Hydrophone stops working after time compression

[CapnScurvy]

Originally Posted by HertogJan

As long as the vessel is 'powered' and in motion even at 2Knts I can hear it, the only time I can't hear anything is when the ship is dead in the water but then there's the little green light... and I'm still able to find my target.

You may want to check that.

I found this "less than half of Maximum speed = no sound" issue when doing my usual tests for visual ship range. I specifically made a couple of missions to check and sure enough, any ship traveling at less than half its rated Maximum speed won't be heard when manually using the Hydrophone station. The sonar man will give a report, but manually, you won't hear the target.

I welcome anyone to see for themselves by making a mission with the Editor using a couple of targets traveling at less than half its rated Maximum speed, the Maximum speed is listed here:




In the above setting, the Hog Island freighter will not be heard when manually using the Hydrophone. Maximum speed is 11.0 knots, the cruising speed is set to 5 knots (sorry, the 5 is so hard to see).

In the below setting, the Biyo will be heard because the Maximum speed for a Biyo is 12 knots, its cruising speed on this leg is 6 knots.





It makes no difference to what specific ship this occurs, the cruising speed compared to its maximum speed value makes the difference. A ships Maximum speed is provided in the "Editor" from the games specific ship .sim file. Below is the Kiturin passenger ship .sim file with a Maximum speed of 18.0 knots.





With a Kiturin, if the cruising speed is 8 knots or less, you'll not hear it with the manual Hydrophone.

There are other variables that come into play to allow for hearing a target if it drops its speed less than half its maximum speed. One is the time it takes to lose a target after its been first detected. A ship can easily drop below its half max speed if it detects the subs existence by starting a zig-zag pattern. If your sub detected the target before it drops its cruising speed below the half to max threshold, you'll still be able to track it with manual hydrophone use. The time it takes to "lose" a detected target is a parameter that overrides the speed difference.