My map contact update dilema...

Benzin1973 · 04-20-17, 08:48 PM

This isnt really a question, more like a "reflection", i would like to hear your toughts on this...

Steam sais ibe played 531 hrs of Silent Hunter 3. Add to that the hours ibe played without launching the game from steam and therefore steam doesnt count them, (after patching with hsie fixes the game no longer needs steam to run), and the real number of hours ibe played the game are probably near 1k.

All this game time has given me experience, even using the harder mods like NYGM or GWX, i havent died in ??? i dont even remember, i never load a game, and i can hit pretty much anything i want, as long as its under 3.5km (by getting targeting data from plotting), i can plot perfect intercept courses to radio contacts, and conduct "textbook" 90º attacks.

Yep, i can do all this things. -Provided- the "No map contact updates" is Not checked.

All other realism setting dont make a huge difference to me, i can (and usually do) keep them off without major problems. But the second i disable map contact updates, my tonnage drops to about 30% its usual, i find myself almost ramming the ships (or ending up too far to shoot at them) and some times when i get chased by destroyers i only escape by the hair on a bold frogs head.

Ibe allways justified myself to have map updates on with "its just a convenience to avoid tedious plotting". But i have realized that all this time ibe played with map updates on, has made me so dependant on it, that now it seems i cant play without it. it seems my whole "style" of play and tactics are somehow totally dependant on those squares being there on the map.
Now i honestly admit, i really had no idea of how much of an impact map updates makes in the game. To me it now seems this feature should account for like 90% of the "realism value".

So i disabled the map updates some time ago, and im slowly getting better. And yes full manual plotting is tedious, not to mention i need to have my calculator handy to convert relative to true bearings, but im slowly getting better at it.

Of course the captains on those uboats dint have a magic-self updating map with them! so now that its gone, im playing more realistically! right?
But then i realize, the way to plot the targets course is dependant on asking my WO for nearest visual contact, so he gives me the range & heading (or i dont know another way at least). But in real life, how would he be able to give me that information?
So isnt this just as unrealistic as having map updates on???

Sure, as long as the targets are not too far away (say under 5-6 km) i can id them, get the course, and use the stadimeter or RAOBF disk to get the range myself, but there is just no way i can see a ship well enough to get this information when he is 18km away. Not even with MaGUIs 12X zoom periscope. So i have to rely on the WO to "magically" tell me.

So i wonder, how in the world did real uboats captains did it!?

BigWalleye · 04-21-17, 07:01 AM

Real kaleuns did not do their own map plots, just as they did not cook the soup or clean ths boat. There is nothing wrong with letting the crew do the plotting. It is historically accurate. What is wrong is that the plots are perfectly accurate and instantaneous. h.sie and Steibler's patches do something about that. They inject a certain amount of inaccuracy in the watch officer's reports and this is reflected in the plot. But the plots are still too fast and too reliable.

It's like the fatigue problem. Tucking the crew into their bunks when they got tired was not the kaleun's job. It's historically wrong. The only way to fix this is to turn fatigue off entirely, which is also completely unrealistic. You have to pick which historical inaccuracy you want to play with.

bstanko6 · 04-21-17, 01:14 PM

I have been playing 100% realism since the game came out.

The watch officer only gave you the bearing and distance. This is something the commanders could figure out themselves.

This big trick is to figure out the course. AOB has always been and always will be the most difficult to figure out. Even with all the math in the world, calculators, and methods, you need he experience of looking at a ship, and determining the AOB on sight.

Yes there are other things that are complicated in this game. Plotting can be tedious, speed calc can be a pain to figure in bad weather, and range can be a bother when you are doing it without a stadimeter in 15 m/s winds at 10km.

But for some reason AOB is the one people get wrong the most. It gives you the course of your ship. The course gives you all the information to set up your attack angle. And once you have the attack angle, you are now 'god' determining this ship's fate.

You should never be too far away or too close to a target. You should always be able to plot where you need to be at the right time, it just takes practice.

04-21-17, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Real kaleuns did not do their own map plots, just as they did not cook the soup or clean ths boat. There is nothing wrong with letting the crew do the plotting. It is historically accurate. What is wrong is that the plots are perfectly accurate and instantaneous. h.sie and Steibler's patches do something about that. They inject a certain amount of inaccuracy in the watch officer's reports and this is reflected in the plot. But the plots are still too fast and too reliable.

It's like the fatigue problem. Tucking the crew into their bunks when they got tired was not the kaleun's job. It's historically wrong. The only way to fix this is to turn fatigue off entirely, which is also completely unrealistic. You have to pick which historical inaccuracy you want to play with.

