Default depths?

[Sniper297]

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Submarine\NSS_Sargo\NSS_Sargo.cfg is the file I'm hacking, trying to change surface depth, periscope depth, and snorkel depth. Didn't see any effect fiddling with the numbers, so I started a new career to see if that was necessary, nothing. What I currently have;

[Properties]
PeriscopeDepth=17.8;meters
SnorkelDepth=8.2;meters
CrashDepth=40;meters
MaxDepth=122;meters
SurfaceDepth=2;meters
TorpLaunchMaxDepth=39;meters
StormConditions=9,0.1;max wind speed [m/s], max rain intensity [0,1]

2 meters is about 6 1/2 feet, the blasted thing should be sitting on top of the water, yet it still has the standard 17-19 feet even after diving-surfacing and waiting an hour. Do I have the wrong file or is this hard coded in somehow?

[TorpX]

I think the NSS_Sargo.sim file has the displacement and draft values (as well as others). I am not sure if these will change what you want or not.

You will need use S3d to open it.

[Sniper297]

Thanks, that looks like it. Surfaced "draught" (draft in Yankee Doodlish) shows 5.61, which works out to about 16 feet in real money. In real life a fleet boat blew with compressed air and came up to a keel depth of about 20 feet or so, then ran a low pressure blower which took 15-30 minutes to empty the tanks so she was riding in surface trim. What I'm trying to avoid is the rough seas problem repeatedly shutting off the radar, and for some reason the Sargo draws 17 feet most of the time and wants to hover between 19 and 21 feet when it gets moody. That time of the month maybe.

Other possibility is "submerged" draught under the surfaced, that shows 7.5 which is about 24.6 feet. Could that be the value which decides when the bridge crew disappears? If the programmers were lazy (pardon me, but many things about this game point to that possibility ) they might have set everything to be keyed off that single datablock including diesel cutoff and radar shutting down.

I'll fiddle with that and report back.

[Sniper297]

Okay, some really weird effects from hacking that number - set it to 30 feet and tried it out, near as I can tell it has no effect on crew or radar cutoff, but the diesels will run at that depth. For giggles I set it for 60 feet and tried again, and the diesels will indeed run at periscope depth - if you can get down there. Hit the P key and get the "yes sir, periscope depth" (landlubber, supposed to be AYE AYE SIR not yes sir to acknowledge an order) but it won't dive. Select a depth on the dial meter and it still won't dive. Hit the C for crash dive and it will go down, only problem is trying to select a depth after that, which is always off by 20-30 feet. Select snorkel depth and it just surfaces.

So after some trial and error (mostly error) I set it back to a more realistic surfaced 4.6 (15.4 feet) and submerged 8.5 (27.88 feet) which seems to work with no problems so far.

Aside from the radar constantly cutting off in heavy seas, the other problem I've always had was getting the blasted snorkel depth to work consistently. Set for 27 feet and it wants to be at 23 or 25 feet, and I know from the google chart I'm converting French Furlongs into good old Christian feet correctly.

The NSS_Sargo.cfg is set;

[Properties]
PeriscopeDepth=18;meters
SnorkelDepth=8.85;meters
CrashDepth=40;meters
MaxDepth=122;meters
SurfaceDepth=4.8;meters
TorpLaunchMaxDepth=39;meters
StormConditions=9,0.1;max wind speed [m/s], max rain intensity [0,1]

8.5 is about 29 feet, but apparently it needs to be set deeper than the actual - that setting maintains a consistent 25 feet depth.

What that looks like, on the surface;



Averages 14-15 feet and don't look too high. Might help the radar annoyance, I hope.

Snorkel depth (decks awash) at 25 feet the crewmen do go below (scurvy dogs, who gave you permission to flake out?!) so that's probably not affected by this value.



One other item, for those fiddling with the snorkel control to get decks awash, it requires some tinkering to make it work, and the other file that affects it is:

\Silent Hunter 4 Wolves of the Pacific\Data\Cfg\Commands.cfg

Open that in notepad (make a copy of the file first!) and scroll down to;

[Cmd195]
Name=Snorkel_depth
Ctxt=1
Str=1033
;Key0=0xBA,C,"Comma"
Key0=0x44,s,"Shift+D"

A semicolon ";" at the beginning of a line is program code for "this is a comment, computer ignore this". So remove that ; from the beginning of the line and delete the last line;

[Cmd195]
Name=Snorkel_depth
Ctxt=1
Str=1033
Key0=0xBA,C,"Comma"

Or just copy and paste the above over command 195. The actual key is the semicolon ; and not the comma "," key, the programmer was probably drunk when he added the notations.

[Snarf]

The radar really needs to stay on until the sub is below 47 feet (known as 'Radar Depth'. They did use the radar while submerged and the periscope shears out of the water.

[Sniper297]

Yeah, ingame the SJ1 cuts out around 40 feet, but the main irritation I was trying to cure is when on accelerated time in rough seas it keeps cutting out and the idiot operator never automatically turns it back on.

So far this doesn't do everything I thought it would - changing the surfaced draft to 14-15 feet doesn't affect rough seas causing it to average 20-24 feet. In any case I'm pretty sure the submergence depth only affects the diesel cutoff and shift to battery, nothing else. Increasing submerged draft helps with that for decks awash, but again increase it too much and I get really bizarre problems with trying to dive. The whole point of a submarine is the ability to submerge, so any hack that screws that up is not good.

Still haven't had big enough waves in this patrol to see whether the radar cutting out is affected or not.

[merc4ulfate]

You should have had to use one in real life. You not only had to deal with the ocean washing over the screen at radar depth but even on the surface the radar signal was skewed by the roll of the boat.


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[Sniper297]

"You should have had to use one in real life."

US Navy Aviation ASW tech, I have used radar, sonar, MAD gear, and FLIR.

Pitch and roll didn't affect even the earliest radar dishes since they were gyro stabilized as early as May 1941.

And spray might temporarily blank or muddy the return, but it wouldn't automatically turn the set off.

[TorpX]

The diving/depth performance is at least partly a function of the sub's mass. I was fooling around with the sim file of the S-18, mainly trying to figure out how to dampen the acceleration of it and generally figure out the physics of this game. Since nothing else worked, I put in a figure of 1,000 tons mass for the boat. This was not an enormous increase, but I was hoping the inputting a figure would change the way it worked. Well it did slow down the boat quite a bit. It also dived very quickly to periscope depth....... and kept right on going, down to the bottom. For laughs, I increased it to about double, to see if it could stay on the surface. No dice - it dropped like an anchor, straight down, the second the mission started.

[merc4ulfate]

"I have used radar, sonar, MAD gear, and FLIR"

Then I supposed the above link to the Navy Manual was required reading for you.

While there was SD radar in 1941 it's 6 mile range was barely enough time for a boat to dive. It wasn't until December of 1941 that the SJ prototype was even developed. It wasn't until early in '43 that SJ finally was on all boats.

It wasn't until after May of 1941 that Ernest Pollard used shipboard SG radar units and the gyro mount was for fixed position antennae on land and surface ships only. The AN/APS-2 was used on surface ships and Navy Blimps.

Because of the movement of the operating vessel and subsequent antennae, especially low riding submarines, the Navy developed Lobe Switching to better determine the accuracy of the contacts. There were no gyro mounts on submarines. Even a storm cloud, lightning and St. Elmos's Fire could affect radar signals. If you do not think pitch and roll affected radar signals on fixed antennae then I guess the Navy was being redundant in coming up with lobe switching, main, minor and back lobes instructions for radar oporators.