You exaggerate a bit. Most common submarines for WW2 are more alongside the 8-10 knots submerged. Not that much better, granted, but still.
Furthermore, though not ideal, let’s not forget that most WW2 submarine (aside maybe from the small British ones) reach 15-25 knots while surfaced. I think some kind of “stealth” mechanic, making them less noticeable even surfaced so they can close in, and working with a speed-up diving process would alleviate the speed issue.
The stealth mechanics already exist somewhat in the form of submerging, hiding in the enemy ships baffles, ambient ocean noise, and submarines just being quieter than surface ships so that if a surface ship wants to hear a submarine it has to slow down, which the submarine can counter by slowing down as well, not to mention thermoclines and more generally thermal layers and how they can misrepresent or even totally mask the location of a submarine.
Point is, subs already have alot of stealth without enemy ships getting a nerf to their spotting range, that said, I’d want to see how submarines play out first.
Of course. In any case, Submarines aren’t completely limited to submerged speed. That said, we still have to see how they’ll be balanced.
so you mean you kill the bots that play naval… cool GL with that.
aside any real player is not going to let you get close to them unless its naval realistic (in my opinion not a good game mode arcade naval is a lot better to play)
I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t expect subs to be all that amazing in AB. Though I consider RB better in literally every way, so it’s a moot point from where I sit.
Sounds like my regular UBOAT gameplay. Also, why submerged across whole map? Submarines traveled surfaced most of the time. They submerged just in combat situation.
But not by much
SOME… Type VII 7.6 kts, S class was 10 kts, but only 14 kts surfaced, T class 9 kts submerged, 15 kts surface
Italian Adua/Perla boats 7/14
Wahoo - 15-25 kts on the surface is 28-45 kph… be still my beating heart while I die of boredom watching them race flak barges…
As a whole population American subs were the fastest, with Gato’s and other WW2 builds getting 8.75-9 kts submerged and 20-21 kts surfaced.
Gonna be a shed load of disappointed players when this all “drops” (pun intended!)
The speed range you listed for surfaced is the common speed for dreadnoughts so I don’t quite see the problem at all, since it’s very normal if you play top tier naval that are dreadnoughts to see exactly that speed and to go slower in small island sections of maps.
Tons of coastal boats are quite slow too, and they don’t even have the option to go underwater and “hide”. Heck, many of those slow boats don’t even have torps.
Sub speed will be just fine for gameplay, especially as they’ll likely spawn much closer.
No submarines in the teaser…
I was hoping for them so badly.
But with them confirming they are working on the topic means we just have to wait!
I’d like to see them in game at some point but for them to be balanced we would need guided torpedoes via sonar or sound, currently if I’m not mistaken there are only a few ships in game that can field guided torpedoes and untill we get more for all nations I feel subs would indeed be the drone age equivalent of naval
I am entirely against the addition of submarines to this game. I understand silent thunder isn’t going to be the “best” representation of what we might receive in game. But I find the addition will be made so cartoonishly unrealistic. It will be a dead addition to the game and a waste of resources.
How are they going to emulate sound propagation and the curvature with thermal layers or the sea floor affecting bottom bounce—if it’s sandy or rocky, sound will carry less energy or more depending on ocean floor.
With sound being your way to see until you either surface, or you hit periscope depth, how is spotting going to work? Are they going to make everything invisible until your submarine picks it up?
I know some people will say “you don’t really need to worry about this in ww2 subs” But depending on water temperature and depth and salinity, the thermal layer can be really shallow.
If I had to guess, alot of it would come down to crew skills. Specifically for sonar operator.
Stuff like solution recognition would allow your sonar operator to take less time identifying the kind of vessel making the noise for example, maybe some other things like solution searching that allows your sonar operator to pick up signals that may be quieter (due to distance or lack of speed).
As for sound propagation in water, that shouldn’t be too difficult to model, if the sound hits the thermal layer at a shallow angle, it should be bounced off which would increase its range but hide anything below the layer, if the sound hits the thermal layer at a steep angle, it should refract it which would make the submarine appear closer than it actually is or even create a shadow zone in which the submarine cannot be detected.
That said, thermal layers should affect sonar going BOTH ways.
Ships and submarines should have their baffles modelled, makes towed arrays more valuable if/when they do arrive, if a vessel is in the baffles, it should be flat out undetectable and give both boats and submarines a reason to slow down and clear their baffles.
Silent Thunder was pretty bad representation. You should have played Battle of Atlantic event. It was one of my most favourite events in game. It worked pretty good.
I had a few issues with battle of Atlantic but literally see my message above yours regarding to how I’d fix them lol.
watch as itas next years first update LMAO
it did work pretty good
Your sonar op will filter this automatically.
I know how thermal layers work, but the crux of what I’m getting at is: Is it going to be possible without infinite levels of jank to make it a believable and working function in game? My issue is trusting gaijin to not “entirely” gameify the experience.
Also, for the people reading this. Here’s a chart I quickly made to represent how thermal layers work in a simple way. The closer you are to the enemy—in regards to surface ships at least—the closer you have to be to the thermal layer to not be spotted. There is still a bottom curve, so if you are going much farther down in depth below the thermal layer, you will have to stay farther away from the target. Until it bounces off the sea floor. So in reality you have giant pocket you’re in. Of course, that depends on the energy and if it’ll run out.
Once subs are brought into the mix, this logic kinda goes out of the window as if a sub is above the thermal layer, and you aren’t the source of the sound and thus the shadowzone will change with depth.
I mean, they don’t have to? There are more realistic submarine simulators on the market, Gaijin doesn’t have to go all-in on replicating everything if they don’t want to. A lot of War Thunder’s strength is that it balances realism and accessibility. It’s not the most detailed sim in any category, but it does have the broadest amount of vehicles and systems available to players.
They could. Or it could be tied in with a sonarman crew skill. Or allied vessels might always be visible. Obviously active vs passive sonar is a factor too. There are lots of ways Gaijin could handle this, it’s really not an impossible challenge by any means.
That’s ok, to each their own. But I think that’s why it’s important for the community to have a discussion about submarines and their implementation, so that we have some form of consensus and can respond when we see exactly how Gaijin will include them.
