, you have no contact (other that the torpedo) with any of your sensors on that bearing. Checking now, you can't even get a whiff of a sonar contact on 315 or anything close.

The rub is, of course, that reacting blind is a very bad thing. But if you take the time to try and resolve the torpedoes track, and it is close and acquires you - then it may be too late to evade.

So you are completely blind. No range, no contact, no platform SWAG, and an active torpedo in the water.

What would you do?

And yes, I know the first answer - Never let yourself get caught in this situation. But it will happen to most, if not all of us, at some point.

I'll start:

I would assume the worst. I've been caught with my pants down and the hositle it close and has a good TMA on me. I would drop CMs, turn to put on an opening perpendicular course (say 115 degrees off the TIW bearing) and perhaps crank up to 10 or 12 knots. Enough that I am clearing datum as a reasonable pace, yet can still listen with the TA for the torpedo at the moment. If I have the room I might consider changing depth. I would definitely prepare two Snapshots torpedos, Active, initially set to 10 degrees on each side of the TIW bearing, flood and equalize the tubes. Since I have nothing on the TA on the bearing of the TIW, I would bet enable range to about 9 kYards. I would then hope that in the next few minutes I get some kind of data to refine the range SWAG and then consider shooting the Snapshots.

This question arose from an experience I had in DW. Here are the particulars:

Single Player quick battle in the Bering Sea. Ice cover. No layer as too shallow. I don't think there was 150 ft of water to play in.

I was in the game in a 688i moving at 4 kts. I had deployed my TA as much as the water/speed/iceberg situation seemed to safely allow. I initially had Autocrew on sonar, then switched it off to do my own sonar workup. After about 20 min game time, I got a TIW from 230. I had no sonar contact on that bearing other than the torpedo. The torpedo went active almost immediately. I dropped a CM and changed course apporpriately and increased speed to 6 kts. Maneuvering was hampered by icebergs.

Initial torpedo passed astern and was lost. I assumed the CM confused it and it never found me.

about this time I get another TIW from roughly the same bearing. Again I have not sonar contact on the bearing except the torpedo. Again the torpedo went active almost immediately.

I launched CM and changed course to what I SWAGed was an opening course while avoiding ice flows.

This time the torpedo acquired me and I was unable to shake it. I could not go to flank bells due to the icebergs being thick in the area I had to maneuver through.

After it was all over I turned truth on. I had been nailed by a diesel sub that was only about 11 kyards away. I never got so much as a hint of a trace on him on sonar, yet he had locked me up quite nicely.

So I was expending this to what if this happened in open water where you had more room to maneuver? In general, what else might I have done had I been able to do so.

I never fired a Snapshot in the game because I was a bit busy with the icebergs to do it.

Turning perpendicular to the incoming torpedo will only increase the probability of acquisition. In this case you are giving the torpedo too much broadside to work with. Generally, you want the torpedo about 30-45 degrees abaft the beam. You don’t want to cross the torpedo’s track while evading.

You must drive the boat above or below the nearest sonar layer.

All ahead flank.

Snapshot down the bearing of the incoming torpedo.

Not necessarily in this sequence.

You may:
1. get a sonar report about a TIW. At a minimum speed to FULL. Meanwhile get bearing and bearing rate data. Is the torpedo drawing left or right? Which side of the beam is it on? Is it opening or closing range.

2. Check the Active sonar repeater. It will tell you the bearing to the active intercept. You must watch this for bearing drift information. Also check the broadband display for bearing drift. Be sure to turn in the opposite direction.

3. Get movin, start using CMs. Fire snapshot.

4. don’t forget to find that layer.

[Deathblow]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

Always shoot a snapshot. You'd be surprised how often they'll hit SOMETHING. They may be a shot in the dark, but they they're sufficiently dangerous that the bad guy has to at least think about them. I'm convinced that fact alone makes your torpedo evasion much more effective, because while they're avoiding your torpedo they're NOT concentrating on where you are.

What would also help would be if we had a "launch transient" and never the TIW to clue into whether a torp is sub or air dropped. That would be a nice additon. It would also help to know whether a sub is firing off ASW/ASM launches, because we don't detect their launches, just the results after the payloads delivered. Always a source of soreness in gameplay personally. Maybe in a future patch. *Fingers crossed*

[MaHuJa]

Originally Posted by Deathblow

What would also help would be if we had a "launch transient" and never the TIW to clue into whether a torp is sub or air dropped. That would be a nice additon. It would also help to know whether a sub is firing off ASW/ASM launches, because we don't detect their launches, just the results after the payloads delivered. Always a source of soreness in gameplay personally. Maybe in a future patch. *Fingers crossed*

Sounds like you'd want lwami

Missiles launched from underwater with the mod installed will make a lot of noise, unfortunately there's no automatic notification like for torpedoes.

[Sgian Dubh]

I am using Lwami and the launch transient of ASW missiles was next on my list of things to sort out. I am disappointed that this was not corrected from SC days. But having them make a good deal of noise is better than nothing.

