[REL] Harder Enemy Escorts- Better Sensors

[kakemann]

I'm trying to figure out the sim.cfg contents.

Do any of you know he difference between the hydrophone part and the sonar part? Or what is exactly the difference between hydrophones and sonar?

I guess the sensivity line on one of these two could have some impact on their sensors

I'll try to tweak a bit and see if I get any good results!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by kakemann

I'm trying to figure out the sim.cfg contents.

Do any of you know he difference between the hydrophone part and the sonar part? Or what is exactly the difference between hydrophones and sonar?

I guess the sensivity line on one of these two could have some impact on their sensors

I'll try to tweak a bit and see if I get any good results!

Thanks!

Sonar is active pinging. Hydrophone is passive listening.

[kakemann]

Thanks!

Read your post about people requesting and not contributing and felt i could try to learn something. Hope to be able to contribute some more.

Originally Posted by kakemann

Thanks!

Read your post about people requesting and not contributing and felt i could try to learn something. Hope to be able to contribute some more.

Of course requests are ok, but we need all the help we can get to improve SH4.

[FAdmiral]

Patches from the devs are needed to fix bugs and make changes to the game engine & hard-coded elements.
Everything else (plain text files) can & will be addressed by the modders but they almost have to wait till the
devs release the patches first. From what I have observed so far: the AI DDs don't have the detection down
pat in SH4 like the Brit. DDs did in SH3 (actually this could be historical) and I can see that happening early in the
war years. The thing that irks me the most is when you do torp and sink a ship in the convoy they are guarding, the DDs don't seem to have a search plan they impliment in order to find you. Detection is one thing but looking for an enemy sub that just attacked the convoy the DD was guarding is lacking here. In plain words, the DDs in SH4 are just NOT doing their
job right. This may be hard-coded and a patch is needed to fix it. American Sub Doctrine at the start of WW2 in the
pacific was to protect the BB TFs and sink enemy warships (same as Japans). Adm Nimitz changed all that when he
figured that Japan, like England, was an island nation and needed to ship in all the resources to sustain itself. So he
used the German approach to go after the merchant & tanker ships (or convoys later) doing the resupply. I think that
caught Japan off-guard in relation to what American Subs would be doing till at least late in 1942 when they finally
started to catch on....

JIM

[castorp345]

nicely put, Jim!

reminds me of the old adage: "fools rush in where wise men fear to tread"...

i've think you've got it right in that the apparently undesirable asw behavior is ultimately something that's going to have to be corrected on the developer side (and not by porking the sensor systems but rather by their tweaking the ai), and so these sorts of issues should (if they're not already) probably be listed on the bug thread, and supported as well by much user playtesting/feedback and historical evidence (viz joea's research threads ==> http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109413 & http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109419) to back-up any claims made and provide a resource not only for potential modders but also to assist the devs in addressing such concerns as might legitimately be raised.

as you say, when the devs have finished their bit, then is the time to see what can be done. in the meantime, more playing and reading!!

cheers
hc

[Ducimus]

Figure i'll toss a couple more cents into the ring.

When submerge the AI has two methods to detect you. Active (sonar), Passive (hydrophone)

The AI, unless its changed greatly from SH3 (which i doubt), can only do one of the two at any given moment in time, but can switch between the two in a nanosecond. That said, the AI doesnt ping (switch to active) unless he has reason to.

Passive sonar:
is effected by the state of the sea: ( Waves factor ) and how many RPM's your sub is doing ( Noise factor ), and he can only use this sensor when he's going at or below a given speed ( Speed factor ). So if his speed factor is 15, but hes doing 20 kts, he can't hear squat.


Active sonar is a bit different and was harder to figure out. Active sonar is only used when a series of conditions are met.

1.) Your within his active sonar cone (as defined by the AI_sensors.dat, at least it was in SH3)

2.) Your presenting him a favorable aspect ( Enemy surface factor )

3.) Your doing both 1 and 2 for X amount of time. ( Detection time )

So for example in stock the detection time for active sonar is 20 seconds. 20 seconds is a long time if you consider your own movment or the AI's speedlng along the surface. The result is he might get 1 or 2 pings and then lose contact once you fall under the cone. THen he has to see if you screw up for a full 20 seconds before he can get a ping again. By reducing the contact time in the active sonar alone, you greatly increase the use of active sonar.

Ive explained most of this in other terms here :
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=104377

[kakemann]

I've tested a bit now, altering the sim.cfg file, and I think I'm in to something. By changing the hydrophone sonar sensivity to a higher value - below 1.0 the destroyers seems to have somewhat more sensitive hydrophones. If anyone would like - try to alter this one in sim.cfg with notepad - (of course DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP THE OLD sim.cfg file).

What I did was to change this:

[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]
Thermal Layer Signal Attenuation=3.0 ;[>0], 1 means no signal reduction, 3 equals signal reduction to 33%

To this:

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.5 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=15 ;[kt]
Noise factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Thermal Layer Signal Attenuation=3.0 ;[>0], 1 means no signal reduction, 3 equals signal reduction to 33%

Please post your findings. I'll test some more...

[CCIP]

Wow, that's a HUGE sensitivity value.

I am curious whether it will work. Such a shame I don't get to play/test the game for the next, oh, 3 days

Originally Posted by kakemann

I've tested a bit now, altering the sim.cfg file, and I think I'm in to something. By changing the hydrophone sonar sensivity to a higher value - below 1.0 the destroyers seems to have somewhat more sensitive hydrophones. If anyone would like - try to alter this one in sim.cfg with notepad - (of course DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP THE OLD sim.cfg file).

What I did was to change this:

[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]
Thermal Layer Signal Attenuation=3.0 ;[>0], 1 means no signal reduction, 3 equals signal reduction to 33%

To this:

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.5 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=15 ;[kt]
Noise factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Thermal Layer Signal Attenuation=3.0 ;[>0], 1 means no signal reduction, 3 equals signal reduction to 33%

Please post your findings. I'll test some more...

I think the lower the number, the higher the sensitivity. But I could be wrong.

[FAdmiral]

That should be fairly easy to test. Set one test at full 1 and then
run a 2nd test with it set at .001 With that big a difference, there
should be a noticeable difference in DD action...

JIM

I am about to release the next version of this mod.

[kakemann]

Originally Posted by FAdmiral

That should be fairly easy to test. Set one test at full 1 and then
run a 2nd test with it set at .001 With that big a difference, there
should be a noticeable difference in DD action...

JIM

I did that and found that the DD's seemed more aggressive when i turned to 0.5.

But if more people try we'll definately find out.

Try setting it to 0.5. Or maybe nvdrifter already found out?

[kakemann]

Read Bootsmann's thread about these values here:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...71010205/inc/1


It seems he has some knowledge!

The guy asking in this thread seems to have the opposite problem, but the answers from Bootsmann are interesting even if it is from Silent Hunter 3. Maybe we can learn something all of us?

I've learned quite a lot

[joea]

BTW guys please check this thread out might be useful.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=109413