Hydrophone Use

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by mido

I made an interesting observation right now. I detected a ship with the hydrophone which was definitely travelling very slow, less than 5 knots. As it got closer, the sound all of a sudden dissappeared. When it came in sight I checked the speed and it was 4 knots. I waited until it was out of sight and guess what, the sound came back!!!

That is strange.

I'll need to test further if the closer the distance to target makes this kind of disappearing sound. I've let my target ships come close, even let a couple pass by the sub, but hadn't run into the sound being heard one minute.....the next disappearing.......then coming back again as it goes away.

As far as a ship going slowly, like 5 knots, the propeller sound will still be heard as long as the "max_speed=" figure of the Propulsion/Propellers parameter is 10 knots or less. If the ship has a max_speed=12 or greater, you'll not hear it at all.

One way to get the disappearing sound you described is the possibility the ship hit a waypoint that slowed it down to 4 knots (less than half of 10), then it sped up again. I'll check to see if this could happen with my test ships.

The trouble I see of some mods trying to change the "max_speed=" parameter to suit realistic maximum speed figures is that increasing this figure will cause a game mission target ship not to be heard with the hydrophones with manual use. The game patrol/campaign missions are set to specific ship cruising speeds. If we mod an increase in maximum target speed, we mod the ability to manually use the hydrophones right out of the game.