Periscope detections are hosed

[TorpX]

neilbyrne, I certainly agree with your reasoning. Whenever someone posts about their scope being spotted at > 1,000 yd, I have to scratch my head. I feel the same way about the way enemy ships are able to spot torpedo tracks. It seems to defy logic.

Someone posted about the same problem a few months ago. They said the instant he put up his scope, the target started to evade. Later, he said he changed up his mod order, and the problem went away. What mods are you using?

[Armistead]

I used the keys to control the scope so I can move it as I please, this way I can leave it under the water line and just barely move it up to break water enough to see. Beats all the up and down all the way during an attack.You really need to just break the waterline with you scope in calm waters, can get by more in rougher waters, fog and night of course.

I haven't messes with files in a long time, seems there is some sim files that deal with the scope, also possible different min/max heights that may could be adjusted and I believe there's a value regarding speed, the wake your scope leaves, so be careful about speed when scoping.

Obvious, use the attack scope during the day..

Scury would probably be the one to ask about this.

[Sniper297]

I'm still working on Manilla Raid and Resupply, so I've been observing the behavior of one Fubuki over and over. The group is one Hiryu, two cruisers, and I eliminated all but one escort. Manila Bay is shallow, the spot I attack from is 120 feet deep, so there's no going deep to evade. Got three wrecks screaming the breakup sounds of tortured metal all around, but I put the scope down and switch to external view to watch - I go north, south, west, or settle on the bottom, kick out decoys, nothing changes. He makes a beeline for me every time. I changed his path to put him 4000 yards away from the group, he still knows exactly where I am and where I'm going. Changed him from Veteran to Competent, there's STILL no evading him.



I know a lot of tricks to fool ASW operators, but I have to change him to Novice and place him way outside sonar detection range when I start the attack to get an even chance of actually evading this poltergeist. Periscope exposure and noise are irrelevant, the AI cheats.

[Armistead]

Haha, the AI doesn't cheat, it just follows the values set for it. It takes time to understand those values and how to deal with them, but the AI, even difficult settings like TMO or worse can be defeated..

[neilbyrne]