[sonar732]

The only problem with launch transients is if you're in SP you're hosed because the chance of you looking at BB the exact moment that it is launched is slim. However, if in MP and assigned the BB and your only job is to watch for transients the chances get better. If I remember right, either Fish or Xabb has posted screenies of what it looks like. Trust me, the transient warning is high on everyone's wish.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by goldorak

No, fire a snapshot only when you're pretty sure the torpedo has been fired at you.
No sense in giving out your position if you're not in danger.

I used to think that too, until I wrote a little toy Monte Carlo to see what mattered. If you always shoot a snapshot, you do better on average.

I'm pretty convinced that if it's not shot at you, then you're actually in better shape than if it had been shot at you, because now you've attacked the badguy first. It's like a page from Fleet Tactics. The bottom line is that if you hear a TIW, you've either been detected first and are being shot at (therefore you should shoot back), or someone else was detected first and is being shot at (therefore you should shoot at the guy shooting at them), or someone else is dumb and shot before they had a good shot at anyone, thus revealing their position needlessly (therefore you should shoot them).

The more torpedoes you can shoot at a badguy the better off you are. What's the worst that can happen? Someone else shoots another ill-aimed torpedo at you down his LOB to you? Either way, nobody's torpedo is likely to hit anything. The only thing you can do to skew the statistics in your favor is to increase the salvo size, ultimately. Probably the best tactic is to fire all tubes and not just one. Maximum salvo size is a killer.

I believe it is much better to shoot lots of torpedos, whiff ten times and get the bad guy on the eleventh, than to spend so much time setting up a shot with a silver bullet that you get wacked in the process.

More is always better. The truth is, if you watch how people play this game, they rarely do more than shoot what essentially amount to snapshots anyhow.

[Molon Labe]

I beg to differ.

[Bellman]

With respect SQ - these are not MP procedures that I am able to endorse !

[OneShot]

I agree to disagree ....

Since I favour the Airplattforms, one of my principles is to carefully set up my shots and make em count. This is especially important on the Helo where you might have only 2 torps and reloading (if you can do that at all) takes ages. The drawback on this ... often enough my opponent got me while I was in the process of gettin in the right position. Depending on your loadout the lack of torps to shoot is less emphasized on the P-3, still for the airborne platforms all torps are Fire-and-Forget weapons, no chance of resteering or whatever.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by OneShot

I agree to disagree ....

Since I favour the Airplattforms, one of my principles is to carefully set up my shots and make em count. This is especially important on the Helo where you might have only 2 torps and reloading (if you can do that at all) takes ages. The drawback on this ... often enough my opponent got me while I was in the process of gettin in the right position.

Air is different. The total area searched by lightweight torpedoes is insufficient to make this effective. In that case a TIW helps you to cue your search, though, although if you can pick up the torpedo shortly after it's launched, that's probably a good place to mark and drop on.

Depending on your loadout the lack of torps to shoot is less emphasized on the P-3, still for the airborne platforms all torps are Fire-and-Forget weapons, no chance of resteering or whatever.

Yeah... that's another big factor.

I've noticed that a lot of submarine people tend less to depend on the the torpedo just searching out a swath of space on it's own, and instead prefer to "walk it in" by activating it, seeing if it homes on anything, inactivating it, letting it go for a while, activating it again. How many times do you see people activating torpedoes WAY early doing exactly that? They haven't the foggiest clue where you are, they just have a line of bearing. It's the same as a snapshot. They're just shooting down a line of bearing with little or no effective TMA.

Almost everyone I've seen in MP is shooting what amount to snapshots, and then wire guiding them in when they get a sniff of someone, or else not even necessarily having a clear idea where anyone is at all. They just develop a feel for the torpedo and let it home when it homes, adjusting it so that it stays along the line of bearing they have on their sonar.

It seems to work as a tactic. It goes back to the whole "shoot effectively first..." argument. They use the wire guidence as a way of compensating for what's ultimately a lack of sufficient skill to spend the time to develop an accurate firing solution. They don't need to do TMA. In these multiplayer free-for-alls, who cares ultimately who you hit so long as you hit someone? The Seawolf is especially cheesy in this respect. In many cases, theoretically, you don't have to even know which direction the guy is in, just have to know he's there. You can cover 360 degrees out to a fairly good range by firing tubes 1-8, and have a decent change of hitting someone.

I think it's actually kind of annoying, because the only way I've figured to counter the tactic is to break contact and start all over again. Even then, probabilities start to accumulate. Let's suppose there's only a one in ten chance of a torpedo hitting you. After seven torpedoes there's a better than 50/50 chance of at least one of them hitting. Now imagine multiple salvos!

What I have also noticed is that frequently they don't react to counterfire. They just keep wire guiding their torpedo intently and rely on the fact that it has slightly less distance to travel than yours do.

The thing is, this is an unrealistic tactic, because in truth, it doens't matter if you kill the other guy if you get killed in the process. Frequently, that's precisely the situation they set up, only they quit the game before that happens. Even so, if that's the name of the game.. maximum salvo size along the line of bearing. Get as many torpedoes in the water as you can as fast as you can.

[Wim Libaers]

In some situations, it may also be useful to check if the torpedo was fired by a friendly or a hostile platform.