The more I read (and play), the more I see how far from a simulation this game is !

Benzin1973 · 04-21-17, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

Real kaleuns did not do their own map plots, just as they did not cook the soup or clean ths boat. There is nothing wrong with letting the crew do the plotting. It is historically accurate. What is wrong is that the plots are perfectly accurate and instantaneous. h.sie and Steibler's patches do something about that. They inject a certain amount of inaccuracy in the watch officer's reports and this is reflected in the plot. But the plots are still too fast and too reliable.

It's like the fatigue problem. Tucking the crew into their bunks when they got tired was not the kaleun's job. It's historically wrong. The only way to fix this is to turn fatigue off entirely, which is also completely unrealistic. You have to pick which historical inaccuracy you want to play with.

My main issue in regards to realism with the map updates, is not so much because the plotting is done automatically, but because i feel that having it show all contacts and updating itself in realtime, gives me a complete situacional awareness that there is no way real captains had.
But the biggest "cheat" from map updates (for me at least) is when we are underwater. Having those magic lines showing the exact position and distance to everything arround is just... BS

It makes a HUGE difference when trying to evade those escorts!

I think the ideal solution would be to be able to select a target, and "order" the NO to plot it/mark its position on the map, then you could order him to constantly update its position (sort of like you order your hydro guy to follow a contact), and you would see the contacts square updating every X seconds as it moves along.
While under water, maybe having a small arrow or line that "points" in the direction of contacts, but doesnt give you the exact position or range.

So when deciding map updates or not, i think the decision comes down to :
- Take chores that were not the captains (plotting everything yourself),
Or...
- Have a situational awareness completely over the top of what real captains had. Heck, i dont think todays modern nuclear submarines have such a detailed map! haha.
Hence i decided to go with no map updates at all.

I think the closest we can get to a balance of not having to plot everything vs having "the eye of God", is the "Assisted plotting mod" included with NYGM (also available by itself).
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1328

In this mod Contacts are not shown in map. But when you get the heading of a contact and an approximate range, you go to your map and hover over its aproximate position, and a circle pops up. Then you can put a mark on it and start to plot its course. Just as if you had done the manual plotting yourself, minus the chore of converting bearings, drawing lines, etc.
It aleviates somehow the chore of manual plotting, but denies the unreal situational awareness you get with stock map updates.
Underwater, map shows small dashes pointing towards the contacts direction, but not a full precise line that shows its exact position.
Even though ibe used NYGM for a while now, im just "discovering" this feature. Almost as soon as i installed NYGM i made a mod to show contacts in map in black like GWX. So ibe never really used its default mod untill now.
I like that assisted plotting mod, im currently making a version for GWX3 as The standalone mod i linked to earlier doesnt work 100% in GWX because you loose the bearing overlay, so im working on a version to integrate with gwx.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bstanko6

I have been playing 100% realism since the game came out.

The watch officer only gave you the bearing and distance. This is something the commanders could figure out themselves.

This big trick is to figure out the course. AOB has always been and always will be the most difficult to figure out. Even with all the math in the world, calculators, and methods, you need he experience of looking at a ship, and determining the AOB on sight.

Yes there are other things that are complicated in this game. Plotting can be tedious, speed calc can be a pain to figure in bad weather, and range can be a bother when you are doing it without a stadimeter in 15 m/s winds at 10km.

But for some reason AOB is the one people get wrong the most. It gives you the course of your ship. The course gives you all the information to set up your attack angle. And once you have the attack angle, you are now 'god' determining this ship's fate.

You should never be too far away or too close to a target. You should always be able to plot where you need to be at the right time, it just takes practice.

Yes i agree completely. Once you know the targets true course, he is as good as dead (provided he is not a warship going 25k away from you haha).

The AOB issue is somehow of a paradox. Give me the exact AOB, and i can calculate the target exact true bearing (hes dead). and the easiest, fastest most accurate way to get the exact AOB of a target, is to know his exact course!
Give me his exact course, i can tell you his exact AOB very quickly with just a single transporter line on the map.

I too see a lot of people asking how to get the AOB of a target, And (assuming they have map contact updates on), I dont really understand why. Just mark the targets course, throw a transporter line from ahead of the target track, to the point where your track on zero relative heading intercepts the targets track, to your own sub, and viola! you have your targets projected AOB when he is on your zero heading. Now set your scope to zero, input that AOB and youre done!. TDC updates the aob according to where you are "pointing" the scope.
No need to guesstimate, RAOBF weels, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kendras

The more I read (and play), the more I see how far from a simulation this game is !