I've been having the same problems detailed above with escorts zooming in from all quarters for no apparent reason. Two nights ago I encountered a very large convoy (6 columns of 5) east of Formosa. I made three attacks on these guys all using the same tactics just to make sure I wasn't being paranoid about uber capable escorts. In each case I would run around them on the surface. Get twelve or so miles ahead, go to radar depth and track them in until the closest escort was 8nm distant then go to PD and silent running. Oh yeah, this was all at night. The only strong escort was an OTORI, the rest were corvettes and trawlers. The OTORI was on the convoy's stbd wing so I stayed to their port. I had their speed from radar and I'd lay out a speed vs. bearing track on the main body so I would pick up any major course change and keep periscope obs. to a min. Layer depth was 230ft. None of these tactics, nor keeping the lead escort pointed made any difference. At about 4kyds fm the nearest escort, the closest three escorts would turn right at me. Happened every time. This is OCT '44.
So sonar detections are as hosed as periscopes. Here I’d like to go into sub detection by escorts with sonar. I have a lot of experience with this, and it is very difficult. It's why between us and the Brits, we built 1600+ destroyers/escort vessels in WWII. There is strength in numbers, because the individual capability just sucks. In 1970 ASW School, we were taught the capabilities of all the sonars then in the US surface fleet. There were still some WWII ships active, mostly old FLETCHERs and SUMNERs that hadn’t been through the FRAM (Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization) refit that installed newer systems. As I recall, these old girls had the SQS-46V sonar. We did a day or two in the attack trainer using this system. In absolutely beautiful water, isothermal (no layer) to 400ft, it had a reliable detection range of 2000-2500yds. Now remember this was the best sonar we had toward the end of WWII. In worse water, it was less. And a good rule of thumb about subs below the layer is that range across the layer is no better than 33-25% of range above the layer so that an above layer range of 2kyds yields a below layer range of 650-500yds. The IJN had nothing better than this, and in my research in Morison’s 15 volumes History of USN Ops in WWII and Roscoe’s histories of US Sub & DD ops, I never found a sub detection at greater than 2,500 yds on active sonar. Most IJN detections were at 2,000 or less. On passive sonar, those sonars could detect thermal (steam/oxygen) powered torpedoes pretty well but close in to own ship; electrics not at all. The only condition when a sub on her battery would be at all vulnerable to passive detection was if she were cavitating her screws, normally at 7kts or more and only above 150ft depth, or at 15kts or more below 150 but above 300ft. Deeper than 300ft, water pressure keeps the cavitation bubbles from forming. And even those detections were a long way from a sure thing.
Max sonar speed for WWII escort ships was 10-12 knots and it was not graceful degradation above that. From 10-12, count on losing half your range, go faster and you were deaf as a post in both active and passive.
The idea that the IJN could passively detect a non-cavitating sub on her battery is fantasy. The USN did not field a surface sonar with a really decent passive capablilty until the SQQ-23 (PAIR) IN 1969. PAIR had two completely rubber sonar domes, much more acoustically transparent than the conventional steel and enormously improved signal processing and displays. The PAIR test ship was USS BROWNSON (DD-868) in which I was CIC and then ASW officer. We took PAIR thru OPEVAL, the tests required to determine acceptance for service use. The sub we tested against was USS JALLAO (SS-368) a BALAO GUPPY. We did months of test runs together. JALLAO would open range on us with all her top hamper, periscopes, radar, comm antennae way out of the water so we could track her out to ~30kyds on radar. Sonar was kept in the dark as to her position. Then she would turn toward us and energize an acoustic augmenter to sound like a Soviet nuke boat. CIC would pass word to sonar the run had commenced and they'd try to detect. PAIR passed OPEVAL based on the results, but the reason I went into all this detail is that on the conclusion of the run, JALLAO would secure the augmenter and she'd be GONE off our sonar displays. I mean we wouldn't even have to wait for her to tell us she'd secured; we knew immediately.
So there we were in 1970 with a state of the art sonar, rubber domes, cabinets full of jacked up signal processors, JALLAO shuts down the augmenter and we can't detect her just on her battery. Plus detecting her on battery wasn't even part of the PAIR spec because everybody knew it couldn't be done. Even today, conventional subs on battery are the hardest passive ASW target there is. The idea the IJN could passively detect twenty-five years earlier is fanciful.
So where are these 4kyd detections coming from? In reality they can't be active or passive sonar or periscope detections at night; so what are they?

My mods:
Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
1_TriggerMaru_Overhaul_2-5
1_TMO_25_small_patch
RSRDC_TMO_V502
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1
Convoy Routes TMO+RSRD
1.5_Optical Targeting Correction 031312 for RSRDCv502
1.5_OTC for 16 to 9 Aspect Ratio RSRDCv502
Improved Stock Environment_v3_TMO&RFB
#2 ISE Realistic Colors
Easier AI for TMO 2.5 by Orpheus
EZ Plot V1.0

[Sniper297]

The AI cheats, there's no other way.



AQS-13/A from a Sikorsky SH-3D antisubmarine helicopter, 1978. Max range 20,000 yards, but only under ideal conditions, and in passive mode you MIGHT hear a noisy surface ship at 10k yards. They would have loved that in WWII, but regardless of how good any sonar is - you can't hear what's not making noise. Soviet nukes back in the 70s had some pretty noisy reactor pumps, that's why they went back to diesel electric with the KILO class. Our subs were really quiet unless they were running fast and shallow, I know exactly what you mean about the augmenter.

WWII the technology just wasn't there, the way the hunter-killer groups in the Atlantic found Das Boot was by flying radar equipped Avengers off of jeep carriers - at night. On the surface. After that stick a pin in a chart and draw a 100 mile radius circle, patrol that circle - he has to come up somewhere in that circle within 48 hours. Every time he pops up to recharge batteries the TBMs get him on radar, attack again to force him under, repeat until power is gone and he can't stay submerged.

In SH4:



With wussie mode on you click on a tin can, and get the circles. Outer is visual detection (in good weather), 5500 yards. Inner is passive sonar, 3800 yards (really optimistic for WWII), the wedge cut out of the back is the dead zone (from screws and machinery noise, good place for a sub to sprint). The half circle in front is active sonar, 550 yards (again in ideal conditions, sub shallow and at a 90 degree angle).

