ASW Helicopters need limited fue/time on station

[stb155]

Those helos are really frustrating in some missions.

I sink all the escort ships he can land on.
But when i have to go fast in shallow water to reach the mission target landing ships, or launch Harpoons at them he always picks me up and lobs torpedo after torpedo.

Those ******* really should have to fill up every 1-3hours and rearm after 2 torps fired.
And if there is no ship left to land on, ditch/crash.

Since you can't kill them, can't outrun them and can't hide from them they should at least be not there forever.

Also would help if they show on the map, at least during they dip their sonar.

[Sugar]

+1

[theCarthaginian]

I think they do have limited weapons... but the infiinite fuel/sonobouys thing is annoying.

[ramjbjb]

All platforms have realistic loadouts. Those helicopters have two torpedoes and a limited number of sonobuoys, as far as I can tell. The problem is that they carry a lot of them, enough to track a submarine for VERY long.

A Ka25 had an operational range of 400km cruising at 200kph. Meaning it's full reach was 800km at 200kph. Loitering consumes less fuel so in fact is more, but even at 200kph those things will stay up for 4 hours.

Did your fight last more than 4 hours?. Then the helicopter being aloft is perfectly normal.


PS: you can't hear a helicopter dipping a sonar, the only way you'll detect it is if it goes active. In my experience helos don't go active until they already have a solid passive contact with you - meaning they are mostly on top of your position.

So 99% of the time there's no reason you should get a map contact for one because you should get no map info on something you can't hear. And in the 1% left you have much bigger problems than the helicopter not showing on the map.

[Shadow]

Ideally, as soon as its mothership is sunk, a helo should very well decide to bug out if it suddenly finds itself short on fuel to reach any viable friendly platform or Soviet-held territory.

There could be some variance to it: some pilots would leave the area as soon as they find themselves at or past bingo fuel with no suitable friendlies around, while the most zealous ones would rather stick around, do their job and then ditch, hoping to get the Order of Lenin afterwards, perhaps.

And a whole spectrum inbetween. The mission's location would be another factor, of course. On average, red helos would stick around longer the closer they are to friendly territory.

[theCarthaginian]

Originally posted by ramjbjb:

A Ka25 had an operational range of 400km cruising at 200kph. Meaning it's full reach was 800km at 200kph. Loitering consumes less fuel so in fact is more, but even at 200kph those things will stay up for 4 hours.

Didn't realize those Sov mini-choppers had such long legs. Lack of a tail boom must really make you underestimate their size.

[The Gowron Gaze]

Well if the fleet is conducting blue water ops in which there is no land base for the helo to RTB to should it lose its mothership, you can pretend that the helo crew is going to expend every effort to find the bastard that sunk their ship before their fuel runs out.

Likewise if the helo is within range of land you can put on your role playing cap and assume the crew would rather hunt you down than go for land and potentially spend the rest of the war as POWs :D

[Hellfish6]

Is that a 400km operational range with weapons aboard? I kinda doubt it.

[ramjbjb]

Originally posted by Hellfish6:

Is that a 400km operational range with weapons aboard? I kinda doubt it.

Doubt it all you want.

http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=211

That's the standard range on a normal loadout. The Hormone could swap one or both of it's torpedoes for external fuel tanks, so with reduced torpedo loads they had even more range.

[theCarthaginian]

Originally posted by Hellfish6:

Is that a 400km operational range with weapons aboard? I kinda doubt it.

Well, I was operating under the assumption that they were smaller than they are - as I said, the coaxial rotors make them look almost comically small for someone used to judging an eggbeater by the size of a common 'main/tail' layout bird.
Turns out a Hormone has about the same MTOW as a Blackhawk... but about 50% the range at cruise.

[Shadow]

Originally posted by Homey D. Clown:

Well if the fleet is conducting blue water ops in which there is no land base for the helo to RTB to should it lose its mothership, you can pretend that the helo crew is going to expend every effort to find the bastard that sunk their ship before their fuel runs out.

Likewise if the helo is within range of land you can put on your role playing cap and assume the crew would rather hunt you down than go for land and potentially spend the rest of the war as POWs :D

Perhaps. I could hear them overhead, coming and going, but no amount of communist zeal could find my boat after this[image.ibb.co], and no amount of revenge would be enough.

(Command was somewhat confused and told me I had failed the mission, but then I got a Silver Star and the Iceland Stands event, so I figure it was just a text glitch)

[puckhead]

The helo thing is frustrating sometimes. I feel at times their passive sonar is too good and I'm pretty sure the rotor wash would be detected by own ship passive sonar at times depending on range and other factors. I've yet to see this on my screen.

[Shadow]

Originally posted by puckhead:

The helo thing is frustrating sometimes. I feel at times their passive sonar is too good and I'm pretty sure the rotor wash would be detected by own ship passive sonar at times depending on range and other factors. I've yet to see this :Helo: on my screen.

Someone had done some research and found out the range of aircraft MAD (passive magnetic detection) is more realistic around 500 yards rather than 1000, Cold Waters' default value.

If you'd like to mod it, you'd need to edit config.txt like so:

MADDetectionRangeInYards=500

I played the mission from the screenshot with this change, and helos appeared to be more reasonable. Even though I managed to sink the whole convoy, during my initial launches they were all over me, and then they stayed fairly nearby for a while, until they finally lost me. After the initial four or so torpedoes, I figure they ran out of ordnance, and once the escorts were hit, if I was still on their screens, they could do nothing but watch me fade away into the deep.

[puckhead]

I thought MAD was only on planes and helo's have dipping passive/active sonar and sonar buoys.

[Shadow]

Originally posted by puckhead:

I thought MAD was only on planes and helo's have dipping passive/active sonar and sonar buoys.

I'm fairly sure both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters have MAD sensors.

Found some documentation here:
https://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/fun/part09.htm

The function, then, of airborne MAD equipment is to detect the submarine-caused anomaly in the earth's magnetic field. Slant detection ranges are on the order of 500 meters from the sensor. The depth at which a submarine can be detected is a function both of the size of the submarine and how close the sensor is flown to the surface of the water.

[Kilo_60]

Originally posted by ramjbjb:

All platforms have realistic loadouts. Those helicopters have two torpedoes and a limited number of sonobuoys, as far as I can tell. The problem is that they carry a lot of them, enough to track a submarine for VERY long.

A Ka25 had an operational range of 400km cruising at 200kph. Meaning it's full reach was 800km at 200kph. Loitering consumes less fuel so in fact is more, but even at 200kph those things will stay up for 4 hours.

Did your fight last more than 4 hours?. Then the helicopter being aloft is perfectly normal.


PS: you can't hear a helicopter dipping a sonar, the only way you'll detect it is if it goes active. In my experience helos don't go active until they already have a solid passive contact with you - meaning they are mostly on top of your position.

So 99% of the time there's no reason you should get a map contact for one because you should get no map info on something you can't hear. And in the 1% left you have much bigger problems than the helicopter not showing on the map.

It's a known fact that "Hovering in place" consumes fuel a lot faster than just flying from point to point...