Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart666
From 'The silent deep', it would appear the sonar system on the Victor would be based upon the British Type 2001 sonar from Dreadnought, which was stolen in the Portland spy ring, the capability of which is actually listed in Silent Deep. So the active component you would expect to be pretty good, whether the signal processing was actually good enough to get a similar effect out of the passive side of it is another matter. I mean look at the report, it basically says they have ships in 1972 with sonar as good as the USN, but they dont have the processing capability to make use of it. They dont even seem at the time to have an ability to categorize the sound contacts they DID pick up. Presumably they had to depend on operator ability to do that.
im just looking the figures in the game. It lists sonar in many cases as just as effective as US submarine sonar, when looking at a period report (and the USN had to have a fairly good idea) it just wasn't happening that way in real life. I can entirely believe the Soviet Active gear was as good as Western Equipment, but the passive gear really shouldn't be comparable till the 1980s when they were making use of stolen towed arrays.
I dont think superior silencing can be the only reason. Its notable in many books how noisy Soviet boats were, and how wholly oblivious they were to it. They dont seem to have made any serious effort towards that till the walker spy ring told them how noisy they were. And that suggests to me (and this is pure conjecture admittedly) that if their own sonar systems were not capable of picking them up, they assumed the Americans couldn't either. And its not as if the American boats are that quiet, its quite clear from Polmar that the Victor was as noisy as a Sturgeon class. The Americans seemingly had little difficulty picking them up (and even used their loudness as a way of tracking the rather quieter Yankee's they escorted) but the Soviets were clearly not able to repeat the capability.
Look, im not trying to be contentious. Im just requesting someone, either the devs or one of you fellas who clearly know your stuff, seriously look at the same data there I trawled up and compare it to other references out there. I dont have the USNI reference book, but the suspicion is that they have taken data for US sonar systems and 'assumed' Russian ones of a similar age are comparable. The modern ones might be, but the information on the ones up to the 1970s are they were badly lagging behind. When the CIA was assured that Soviet sonar systems were at best half as effective as US ones in 1972, it seems the Soviet sonar systems are behaving far too effectively in game, particularly at sprint speeds. And as the USN was spending so much time trailing them, they really ought to be the ones to know.
Just my view, and absolutely no disrespect to anyone intended.
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We have much better primary sources available today after the fall of the Iron Curtain than the CIA had. The russians trialled their sonars against russian boats. Thus superior silencing on US boats is probably the primary factor. That said, it is irrelevant if historically the russians were completely blind and a non-threat. It does not make for good gameplay. The game needs to be challenging in order to put you into the correct frame of mind, and as such the russians are set up to be a credible opposition. I've balanced the sensors with this objective in mind.
Btw, the passive sonars are pretty useless at sprint speeds in the game. The escorts use hunter killer teams to get around this.