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[2025.1]Realistic Hydrophone
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27 Sep, 2024 @ 3:40pm
1 Mar @ 7:39am
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Matta
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[2025.1]Realistic Hydrophone

Description
Are you ready to test your metal as a U-boat ace?
This mod gives the hydrophones realistic ranges.
It will be much harder to obtain your Tonnage totals!

Using the first GHG (Gruppenhorchgerät), you can expect to find lone merchant ships between 16-19km away, given that you have an additional sailor in the Horchraum.
Medium-sized (~10 ships) convoys can be found at around 32km.

Using the GHG-Balkon upgrade, the ranges are extended to resp. about 22-27km and 45km.

The KDB upgrade is interpreted as including the standard (although slightly modernized) GHG, so gives a modest increase in range of 10%.

Very careful manual listening will allow you to hear targets about 1-2km further than the AI technician officer.

Compatibility
Requires a new save game!

The mod is compatible with GHG 360.

It is not compatible with any mod that makes changes to the hydrophone entries in Entities.xlsx/Equipment, or to a few of the /Detection Settings in General.xlsx.

Not compatible with:
Historical sources
"The maximum range at which a destroyer or small merchantman can be heard under good Atlantic condition is said to be 10 miles and convoys may be heard up to 20 miles."[www.uboatarchive.net]

“It was stated that G.H.G. enabled U-Boats to hear ships which were below the horizon, estimated at a distance of 12 miles [...]|”[www.uboatarchive.net]

"The Allies probably did not realize how efficient the German listening equipment was until the summer of 1941 when the U-570 was captured by the British. They then discovered that German [...] listening was possible up to ranges of ten miles under good water conditions.The normal range of the U-boat GHG was said to be 20 kilometers with the U-boat running submerged at 3 or 4 knots; this range fell to 3 to 5 kilometers at 15 knots.[pubs.aip.org]
From: Holt, L. E. (1947). The German use of sonic listening. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 19(4), 678-681.
90 Comments
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Feldherr 27 Jun @ 4:15am 
@Matta

I have the same Problem like Michael J.Caboose

Seems like my hydrophone Operator recognizes Contacts just when they can be heard in the middle range of the Hydrophone.

And i want to say thank you to your work!
Matta  [author] 13 Jun @ 10:31am 
@J0hn Shadow, unfortunately 148x speed is definitely beyond the point that the game's automation starts behaving funky. The default hydrophone settings are just forgiving enough for you to not notice. Unfortunately there is nothing a mod can do about that,
Matta  [author] 13 Jun @ 10:26am 
@Lopot4813 and @Michael, the values in the screenshot are as expected. The 'direct detection range' refers to the range at which you get all of the ship information from just the hydrophone. Single ships in this game are actually a 'group' of one ship-- as such they will be detected at ~50% of the 'group detection range' (as the total noise of the 'group' is not enough to be detected at the maximum group detection range). As for the manual audio being high, I'll do some testing soon. Is there any more information you can share in the meantime?
Lopata4813 11 Jun @ 1:47pm 
When i scroll over the Hydrophone it gives me the ranges, and it shows that the group detection range is 35km while the single ship detection range is just 1.8km
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3497318991
Lopata4813 8 Jun @ 6:55pm 
I'm having the exact same problem as Michael, I can hear the hydrophone contacts very clearly, but the AI never seems to register them until they are extremely close. And I always use 48x time compression when listening with AI.
Michael J. Caboose 15 May @ 1:56pm 
Hydrophone station bugged after update, cant leave and background audio of the sea gone. Not sure if it is this mod or sounds of war mod that is conflicting with update
J0hn Shadow 24 Apr @ 3:43pm 
I'm playing the game only at 148x speed and I almost always encounter the same problem. I never trust my hydrophone guy. Even if I hear it clearly, even in the middle frequencies, the guy just sits there and is looking at the dials as if he doesn't remember what his job actually is - much like the guy sitting beside him^^. I'd love to have a more limited hydrophone, but that's a bit off - i think ^^
Matta  [author] 24 Apr @ 10:54am 
I'm not sure it's a probabilistic mechanism. I do know that time compression janks the whole process quite a lot though. Is this something you have witnessed at low time compression levels? I have done quite a bit of testing at low time compression and never experienced this.
Michael J. Caboose 22 Apr @ 11:22pm 
What Drexack said is exactly what I mean, it seems the way the game works the range of the hydrophone is not the only thing at play when you leave the station to an ai officer.
Drexack 22 Apr @ 11:13pm 
I think what Michael refers to, in more technical terms, is increasing the probability of the technician to pick up the contact, since they are often well in range (<5 km) before he does so. Something seems to prevent the AI from picking up signatures, manual listening is not affected though.

In other terms: manual listening works fine, but the technician needs to become more reliable at picking up contacts.

This is not necessarily something the mod introduces, though. With the ~120 km range of vanilla, it often happens that single freighters are picked up "only" within 40 km. Not a problem, but when the maximal range is 16 km, this reduces to ~5 km.