Matrix Games Forums

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How can an enemy sub travel right through my field of sono buoys trucking along at 17 kts undetected? I used the cheat to see how and it was deep in the water, even so, in order to get a read on it I had to manually place a buoy right on top of it (literally, within a pixel or two at the max zoom level) to detect it, even though it was already surrounded closely on all sides by buoys that my patrols had placed. It obliterated half of my Tawara fleet, smartly, it went for all my ASW assets first and I lost the scenario, by the time I realized I was under attack there was already 3 blobs of torpedos in the water. I could tell where it was because I could see where the torpedos were appearing and taking different bearings, how is it I can detect the torpedos immediately coming right out of the sub, but not the sub itself?

Also, oddly when I dropped a torpedo right on top of it, it just went back and forth with an ETA of 0:00 to 0:01 seconds without hitting. Are these just bugs or am I doing something wrong?

My fleet was one Tawara, Austin, and Whitbay amphibious ships, along with a Virginia-class escort and two O H Perrys. I had them assembled so the two Perrys were running picket operations about 10nm out front and the Virginia was leading the amphib ships by about 5nm, with two ASW helicopters continuously dropping buoys out to about 18 nm infront of center, which would be around 8nm ahead of the Perrys. The fleet was not using active sonar up until the detection of the torpedos and I had many sono buoys dropping in front of it, when I turned on active sonar I still did not get a read on the sub. The ships were traveling at about 19 kts I believe. This all happened as I was approaching the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, but still far enough away so the sub could take deep water obviously, by the time I finally got an active detection on the sub it was half way in between the Perrys and the Virginia-class, which was now pretending to be a sub itself. The O H Perrys, despite running constant ASW operations ahead of the pack, were ran through like a drunk girl at a frat party. Should I massively increase the range at which im conducting the helicopter drops, or just make a separate fleet to travel far ahead of my high value ships?

This disturbs me as I cannot manage to kill or even detect anything with an advanced US nuclear sub without seeing torpedos first, which I hardly ever use active sonar on or run any faster than 5-8kts.

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How do you properly evade torpedos? Just turn the other direction and book it as fast as possible? Is it worth it to fire a torpedo at the bearing of the incoming torpedo, or does this just serve to divert the hostile submarine away from your ships?

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Ok, now that the lengthy sub rant is done, I have another question or two.. Do the short range AAW guns actually do anything? I don't think I have ever seen them shoot anything down (except my planes of course), is it some kind of passive modifier or it only works against aircraft and not missiles?

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Do anti-runway bombs prevent aircraft from being launched? Even if the airfield is not yet completely destroyed.

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Lastly, I noticed a small tactical error in the AI. I had a group of F16s on a LR SEAD mission which could not fire their payload im assuming due to the airfields radar being turned off, it told me I had to close to 1 nm to drop the bombs that were also being carried. after I ordered them to return to base the airfield immediately flipped the radar back on, allowing me to fire at them. Seems the airfield thought I wasn't attacking them anymore, however, I was still within range.

I expect you'll get more in depth replies from more experienced people in due course, but if you happen to have a gander before then my comments would be that detecting subs is always hard, and that's as it should be.
If you're steaming at 19 knots in suspect waters, I'd try 12 at most. The sub coming through you at 17 knots seems odd though, AI seems to be fairly prudent with its subs, it will throw away aircraft like no bodies business but seems to have a soft spot for the submariner (that's how it seems to me).
If you split your group it is more work to keep them synchronised, it should be OK in one group, maybe try different formation ring sizes. If the sectors are too big though it is a lot of water area to cover with a helo.
If you happen to pickup enough sound to know what the torp is, that will give you an idea if it is worth running, though I don't know any other way of decreasing the likely hood of being hit. I'd always fire off a torp of my own if the friendly staff assistant recommends it, sometimes it actually gets a kill which might not save your bacon but mates in nearby ships will be pretty relieved, they might even pick you up out of the briny.
The AAW guns, as they tend to be in life, are a bit 'hit and miss' so to speak, but they do get a hit sometimes. Gunning down missiles is pretty hard, small fast target, it usually passes you and disappears into the distance.
Bombs and payloads in general do generic damage to a base according to their damage value and your luck. As damage increases the aircraft turn around for the base increases and you might also wipe out some of the planes on ground, so although not actually damaging the 'strip it has a similar effect. Anti runway ordinance tends not to be too likely to hit though so you might be better of with precision bombs (and think of going for the hangers or visible planes).
Don Tomas

