Sonar favours smaller subs

[Peenarse]

I notice that on smaller subs you can zoom out on the sonar UI a long way, and get great visibility of what lies ahead. On the largest subs you have to be fully zoomed out to get any visibility at all - any zoom-in has the edges of your sub outside the sonar UI, making it essentially pointless to do so outside of docking.

Since the larger subs tend to be more sluggish anyway, and require more careful and precise manoeuvring, having the added handicap of (effectively) reduced visibility range on the sonar is a real disincentive to use them. Could the sonar UI not scale with submarine size in order to remain consistent?

Here are two very different sized subs at the same levels of zoom, to better demonstrate what I mean.

An alternative suggestion is giving transducers their own sonar "bubble" centred at their location, so that larger subs could place them at their extremities to give them better coverage. This would have minimal impact on the functionality of shuttles and drones considering their tiny size. Just an idea.

[Gerald7777]

Tbh I don't see an issue here - it seems more like a design choice than an issue. Making sonar larger would make navigating easier however as it is now It's not a problem. We also should remember that area of sonar stays the same - logical result. And larger subs are usually better equipped/have more weapons/are slower. A relatively lower sonar range can be treated as Nerf for sinking fortresses. I've been using 2 big subs (around 52x11m) and had little problem with sonar for over 80h playtime.

However, gotta agree that making sonar bubble middle not set on the middle of a sub but on the Transuder location would be nice for both small and big subs. Would allow bigger crews for a more fun experience scavenging for resources or ruins. It can be accomplished using drones docked permanently into a fortress, however, that's a workaround and not a good method.

[Peenarse]

I don't think it would make navigating easier but it would bring it up to the same level that its already at for smaller submarines. If we say (for example) that the sonar has a 150m radius, and you are in a submarine that's 30m long, you can see 120m ahead of you. If your sub is 70m long you can see only 80m ahead of you. I am proposing that it has a consistent range from the edge of the hull (or the transducer method).

In regards to balance, larger subs might be somewhat better equipped but they definitely need to be. If they take on water they tend to sink like rocks, they also are much much harder to maintain once you reach critical depth (so much hull to repair). They require much larger crews, and larger crews require more medical supplies, more welding fuel, more ammunition - so they are expensive to run. All of this is a reasonable and fair trade-off for your extra size and options.

For the helmsman, bigger subs take longer to slow down/change course, as well as being much harder to fit through narrow spaces, so you already pay for your extra gains in plenty of other ways. This is all fine, it makes sense and I like it like that. I'd just like to be able to see the same distance ahead of me as I can in a shuttle :)

[Ek-Videogames]

Peenarse

• Literally all true points.

Also Hot take: Tickbox to make transducers render relative to own position rather than sub center-mass.

[Regalis11]

Addressed in https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma-development/commit/5f2216991cf3d578af1d3e79cf86804e6d5f710f by adding an option to make the sonar centered on the position of the transducer.

[Rokvach]

Tested, working correctly. Closing.