Does depth ping give away my position?
 

I'm playing SH3+GWX campaign, and, due to stock depth map which definitely was made by some Allies or Soviet agent, I have to ping my exact depth under keel very often. This raises a question: can enemy ASW ships actually hear this ping in GWX? Cause some recent game situations make me suspect they can't. :(

This is indeed true. They don't react to it. It's a shame, but the way it is. But you can always do make-believe.

I've always considered this to be one of the biggest failings in the AI.

I have to say that once in gwx i constantly pinged to try to get an escort to break away from a convoy so i could attack it and it seemed to work. either that or they heard something else in my vicinity

Nope... just happenstance.

I've just accepted it and do not ping if I am in a situation where I could not surface and fire off the deck gun into the sky.

There is a lot in the game that someone put in as a good idea, but that was never followed up on. The helmsman qualification, for example. Does nothing whatsoever.

It makes me wonder if someone is able to make it count as a sonar ping without the range estimate since that's essentially what it is. :hmmm:

Sonar is much less effective in shallow water and in areas with ship wreaks and other underwater debris, but the game does not model this. The sonar ping not being heard kind of evens the score.
Later in the war, subs took advantage of this defect in sonar and hunted the British coast in shallow water.
See Stiebler's4A_V16B1_Addon Patch readme for a discussion.

So, just to make it completely clear: enemy ships can't hear my ping at all, or they can get alerted by it but can't pinpoint the direction it was coming from, or they don't get alerted but CAN take ping direction if sub is suspected nearby?

Enemy ships can't hear your active pings.

I wish I hadn't read this thread.

Yeah, a few have said that in the past when little known immersion killers are revealed.

Robbins said it best: Realism isn't about the settings. It's about how you play the game.

- Echolot/sonar ping, gramophone can't be heard by ASW.
- Seafloor sitting can't help to hide yourself from being pinged.
- You can be heard by ASW through the land.
- Dud explosions does no impact on ASW behaviour.
- Impossible to mask engine sound of u-boat underneath a cargo ship.
- ASW has no smoke screen defence mechanism.
- ASW Huff Duff system is not working at all.

well. don't then:D

:):up:

:hmmm:

Are you sure that they could? I mean, not theoretically, but in reality? And if so, did they do it? Up to now, I´ve never read anything about ASW units that hear any pings from enemy u-boats. So I don´t believe that they did. Imho with good reason: They already had their own reliable sonar system. Why should the sonar operator waste his time for searching pings if he could get bearing and distance with his own asdic/sonar?

The really great Jerry Proc site

http://jproc.ca/sari/asd_gen.html

tells a lot about asdic, but no word is lost about enemy sonar pings. The only possibility I see is random discovery. But afaik, the german u-boats barely used their horizontal sonar (S-Gerät) because optical information was more precise at that time, and, well, the maps were good enough :up: so normally there was no need to measure the depth.

Ingame, I Although use the vertical sonar (echolot) very often to get the depth, but always without another ship in sight. Then I plot the depth into my map, so i´m always aware about possible evasion manoeuvres. To be sure about the depth, I use the echolot when crash diving. At that time, the enemy normally knows my positon, so there´s no disadvantage when using it.