Again, I've done some testing on this, if a destroyer is 10,000 yards away when you torpedo a nearby ship, no matter which direction you go, how fast or slow, how many decoys you kick out or how deep you go, the clairvoyant AI will make a beeline straight for you every time unless the crew is set for novice or poor.

The problem may be programming limitations, but every aspect of the AI is oversimplified. Worst example is your own crew's limited intelligence;

"SHIP SIGHTED! BEARING 065! LONG RANGE!"
Yeah, that's the 83rd time you reported the same ship, we're in the middle of an end-around, if you lose sight of him for a few minutes you don't need to report him as a new contact every time you reacquire him.

BAM!!! "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK SIR! WE'RE TAKING DAMAGE SIR!"
Cripes, where did that evil destroyer come from?
"I REPORTED HIM 15 MINUTES AGO, SIR! FIVE MINUTES AGO HE TURNED TOWARD US AND WENT TO FULL SPEED, BUT I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS IMPORTANT TO MENTION THAT SINCE HE WASN'T A NEW CONTACT!"
Scurvy dog, go walk the plank.

Originally Posted by Sniper297

The AI cheats, there's no other way.

yes the AI cheats, there is no denying it.

its designed like that to make the game challenging to players. the trick is to learn how the game cheats and the ways you can fool or get around its attempts to cheat. you can even use its cheating against it to cause it to chase ghosts.

its a skill set to learn and it takes time but once you get used to it you learn how to limit the things you do in the game so it isn't able to be as successful at cheating you.

bottom line is, it is a learning curve you must master to be able to balance the games cheating with things you can do to limit how the game can cheat.

think of night as a clear bright day because they can always spot you at night just as if it was a clear bright day.

even when there is no way for the enemy to know your position and you are making no noise with the scope down and all engines at full stop and are completely silent, a DD will still be able to zoom in from 6000m away and park exactly on top of you and drop charges when it isn't possible to ever detect you to that level of accuracy. the enemy ships deck guns can hit a nail on the head from 10,000m away 3 out of 5 shots so your periscope or conning tower are both spotted and hit by shells beyond any realistic human degree of detection. these gunners that are more accurate from a moving deck platform have to be the best snipers in the world to make such blatently unrealistic shots.

the only thing that can help you beat the games AI in most cases is the thermal layer and to a lesser extent the weather like storms and fog because it misdirects the enemy sensors enough so you can escape detection.

the game does many unrealistic things to try and keep you challenged and into the game and give you a realistic "feeling" of impending doom even though the way things function and happen in the game is very often far from being realistic about the things subs did in real life.

you cant do night attacks under cover of darkness because the games AI doesn't detect you any less at night then during daylight. you try a surface night attack, even in bad weather, and your dead.

there is a long long list of things wrong with the AI in the game that isn't realistic but its not as much about the settings and how they work as it is about the overall feel you get when playing. they are trying to give you the "feeling" that you are really there facing things real captains did.

another thing I hate about the game is when you are inside a convoy or task force, how every ship in the game always knows exactly where you are at periscope depth, even without ever putting your scope up, and manages to be able to drive right on top of you and ram your tower every time. battleships, cruisers, carriers, and freighters all will play pinball with your tower.

sometimes when a ship is near you, the AI tells it to stop and mirror your movements to stay "too close" for your torps to arm so you stop they stop you turn they turn and it is not possible for then to have that close a fix on you speed, position, and range or be able to create a Mexican stand off like that. its simple to break free by suddenly hitting full reverse and break free to avoid it but the realism killer for a battleship to stop dead in the water just so you cant get enough space for your torps to arm is beyond a realism killer for me.

the truth is, if the game didn't cheat it would quickly become boring and no challenge to play it.

the first thing I suggest is do a mod soup cleanup then try again and see if things are better, the game will always cheat "some" so don't expect it to stop all the unreasonable detections. also as torpx mentioned there is a mod conflict issue that if you combine certain mods it can cause you to be constantly detected all of the time even when you shouldn't be so list your mods and the install order lets see if anything is wrong with it.