I think that while its certainly not a 100% accurate simulation, its almost as good a simulation as it can get, while keeping it entertaining/useable. Just imagine for example not having time compression available because its "unrealistic". You would have to actually wait two or three days in front of your PC to reach the patrol area! Or maybe a couple of weeks if crossing the atlantic.
"Ill be back in three weeks honey, gonna play SH3"

I guess that at the end of the day, Simulation or game, map contacts or not, fatigue or not fatigue.. we cant deny that sh3 is a ton of fun!

Benzin1973 · 04-27-17, 09:09 PM

After much experimenting, i think i found a satisfactory solution, a "balance", with the use of the "Assisted plotting mod" mod as implemented by NYGM, and also available as a standalone mod for vanilla.
Now the problem was that i play NYGM and GWX3, and the standalone does not work with GWX3 (you loose the map bearing overlay), so i made my own mod that adapts the original standalone to GWX3.

If anyone is interested in trying it out, feel free to give it a shot!
http://www.mediafire.com/file/47b79u...4-GWX_v1.0.zip

Leoz · 05-04-17, 11:59 AM

The only thing counts is if you are having fun with the game.

I prefer not to use map updates. It is good to learn the concept of the game but if you prefer committing to the game...do it yourself, unless numbers give you a headache (a fair justification).

The biggest thing is to learn to visually guess a ships angle on the bow with the first few observations. Once you plot this on the board (F5), then this will colour how you want to attack it. Don't worry if the first observations aren't perfect. Plot them and it will improve the more time you spend working the problem with more observations.

Lately I have gotten more into taking my time. I will track something for hours (in the game not real hours

) if the ship has deck guns on it and it will take awhile to end-round for an attack anyway. And go for an attack at night.

Doing multiple observations on the map (F-5) for hours will give you a better feel for what the contact is doing.

You will get good at this after awhile and appreciate your own accomplishments better (my opinion).

Also if you goof up an attack, track the target, catch up with it later. Historically this happened a fair bit.

Benzin1973 · 05-05-17, 09:41 PM

Thanks for your input Leoz!
I just discovered another problem with playing with no map contact updates at all.
When submerged, and with escorts hunting me (like after an attack on a convoy), i ask my SO to track the nearest warship, he starts to periodically tell me what its doing as expected. BUT, i found that many times he will continue to "track" the same contact even if another warship has moved closer to me.
For example, there are 2 destroyers, he reports on d1 as its closer. But then d1 goes away and d2 starts chasing me, my SO will still report about d1, instead of reporting on the now closer (and more menacing) d2. And since he tells me that what is supposed to be the "nearest" warship is "long range, moving away" i surface, and come face to face with d2 who might be very close.

So i need a way to tell me on the map where those dds are. But not as precisely as with normal map contact updates. The "Assisted plotting mod" works great in this regard. In the above example it will show me that there are in fact two destroyers not just one, but it wont tell me exactly where they are.

Leoz · 05-09-17, 06:13 AM

I can't help you with that one.

I never engage escorts.

After the initial attack on merchants I try to get the heck out of there; setup a plan to intercept the convoy at a later time....including the time it takes to submerge and load torpedoes (spirit of the game); surface again and continue with catching up.

I also never engage aircraft as there may be two of them. I always crash dive no matter what.

Zosimus · 05-13-17, 12:31 PM

Some random thoughts.

I have no problem with people playing with map contacts off. What I have a problem with is people telling me that this is 100% realism. Well, map contacts on is 100% realism. I play GWX, hit the button for 100% realism and map contacts are on.

So if you want better than 100% realism, then turn map contacts off, have one of your buddies as the WO, and have him do the plotting for you. Otherwise, just let the game do its thing.

As for "engaging" escorts, you have to engage them because they are above you raining down death. At the very least, you need to turn your tail on them so they cannot ping you as easily. But you don't need map contacts for that. Just man the hydroscope yourself, listen in to the closest one, and adjust your full left or full right rudder accordingly.

As for airplanes, the proper course of action depends entirely on how far away they are. If you have unlimited visibility, then definitely you should crash dive (unless it's too shallow). Otherwise, turn tail and run with your flak gunner on deck until you shoot it down or it passes. Then crash dive.

P.S. I sank an escort today... with my deck gun. I do not recommend this method, but there is a time and a place for everything.

