LWAMI torpedo/CM issue?

[ASWnut101]

So I got bored and decided to play a quick mission: Seawolf, ASUW intercept, on easy (really bored). The target was a Charles D'Gaulle (which it always seems to be, by the way) aircraft carrier. A friendly Arleigh Burke was operating in the area as well, maybe 10-12 miles away.

I fired off a TASM, and to nobody's surprise it was shot down. Then the Burke and D'Gaulle went at it, the Burke scoring some hits with its 5 inch gun and a SM-2. I launch an ADCAP, it impacts, then something odd happened.

The Burke dropped an ASROC on my head.

After some (many) turns and CMs, I began to notice something odd. The torp, after burning through an active CM, would fly to the surface and jump out of the water.


Now I thought I remember something about LWAMI fixing this, so it might be something to take a look at (if anyone still on the LWAMI team understands all of the doctrine stuff). It's been a while, so I might be wrong, but it just struck me as odd.

Also, what's with the Burke firing on unknowns? There's no way he could have ID'd me since I was creeping along at 5kts nearly 12 miles away, and even if he did, I would just register as a friendly. If he fired at the TIW bearing...that would imply that surface ships are set to engage any TIW from an unknown contact bearing?

[Molon Labe]

This is all very old stuff so my memory isn't so great (also, I was just a tester or maybe even a user back then instead of a team member).

Anyways, the old torpedo issue, I think, was when the torp would come from depth to the surface and breach with positive pitch, stalling, and coming out several times before recovering and resuming its search. I haven't seen that behavior in years, so I think that was fixed a long time ago. That doesn't necessarily mean a torpedo will never breach the surface if the CM is shallow or if the sea state is high enough. The key is the behavior after it burns through; does it promptly resume searching or does it fart around for awhile first?

On snapshots by skimmers... Luftwolf (and probably Amizaur too) made a lot of improvements to submarine AI and surface air defenses. But, considering the timestamp on the SurfEvadeWep doctrine is the same as the copyright tag in the header (12/20/2004), I'd say this was never modified by LWAMI. I don't see any references to sides in the doctrine, so it's entirely possible that shooting at unknown torpedoes is an "expected" behavior. I'm still a doctrine novice so I don't really know for sure. I've never seen this in-game, but back in the days before the improved air-defense doctrine I remember "neutral" AI warships firing on aircraft, often after weapons in the nearby battle got close. For now I think the best solution is not to fire torpedoes at friendly ships (it's hard for me to imagine a situation where a surface combatant would require a submarine to torpedo a hostile vessel in close proximity to it, unless it was disabled, but in that case it wouldn't be able to shoot you either).

[ASWnut101]

The ASROC torpedo would burn through CMs 1200 feet down, immediately pitch up to about 55°, and jump out of the water. This happened all but one time out of 4 or 5 total CMs, all of which were pretty deep (more than 300ft down). Upon re-entering the water, it would immediately return to its search depth (if I had to guess, it looked to be around 400ft), then continue its engagement of me. As for the time it did not jump, it appeared to work as intended, waiting 2-3 seconds after burning through before continuing it's circle search.



Now with the Burke, I really wasn't firing where my torps would pass close by it (see provided pics). The only thing I can think of is when I shot my first torpedo, it activated way too early, and the torp turned towards the Burke one or two times on it's snake pattern search. However, the Burke never bothered to engage me that time, and the torp was many miles away from it. My second ADCAP never enabled or even turned towards the Burke before it fired on me.

Pic 1, initial conditions after the first ADCAP hit:

355


Pic 2, about 2 minutes after firing second ADCAP:

356


The Burke had emptied its Harpoon launchers at this point, but it only engaged with it's guns and an SM-2 before seeming to disengage the D'Gaulle. That prompted me to fire the ADCAPs. I don't know, the surface ships in quick missions always seem to act...strange.

[Molon Labe]

Is the timestamp on your torpedo doctrine 2/4/2007?

[ASWnut101]

Yeah, it is.

[Molon Labe]

Do you have multiple installs of DW?

[ASWnut101]

Nope, I've never had more than one install after I reformatted my HDD.

[Molon Labe]

Crap. There go all of my theories.

I hope it was just a fluke. Like I said, I haven't seen that happen in years. Hopefully you'll have better luck soon.