Aircraft evasion

[Longknife]

G' day Captains,

I could use some advice on aircraft evasion. I recently added RSRD to TMO & am frustrated with the results.

My beloved Pigboat went from the Lion of the sea to a Nip target scow .
With RSRD you start with zero renown so I can't purchase radar from the onset consequently my 1st warning of an aircraft is obviously once my deck watch spots it.

As soon as an aircraft is spotted I immediately go to GQ, throw the rudder hard over & crash dive. Thus far EVERY single time I do this I still get hit as I am submerging resulting in significant damage .

I have altered tactics & am now remaining submerged during the day & patrolling at night. While this may be historically accurate it is less than gratifying.

I believe my method to evade the dive bombing attack are sound & yet them Nip pilots are unerringly accurate with their bombs. Do y'all have any suggestions on a better way to avoid the aircraft?

Many thanks for any suggestions,

Bob

[suitednate]

I was having the same issues before I switched the enemy sensor parameters. I was playing RFB though and even at 150 ft depth they seemed amazingly accurate and I'd get sunk constantly. There is a thread regarding this somewhere in here........

[Pigboatcook]

With TMO stay under during the day, 100 feet or more. Daylight surface cruising before you get radar is hazardous to your health.

[razark]

Originally Posted by Longknife

As soon as an aircraft is spotted I immediately go to GQ, throw the rudder hard over & crash dive.

The best solution is not to be spotted. Stay under during the day, come up to play at night.
However, if you do get caught on the surface:

Turning slows you down, so you stay closer to the spot where he sighted you, even if you get underwater. I don't know if that would also affect the time it takes to dive, but it might. (It's worth experimenting to find out for sure.*)


Crash dive, and keep the rudder straight, or only a few degrees of turn. Once you're under, then you can worry about turning further out of the way. (This is what I usually do in TMO, if someone manages to make it to visual range. I don't use RSRD, so I don't know if that changes the accuracy of their drops.)

Or

Flank speed, stay on the surface, and turn towards the plane. Man the AA guns. Hopefully, he won't be able to make an accurate drop on you, and once he's made his attack, crash dive and get out of the way.


*Edit:
In TMO without RSRD
Porpoise Class, Navigation Training mission.
Running Standard speed on surface, crash dive, no turn time to get underwater: 55 seconds.
Running Standard speed on surface, crash dive, hard turn time to get underwater: 56 seconds.
It doesn't appear to make a difference.

[fireftr18]

With TMO, the planes can see you as deep as 150 feet. When you dive, you need to get deeper. I run TMO and RSRDC and don't seem to have any trouble evading enemy aircraft. The instant the aircraft is spotted, I crash dive. Then I go to GC. I keep going flank for a few minutes. I don't turn until I reach depth.

[Sniper297]

One of the main reasons I don't use supermods is because the enemy already has superpowers along with help from the psychic friends network, and most supermods I tried just make it worse.

Original programmers used the "fact" that American fleet boats, being larger and heavier than a U boat, took over a minute to submerge. Finding a "fact" in the internet era all too often consists of doing "research" with google, finding some self appointed "expert" with a flawed opinion expressed as fact, and taking that for gospel with no further investigation.

True, the fleet boats originally took over a minute to crash dive, but with practice most crews got that down to 30-35 seconds in real life.

So I hacked mine with Silent 3ditor, the NSS_Sargo.sim for example;

11 UnitSubmarine
Ballast
ManBT_flood_speed = 68000
DiveBT_flood_speed = 58000

Did a little trial and error coming up with those numbers, but I can get the periscope shears under in a bit less than 30 seconds, under 100 feet in less than a minute. To me that seems more realistic, most of the WWII fleet sub non fiction I've read they patrolled on the surface in the daytime as much as possible. Das Boot after 1943 was completely different, in most cases they DID spend the entire day submerged, in fact with allied airborne radar development the U-boats had a hard time even getting out into the Atlantic from the sub pens. I've read accounts of that in 1944 where they tried to cross the Bay of Biscay, got damaged by an air attack, and had to put back in for repairs 3 or 4 times before they finally made it all the way out into the Atlantic.

The Pacific is a much bigger ocean, Japanese radar was never that good, their airborne ASW was never that good and with fuel and airplane shortages got worse instead of better as the war went on. The "realism" of the constant harassment by aircraft in SH4 is on the wrong side and in the wrong theater.

[merc4ulfate]

Why are you turning your only decreasing your dive time and speed?

Crash dive and keep your rudder at 0 until your at 100 feet then turn.

Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
1_TriggerMaru_Overhaul_2-5
1_TMO_25_small_patch
RSRDC_TMO_V502
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1
Improved Ship Physics 2.6_TMO_RSRDC
TMO_Visuals_for_RSRDC
FJB_Navigation_Maps
FJB Color Navigation Map
Gyoraitei
Hull_Numbers
rocks small
plants small
Ship pack 1
Remove grain effect
Webster's Eliminate Floating Plankton for v1.4 and v1.5
More_DDs_for_AITorpedoLauncher
More_IJNDDs_AITorpedolauncher
Aircraft_reflections
11 New Ships + Yamato AA Fix by Miner1436
#5 Depthcharge Sound
#3 Submarines Splash Sound
#2 Other Clouds

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Longknife

I have altered tactics & am now remaining submerged during the day & patrolling at night. While this may be historically accurate it is less than gratifying.