04-20-17, 08:48 PM	#1
Benzin1973 Engineer Join Date: May 2016 Posts: 217 Downloads: 151 Uploads: 0	My map contact update dilema... This isnt really a question, more like a "reflection", i would like to hear your toughts on this... Steam sais ibe played 531 hrs of Silent Hunter 3. Add to that the hours ibe played without launching the game from steam and therefore steam doesnt count them, (after patching with hsie fixes the game no longer needs steam to run), and the real number of hours ibe played the game are probably near 1k. All this game time has given me experience, even using the harder mods like NYGM or GWX, i havent died in ??? i dont even remember, i never load a game, and i can hit pretty much anything i want, as long as its under 3.5km (by getting targeting data from plotting), i can plot perfect intercept courses to radio contacts, and conduct "textbook" 90º attacks. Yep, i can do all this things. -Provided- the "No map contact updates" is Not checked. All other realism setting dont make a huge difference to me, i can (and usually do) keep them off without major problems. But the second i disable map contact updates, my tonnage drops to about 30% its usual, i find myself almost ramming the ships (or ending up too far to shoot at them) and some times when i get chased by destroyers i only escape by the hair on a bold frogs head. Ibe allways justified myself to have map updates on with "its just a convenience to avoid tedious plotting". But i have realized that all this time ibe played with map updates on, has made me so dependant on it, that now it seems i cant play without it. it seems my whole "style" of play and tactics are somehow totally dependant on those squares being there on the map. Now i honestly admit, i really had no idea of how much of an impact map updates makes in the game. To me it now seems this feature should account for like 90% of the "realism value". So i disabled the map updates some time ago, and im slowly getting better. And yes full manual plotting is tedious, not to mention i need to have my calculator handy to convert relative to true bearings, but im slowly getting better at it. Of course the captains on those uboats dint have a magic-self updating map with them! so now that its gone, im playing more realistically! right? But then i realize, the way to plot the targets course is dependant on asking my WO for nearest visual contact, so he gives me the range & heading (or i dont know another way at least). But in real life, how would he be able to give me that information? So isnt this just as unrealistic as having map updates on??? Sure, as long as the targets are not too far away (say under 5-6 km) i can id them, get the course, and use the stadimeter or RAOBF disk to get the range myself, but there is just no way i can see a ship well enough to get this information when he is 18km away. Not even with MaGUIs 12X zoom periscope. So i have to rely on the WO to "magically" tell me. So i wonder, how in the world did real uboats captains did it!? Last edited by Benzin1973; 04-20-17 at 09:13 PM. Reason: accidentally hit the save button before finished!

04-21-17, 01:14 PM	#3
bstanko6 Admiral Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Murwik Naval Academy Posts: 2,127 Downloads: 390 Uploads: 13	I have been playing 100% realism since the game came out. The watch officer only gave you the bearing and distance. This is something the commanders could figure out themselves. This big trick is to figure out the course. AOB has always been and always will be the most difficult to figure out. Even with all the math in the world, calculators, and methods, you need he experience of looking at a ship, and determining the AOB on sight. Yes there are other things that are complicated in this game. Plotting can be tedious, speed calc can be a pain to figure in bad weather, and range can be a bother when you are doing it without a stadimeter in 15 m/s winds at 10km. But for some reason AOB is the one people get wrong the most. It gives you the course of your ship. The course gives you all the information to set up your attack angle. And once you have the attack angle, you are now 'god' determining this ship's fate. You should never be too far away or too close to a target. You should always be able to plot where you need to be at the right time, it just takes practice. __________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] BSTANKO6'S SH5 NAVAL ACADEMY http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPbe...W2NArCA/videos DISCORD https://discord.gg/6tFeTSUmVc Last edited by bstanko6; 04-21-17 at 02:01 PM.

05-04-17, 11:59 AM	#7
Leoz Ensign Join Date: Apr 2016 Location: Near The Rockalls Bank Posts: 235 Downloads: 253 Uploads: 0	The only thing counts is if you are having fun with the game. I prefer not to use map updates. It is good to learn the concept of the game but if you prefer committing to the game...do it yourself, unless numbers give you a headache (a fair justification). The biggest thing is to learn to visually guess a ships angle on the bow with the first few observations. Once you plot this on the board (F5), then this will colour how you want to attack it. Don't worry if the first observations aren't perfect. Plot them and it will improve the more time you spend working the problem with more observations. Lately I have gotten more into taking my time. I will track something for hours (in the game not real hours ) if the ship has deck guns on it and it will take awhile to end-round for an attack anyway. And go for an attack at night. Doing multiple observations on the map (F-5) for hours will give you a better feel for what the contact is doing. You will get good at this after awhile and appreciate your own accomplishments better (my opinion). Also if you goof up an attack, track the target, catch up with it later. Historically this happened a fair bit. __________________ Leoz "Auf gefechtsstationen!" NYGM

