Depth-charge turbulence

[big_feef]

Originally Posted by oRGy

However I haven't suffered any dd attacks yet (1940)

1940? You're kidding right? Getting attacked by destroyers before 1942 is like getting slapped by around by your 2 year-old nephew or something. Yeah, it's annoying, but it won't do anything damaging unless you get careless. In all my pre-1942 patrols, I rarely get any damage to my sub from surface vessels unless I do something stupid; only planes tend to get me.

Post 1942 is a completely different story though... One slip and your sub is sleeping at the bottom; permanently.

[the_rydster]

Originally Posted by Shadow9216

I recently had an encounter that caused me to rethink the whole AI issue...an armed trawler circled my position for several hours of game time despite me doing 1 knot (!), then going all stop and silent running. I was at PD, then 20m, 30m, 50m...finally at 100m he circled for about an hour, then left.

From this same convoy I had deleted :P two T-2s, a C-3, crippled a C-2, and bagged an aux cruiser. I had been aggressively pinged by the Black Swan and Flower that were guarding it, but managed to slip them by using the tactics above.

So how was the trawler able to keep contact? Maybe he was actually trawling, and I was hooked in a net? Otherwise, how was he able to literally circle me- I used the external cam to confirm this, plus my hydrophones- for hours?

Did you enable silent running?

[CB..]

the armed trawlers (pctrawler) do seem to be the most tenacious vessel in the game...staying put and circling you long after the normal DD's have returned to the convoy..this seems to be a regular event ..me thinks the pc trawler has it's own unique AI instructions..it appears to have the same sensors as the DD's etc so there's no other obviuos reason for it being harder to shake.. :hmm:unles as John says it's top speed is low enougth to mean that it never actually loses your contact because it has excellerated above the speed limit for hydrophones and sonar and has such a tight turning circle that it rarely loses you for more than a few seconds..(not long enough for it to give up)

silent running most often loses the DD's most times going to the slightly un-realistic "all stop" state is the only thing that shakes the trawler..

if this was SH2 and not SH3 i'd say :hmm: very interesting...


yup thats it John (Floater ) was right---

the speed set in the game over which the hydrophone stops being effective is 15 knots

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=15 ;[kt]
Noise factor=1.0 ;[>=0]

(note the speed factor this is the maximum speed at which the hyrophone will work)

the top speed of the armed trawler is

MaxSpeed=12


which means it never reachs a fast enough speed for it's hydrophone sweep to be blanked out ---and it's turning circle is probably the tightest of all the escorts so it can very quickly get you back on the screen..

maybe incresing it's top speed to the same as the corvettes

ie 16 knots

might have the desired result --corvettes being losable without going to all stop (which wouldn't be terribly practicle in real life?)

[Dowly]

Have anyone tried to go to the bottom of the sea and stop your engines while attacked? Do enemies still spot you?

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Have anyone tried to go to the bottom of the sea and stop your engines while attacked? Do enemies still spot you?

I have tried it couple of times in the early years.It worked but i could have just got lucky..

[the_rydster]

It is not possible to hide from ASDIC by sitting on the sea bed since a sub as a different ASDIC profile than the sea bed.

[oRGy]

Interesting find CB: But I believe the realistic setting for them losing you on hydophones is about 12knots.

In an old thread, there was a post by "ridgewayranger" on the topic of sonar - he was an ex-RN sonar operator who was on a DD in '48. He noted:

Over about 12 knots background water noise masked everything else, and there was the risk of damaging the underwater dome, which had to be raised before speed could be increased. Hope this explains some of the real limitations of submarine detection in WW2.
Jim O
Ex.TASI, Royal Navy.

So that setting can be set to 12, which should cure your armed trawler problem. I may actually do this myself for the Improved U-Boat mod.

[Col7777]

There is some reference to this in the Sensors folder too, I don't really understand it that much but I'm sure you guys will throw some light on it.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by oRGy

Interesting find CB: But I believe the realistic setting for them losing you on hydophones is about 12knots.

In an old thread, there was a post by "ridgewayranger" on the topic of sonar - he was an ex-RN sonar operator who was on a DD in '48. He noted:

So that setting can be set to 12, which should cure your armed trawler problem. I may actually do this myself for the Improved U-Boat mod.

he he!! what you have to carefull of here is wether the AI will understand that it has to travel slightly slower to retain hydrophone contact or wether it will still behave as if the max speed is 15 which would un-balance the AI ASW tactics..might not ..so worth experimenting with...

you actually might get better results without altering the ships top speeds by experimenting with small increase in the noise level..as the guy said regarding the back ground noise level...im assuming that this is what the noise entry refers to...certainly lowering the entry really sharpens up the DD's hydrophone capabilitys enourmously..

mind you do we know the historically accurate top speed of an armed trawler?---might be worth checking that as well..i'm not a fan of stats for stats sake so i tend to go with what helps in purely gameplay terms..

a bit of both is whats required most times..

for example setting the speed entry lower as you say as long as the AI can cope with it..may actually simulate the effect of the DC's blanketing out the contacts for a longer period of time as the DD's have to speed up to stay safe from the DC explosions..a lower speed will mean that it wil take longer before their phones become use-able again

what is needed is an idea of the slowest minimum speed the slowest dd's use in order to set the speed just above that setting..maybe this would encourage more tactical "creeping" attacks or it might just confuse the AI entirely..as it might behave the same no matter what settings are used..

COL!!! if i know you yull bounce every-one one day with your genius !!don't hide it under a bushel as they say!!

[oRGy]

Tried the tweak - setting hydrophone and sonar max speeds to 12knots as in reality - and the result in the u505 mission was predictably enough, nerfed destroyers who couldn't really hear me and at best half heartedly threw a few wabos in my general area, but nothing really terrifying.

(Running RuB btw)

Indeed, it seems as if the game still thought that the acceptable "attack run" speed was 20 knots (for the sonar!), which is interesting. Setting it back to 20 resulted in things working more as normal.

I'm wondering if the value for the AI "max speed at sonar" setting is in there somewhere. If one could set it to an appropriate value, then we wouldn't have nerfed dd's but rather another edge which uboot commanders had in reality.

Hmm...

I should also experiment with the noise factor, and find some research materials. And also stop messing about with this game, but that's another thing entirely.

[Col7777]

I wish I knew more about HEX editing, I opened some CLUT files within SH3 using a HEX editor and there seems to be a lot more info on all this stuff plus more, it might be worth a look there too.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by Col7777

I wish I knew more about HEX editing, I opened some CLUT files within SH3 using a HEX editor and there seems to be a lot more info on all this stuff plus more, it might be worth a look there too.

me too Col--- i was one of the first "non experts" to notice that you could hex edit the SH2 model files to use different external texture files..but that was just a case of altering one letter in a texture name in the model file..i haven't learn't a dang thing more than that since LOL!!!

i have a complete mental block on the stuff...there doesn't seem to be a "begginers guide to hex editng values and what they refer to" available in W-H Smiths either lol!!

all the other tuorials i've seen around the web come in at too advanced a level for me to get my foot on the bottom rung..

[Floater]

Originally Posted by CB..

corvettes being losable without going to all stop (which wouldn't be terribly practicle in real life?)

Yeah, that's a bugbear of mine, CB. U-boats simply couldn't hover like modern subs without rising or sinking, unlike in SH3 (or SH2 for that matter). Especially at periscope depth, when commanders often had to order fairly high speeds to avoid breaching or losing periscope contact.