Submarine stealth - is it possible?

[AS_Pauly]

Hi! I am a rookie in DW.
I auto-crew all stations, and Im just the skipper.
I use show-the-truth because I have no time to lern all the advanced stuff needed to operate the sonar, TMA, etc.

This level of easiness is very good for me, maybe later I will advance further.

BBUUTT!!!

I need some information on actual naval technology.

Is there any chance to stay undetected from anti submarine cruisers using heavy active sonar? I am at 2000feet depth sitting at the bottom, all stop, no towed sensors, full off everything.

And the carrier battle group allways find me.

How can I be undetected if heavy battleships in the area?
What are the tactics, or where I can find tutorials in this theme?

THX

[OneShot]

Try www.commanders-academy.com ... take a look at the DW Wiki there as well as the File repository and the forum itself.

[NFunky]

Something to consider is that going as deep as possible is not the stealthiest place to be. Generally speaking, just under the layer should mask you from surface sensors quite well because of something called the 'shadow zone' effect. If you are just beneath the layer, you may not even be able to hear the active pings and th general rule of thumb in DW is, if you can't hear the ping, it can't hear you.

Also, there's no real need to be at all stop with your towed array reeled in unless that's how you want it. All stop doesn't really increase your stealth that much because (I assume) you are a nuke and will make some noise no matter what. There is no advantage in having your towed array stowed unless you plan on doing some very high speed maneuvers in which you'd break the tow cable. The towed array is your best sensor, so keep it useable!


P.S. Please don't play with "show truth" on the whole time, it completely destroys the point of the game which is to use the information you can get from your sensors/crew and make decisions. Besides, if you have all autocrew on you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what's going on around you; the TMA auto-crew is pretty damn good and the sonar auto-crew is good enough for your purposes. The other 'advantage' to not having truth on is that you begin to realize what reasonable sensor ranges are and when you might be detected.

[Molon Labe]

Active detection is mostly about range, acoustic conditions, and aspect. Allow the pinger to get close enough to you, though, and he will pick you up. Sonar conditions, aspect, even your depth relative to the layer and SSP can change the distance at which he will hear you, but there is no magic technique that allows you to get "run over" without being detected.

Bottom, passive noise, arrays, etc. have no effect on active detections.

[AS_Pauly]

THX! So it is tough to be a nuke skipper
The mission I talked about was the 'sink The Kuznetsov' with its task force, so it is 4 stars at difficulty

But I know how to be indetected. I shoot a torpedo at 40 knots speed, and I switch to max speed to close behind the torpedo. And they will see just the torpedo, not me. Yesterday I sank the Kuznetsov with this techniqe.

This is game is stellar, I found lots of tutorials from forum members, they are very easy understanding tuts, so I will learn sonar, tma, etc.

THX!

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by AS_Pauly

THX! So it is tough to be a nuke skipper
The mission I talked about was the 'sink The Kuznetsov' with its task force, so it is 4 stars at difficulty

But I know how to be indetected. I shoot a torpedo at 40 knots speed, and I switch to max speed to close behind the torpedo. And they will see just the torpedo, not me. Yesterday I sank the Kuznetsov with this techniqe.

This is game is stellar, I found lots of tutorials from forum members, they are very easy understanding tuts, so I will learn sonar, tma, etc.

THX!

This tactic works only against dumb ai units.
Against real players, it won't work since you can always identifiy the contacts on narrowband. On broadband the torpedo noise can cover that of your submarine, but not on narrowband.

Since you're learing DW try playing some easy missions, setting most stations on autocrew except sonar and weapons station. This should enable you to cope with the tactical situation and learn the 2 most important stations. Once you've got the hang on sonar and weapons you can learn manual tma (but its quite challenging).

[Molon Labe]

It probably "works" because they hear the torpedo first, begin evasion and wash out their sensors. Active sonar starts to wash out above 15 knots, and even the playable FFG TA starts to wash out around 16-18 knots or so. Once they step on the gas, they're not really listening anymore.

Be careful doing this if there are ships with good sonar not in the area threatened by the torpedo shot, or any aircraft dropping sonobouys, or any possible subsurface threats.... or, as Goldorak pointed out, any human opponents.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

It probably "works" because they hear the torpedo first, begin evasion and wash out their sensors. Active sonar starts to wash out above 15 knots, and even the playable FFG TA starts to wash out around 16-18 knots or so. Once they step on the gas, they're not really listening anymore.

Be careful doing this if there are ships with good sonar not in the area threatened by the torpedo shot, or any aircraft dropping sonobouys, or any possible subsurface threats.... or, as Goldorak pointed out, any human opponents.

Its true the playable FFG sonar washes out over 15 knots, but you can always launch a series of sonobuoys and then accelerate to maximum speed. You can listen to the sonobuoys even if you're going at top speed.
The same kind of tactic though can be used on submarines. If you are sure a torpedo is incoming and want to take immediate evasive actions you can always launch an uuv in active mode (to pinpoint the torpedo and other contacts going in your direction, all the while you evade).
In the case of the submarine you give up a certain freedom of movement since extreme manoeuvering can break the uuv wire.

So yes there are ways to neutralize these suicide tactics (launch torpedo and follow in its wake at maximum speed).

Ai and novice players are easily scared by the sound of a torpedo so its simpler to use this tactic.
Against seasoned players no chance at all.

[Dr.Sid]

No kind of wire breaking is implemented in DW, AFAIK. Yes, I know it is in the
manual.

[NFunky]

Well damn! I wasn't aware of this bug (the towed array definately will break). Chock up another one to go with the undetectable periscope/masts and nearly useless Russian active sonar. I guess none of these would be at all fixable in something like LwAmi...? Oh well