Depth chargers are annoyingly inconsistent

[karl]

I've had a lot of depth charges dropped on me and it only goes one of 2 ways, Either they completely miss you're boat and do nothing or they hit and are so accurate that the about 3-5 charges do such a large amount of damage that you can't actually resurface. I mean what is the point of adding the ability to fix stuff and pump are evacuate the water if the only time you get to do it is in a hopeless struggle that is going to fail. I understand that yeah you're not always going to be able to survive depth charges. but in my entire play time i've never survived being actually hit by depth charges. am I just bad at the game is is there something i'm doing wrong? it's such a kick in the balls that you have such an amazing repair system just for me to never use it

[Dewgle]

Without seeing any video of how you play, I can't say for sure that you're doing anything wrong or not. What I can tell you though is that there's a game setting you can change called "Damage Difficulty" iirc, that allows you to change how powerful damage done to your boat is. This setting cannot be changed mid-career.

But there's more to it than just that.

The game has a very complex damage system. Your depth actually affects how quickly you fill up with water. A hole punctured in the side of your boat will spit out less water the closer you are to the surface and a ton of water if you're really deep. Yeah, the game simulates accurate water physics.

Your bilge pump has an operating pressure of 20 atmospheres of pressure. This means it works faster and pumps more water overboard the closer you are to the surface. The deeper you are? The slower it works. And if you're below 200 meters of depth? It just won't work at all. Like trying to lift 3 ton truck with a 2 ton jack, the bilge pump isn't strong enough to fight the water pressure outside of your boat beyond 200 meters depth.

Also, many players don't realize there's an "emergency blow" function, but it's there. You can find it if you right-click on the valve station. A standard blow, that is the one you normally use to surface the boat only uses just enough air to push all the water out of your ballast tanks. About 1/3rd of your total compressed air reserves.

When you're close to the surface where external pressure is around 1 atmosphere, 1/3rd of your compressed air reserves is enough to completely drain the water from your ballast tanks. But at say 200 meters depth where there's 20 atmospheres of pressure? A standard blow will only push out 1/20th of the water from your ballast tanks.

However an emergency blow will just keep blowing air until one of two things happen; Your ballast tanks are empty in which case there's no need to keep blowing OR the remaining pressure inside your compressed air reserve tanks equalizes with the pressure outside your sub. Like trying to fill up a car tire to 32 psi when you only have 30 psi left inside the compressed air tank, you just can't do it.

As a last-ditch 'hail mary' you could try to run your electric/diesel air compressor to shove more air inside your compressed air tanks during an emergency blow but if it doesn't work you'll just kill your crew faster through suffocation.

So all in all what this tells us is that being deep is a death sentence. The deeper you are:

1. The faster you'll fill up with water
   
2. The less effective your bilge pump will be
   
3. The less effective a ballast-blow will be

Depth is the enemy. Do your best to avoid going deep unless you really have to, to avoid the enemy. The one advantage depth gives us (besides helping us evade detection) is that it gives us more time to evade depth charges.

You see the enemy escorts are pretty clever. They don't drop depth charges at where you are, they drop charges at where you're going to be. Depth charges take a while to sink to your level, especially if you're very deep. So the AI has to drop them in front of you like a net in the hopes that you'll just sail right into them.

The best way to avoid a depth charge attack is to watch your map and listen to your hydrophone operator. The moment you hear him yell "depth charges!" then change your depth, course and speed. Anything to put 3-dimensions of distances between you and where the AI intended those depth charges to explode.

You can also use those depth charges to help you escape as well because while they're going off, the loud explosions will deafen the enemy hydrophones and the mass of bubbles from the explosions will send back false positives on their sonar making you temporarily invisible. Use that time to put some distance between you and the enemy before the effect wears off and they begin their search anew.

[wolf310ii]

Originally posted by Meffo Bills:

Either they completely miss you're boat and do nothing or they hit and are so accurate that the about 3-5 charges do such a large amount of damage that you can't actually resurface.

Distance to the boat and the damage to the boat is not linear, its not twice the distance, half the damage.
Actually the distance between a depth charge spring a small leak or ripping the boat in half is very small, only a few meters.

Also if there is a leak and you try to fix it first, only to realize the water comes faster in than you can repair the leak and pump the water out and then you try to save the boat with an emergency blow, its already to late for that.

[mouseno4]

Originally posted by wolf310ii:

Originally posted by Meffo Bills:

Either they completely miss you're boat and do nothing or they hit and are so accurate that the about 3-5 charges do such a large amount of damage that you can't actually resurface.

Distance to the boat and the damage to the boat is not linear, its not twice the distance, half the damage.
Actually the distance between a depth charge spring a small leak or ripping the boat in half is very small, only a few meters.

Also if there is a leak and you try to fix it first, only to realize the water comes faster in than you can repair the leak and pump the water out and then you try to save the boat with an emergency blow, its already to late for that.

I’ve found that the OP is pretty accurate.

They are very inconsistent. Either they do nothing or obliterate your boat.

And when they hit, you are dead. No amount of anything will change the outcome.

If you take literally ANY damage from depth charges, you are sunk. 100% of the time. There is no instances of taking damage from depth charges, fixing and escaping. If you take damage from even one depth charge, your dead, dead, dead.

[CaptainDeadlySniper]

what i do is i take the sub out to the patrol area and the first thing i do is find how far u can submerge to. like most of my boats will go into the red area on the depth gauge. the maximum depth i go to is 225 meters. they don't seem to be able to hit at that depth. so if u get hit constantly i suggest u try to see if u can dive to 225 meters and stop all engines and stop all the noise then they can't sonar ping u so well and can't pick up the noise. basically go silent running.
Thats normally the best option.