Sorry for the belated reply, but in any event Don managed to address most of your concerns.

ORIGINAL: FLiP777
How can an enemy sub travel right through my field of sono buoys trucking along at 17 kts undetected? I used the cheat to see how and it was deep in the water, even so, in order to get a read on it I had to manually place a buoy right on top of it (literally, within a pixel or two at the max zoom level) to detect it, even though it was already surrounded closely on all sides by buoys that my patrols had placed. It obliterated half of my Tawara fleet, smartly, it went for all my ASW assets first and I lost the scenario, by the time I realized I was under attack there was already 3 blobs of torpedos in the water. I could tell where it was because I could see where the torpedos were appearing and taking different bearings, how is it I can detect the torpedos immediately coming right out of the sub, but not the sub itself?

Frankly, I am reassured by the fact that a submarine slipped through your screen and gave you the 'business'. It means that something is working correctly. As far as the technical side goes, keep in mind that sonar checks are performed only every 5 minutes, and that active/passive sonar sensors have only a 50 percent of chance of detecting a target within range when that check is performed. Torpedoes are easier to detect because firstly, they tend to have considerably louder acoustic signatures, and secondly, many are active homing types.

Also, oddly when I dropped a torpedo right on top of it, it just went back and forth with an ETA of 0:00 to 0:01 seconds without hitting. Are these just bugs or am I doing something wrong?

This is the torpedo seeker trying to gain acquisition range (measured in thousands of yards or less), and maneuvering to impact.

My fleet was one Tawara, Austin, and Whitbay amphibious ships, along with a Virginia-class escort and two O H Perrys. I had them assembled so the two Perrys were running picket operations about 10nm out front and the Virginia was leading the amphib ships by about 5nm, with two ASW helicopters continuously dropping buoys out to about 18 nm infront of center, which would be around 8nm ahead of the Perrys. The fleet was not using active sonar up until the detection of the torpedos and I had many sono buoys dropping in front of it, when I turned on active sonar I still did not get a read on the sub. The ships were traveling at about 19 kts I believe. This all happened as I was approaching the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, but still far enough away so the sub could take deep water obviously, by the time I finally got an active detection on the sub it was half way in between the Perrys and the Virginia-class, which was now pretending to be a sub itself. The O H Perrys, despite running constant ASW operations ahead of the pack, were ran through like a drunk girl at a frat party. Should I massively increase the range at which im conducting the helicopter drops, or just make a separate fleet to travel far ahead of my high value ships?

As Don pointed out, 19 knots is the maximum speed at which you can expect useful passive sonar performance. In constricted waters like those in your scenario, I would slow to creep at least occasionally to squeeze more out of your sonar.

This disturbs me as I cannot manage to kill or even detect anything with an advanced US nuclear sub without seeing torpedos first, which I hardly ever use active sonar on or run any faster than 5-8kts.

It would seem, then, a change of tactics might be in order.

How do you properly evade torpedos? Just turn the other direction and book it as fast as possible?

HCE does not model acoustic countermeasures (yet), so your best choice is to either turn and run or, alternatively, try and defeat the acquisition range (seeker cone) of the hostile torpedo.

Is it worth it to fire a torpedo at the bearing of the incoming torpedo, or does this just serve to divert the hostile submarine away from your ships?

