Sonalysts Combat Simulations

[OneShot]

This was originally written by ParaBellum and posted in this thread : KILO Mini Tutorial

After spending quite a few hours with the demo I thought I'd share my impressions so far. I'm NOT exactly a hardcore modern sub grog although I've played both 688I and Sub Command. I installed SC again in order to prepare for Dangerous Waters and it soon became obvious: my TMA solutions are STILL the bane of all ships and lifeforms in the vicinity of my sub. [Smile]

So, this is kind of a n00b's tutorial to the Kilo demo mission. Don't expect any in-depth analysis.

Here we go!

I play the game on high realism settings, only the autocrew of the sonar active intercept station is set to ON.

My mission is to intercept and sink a transiting cargo ship before it crosses a certain line on the map. It will be escorted by an enemy frigate which I must not attack.

I start the mission and try to orientate myself a bit. The first thing I notice is that I'm in really shallow water. 20-30m. Gotta be careful with diving maneuvers here. On the other hand, diesel-electric subs were designed to operate in littoral waters, so we should feel quite at home. We're on course 186, 6 kts.



A few seconds into the missions and my crew already picks up emissions from an active sonar, bearing 228. The new contact is automatically assigned a designation, Sierra (indicating a sonar contact) 1. The new contact is automatically marked on the map.



Now it's time for a look at the sonar broadband station. The Kilo-class submarine is equipped with two sonar arrays, the bow or cylindrical array and the conformal array, but lacks a towed array which reduces its sonar capabilities somewhat. I pretty soon pick up two contacts. According to the amplitude on the display they are either very loud or very close. I mark them and assign trackers so I can monitor them better.



The next step is the narrowband sonar station. Here I can also detect sound contacts but also classify them according to their acoustic signature. I notice two contacts, one looks like a freighter, the other like a cargo ship, our prospective target. You can use the frequency scale to get a more detailed view on a contact's sound emissions in order to help you estimating what you're looking at. Since we don't want to sink the freighter by accident we have to be very careful making sure we're firing on the correct target.



I want more information so I decide to raise my ESM mast for a sneak peek above the waves. The ESM is another passive system that detects and classifies radar emissions. And indeed, as soon as the ESM is deployed several radar emitters are detected and automatically classified. I can clearly identify the emissions from an Oliver Hazard Perry FFG, a merchant ship and a large cargo ship.
At the moment I know there are three surface vessels out there, all SW of my current position, one of them a frigate that is using its active sonar to look for bad guys, like me. But I need more information to accurately employ my ordnance and hit the right target.



Since I now know the type of the contacts I go to the map station and classify the contacts. From the database of ships I get additional information, most important the TPK (Turns per knot) number and the number of blades of the target's propeller(s).



With the TPK and the DEMON (Demodulated Noise) station I can estimate a contact's speed. VERY important for creating a precise TMA (target motion analysis).

For example, here we see the DEMON station showing a contact with 7 propeller blades. From the classify menu in the map station I know that a freighter has 7 propeller blades, and a TPK of 20. I dial in the that number and move the cursor to the first (left) line of the DEMON display, now the computer calculates the speed of the target which I then enter into my TMA data. I then do the same for the cargo ship, which has a TPK of 10 and 4 propeller blades.



Now let's take a look at the TMA station. Finding and classifying a contact is only half the game. The other is creating a good firing solution so that your weapons actually hit the target, instead of scaring the local whale population. For a precise TMA we need four things: the target's range, course, speed and bearing. Speed and bearing are rather easy to find out as shown above, range and course are a bit more tricky. For example, we haven't got sonar contact to that sneaky frigate yet, only the regular active sonar intercepts. But since I know the speed of the cargo ship I guess that the FFG will sail at about the same speed, so I enter the 17 kts I estimated for the cargo ship using the DEMON station for the frigate.



The task here is to move the ruler so that the little dots in the upper left window stack upon each other in the center. Each of the marks on the ruler should exactly lie on one contact line. The length of the ruler represents the speed of the contact.

Since I now have a rough estimation about the enemy I go to the fire control station to prepare my attack. I will attack the cargo ship with two USET-80 torpedoes with passive/active seeker heads. I assign them the correct target and set their launch parameters. 50kts, 10m depth with 5m ceiling (so they will detonate far below the waterline causing maximum damage), 25m floor (meaning they won't go deeper since the water is very shallow here, don't want them to hit the seabed), active search. I set the "run to enable" distance to a bit more than 9000m. After travelling this distance the weapon will "go active" using its active sonar to search for its target. Whatever vessel is detected then will become the torpedo's target so we need to be very careful if other, neutral or friendly ships are around. Since the only neutral vessel is well to the south that shouldn't be a problem. I estimate the actual distance to the cargo ship from the point from where I plan to fire at about 12000m, so even if I have made some errors in the TMA the torpedoes should still be able to acquire and hit the target.



