The Humming Bird U-boat

[VonHelsching]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

No hover no hover no hover no hover no hover no hover

Sailor Steve,

I hope you didn't vote 6 times on the poll also.

Vote Early, Vote Often!

Slogan (I think) from the Bleeding Kansas days.

[AlanSmithee]

No hover, please. Even if maintaining buoyancy wasn't something the captain would directly control, it was certainly something that would have an impact on his choices and actions - suddenly the "sit and wait" option becomes the tactical equivalent of attacking in heavy seas.

This may be a separate issue, but IIRC a nearby depthcharge could change the buoyancy of a sub relative to the surrounding water, causing it to rapidly assend or descend. Any way this could be modded?

[AlanSmithee]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Vote Early, Vote Often!

Slogan (I think) from the Bleeding Kansas days.

Anyone who's lived in Chicago knows this is the City's unofficial Motto.

[Tikigod]

I'm for letting it sink as long as there aren't any additional side effects......if I take damage in a shallow area say 2 meters and the boat sinks as if I were at 400+ meters as a side effect I would be agaisnt it....but, as long as different scenerios are tested (different rates of flooding, damage at different depths, etc and proven I am for removing the humming bird effect....

I'm curious to what the exact historical behavior was...everyone describes this sinking effect if not in motion but, at what depth did this actually occur? because just liek a buoyancy compensator in scuba diving.......at some point the ballast does make the ship become neutral.....no matter what the weight or surface area....and it does go positive making the ship bouyant and surface again....my suggestion is to make this behavior occur at a deeper level like 50 meters and below...or wherever the historical value is based one the model boat.....someone mentioned the sim does have this have this behavior already that you need to stay moving but it occurs at a very deep depth and not at normal operating depths people usually are at during the game.....

[scandium]

Voted 'no hover' but with reservations. Biggest being visions of cruising with 64x TC at 150 metres to put some more distance away from DDs, then getting a sonar contact from a nearby merchant that drops me to 8x but not noticing right away, its the straw that breaks my electric crew's back and before I can react to "the not enough crew in electric compartment" my now still uboat has plunged to crush depth.

Okay so I have an over-active imagination but TC is one of the things this game handles really poorly: like surface cruising in 1941 in medium fog and the next thing I know I'm at 8x TC with "we're taking damage sir" scrolling and in the time it takes to drop to 1x & get to the bridge I see a flower corvette (of all things) has come out of the fog and opened up on my type IXc badly enough to almost sink it... it was only luck that it was a slow flower corvette and not a fast DD.

Thanks to the awesome guy who made SH3C these types of incidents haven't happened since (cuz of the ability to force it to 1x when encountering hostiles) but the default TC "feature" is like Russian Roulette with "no hover" a second potential bullet.

[Tikigod]

Here is post where it was discussed before:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=278077

Its been brought up a bunch of times....I think the main problem is SH3 doesn't model bilge pumps, ballast, or trim correctly....it would be alot more interesting to have a negatively bouyant boat if you could manually attempt to fine tune it...and compensate with bouyancy during damage, flooding, etc......otherwise it has to be like a hummingbird to be automatic like everything else in the sim....

I have a feeling once you start taking damage...after removing the hummingbird effect...the game will become irritating because in reality you only can pump air into your ballast like 4 times total (the amount of times the developers allow you to use your compressor based on the default presets) to compensate for negative effects related to damage.....there needs to be more refined control of at least the ballast in order to compensate once your boat begins to take on water...I can see a scenerio where you might be deep and sink even though you are going at a fast speed but cant maintain depth because the ballast doesnt aid like it should.....

[Dantenoc]

There is already a too large amount of things that the captain has to do personaly becuase the crew are totaly incompetent to add yet another worry

This is definitely NOT the games weakest point... LOTS of other features should take precedence, let's focus on those, no?

[Der Teddy Bar]

Where did I say the captain had to do anything other than order the u-boat to maintain a certain speed. Don't you already have to do that?

As for other focus points... well lets do what we can?

[lafeeverted]

The principle is simple , if you are not moving while submerged you sink. If it can be implemented that way , then it makes sense.

[zombiewolf]

I believe that since we are not hunting in a pack but rather as lone wolves some "uberness" should be afforded .

hover baby :|\

[Khayman]

A good few times in heavy to medium seas I've moved into the perfect postion and waited on my prey. I've followed their sound contact, raised the periscope to finally fire....and found my boat has drifted a little too deep and all I see is a nice underwater panorama.

I have to go from all stop to at least ahead one third and order periscope depth again, and it seems to take a maddening amount of time to do so!

I've also noticed that when at periscope depth and moving at flank speed your conning tower has a tendency to pop up above the waves and be spotted by alert crews from some 4000 yards

[HEMISENT]

Teddy
Is anything going on with this or did the non-hovering U boat idea die a quiet death?

I, for one thought it was a good idea.

[CybrSlydr]

Originally Posted by donut

When you use the(A) key to maintain depth,in real life, the dive officer,controls the depth. We just modded it so the Captain didn't have to tuck every one in bed. Let the dive Officer do his job.Why, oh why,go out of your way, to create more instability and hoop jumps.for the Captain. Strighten out Kiel Canal so that anyone can use it,plotting it, is hoop enough! Sunken ships look cool, if they can be spotted by watch crew. Otherwise, just another hoop, to stub your toe on. This is a game,Enjoy. Plus, in German waters, dont you think Germans were smart enough to remove hazerdious aids to navagation.Let Boot hover,if it has comperssed air for dive Officer to use. Real life;can't vote for this hoop.

Rock on brother!

[Floater]

It depends on your desire for realism. In real life, U-boats could not hover - without movement of water over the dive planes caused by motion of the boat, they would either sink or rise to the surface. The same goes for any submarines of the period.

Later boats had much more complex automated trim systems that allowed hovering, but this wasn't the case at any time near WWII. The only exception was when a boat found itself able to park on top of a thermal layer - this was a very rare thing.

Hover all you like, but please don't pretend it's historically accurate to be able to do that. If you want accuracy, maintain at least 2-3kts when submerged, especially when near the surface. The faster you go, the more chance the planesmen have of keeping you at your required depth.