05-09-17, 06:13 AM	#9
Leoz Ensign Join Date: Apr 2016 Location: Near The Rockalls Bank Posts: 235 Downloads: 253 Uploads: 0	I can't help you with that one. I never engage escorts. After the initial attack on merchants I try to get the heck out of there; setup a plan to intercept the convoy at a later time....including the time it takes to submerge and load torpedoes (spirit of the game); surface again and continue with catching up. I also never engage aircraft as there may be two of them. I always crash dive no matter what. __________________ Leoz "Auf gefechtsstationen!" NYGM

04-21-17, 07:01 AM	#2
BigWalleye Sea Lord Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: On the Eye-lond, mon! Posts: 1,987 Downloads: 465 Uploads: 0	Real kaleuns did not do their own map plots, just as they did not cook the soup or clean ths boat. There is nothing wrong with letting the crew do the plotting. It is historically accurate. What is wrong is that the plots are perfectly accurate and instantaneous. h.sie and Steibler's patches do something about that. They inject a certain amount of inaccuracy in the watch officer's reports and this is reflected in the plot. But the plots are still too fast and too reliable. It's like the fatigue problem. Tucking the crew into their bunks when they got tired was not the kaleun's job. It's historically wrong. The only way to fix this is to turn fatigue off entirely, which is also completely unrealistic. You have to pick which historical inaccuracy you want to play with.

04-27-17, 09:09 PM	#6
Benzin1973 Engineer Join Date: May 2016 Posts: 217 Downloads: 151 Uploads: 0	After much experimenting, i think i found a satisfactory solution, a "balance", with the use of the "Assisted plotting mod" mod as implemented by NYGM, and also available as a standalone mod for vanilla. Now the problem was that i play NYGM and GWX3, and the standalone does not work with GWX3 (you loose the map bearing overlay), so i made my own mod that adapts the original standalone to GWX3. If anyone is interested in trying it out, feel free to give it a shot! http://www.mediafire.com/file/47b79u...4-GWX_v1.0.zip

05-05-17, 09:41 PM	#8
Benzin1973 Engineer Join Date: May 2016 Posts: 217 Downloads: 151 Uploads: 0	Thanks for your input Leoz! I just discovered another problem with playing with no map contact updates at all. When submerged, and with escorts hunting me (like after an attack on a convoy), i ask my SO to track the nearest warship, he starts to periodically tell me what its doing as expected. BUT, i found that many times he will continue to "track" the same contact even if another warship has moved closer to me. For example, there are 2 destroyers, he reports on d1 as its closer. But then d1 goes away and d2 starts chasing me, my SO will still report about d1, instead of reporting on the now closer (and more menacing) d2. And since he tells me that what is supposed to be the "nearest" warship is "long range, moving away" i surface, and come face to face with d2 who might be very close. So i need a way to tell me on the map where those dds are. But not as precisely as with normal map contact updates. The "Assisted plotting mod" works great in this regard. In the above example it will show me that there are in fact two destroyers not just one, but it wont tell me exactly where they are.

05-13-17, 12:31 PM	#10
Zosimus XO Join Date: Jun 2014 Location: Chorrillos, Lima, Peru Posts: 401 Downloads: 3 Uploads: 0	Some random thoughts. I have no problem with people playing with map contacts off. What I have a problem with is people telling me that this is 100% realism. Well, map contacts on is 100% realism. I play GWX, hit the button for 100% realism and map contacts are on. So if you want better than 100% realism, then turn map contacts off, have one of your buddies as the WO, and have him do the plotting for you. Otherwise, just let the game do its thing. As for "engaging" escorts, you have to engage them because they are above you raining down death. At the very least, you need to turn your tail on them so they cannot ping you as easily. But you don't need map contacts for that. Just man the hydroscope yourself, listen in to the closest one, and adjust your full left or full right rudder accordingly. As for airplanes, the proper course of action depends entirely on how far away they are. If you have unlimited visibility, then definitely you should crash dive (unless it's too shallow). Otherwise, turn tail and run with your flak gunner on deck until you shoot it down or it passes. Then crash dive. P.S. I sank an escort today... with my deck gun. I do not recommend this method, but there is a time and a place for everything.