Do American Subs do Surface Night Atacks?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Steeltrap

SHIII required considerable work by modders to enable surface attacks - I suspect this is the same situation in SHIV.

Already fixed

[Snuffy]

The ones I pilot do ...

[Seaman_Hornsby]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Sure they can detect you. The IJN surface ships and subs had the capability of radar. Not as good as the US version. The Batfish sunk three IJN subs using his radar. The Batfish's radar could detect the IJN radar waves. This was how they found the track of the IJN sub. The Batfish radarman would only turn his radar on for a few seconds and turn it off to get the bearing. It was not left on because they were not sure if the IJN sub radar could detect the Batfish's radar. The radar does need some work.

I actually just recently finished Ned Beach's Submarine! with the account of Batfish's sub-sinking exploits. My beef is that the missions I have played so far seem to have the Japanese able to detect my sub on the surface at night far too easily. I regularly have Japanese destroyers heading for me at top speed well before my watch spots them. That's not realistic. The discussion I cited with the link seems to address this.

[fastfed]

I made a post about this before..


Every Sub book I read, well the two ( Combat Patrol and Submarine ) almost "ALL" night attacks ( and they would shadow a convoy until it was night usually ) was almost all on the surface, I mean they would get as close as 1000 yards and fire a salvo and not get caught, fire 3,3, and then spin around and fire their rear torps.. 3 different ships, "THEN" they would usually just run away, or dive and run that way..

Its weird if you think about it, in one chapter of one of the books they talked about how a submarine was really a surface ship attaker but had the option to dive to avoid getting killed..

They also had ice cream machines on many Gato class subs

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Steeltrap

Another factor not covered by the sim is that USA subs suffered periods of blindness through their periscopes. This was due to the attack scope having a narrow head (to minimise chances of it being spotted) which meant they were unable to draw a great deal of light through them. So in periods of low light they were, effectively, blind.

I'm not sure, but if you mean this was a problem limited to "USA scopes" it would be bollocks though. Nazi periscopes had the same problem. This is why both sides also introduced observation scopes, which would allow more light to get through than the narrow attack scopes (and could be tilted upwards for searching the sky, too).

Problem in these modern games with lightsources/light conditions is that it's difficult to consider the human factor as well as the AI in how "good" the visibility is. In the old games, with no "real" lightsources, visibility was either 0 or 1. In good conditions, you and the AI would both see like 20km, while during a dark night the enemy ship would appear on the screen at 5km or whatever, and would then also be there for the AI. Today, you, the human, might see or might not see something on your monitor, depending on your gamma settings etc., but the AI still has the old "0" and "1" parameters to decide whether or not it can see and what. So there will be arkward results like you seeing ships in the night which are not spotted by the crew, or vise-versa. To avoid that, the game would also have to incooperate a simulation of the human eye - which is not going to happen anytime soon in gaming.

[jhelix70]

Night surface attacks are historically accurate, but it is not really possible to make attacks resembling those in the WW2 sub skipper's memoirs in SHIV as it is now. Why? Japanese warships can detect you with their air-search radar from long range.

A good fix for this is to disable the type 13 air search radar in the AI_Sensors file (located under the library folder). Just set the max range value to 1. You'll need a hex editor or the minitweaker.

[Seaman_Hornsby]

Originally Posted by jhelix70

A good fix for this is to disable the type 13 air search radar in the AI_Sensors file (located under the library folder). Just set the max range value to 1. You'll need a hex editor or the minitweaker.

Thanks, mate. I'll have to check into getting a hex editor to make some changes. Good work identifying this one too, it's been puzzling me enough to make me an ex-lurker!

[jhelix70]

What part are they not addressing? Scope attack at night or surfaceattack at night?

Scope attacks are too easy at night, thus we are not forced to adopt the night surface attack. We can stay safer underwater.

[XanderF]

Originally Posted by jhelix70

Scope attacks are too easy at night, thus we are not forced to adopt the night surface attack. We can stay safer underwater.

You need this mod. See if that doesn't make "pitch black" night attacks through the periscope more difficult for you.

[jhelix70]

You need this mod. See if that doesn't make "pitch black" night attacks through the periscope more difficult for you.

thanks, will give it a try!