Looking for Danger in the Pacific...

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Admiral8Q

Don't make them detect a sub submerged. That's just wrong.

It's been that way for some time now. The best part is, its not only plausible, but many indications are also historically correct. There are plenty of pictures of subs visible below the surface in the pacific if you google image search enough.

As an side, some info on the USS Grenadier and Planes:

Running on the surface at dawn 21 April, Grenadier spotted, and was simultaneously spotted by, a Japanese plane. As the sub crash dived, her skipper, Commander John A. Fitzgerald commented "we ought to be safe now, as we are between 120 and 130 feet (40 m)." Just then, bombs rocked Grenadier and heeled her over 15 to 20 degrees. Power and lights failed completely and the fatally wounded ship settled to the bottom at 267 feet (81 m). She tried to make repairs while a fierce fire blazed in the maneuvering room.

After 13 hours of sweating it out on the bottom Grenadier managed to surface after dark to clear the boat of smoke and inspect damage. The damage to her propulsion system was irreparable.

As it happens, planes in TMO can most definatly nail you at depth of 130 feet.

Frankly i find removing planes, while a logical decision due to the no threat annoyance they were, something that should be avoided. Reduced in frequency sure, but removed? That never sat right with me, completely removing an element of a submarine sim. Instead, i found a creative and plausible way to make them a threat again.

I'm sure you'll be cussing a mean streak when your detected by a plane if one happens to be around while doing a submerged, daylight periscope attack on an escorted convoy. They WILL alert the escorts, and vector them to your position. It's happen to me twice.

[Admiral8Q]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

It's been that way for some time now. The best part is, its not only plausible, but many indications are also historically correct. There are plenty of pictures of subs visible below the surface.

Good point. In the tropical Pacific, you can see really deep, 150 ft from the air I suppose. I'm from the east coast of Canada (Atlantic Ocean) and seeing below 15 feet is rare but good. I looked up your recommended pics.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

As it happens, planes in TMO can most definatly nail you at depth of 130 feet.

That makes sense as that would only be only 35-45 meters in a u-boat.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Frankly i find removing planes, while a logical decision due to the no threat annoyance they were, something that should be avoided. Reduced in frequency sure, but removed? That never sat right with me, completely removing an element of a submarine sim. Instead, i found a creative and plausible way to make them a threat again.

I think they should be left in, but if you score hits on them with the AA gun, they should take a lot of damage.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I'm sure you'll be cussing a mean streak when your detected by a plane if one happens to be around while doing a submerged, daylight periscope attack on an escorted convoy. They WILL alert the escorts, and vector them to your position. It's happen to me twice.

That makes sense, maybe there needs to be dirigibles too!

P.S. If you want a tester for the next version of TMO, I'll be happy to. Just expect blatant honesty from what I think...

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

As an aside you may find these damage reports interesting.

_awesome_ read. And yea, I like the idea of being dragged down by flooding rather than having a hull integrity fail at shallow depth.

About the plane issue, well, SD radar makes you safe from direct attack, but there are circumstances when they can still get in the way. Yesterday I was trolling at 400 ft during the day (forced down by SD radar contact - I'm in the habit of running at 400 all day because the planes show up like clockwork). Well, I get a hydrophone contact and come to radar depth and do a scan. I plot a rough course on the merchant, and set up an intercept vector. Problem is he's like close to 90 to me, so I need to do an overhaul maneuver. I surface, go flank, and use my special ability to juice the engine. I run for about 20 minutes, and then I get the SD radar contact. The planes are nearby. But I still need to get into a better firing position. Just as the ship comes in visual range, I get aircraft spotted, so I crash dive. Depth charges in my wake. I do the rest of the run to my attack point at 400 ft at flank speed, coming to PD to get off 2 torps and make a kill at just > 90 AoB. It felt good. But yea, the planes can still mess you up. Interestingly, despite the plane having detected me and dropped DCs, the merchant was not alarmed. Could be a range thing I guess (he was at about 6000 yards when I was attacked).

I've also been sunk at PD by planes who must have spotted me (though at high TC I couldn't confirm what it was). That's why I'm in the habit at trolling at 400 ft.