Sure, its useful, because the attacker just might be close enough for you to score a kill (and prevent future encounters with him altogether), or if you can't kill him, force him to turn away, lose track of you and hopefully give you an opportunity to break free of him and his torpedoes.

Ok, now that the lengthy sub rant is done, I have another question or two.. Do the short range AAW guns actually do anything? I don't think I have ever seen them shoot anything down (except my planes of course), is it some kind of passive modifier or it only works against aircraft and not missiles?

As Don said, short range guns typically have a very low hit probability.

Do anti-runway bombs prevent aircraft from being launched? Even if the airfield is not yet completely destroyed.

At the present time, anti-runway ordnance will only prevent landings (that is, where the field is damaged and now too short). It won't stop takeoffs.

Okay, thanks for the help, I didn't realize that lower speeds increased sonar detection, makes sense. So basically a range battle between a surface group and a sub for detection would be to see who can go the slowest or something of the like, and also gives the game more time to hit the sonar trigger. I still think its wrong that the sub can blast through buoys like that, theres really no way to counter it and puts the win or loss of some entire scenarios on the whim of the program code to detect the sub or not.

I just made a scenario and shot down some helicopters with AAA, I think this will be a first for me that I have noticed. I created it to try out a few things and try to learn how this works, I gave myself a Seawolf-class sub and pitted up against three generic looking russian subs. I see they say in the description of the Seawolf that its very quiet, well its not lying and with a creep speed of 19 kts it was able to squash all three I think without being detected, though I kept it at 5 kts when I started to close on them individually. It also made it almost all the way across my little theater that I had to help a surface group that was being overrun.

In this scenario I also gave myself two small surface groups (3 ships) and red had no less than 20 small missile boats along with a few AAW and ASW larger ships thrown in the mix along with another red sub lingering around my groups. The Seawolf was too far away to help immediately and I lost the leading group to a massive missile attack, the AI expended about every last missile on the first group, I'm guessing this game isnt made to have ships start within missile range of each other. In the AIs defense, it did allocate enough of its missiles to sink my Underwood AAW ship in the second group, leaving me with two Knox-class ships and the Seawolf a ways off in the ocean. Amazingly, the Knox-class defeated two of the remaining incoming missiles and the others didn't hit. I diverted the Seawolf south to intercept a missile boat group that did not fire yet and the destroyers defeated the red sub with helicopters and gunned down each and every last red ship, including the larger ones. Though the wimpy missile load of 2 harpoons each didn't do anything they threw themselves into my main guns, which are quite good on the Knox-class destroyer I see, I think I have a new favorite ship even though it sucks against anything with serious missiles(pretty much everything), the Underwood utterly failed at missile defense being destroyed by something it should have taken care of.

Fun game, though I see it can cause some mouse rage from time to time.

It would seem, then, a change of tactics might be in order.

As far as I know im doing everything right with subs, staying slow and low with sensors off, launching torps at non-exact detections when I can.

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Also, assuming there is going to be future versions of this game, is there anywhere I can make a suggestion? I know everyone and there mother is making suggestions for everything, but I think HCE really needs markers you can place on the map maybe with a little note, doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement either with the existing system for groups seeing as land units were added and whatnot. So far I have been using note pad to somewhat keep track of things during a scenario, which isn't hard, I'm just saying it would be neat though.

ORIGINAL: FLiP777
Okay, thanks for the help, I didn't realize that lower speeds increased sonar detection, makes sense. So basically a range battle between a surface group and a sub for detection would be to see who can go the slowest or something of the like, and also gives the game more time to hit the sonar trigger. I still think its wrong that the sub can blast through buoys like that, theres really no way to counter it and puts the win or loss of some entire scenarios on the whim of the program code to detect the sub or not.

Sonobuoys are not a 'sure thing' when it comes to detection, not in real life and not in HCE either. Any sensor is only as good as its construction/electronics, its operator, the environmental conditions, etc, etc.