[kangaxx]

Wait until you get hit with hedgehog... 1 salvo and had 16 leaks and 12 sailors injured

[karl]

Originally posted by kangaxx:

Wait until you get hit with hedgehog... 1 salvo and had 16 leaks and 12 sailors injured

This exactly I'm often at depth around 100-150 meters and the one time I get hit well actually it's more like 3-5 consecutive hits in a row

[karl]

Originally posted by McDewgle:

Without seeing any video of how you play, I can't say for sure that you're doing anything wrong or not. What I can tell you though is that there's a game setting you can change called "Damage Difficulty" iirc, that allows you to change how powerful damage done to your boat is. This setting cannot be changed mid-career.

But there's more to it than just that.

The game has a very complex damage system. Your depth actually affects how quickly you fill up with water. A hole punctured in the side of your boat will spit out less water the closer you are to the surface and a ton of water if you're really deep. Yeah, the game simulates accurate water physics.

Your bilge pump has an operating pressure of 20 atmospheres of pressure. This means it works faster and pumps more water overboard the closer you are to the surface. The deeper you are? The slower it works. And if you're below 200 meters of depth? It just won't work at all. Like trying to lift 3 ton truck with a 2 ton jack, the bilge pump isn't strong enough to fight the water pressure outside of your boat beyond 200 meters depth.

Also, many players don't realize there's an "emergency blow" function, but it's there. You can find it if you right-click on the valve station. A standard blow, that is the one you normally use to surface the boat only uses just enough air to push all the water out of your ballast tanks. About 1/3rd of your total compressed air reserves.

When you're close to the surface where external pressure is around 1 atmosphere, 1/3rd of your compressed air reserves is enough to completely drain the water from your ballast tanks. But at say 200 meters depth where there's 20 atmospheres of pressure? A standard blow will only push out 1/20th of the water from your ballast tanks.

However an emergency blow will just keep blowing air until one of two things happen; Your ballast tanks are empty in which case there's no need to keep blowing OR the remaining pressure inside your compressed air reserve tanks equalizes with the pressure outside your sub. Like trying to fill up a car tire to 32 psi when you only have 30 psi left inside the compressed air tank, you just can't do it.

As a last-ditch 'hail mary' you could try to run your electric/diesel air compressor to shove more air inside your compressed air tanks during an emergency blow but if it doesn't work you'll just kill your crew faster through suffocation.

So all in all what this tells us is that being deep is a death sentence. The deeper you are:

1. The faster you'll fill up with water
   
2. The less effective your bilge pump will be
   
3. The less effective a ballast-blow will be

Depth is the enemy. Do your best to avoid going deep unless you really have to, to avoid the enemy. The one advantage depth gives us (besides helping us evade detection) is that it gives us more time to evade depth charges.

You see the enemy escorts are pretty clever. They don't drop depth charges at where you are, they drop charges at where you're going to be. Depth charges take a while to sink to your level, especially if you're very deep. So the AI has to drop them in front of you like a net in the hopes that you'll just sail right into them.

The best way to avoid a depth charge attack is to watch your map and listen to your hydrophone operator. The moment you hear him yell "depth charges!" then change your depth, course and speed. Anything to put 3-dimensions of distances between you and where the AI intended those depth charges to explode.

You can also use those depth charges to help you escape as well because while they're going off, the loud explosions will deafen the enemy hydrophones and the mass of bubbles from the explosions will send back false positives on their sonar making you temporarily invisible. Use that time to put some distance between you and the enemy before the effect wears off and they begin their search anew.

Ok so I already new most of that i'm a fairly seasoned player I have 160 hours which isn't that much I know but still I know stuff about U-Boats just from watching movies and researching stuff about them. Typically what I do is start dive as deep a I can go but never past 150 and just as the destroyer is about to drop his charges I speed up and turn sometime even change depth. 99% of the time they miss my boat completely not even coming close. I've been in hour long engagements with multiple destroyers and survived long enough for them to run out of depth charges. But that 1% when they hit is unrecoverable 3-5 hit about 6-20 leaks and half my crew dead, also my damage difficulty is on medium

[kangaxx]

Originally posted by Meffo Bills:

This exactly I'm often at depth around 100-150 meters and the one time I get hit well actually it's more like 3-5 consecutive hits in a row

I ling around 92-96m depth in preparation for a depth charge attack, and when they start dropping, crash dive to 150m. But with the hedgehog depth is barely a defense, the grenades sink faster than depth charges, so they dont need to guess where you are going to be but where you are. And since they drop so many you are hit several times :-(

i was hit on the bow and aft simultaneously and died seconds later, no chance to repair or pump out water

[Tribal44]

if they drop depth charges right on you, basically your position/bearing/speed etc have been pinpointed, so yes you are kinda screwed in this situation. ( but it depends on the depth of sea bed, if you can land it easier to recover/loose enemy)

there are a few things to do to either confuse enemy or make you harder to detect.

[🅽🅴🅼🅾]

What you said there sounded historically accurate OP. Depth charges were hit or miss and when you're very deep a tiny bit of damage is all it takes. Sometimes you're in shallow waters and you don't have to worry about the massive amounts of pressure in the deep ocean when you've taken some damage. Hopefully the enemy has run out of depth charges at this point, or didn't hear your bell hit the dirt. Those were likely the times when it was actually possible to repair and resurface. Most just died.