In the end, the night is the submarine's hunting time. By day, often it takes luck to get into a good firing position without being seen. Plus, I've found that escorts/merchants are quite able to spot periscopes at like 1000 to 1500 yards by day. By night you have a lot of flexibility.

[Jan Kyster]

You're covering far too little area running submerged...

Spend a minute tracking the plane*). Is he coming too close, go to radardepth or - if very close - go deep.
Start stopwatch, give him 3 minutes to come in and some 4-5 minutes to leave, go back to radar depth.
If all clear surface and continue search...



*) if detected range is some 10-12 miles, by all means: crash dive! Then it's more than probably one of those tiny Zeros...

Distances are of course dependable of weather and your speed...

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Jan Kyster

You're covering far too little area running submerged...

Spend a minute tracking the plane*). Is he coming too close, go to radardepth or - if very close - go deep.
Start stopwatch, give him 3 minutes to come in and some 4-5 minutes to leave, go back to radar depth.
If all clear surface and continue search...



*) if detected range is some 10-12 miles, by all means: crash dive! Then it's more than probably one of those tiny Zeros...

Distances are of course dependable of weather and your speed...

I wasn't aware that you could get a range from air search radar. How to do this?

[Ducimus]

He's probably plotting the aircraft on the nav map. Most people use it, and TMO's designed to some degree to have it on. In case you ordinarly check "no nav map updates" as quick as i might click, "realistic fuel" the nav map was umm.. nerfed. It no longer displays nationality, ship type, velocity vectors, sensor information, etc. All you get, is a little black dot to mark the contacts position. Everything else you have to do yourself.


Now as cruising goes, staying down at 400 feet is overkill. Personally, if i cruise submerged, i'll do it at 165, sometimes to 200 feet just to clear the first dial if im expecting trouble. But normally at 165 feet. I've never been hit at that depth. They carry two types of bombs, one explodes on or just near the surface, the other, an air dropped depth charge, will detonate at around 147 feet, give or take 3 feet. At 165 feet, it might blister the paint if it goes off at 150 feet, but i doubt it would do anything major. I could be wrong though, some have said they got it pretty good at that depth, but i never have.

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

He's probably plotting the aircraft on the nav map. Most people use it, and TMO's designed to some degree to have it on. In case you ordinarly check "no nav map updates" as quick as i might click, "realistic fuel" the nav map was umm.. nerfed. It no longer displays nationality, ship type, velocity vectors, sensor information, etc. All you get, is a little black dot to mark the contacts position. Everything else you have to do yourself.

Hmm... from what it sounds like, you get 'truth' in terms of bearing/range automatically? I guess this works for radar surface contacts too? That's a little more than I could live with because obtaining bearing/range information is basically the whole problem. If I had truth about position of a surface contact, then in 9 minutes (or even 6) I'd have true course and speed info. When information is that close to correct, you can take shots at maximum torpedo range and still hit. I'm even a bit wiggy about getting my watch officer to give me a visual range - he gives it accurate to 1 foot. That bugs me. I always wished that there was some filter I could apply so he would naturally round to the nearest 50 or 100 ft. Probably 100. That would be much more realistic and cool.

I don't suppose there's any mod for that? I doubt we could implement rounding, but we could replace the last x digits of the feedback with 0s. I bet this is too hard-coded to get at though...

[Ducimus]

Oh i forgot to mention in my last post.

The A scope and PPI are tied to the SJ radar. In real world terms, the A scope should be tied to the SD radar, but their hardcoded to latch onto the radar that behaves like a surface radar. So with map contacts off, you get no notification other then being told "radar contact".

That said, with map contacts on, you get way too much information. You should get range, but not bearing if i remember my radar nonclamature correctly. (or was that the other way around) Either way, I could probably remove the plane icon from the map altogether. You see right now, planes are tracked on the map only so far out. As they get closer, they are removed from the map. The whole preimse behind the map is to only track what a fellow with a grease pencil could. He can't track fast moving planes. Anyway, the whole thing with the SD radar is a catch 22. You either get too much info, or too little.

