From the Depths - How to Build a Stealthy Submarine

[@lukedeconcini]

ur a legend bob thanks for this tutorial, i totally forget abt wireless snoopers

[@plumsink]

You're very welcome, ya there is a lot of stuff to overlook in this game.

[@williamS538]

Congrats on the 1k subs, awesome vid

[@plumsink]

Thanks man!

[@plumsink]

I finally have my Angstrom killer! It's an ugly piece of work, half the hull is covered in rubber and half is bare metal. I just call it PACsub, and two of them and a Dory (to finish up) took out an Angstrom. Which, since the Angstrom costs twice as much as the two PACsubs and the Dory put together, I am gonna count as a win in my book. ;) As the name suggests, the PACsub uses two particle cannons. It is a bit of a caviar solution by my standards, costs a bit over 100K and swallows more energy than Three Mile Island could produce, but it gets it done.

[@kiritotheabridgedgod4178]

IIRC, don't propellors cripple stealth capability when it comes to sonar? That could be the reason why you see no improvement from using rubber instead of stone? IIRC, in terms of stealth engines for subs it goes Ion, internal dediblades, external dediblades and then propellors, from best to worst. So any propellors on the craft instantly kneecap its stealth in terms of passive sonar signature. Rubber deals with the active sonar signature.

[@plumsink]

Economy was part of my objective, and ion engines are not very cheap for the thrust provided. I will try internal dediblades the next time I build one, not sure how many dediblades that would have to be to achieve the same speed.

[@kiritotheabridgedgod4178]

@@plumsink fair, but if the point is to make a stealth sub, ion is still your best bet, if you're using propellors, then it doesn't matter if you only use passive sonar and wireless snoopers. The point is, the reason the material you use doesn't seem to matter, is because of the propulsion system being used. If I remember correctly, a completely wired sub, with ion engines and rubber outer plating has a passive detection range of < 100m and a similar active detection range, although both are also dependent on the overall shape of the craft. The advantage of using the ion propulsion (and arguable the dediblades as well) is that a well designed Ion/dediblade sub can travel a lot faster outside of combat, as you can fly while moving and dive down to truly undetectable depths while in combat. Doesn't matter if the enemy can see you at the start if they can't find you after the fact.

[@815TypeSirius]

​@kiritotheabridgedgod4178 going to incorporate this if still accurate.

[@kiritotheabridgedgod4178]

@@815TypeSirius only thing that isn't is the dediblade thing. Did also learn that if Tailplanes are also radar/sonar disruptive, so if you're going for an Ion sub, duct the engine with an alloy duct, then cover the duct with Tailplanes. It will help with stealth, and give you slightly more aerial control. Learned since then, that alloy also has a similar effect, if less so, to rubber in terms of radar/sonar dampening. The best idea, is make the side and front/back profile of the sub as thin as possible and launch all your weaponry from the underside. If you can keep the front/side profile under 7 blocks tall, you can get away with a sonar decoy of 4 decoy bodies for distracting a torpedo with 2 or less signal processors.

[@icetea_isgood]

Does rubber coating on the outside of the sub keep it more stealthy?

[@plumsink]

Supposedly it does, but I tried rubber on my Dory submarine and I didn't notice any difference from stone. Now, this may be because the Dory is so small that it is almost undetectable anyway.

[@815TypeSirius]

Is this still relevant? I really want some stealth capture subs.

[@plumsink]

It's at least partially relevant I would say, a lot more can be done to make a sub stealthy than I think I was talking about here. The best way to find out how to make stealthy subs is to join a good discord like Damaddok's one - discord.com/invite/7dqpnWM8xb However, if all you want is a good capture sub, pretty much all you need is one that goes deep until it is near the target, is small, and goes very fast. Having a sub that goes 35 m/s or more is not at all unreasonable, and it can be small and so hard to hit. Stick some rams or harpoon missiles on it too. What I do also is actually have a seat on a nuke missile (a tiny fast airplane with a nuke in the nose) but put the seat far enough back to where you are not in the area of effect. Just let the missile nuke the target then hop off and get on the vehicle. Good luck! :)

[@Damaddok82]

I know you are trying to keep things cheap but, if you put some aerodynamic hatches on your torpedo tubes I think you can squeeze a bit more speed out of it.

[@plumsink]

I probably could squeeze a few more m/s out of it, it's just not worth the resources to me to get those extra few. Anyway the craft exists for the sake of the video and explaining the concepts behind stealthy submarines. I am not going to use it in campaign. What I am working on now is an underwater base to protect the resource zones. It will be like a submarine but with cannons with supercavitation shells.

[@Damaddok82]

@@plumsink I think aps shells lose about 10% of their speed with the super cavitation base so you may have some accuracy issues. I may be wrong so take it with a grain of salt

[@plumsink]

@@Damaddok82 Well I am not sold on any one approach yet. Just want something that can take out the frikkin Angstrom. I have the guns ready to go into the battleship, but I need a more cost-effective solution for base defense. Missiles and torpedoes just don't hit it at all often, even if you set their speed to max. I figure if I have something that will take out an Angstrom, it will take out most of what the LH throws my way.

[@plumsink]

Guessing the LH don't use smoke much, maybe I should go with a space laser.

[@Damaddok82]

@@plumsink IDK if this is still around but IMHO the tachyon was the hardest design. Did like 160 m/s and had smoke deployers. But with that said I think small EMP frag missile spam works pretty well last I shot one down. Just remembered something about torpedos. Many mid to late game designs have some kind of torpedo defence. The distraction sticks can be countered by signal processors. I'm more a fan of torpedo interceptors myself because then you just take the enemy torpedos out of the equation entirely. But if you want the best means of hitting something with torpedoes you can't go wrong with remote guided thumper head torpedoes. Large ones will just laugh at most torpedo defenses. It's expensive to run if course but may be worth looking into.