Getting bombed at 250 feet?

[M. Sarsfield]

Are you using Time Compression? That can be a contributor to their God-like powers, as well.

[Quillan]

Ducimus has posted about this a couple of times. Once he changed things so planes could see you below the surface, there's no longer a magic barrier that blocks sight; all there are anymore are modifiers. Given the right set of circumstances or just luck, they can spot you at 400+ feet depth. All I can suggest is go as deep as you can and don't run time compression over 8x-16x while you're waiting for the plane to pass. You cannot prevent them from seeing you, but you can minimize the chance.

[Ducimus]

Only planes have the ability to see submerged objects. Since nobody reads the FAQ, here is my canned response:

24.) Planes are detecting me at impossible depths! What gives?!

This mod assigns additional visual sensors to unit types. One of these sensors goes to just aircraft. This visual sensor gives aircraft the ability to detect shallow submerged objects. However, there is a small problem. The radius of visual detection can be adjusted, just not the depth. There is a long drawn out explanation for the way things are set the way they are, but suffice to say, yes occasionaly a plane will make a detection at a seemingly impossible depth. Such occurances are by my experience however, rare. Submerged visual detection by aircraft, isnt a 100% thing. Several factors come into play such as, what angle your sub is to the viewing plane (bows on vs broadside), state of the sea, lightinig level, fog level, etc. Every step has been made to ensure that submerged detection is as realistic as the game engine allows, and fair to the player. Visual detection was even made to be effected by thermal layers. So all that can be done, has been done. You may wonder why this was one at all. Simply because the positive aspects of this particular mod far outweigh the occasional scruple. In the end this is a MODIFCATION, a mod is really nothing more then a hack at a finished product. Its not like i have acces to the source code to effect "real" changes.

[tater]

Since RL airdropped IJN DCs couldn't explode any deeper than maybe 150 feet, this shouldn't be a problem.

Ducimus, if you are using air-DCs different than the 25m +-1m and 45m+-1m air dropped versions I did, you might consider using those values. Certainly for the deeper one.

I can see a wider range of depths for the shallower of the two since any slight error due to bomb path through the water (given the plan'es forward velocity) would be a larger % of the final depth. The deeper it went, seems like the closer to set depth it would be. Regardless, even at +-10, we're only talking 164 feet, max.

Alternately, the deep DC could be shallowed up some if you think that a sub would NEVER be spotted at 150 feet in RL as a way to tweak it (who cares if you are spotted at 400' if the plane can't do anything about it?).


tater

[Ducimus]

I did cap the bombs as to how deep they can go. I took the two historical figures you mentioned in an earlier post and capped them at about 1 meter to that depth if i remember correctly.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by tater

Since RL airdropped IJN DCs couldn't explode any deeper than maybe 150 feet, this shouldn't be a problem............. (who cares if you are spotted at 400' if the plane can't do anything about it?).
tater

I do, if I'm detected at those depths all night long and can't surface at any time to recharge batteries or spend all night bobbing up and down like it's daytime.

[tater]

Planes can spot you at night that deep?

I'd have thought the light factor would make that virtually impossible. Hmm.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by tater

Planes can spot you at night that deep?

I'd have thought the light factor would make that virtually impossible. Hmm.

I'd have thought that, too, but I have been bombed at 150 feet at 2AM in pitch black. It's too easy with S3D to remove the underwater detection, anyway, so anyone that doesn't like how it works can easily fix it for themselves.

[difool2]

Originally Posted by tater

Planes can spot you at night that deep?

I'd have thought the light factor would make that virtually impossible. Hmm.

Yeah me too. Mind I had already researched all of this before I posted, but just had to vent. Not really Ducimus's (or any other modder's fault), but rather Ubi's and their laziness. Yeah it might take another man-month for them to properly tweak aircraft detection abilities to take into account sea state, visibility, aircraft angle to the sub, etc. etc., but IMHO it was something which was a core gameplay feature and they basically stuck some simple little algorithm in there which then leads to all these impossible spotting scenarios (and I include the TC "feature" in there too-many times I come out of high TC after my radar guy spots a plane and their course is dead-on to my boat-at 22 miles...).

My take is that yes a plane might be able to spot a submerged sub, but it would take an almost perfect combination of viewing angle, sun angle, light conditions, & sub depth (yeah 60 feet down might not be deep enough). A helicopter or blimp would have a much better chance, but a plane is either zipping along at 100 feet above the ocean, where it has a small fraction of a second to spot the sub 160 feet below, or is at 5,000 feet and any sub down there will blend into the shadows enough that they won't see it. IMHO it should be/was rare enough not to bother with as a simple little workaround after Ubi has already ensured that it is too much of a simplified black/white issue.