And i know nisgeis is working on a radar range unit, but in TMO 2.0, ive gone ahead and added the 4 digit range dials to all the radar cabinets, just in case they end up being needed. It lists the range in meters (as does the whole radar set, but it's so fuzzy in range nobody notices), but it's better then nothing.

[HMCS]

TMO has sunk me more than once. If the originator of the post wants a challenge, then I suggest he start in an S-Boat in Manila at the start of the war...

Operating in shallow waters against convoys in say, the East China Sea can be challenging as well. "Depth under keel is...165'".

I play mostly RFB and I have run into Kaibokans there in lat '43 and 44, and it can get pretty hairy.

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

And i know nisgeis is working on a radar range unit, but in TMO 2.0, ive gone ahead and added the 4 digit range dials to all the radar cabinets, just in case they end up being needed. It lists the range in meters (as does the whole radar set, but it's so fuzzy in range nobody notices), but it's better then nothing.

I'm really excited about this radar range mod. But someone convinced me that the range unit on the scope (the distance measure - can't remember if that's A or PPI) was in yards, despite the x 100 m that is written on it. If it's in meters, that could explain why my radar range estimates were skewed.

The other thing I was wondering about that scope (the SJ radar range scope) is if the scale is actually exponential. Do we know if the game actually plots the range on that scope according to the exponential (compressing) range markers, or is it linear. If it is actually linear, that would also explain my skewed estimates. When I say skewed, if it was just a meter/yard conversion error, then it would still give me the right course info, just off by a certain factor. But what I seem to be getting when I eyeball the scope and plot bearing and range purely from SJ radar to get a course, is a bending of the course (to when I get the actual course from visual bearing/range). Does this make sense?

I'm really concerned about radar because it could potentially (and is starting to be for me) the most important tool on the boat. The ability to plot accurate bearing/range info when I'm way outside of visual range is almost magic.

[Morpheus]

I'll ground a new fanclub: "Give me Damaaage!!!" - and give it good!

There is nothing more thrilling than a DC attack that nearly kills you and your sub, but lets you survive somehow in the end. Whe are a band of masochists searching just for the right amount of pain ^^

morph

[Jan Kyster]

PERFORMANCE:
SD-a, SD-1 and SD-2, with antenna at 40' above water, have a reliable maximum range of 15 miles on medium bombers at 10,000' altitude. SD-3, with antenna at 80 ft. has a reliable maximum range of 25 miles on a medium bomber at 10,000'. Range accuracy is ± 500 yards. Bearing accuracy of SD-3 is ± 10°.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/Library/online/radar-1.htm

The Current Doctrine: http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/....html#contents

Fluckeys radarman could tell from the echo, it was a destroyer?

[Armistead]

With RSRD you sort of got to know where the action is. Once you learn it, you can get more than you'll ever want. In 42 and 43 I stay in the Solomons mostly. Research the battles that took place as they're all in RSRD well in that area. The Battle of Santa Cruz probably the largest. I just chased this group in battle forever.
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...5/m/5031017848

All the other battles are well done, battle of Savo's a good one if you want to see some large suface action between the fleets. Coral Sea the biggy is also well done. I'm sure you'll seen the flash messages of all the DD's running the slot, can be fun to attack if you're brave and want to shoot at large groups of DD's.


You can also catch large convoys coming from Truk to Rabaul.

Early war, 42, Feb and March just run the coast of Java, many convoys of 40 plus merchants.

If you want real action, just hang in the Formosa Strait in 44, many large convoys come through and seems all have many type AB escorts with those 6 Y guns. Try fighting those in shallow water.

The main fun with RSRD is catching the many large invasion forces scripted...

[Grizzybear]

I think TMO is pretty well done. I run 1.9 and RSRD and yea I get away with murder from some DD's there are some that just nail me...If you wish look at my patrol log about a interesting patrol in the Drum..suffice to say if I where in command she wouldnt be a museum

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by Armistead

With RSRD you sort of got to know where the action is.

The main fun with RSRD is catching the many large invasion forces scripted...

Spot on. Which is probably why I was really bored with it. I never managed to get near any of the flat top action in the Coral sea due to extreme fighter coverage