I continue slowly cruising south, changing my course by 20-30 degrees a couple of times to get a better TMA, constantly refining my firing solution. Finally I decide it's time to start the attack. I make sure I've entered the latest updates from the TMA screen via the "enter solution" button to the weapons control and switch to the fire control station. Flood torpedo tubes 1 and 2, equalize pressure, open muzzle doors, FIRE!



Immediately after my 2nd torpedo leaves the tube I receive the message "Torpedo in the water, bearing 206!", indicating that the O.H.Perry Frigate's sonar has detected the noise caused by the torpedo launches and its crew counter-fired a weapon towards me.



I order a course change to 80° and increase speed to 11 kts, the highest speed at this depth I can go without cavitating and getting VERY noisy. A few minutes later I can hear the active pings of the enemy torpedo. The active intercept station shows me the bearing of the threat but, since the interval of the pings is still pretty large, I'm hoping the fish hasn't acquired my Kilo yet. Just in case I fire my countermeasures and change course so that they are between me and the torpedo.

Several minutes later I hear loud detonations from the bearing of the cargo ship, a quick look using the "show truth"-cheat shows that my torpedoes have found their target.



The enemy torpedo is still coming closer, so I launch another pair of countermeasures, or better I try to launch the countermeasures, but apparently I forgot to reload them after the first salvo. Ooops... Well, after some rather exciting moments the countermeasure stores are reloaded and I fire them off, change course and increase my speed. I can't really run from a torpedo with a Kilo and its 20 kts max speed but at least I can try.

Shortly after that the pings of the torpedo cease and I reduce speed again to sneaky 5 kts. I change course to increase the distance between me and the frigate and hope to escape without her helo dropping a torpedo on me.

But nothing happens, I can escape unnoticed, a shadow in the deep, a hunter in the sea, a ghost in...ah, you get the idea. [Wink]



Result:

I sank the cargo ship, didn't sank the FFG or any neutral shipping and didn't hurt a single whale. Ah, and survived.

And had LOADS of fun.

This was NOT meant as a full-blown tutorial covering the finer aspects of sonar, TMA and ASW/ASuW warfare but more as some first impression on what I think is a fantastic, complex simulation. And maybe it helps another n00b or two...
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[HappyNinja]

Save the whales, say no to active sonar!

[dreaper]

How is active killing whales?

[OneShot]

I'm not sure if science has already proved this (I think I read something along those lines), but the active sonar frequencys presumably mess with the Whales - probably there sense of direction or something like that (or it tells them to commit suicide), because it was observed that in regions where there is lot of active sonar activity, whales end up a lot on beaches and given their mostly larger mass they have a problem of getting back into deep water, hence they die.
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[sixpk]

Excellent and thank you for this walk through:)
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*Sixpk*

[JavaDoc]

Nice. Thanks oneshot this was really useful. I'm a total newbie at naval games

Got one amendment and a question.

On Demon Analysis I was going crazy because I couldn't get any reading at all. By trial and error I found out that only tracks assigned A/B in Cylindrical/Outer BB can be used/show in DEMON.

Question I have is about Stadimeter - what's up with ranges being so far off? Like about 25-30% O.o unless I'm really bad at click 'n' drag. Also the zoom gradients for matching the photo to the 3D size seems to be too big/very difficult to get close.

Thx again

[azreark1]

i got a ?

are those 4 ships the only ones in the whole demo? i got tired of blowing up the same cargo ship so i went a little overboard and went after them all...and after i got them all (and lived!!) i set time speed to full and set my boat on a course looking for some more boats...after a day (in real life) i never got another sonar contact and i didnt feel like wasting more time going the opposite way so i'm just wondering...

[OneShot]

Yep thats about it as far as ships/boats in the demo mission go. Reason: everything has to be placed in the mission by the mission designer ...
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[Silent_But_Deadly]

Thanks for this walk-through of the demo. I'm a complete noob to DW, being playing a lot of SH3 which is like an arcade game in comparison! It took me a while to figure out a few things but I've more or less got the hang of it now, apart from the fact I ALWAYS get hit by the darn torps the FFG fires at me.

Are there any special tips to deploying countermeasures? Active or passive? It's the MK-50 they fire at me.

[Molon Labe]

http://www.commanders-academy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47
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[Tom]

great guide! i just wanna add a few things....*cough* the "cheap" things *cough cough cough* on this particular mission, the FFG wont shoot you if you dont shoot....erm...anything (aaaawwwww D': i wanna shoot stuff!) so,one of my favorite (cheap) tactics, is to turn showtruth on,surface,snorkel up,diesel engines on,ahead flank, fast forward until about 5 NM from the cargo ship. then,i shoot my torps, (all 53-65k) and start the OTHER 'cheap' tactics, which are: goto depth 9999 meters until I'm around 18 meters,then set dept for 26. usualy,by now,the ffg has either (A. fired torps or missiles...or (B. launched a seahawk,or both. if the FFG doesnt launch a hilo,i turn around,ahead flank, launch about 6 active cms,then slow to a stop,and watch the pretty B00MS <--- and those are my cheap tactics in a nutshell!

[gune]

Wow nice guide. Much better if you are always ready in fighting.



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