Surfaced Sonar

[Crannogman]

I left Pearl in early '42 with a new Gato and RSRD. I found the hunting incredibly austere, to the point where I snuck into a harbor in Formosa and sank 5 ships. Then I started getting contacts reports suggesting a shipping route, and started down it. Still nothing on sonar, then a medium freigher loomed out of the fog dead ahead. A few days later in the Bungo Duido, I was able to confirm that I my sonar only worked when I was submerged.
I though RSRD only changed campaign stuff, not AI and sensors etc. Anyone have any idea if it's RSRD, or maybe the Gato?

[Sniper297]

Never tried RSRDC myself, but from what I understand some of the megamods try to get more realistic by disabling certain things - like the black / blue sonar contact lines on the map. Dunno if RSRDC does that, but one of the megamods you won't see the lines even if you have the map contact update cheat turned on.

[merc4ulfate]

Yes the megamods remove contact lines. Most of them do. Most of them also remove sonar abilities surfaced while some add it back in. Sonar could be used on the surface but only at slow speeds.

The game also has a bad habit of using the most recent and closest contact report as a means of showing the lines if they are still available. Meaning if your contact can be seen visually it stops showing up as a line on the sonar.

You can still go to the sonar station and listen and find the contact yourself however. Some, even submerged, will not show contact lines for sonar if the scope is up and the target is being shown visually.

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
Fixed_CD_sonar_RSRDC
Classe_Balao_CamoTri
Pacific Sound Mod
Nav Map Make-Over v2.1
NMMO Airbase Add-on
NMMO v2.1 Patch 1 with AB
NMMO Maps Add-on
NMMO Pre Pearl Harbor Career Start Add-on
NMMO Reverse Ocean Colors Add-on
Less Plankton 1.2

[CapnScurvy]

Crannogman, you've not stated your mod list (except for RSRDC). If your using RSRDC v550 only (for the stock game.....no other mods activated with it) I can answer your questions.

Yes, RSRDC is thought to only add historical routes to the game.....it does a lot more. New ships, and planes are added. Configuration files are changed, so are data files.

To answer your question about the Gato (and most later model subs in RSRDC), the sensor file was changed from stock......having the "Ball" mount hydrophone (the one on the bottom of the hull used with newer subs) to require submerging before it works. That's not what it should do, but that's what it does. I'm guessing Lurker had his head filled with Operation Monsun and just forgot that American subs (outside of the S-Class, or a couple of the older class subs) didn't require the sub to be submerged when using a "Ball" mount sensor.

Here's the comparison of the Stock file on the left, RSRDC on the right:



RSRDC requires you to be 12 meters deep before the hydrophone works, when equipped with the hull "Ball" type of Hydrophone. A work around is to remove the "Sensors_sub_US.sim" (found in the Data/Library folder) file from RSRDC.

Regarding not "hearing" a ship even though it's within eyesight of your sub. RSRDC changes the ship route speeds many times in the span of a day. If you've ever opened up one of RSRDC's .mis files, you would see a multitude of way points added to the shipping routes, when compared stock. He has some dropping down to less than 1 knot, then maybe shooting back up to 7 knots on the next way point. The problem is, when your manning the Hydrophone station yourself, you won't hear the target ship as long as its speed is less than halve its MaxSpeed set in its .dat file. Say a ship has a maximum speed of 16 knots....you'll not hear it with the Hydrophone yourself if it's travel speed is 7 knots. This is a stock game issue, not something brought on by RSRDC. However, RSRDC doesn't help the issue by trying to set many of its travel speeds less than halve the ship's MaxSpeed.

[Crannogman]

Thanks Capn, that must be it. My other mods are the nav map 2.1, PE4, and natural sinking; however, RSRD is the only thing that I added between my last patrol and this. I'm guesing I'll have to be in port to fix that, no? I'm out of fish and 16 hours West of Midway, but I'm pretty sure getting to Pearl and back in 3 days is out of the question

[CapnScurvy]

Yes, remove that .sim file after you're back in port...between assignments. Instead of completly removing it, just rename it to something like "OLD_RSRDC_Sensors_sub_US.sim". Then you can always go back to it if you like.