I had a Idea. When a surface ship sinks they release a section of the ships deck or structure that floats to retrieve the ship. Opposite the submarine by nature when they sink nothing floats as a floating marker and is real hard to find in different visibility and depths of water, well here go's. Build a submarine that takes hits like usual but with contacts inside the hull that are touched by water or a float switch when trigetrig brings the sub to the surface, has a set of lights go off with different colors, and deactivates the ability to submerge or fire the wepons. There is a second idea I have but I will add it later when the thought is vetoed or outright rejected.
Awesomley funny lol, I liked your comment The second idea is to have the the same water contacts inside the hull or a float or two one at each end that triggers a bobber to be released for a water marker that shows where it went down. Only issue is how to keep it from firing too early...
That was a experiment done in1988-1989 by swampy. Axis Lutzow and Allied SLC I think. Not mainstream, idea was to "make it easy/simple".
Is Arduino/Raspberry pi permissible to use to automate the depth control under normal operating provided there is no damage to the hull skin? I recently found a rc sub builder that has many good ideas for constructing, automate ideas. http://www.scratchbuildwithjohn.com/public/rc-submarines/
There have been automatic depth control mechanisms around since the mid-2000's. wfirebaugh, the mechanism you described requires active response to deploy the float. Active response means that a failure prevents the system from deploying. Not ideal. I've seen some experiments with alka-seltzer tablets to use a bubble stream to locate the wreck. set up correctly, you get a slow trickle of bubbles, and it starts working the moment the ship hits the water.
I was not talking about recovery, I was talking about the sub staying at the same depth while submerged not having to worry about trimming up or down while on the move. now if it gets several penetrating hits it is going down with or with out auto depth control meaning a sink score for the enemy team. I was asking if that degree of automation is OK or not. this thread was up so instead of making a new thread to ask the question I thought I would post here as it was related to the same class of vessel.
If you're taking IRCWCC/fast gun I can't think of any reason that system would be illegal as long as it didn't prevent you from sinking due to damage.