Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins
You should realize that the reason the Germans could use the tools in the OLC Gui related to the openness of western societies, where ship dimension information was pretty easy to obtain.
In the Pacific, Japanese warships' lengths and other dimensions were mostly known but the merchant fleet had hundreds of ships that were not even in the recognition manual! The rest had some very unreliable information. Using something like the OLC GUI in a fleet boat would necessitate another mod like SCAF, which would have to put precise dimensions for every ship on the ocean into the ONI manual of the fleet boat. Since that would be grossly unhistorical, the presence of the tool that would require that information would also be inappropriate.
Simply put, in closed societies such as Japan and Germany, information is much more difficult to obtain than it is in open societies such as the UK and US.
An interesting sidenote: the American subs could do Fast-90 in real life as there was a direct hookup of periscope beaing to TDC which is not incorporated into our game. Even better than that, O'Kane was using the position keeper in conjunction with the periscope bearing link to do constant bearing attacks at random angles, as we do with the vector analysis method.
Joe, I was responding to Aaronblood's call for a position keeper in the U-Boat and MH's call for fleet boat dials with a "U-Boat look" in the German boat. I think I understood those posts.
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Firstly, this thing you said about open/closed societies and the relative abundance of data - do you have any evidence for this? Because, in short, it doesn't match anything i have learned on the subject.
For a start, how do you even define open/closed societies in this case? Japan opened up in the 19th century at the behest of an american gunboat, and had been crawling with foreigners ever since - and what's more, a goodly number of Japanese ships were not even built in Japan.
From what I've read, the Germans, like the Americans, had patchy and unreliable intel and a lot of experience. They may not have known the exact dimensions of specific ships, but they understood the design of shipbuilding and what to look for in ships of certain sizes. They also knew average dimensions and standard mast height ratios. Just as did the Americans.
Contrary to your assertion that the tools are dependent on highly accurate data, you can still use these tools with imperfect information. However you are not alone in this misapprehension. Personally, i use the tools a lot, and never open the recognition manual.
And also it should be borne in mind, just like the Americans, the Germans often overestimated what they had just sunk.
The OLC-GUI tools, as you call them, were there in U-boats at least for some of the time, and they were used as and when needed, which was not necessarily all that often. The AOB finder was also there on US scopes, but US skippers, like the Germans, preferred to judge AOB by eye. I do too. It's quicker and more reliable.
The U-jagd chrono was not used by the Americans, and it appears the US never really understood the simple elegance of the fixed wire method even after capturing the U505. But this happens in life, sometimes simple solutions don't always occur to everyone.
The Attack Disk is broadly similar to the Submarine Attack Course Finder, which was itself designed by the Royal Navy i believe.
It is true that the representation of the TDC lacks several important capabilities, but it is also true that the representation of the German TDC also lacks important capablities, most notably the ability to account for changes in the U-boat's own heading.
Lastly, Aaron Blood was not in fact calling for a PK in U-boats. MH was maybe doing what you say, but personally i think he was calling for directly inputtable TDC controls on the scope screen, rather than a complete US PK. There are mods that enable this, very well in SH3, so far less well in SH4UBM