The Kilo battery(again)

[Castout]

Just did the Kilo demo mission(with voice command) and my battery reached 55% in one and a half hour?

This seems to be ridiculously short. Perhaps Sonalyst made this on purpose to balance out the game?

Edit: My average speed was about 11-11.5 knots during the game.


Is there any way to increase the Kilo battery endurance to a more realistic level?

Btw playing with voice command is kind of silly because in a period of almost two hour playtime I was already exhausted(and it wasn't because there were a lot of misinterpretations). Point and clicking preserves more of my own energy

[To be]

You were going quite fast.

[Reaper51]

11-11.5 knots! You most certitanly shouldn't be going that fast. Kilo's loose their noise advantage at over 5 knots. And ahead standard is rapidly draining your battery, and anything above just sucks it dry in no time.

[Molon Labe]

Average speed doesn't tell anyone much. If you spent the whole mission at 11 knots, you'd probably last about 3 hours. But if you spend some time at flank and some time at 2 knots such that the average speed was 11, you'd be lucky to last much longer than an hour or so. The way it's set up is for an exponential increase in battery drain as speed increases; what you end up with is that up until about 5 knots you can plod along indefinitely, up to about 10 knots you have a significant drain rate that will press you after a few hours, and anything beyond 12 knots or so will blow your battery's load like it was a nervous teenager on prom night.

[Castout]

Nervous teenager on prom night LOL.

Kilo demo mission
I was 'drifting' at 2-4 knots to get the Cargo ship in range that is to get it within 5nm as the Kilo weapons max out at 10.7nm. I fired my 2 torpedoes at the Cargo ship at about 4-5nm then I listened until my torpedoes(2 56K wake homing) hit their quarry. The Crago ship was sunk with two hits then I ordered my speed to about 8 knots to evade retaliation from the humiliated OHP frigate. I was at all time at a relatively shallow depth(less than 50m) so I tried not to captivate. I was aiming for deeper ocean to break free from the pinging FF and as I slowly gain more depth I ordered the Kilo to dive deeper to allow me even more speed(eventually reaching 13 knots). The FFG was pinging at 15 knots. At the start of my evading phase I was about 9nm from the FFG but the FFG got nearer and nearer until it was less than 4nm from me. Eventually it broke my nerve as it seemed to be heading right into my direction. I ordered 4 fishes out to sink it. All four sank the FFG. All this happened in a 1:50 minutes time.

My battery was drained to about 55% percent left. I thought the Kilo had more endurance than this. I mean they have decades to improve the battery since WWII.

Creeping away at 3 knots would definitely kill me. So I guess attacking any escorted ship in shallow water is pretty much suicidal decision with a Kilo?

But you guys made it such that this was normal that the Kilo's battery does drain much faster with speed more than ahead one third.

[Molon Labe]

Not necessarily. Usually you get to blast the escort ship, the demo is a bit weird like that. I also have no idea what the bottom type in that mission is, but it makes a huge difference in BL SSPs. If it's rock then maybe you really are screwed.

It's also abnormal for an escort ship to respond to a torpedo datum at 15 knots. They usually step on it, which means they are completely blind until they get where they're going and slow down to listen again. That gives you the window you need to either kill them or slip away. If you're going to slip away, it's crucial to start running when you first shoot the torpedo (don't wait until after your weapons have hit!) and to slow down the moment you see his speed drop.

It might be a little cheap, but it might be helpful for your torp salvo to include one weapon run at 40 knots or less aimed at the OHP, but fired from far enough out that you know the OHP won't get hit by it. But he'll sure be running for a long time, and he'll have longer to run back to find you after the torp shuts down.

[Castout]

That is good advice Molon Labe. I already thought of starting my evading phase the moment I launched my fishes but I didn't because I wanted to make sure that those fishes hit their intended quarry. But good advice nonetheless.

One one torpedo to scare away the OHP....that's even better but the longest running Kilo's torpedo doesn'r run for that long with 10.7nm maximum range.

I prefer to evade the FFG as I believe that a good sub should always be able to evade detection first than just blowing things out along the way.