Advice for a new player
 

Hi all - I hate to make this kind of post, but I've been looking around and while I have found some guidance, I am hoping for a more concrete set of suggestions.


I just recently picked up DW after playing Cold Waters for a couple of months, during which I stumbled upon FPSChazly's YouTube channel. Get looked interesting and so, undeterred by the complexity and girth of the user manual, have jumped right into the game.


I saw several suggestions on this forum that the best thing a beginner can do is to stick with one boat, read the manual, and learn how that one boat works really well. I have been doing this for the most part, trying to stick to the 688i boats, but have occasionally played a 773 or SSN21. success has been... Marginal at best. Doing scenarios, I have struggled to land weapons, have sunk the wrong target, and failed to detect the enemy just about every time. I had a brief moment of success earlier this week on a CVBG protection mission, sinking an Iranian Kilo, but the second of my flight of two torpedos re-acquired on and sunk a friendly Ticonderoga... Oops.


Anyway, I'm now obviously looking to improve my gameplay. I have installed the RA mod, as I thought it fixed bugs and stuff with the base game, but recent posts I've seen have suggested I am doing myself a disservice by not learning the base get first. Is this true? Should I uninstall and start fresh with an unmodded game?


Also having some issues with specific techniques. Three biggest problems I'm having are below. Any advice is welcomed and appreciated:

1. TMA and getting a good solution... I know this probably comes mostly from practice, but if anybody has tips... I have been playing with truth off until I get a solution I like and then toggling truth on for a second to see how close my SOL is. Seems to be helping. How do some of you experienced hunters work a good SOL? Do you merge contacts from different sensors frequently? That seems to just make things harder for me. How do you judge a good speed for a contact without Demon data?

2. Weapons... I think I have deciphered the RA weapons guide enough that I can shoot torpedos pretty well, at least I'm getting hits. But TLAMs see. To be prematurely detonating. I've read Ivan's instructions multiple times, but cannot make them work. Insight?

3. Lastly, torpedo evasion... I haven't even really tried yet, aside from changing course. Generally if I start getting hit by quick pings I go get another drink while I wait to sink to crush depth. I see Chazly has a video... Is that a good place to start? Any other good tips?



Oh one more thing I guess. Is there a way to mute the active sonar pings of friendly vessels? So annoying when I'm trying to get a good SOL on a faint Kill and the OHP 4 nmi away is playing dueling banjos at 7500Hz...



Thanks for reading, looking forward to answers. And Chazly, if you're reading and care to provide input I would be slightly star-struck!

I guess the first thing to realize is that DW/RA isn't Cold Waters. :03:
Cold Waters is more like dog fighting in jets. You have good 360 degree vision to dodge attacks, which isn't all that accurate for submarines.

It sounds like you have a good plan as it is. With DW, you need experience and a little bit of luck. Look at what you did wrong after a frustrating mission. How would you correct your mistakes? Are you using your boat properly and maximizing its strengths?

Sometimes small changes can help a lot. Let's suppose you just picked up a contact on your towed array and you have your sonar and TMA auto crew turned on. Track the contact for about six minutes then alter your course to port by, let's say, 15 degrees. Track it for another six minutes after your towed array straightens out then alter your course to starboard by 30 degrees so you're doing a zig zag pattern. Track it for another six minutes.
Your TMA auto crew should be able to come up with a fairly accurate solution. :D
Now, try to close the distance slightly so you can get better sonar performance. Use this time to start classifying your target. Once you have a good idea of what you're up against, you can plan a good attack.

Now, draw a couple of dots with a straight line connecting them. One dot represents your boat and the other represents the sensors on your towed array. Where would you want your contact to be to get the most information from it? :03:

One last bit of advice for getting a good solution: your TMA computer needs some change in bearing over time so it can do its thing. :up:

welcome aboard!
 

:D

1. Part of me hates to say that a lot of what I do with TMA comes from intuition and just experience, but it's true. I wish I could break it down better but I'm not sure it's possible. It probably needs something more like someone just guiding you, which is a labor intensive task to say the least :).

3. The torpedo evasion video I posted is about evading torpedo acquisition. Once a torpedo has acquired, sometimes radical maneuvering but more likely a counter measure could save your hide. But it's still pretty dicey, I recommend against it :up:

Enter sequential number "of the last TLAM waypoint" into DR field. If you have 4 waypoints enter 4.Hope it works for you.

There should still be a bunch of guides on subguru.com written for 688i, Subcommand and DW talking about sonar, TMA and so on. They are probably also uploaded here in Subsim.

Hah, thanks Chazly! :yeah:

TMA does seem to require some kind of intuition. I wish there was a way to get a little more info from the actual TMA plot, like zoom factor (2x, 4x, 8x, etc), maybe a little scale bar to show what 10kyd would look like at that scale, or the ability to lay the TMA plot over the tactical map. I doubt any of that would help me, but it would be cool.


On a side note, sunk my first submerged (and correctly ID'd) target over Thanksgiving :D


Polak - yeah I thought I had done that correctly but I guess not. May try again soon. Thanks for clarification.


Thanks for the responses everybody!

howdy neighbor FPSchazly
 

FPSchazly I see you're another Marylander..... I'm a native of Annapolis, grew up on the Naval Academy grounds, had the amazing experience of going down the Bay (and about 60' under) for a day on the X-1 submarine (mothballed at the Naval Academy near Field House last time I saw her)..... that was about 47 yrs ago, and here I sit no less the noob but found your videos at YouTube to be excellent. Coherent is good :) You know your stuff.

My father was a comrade of the captain of the X-1; they were regulars at the Fleet Reserve Club. I spent a lot of my youth fishing and crabbing the Severn and Chesapeake, saw the USS Scorpion as she sat in the channel off of NSRDC across from USNA, then we got the horrible news she'd gone down off the Azores. I'll never forget as my grandfather circled the Scorpion many crew were on the deck..... rather eerie when she went MIA. Also grew up with kids of a naval officer who'd done significant work in the hunt for the Thresher after her hideous fate.

I was inspired to buy "Sub Command", but the actual manual was out of my budget; the existing embedded tutorials were quite good, though. The fact is I'm pretty much starting again from scratch...... your YouTube videos were a great find.

Not to intrude on the topic, and I'm kind of new at this forum scene......just caught my eye when I saw the excellent thread and initiating message. Were you ever crew on a submarine, or work in the design end? I'd prospected for a graphics job at Johns Hopkins APL in Savage, MD and saw extensive and fantastic visual material they'd produced for a long-term submarine technology project. The bulk of my graphics career was much more focused on military aircraft, also a captivating topic for me. Speaking of topic, I'll conserve bandwidth and sign off here :) Look forward to focus time on your series. Thanks for your generous knowledge....

Welcome to SUBSIM Guys!
 

:salute:

Thank you! That sounds really cool to go on that submersible, never been on one (that actually works). I work very close to APL, actually, and my grandfather worked there. But, no, I've never worked on or been deployed on any submarines. I just use my engineering knowledge to talk about the topics for which I know some things, it tends to make it seem like I know more than I actually do :haha:

I hope you enjoy watching more of my content!