As far as I know im doing everything right with subs, staying slow and low with sensors off, launching torps at non-exact detections when I can.

I would try to localize and firm up contacts before shooting at them, especially if my platform is a submarine. (Unless you're doing counter-fire, or some other emergency situation).

Some background reading on ASW here: Tactics 101

Also, assuming there is going to be future versions of this game, is there anywhere I can make a suggestion? I know everyone and there mother is making suggestions for everything, but I think HCE really needs markers you can place on the map maybe with a little note, doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement either with the existing system for groups seeing as land units were added and whatnot. So far I have been using note pad to somewhat keep track of things during a scenario, which isn't hard, I'm just saying it would be neat though.

Yep, you can make a 'wish list' at the home of HCE development, at HarpGamer. Check the beta section forums there. Btw, your desire for map markers is already on my own wish list. [:)]

ORIGINAL: CV32
I would try to localize and firm up contacts before shooting at them, especially if my platform is a submarine. (Unless you're doing counter-fire, or some other emergency situation).

That last scenario that I just talked about I sunk 3/3 (3 different subs, 2 torps each) in sub vs sub combat without an exact detection or active sonar, though I was using a Seawolf-class which is an absolutely awesome sub. Only because I had plenty of torpedos, I probably wouldn't have used them if I only had a couple.

I've began tinkering around with the Platform Editor, which is fun, but very complex to understand. Am I right that the 'Qty' value under the weapons tab in the mount section is the max rounds that mount can hold for that weapon? How does it correspond to 'Rounds' in the above field?

For example and just to clarify, assuming ship A has plenty of magazines to reload with, and it has a mount with 'Rounds: 255' and one weapon assigned to that mount with 'Qty: 24', does the ship reload that mount to 255 or 24? If it had 'Mounts: 2' would it reload to 48 instead?

ORIGINAL: FLiP777
I've began tinkering around with the Platform Editor, which is fun, but very complex to understand. Am I right that the 'Qty' value under the weapons tab in the mount section is the max rounds that mount can hold for that weapon? How does it correspond to 'Rounds' in the above field?

You've picked probably the most complex of the annexes to tinker with. [:D]

'Rounds' refers to the number of rounds of shells, missiles, torpedoes, etc, that are contained per mount. The 'Qty' figure becomes useful when you have a 'multi-mount', e.g. a mount that has multiple types of weapons in a single mount, like a Mk 41 VLS. Often these may have the '255' figure.

For example and just to clarify, assuming ship A has plenty of magazines to reload with, and it has a mount with 'Rounds: 255' and one weapon assigned to that mount with 'Qty: 24', does the ship reload that mount to 255 or 24? If it had 'Mounts: 2' would it reload to 48 instead?

The magazines will only reload to the maximum capacity of the mount.

For more quirks of the PE and DB editing, see the pretty good explanations contained in HCE DB Editing Guide.

One point nobody addressed:

Just what IS the "enemy sub"? It may well be that, even at 17 knots, it is considered to be very quiet. For example, the Seawolf can creep at 19 kn. Does the "enemy sub" have a similar xcapability?

your best choice is to either ... , alternatively, try and defeat the acquisition range (seeker cone) of the hostile torpedo.

Is that a realistic option in the game, and if so, could you please provide a few details?

ORIGINAL: VictorInThePacific

your best choice is to either ... , alternatively, try and defeat the acquisition range (seeker cone) of the hostile torpedo.

Is that a realistic option in the game, and if so, could you please provide a few details?

Each torpedo has an acquisition range listed in the database (generally air-dropped are very short range seeker, heavy torps longer ranged seeker). If you can stay out of that acquisition range the torpedo won't find you and go in for the kill. The game will choose a pattern for torpedo search (one of them is expanding spiral) so you could in theory time your escape by making the right guess on where to turn.

The difficult part is that you probably won't know what maneuver the torpedo is conducting, you need those Sean Connery instincts!