Gonna retry the second mission of Dangerous Waters' campaign again. It's a really interesting mission. As the american side, after the start of a Russian rebellion, you are in a Seawolf sub and need to do some recon and ascertain the strength of their rebels in one of the ports they took, find if they have taken functioning SSBNs (Nuclear Ballistic subs, aka boomers) and identify who else comes to take a peek. Ideally without giving away your identity, it's all matter of managing how much information you let leak as you gather information yourself; there's all sorts of compromises. Periscope depth makes visual ID of surface ships easy, but exposes your periscope to visual detection, and forces you into shallow waters above the thermal layer where you're more easily detected. There's all sorts of trade-offs with raising any mast out of the water, as to what you're exposing. Even just passive listening can expose you, a towed sonar array needs you to be towing it to function properly, and your propellers are liable to be themselves detected by a good sonarman.

@guizzy There is also a very slight difference between spherical and towed arrays (they're physically far apart) that you an get see where the lines cross for quick ranging

@guizzy Also IIRC in the seawolf you're practically inaudible below 10-12kts

@sullybiker Yeah, I think the game says “Silent running under 21kts”,but I just got counter-detected at 5kts with no masts poking out. Admittedly at shallow depth though. Not a mission ending event though, the mission doesn’t require avoiding detection for success.

@guizzy Were you getting pinged?

@sullybiker Nope, at least not that I heard or that showed up on the active intercept display.

@guizzy something got close enough or you drifted close enough. Probably another sub. It's very difficult to avoid If you are forced to go to a location.

@sullybiker Oh yeah, I had to go very close to some contacts, some of the boats at the back of the harbor don’t get picked up until I get quite far in.

@guizzy Do you know the 50hz trick on narrowband? You set the scale to its lowest and for Russian subs 50hz always comes through first as a line in the middle. Also fishing boats but they are so loud you can normally rule them out.

@sullybiker Interesting! I did not know! Interesting!

TBH I'm just starting out with the game. I had it for a long time, but got intimidated. I only started being comfortable playing it after getting the manual (I barely refer to it, but knowing its there if I need to know anything is reassuring) and after playing another more basic cold war sub sim (Red Storm Rising on the C64). I did play a bunch of WW2 sub sims before though.

I leave the stations pretty much all autocrewed for now and concentrate on the decision making, but I'm frustrated by how my sonarman seems to make the same wrong IDs over and over, so I should probably learn to operate the sonar myself better, if only to double check and reject some of these ludicrous IDs.

@guizzy It's not too hard to work the Sonar; AI crew is best left to TMA work which can be a bit tedious, but yes they make a lot of mistakes and don't always merge contacts properly, that kind of thing.

@guizzy But it's an absolute gem of a game, so deep (hurr) and rewarding to play.