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I don't yet get it how helicopter dipping sonar works.
Do I have to manually go to zero speed and activate? Or activate and the sonar gets dipped after I go to a hover?
Or is it active even if the helicopter moves (this would be 2030 tech then )
Is there a way I can make a helicopter patrol automatically using dipping sonar?
I've been using it "realistically" and that works. Seems it reduces speed to 50% when you toggle it to deploy, but I'm not sure that's enough to have it work.
Anyway, I order it to go to very low (10m) and move slow (helos don't change altitude when stopped, so 1 tick above that). With the thing deployed and those conditions it works a treat.
Pretty sure you can fly about as normal with the thing still deployed, but I guess you don't get data from it. At any rate you don't have to worry about damaging the array.
Try the sonar tutorial and fly very low (wave skippingly low) and max half speed with dipping sonar deployed. If you try flying faster you wont detect the sub. As soon as I slowed a bit I detected it and it was almost right under me at that point. You dont seem to have to stop or fly very slow which is good because otherwise you would have to manually keep stopping and restarting which would be a real pain. I have found what seems to be a bug where if you select deep sonar you cant seem to then turn off deep and go back to shallow unless you retract the whole thing and start again. Maybe its made that way.
EDIT: you do have to fly slower than half speed otherwise you wont detect subs it seems on testing with the Akula class Russian sub in the Turkey Shoot tutorial mission. So you will have to start and stop at internals which is a bit of a pain. Really therefore needs a specific action set up like the sonar buoys where you can fly a course and stop to check for subs at each waypoint.
it would be great if you could put helicopters on auto hunt for subs, specially when you have a larger fleet. very time consuming to put each helicopter submarine hunting constantly.
it would be great if you could put helicopters on auto hunt for subs, specially when you have a larger fleet. very time consuming to put each helicopter submarine hunting constantly.
That's a smart idea. Maybe specify an area to sonar-dip, like with sonobuoys, and let the helicopter travel to random points within that selection, deploy the dipping sonar, slowdown and hover, and spend 5 mins at each location.
In a long term project, it would be cool to have the possibility to include helos and aircraft in a ship formation.
I know "Harpoon could do that" sounds lame (NWAC allready can do quite a few things Harpoon couldn't do in 20 years), but it was convenient that you could assign patrol zones for helicopter ASW, AEW planes and BARCAP within the task force independent of the ship's movement.
it would be great if you could put helicopters on auto hunt for subs, specially when you have a larger fleet. very time consuming to put each helicopter submarine hunting constantly.
In a long term project, it would be cool to have the possibility to include helos and aircraft in a ship formation.
I know "Harpoon could do that" sounds lame (NWAC allready can do quite a few things Harpoon couldn't do in 20 years), but it was convenient that you could assign patrol zones for helicopter ASW, AEW planes and BARCAP within the task force independent of the ship's movement.
As in, it doesn't automatically go to each point, stop for a while, then move on. We have to manually do that, which can be a bore with too many helicopters.
As in, it doesn't automatically go to each point, stop for a while, then move on. We have to manually do that, which can be a bore with too many helicopters.
Its a bore with one helicopter. You have to slow down so much that you are slower than the ships which means you constantly have to adjust the helicopters speed to make it useful. Ive given up using it now I just use the buoys. I would either like it the same as the sonar buoys ie a button for creating a matrix of sensing spots or adstracted so that you can fly the helicopter at half speed but still use the dipping sonar. There does seem to be a massive difference between half and slow speed in the helicopters. One is almost too fast and the other too slow to be useful...
I don't have a problem with it, that's just how it works, but some automation by specifying an area to search with the sensor couldn't hurt.
I'm against further abstraction though. Flying around with the array deployed is already odd enough for me. Having it drag through the water at speed would create enough drag to tear it right off the chopper, and create enough turbulence around it to not be able to "hear" anything. The latter is modeled and I'm quite happy with that.
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