Why is it less than gratifying? When we say to patrol submerged, we mean at periscope depth, not 200 ft. Targets can still be approached and attacked.

In any case, when attack is imminent, crash dive, and keep the rudder straight. Getting deep is your priority, and using the rudder can only hinder you in this. Once you are at depth, you can twist and turn to your hearts content. At best, this only helps avoid follow-up attacks.

Be cautious as to surfacing.

IMO, if you find you must crash dive frequently for this reason, you should be patrolling submerged, instead.

[merc4ulfate]

I always patrol surfaced until a plane is spotted then I'll dive.


Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
1_TriggerMaru_Overhaul_2-5
1_TMO_25_small_patch
RSRDC_TMO_V502
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1
Improved Ship Physics 2.6_TMO_RSRDC
TMO_Visuals_for_RSRDC
FJB_Navigation_Maps
FJB Color Navigation Map
Gyoraitei
Hull_Numbers
rocks small
plants small
Ship pack 1
Remove grain effect
Webster's Eliminate Floating Plankton for v1.4 and v1.5
More_DDs_for_AITorpedoLauncher
More_IJNDDs_AITorpedolauncher
Aircraft_reflections
11 New Ships + Yamato AA Fix by Miner1436
#5 Depthcharge Sound
#3 Submarines Splash Sound
#2 Other Clouds

[HertogJan]

Once spotted leave that zone, you'll get more frequent air patrols in that area and do not wan to stick around for them to find you again and get a lucky hit.

[Longknife]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

I should reiterate that I am in a S-Boat & was using plain vanilla SH4 with only TMO added. I didn't time it but from cruising at 2/3rds the command to crash dive until the periscope shears were underwater was at least a full minute if not a little longer.

When I saw merc4ulfate's post & all the mods he uses I decided to duplicate that install & the results are amazing! Same criteria as about & the boat is submerged in just under 30sec with a crash dive. 100ft in 1min 10sec.

The reason for throwing the rudder hard over is because it took me so long to submerge I was trying to make my boat at least a little harder to hit.

[CDM]

The Pacific is a much bigger ocean, Japanese radar was never that good, their airborne ASW was never that good and with fuel and airplane shortages got worse instead of better as the war went on. The "realism" of the constant harassment by aircraft in SH4 is on the wrong side and in the wrong theater.[/QUOTE]

Is there anyway to reprogram the game to correct this?

[Pigboatcook]

Originally Posted by CDM

The Pacific is a much bigger ocean, Japanese radar was never that good, their airborne ASW was never that good and with fuel and airplane shortages got worse instead of better as the war went on. The "realism" of the constant harassment by aircraft in SH4 is on the wrong side and in the wrong theater.

Japanese aircraft production was 75,000+. Losses at the end of the war were approximately 43,000. Sure, it doesn't scratch the benchmark of the U.S.'s 300k but 75,000 is still one heck of a lot of wings.

Here are the numbers by year:
39 4.4k
40 7.8k
41 5.0k
42 9.0k
43 16.0k
44 28.0k
45 8.0k

[Crannogman]

Originally Posted by Pigboatcook

Japanese aircraft production was 75,000+. Losses at the end of the war were approximately 43,000. Sure, it doesn't scratch the benchmark of the U.S.'s 300k but 75,000 is still one heck of a lot of wings.

Here are the numbers by year:
39 4.4k
40 7.8k
41 5.0k
42 9.0k
43 16.0k
44 28.0k
45 8.0k

Too bad their fuel and aircrew production couldn't keep pace. Or, rather, too good...

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by CDM

The Pacific is a much bigger ocean, Japanese radar was never that good, their airborne ASW was never that good and with fuel and airplane shortages got worse instead of better as the war went on. The "realism" of the constant harassment by aircraft in SH4 is on the wrong side and in the wrong theater.

I heartily agree. Though aircraft allotted by the Japanese to the role of ASW and maritime protection multiplied until 1945, the supply never met the need. As the war continued into its final year, air cover became truly scarce, sometimes disturbingly so. One Japanese officer bitterly commented that "when we were near a base where we could request air cover, the only planes that showed up were American." The shortage of planes often precluded the possibility of antisubmarine sweeps in areas of beyond the immediate convoy routes. As a result it became common practice to send unarmed training flights over open water in the hopes that their presence might discourage any submarines that happened to be in the area.

In addition, with aircraft (as with surface vessels) availability more than suitability was the more influential benchmark for assignment to anti-submarine work. The Japanese had nothing comparable to the B-24 which could carry 24 depth charges on patrols reaching over 1,000 miles from shore. True, the Japanese navy did have the excellent Kawanishi flying boats and some float planes quite appropriate for maritime protection duty, but their production run numbers were few and many lacked the proper equipment.

The radar installed on these planes, when they were lucky enough to be so equipped was often not reliable. Ten miles was the maximum distance at which airborne Japanese radar could pick up a surfaced US sub. During daylight hours most pilots preferred their own eyesight, as it had greater range.

I've always been at something of a loss for mods that try to make Japanese aerial ASW the equivalent of Coastal Command in the Atlantic. (and the ridiculous number of Japanese aircraft aloft in the stock version of the game was out of whack, too.) I do suppose it is the make the game more tense and exciting, but it can't help but be at odds with history.