If Sonalysts made a new game...

[Arclight]

There were tutorial videos on the disk, you just had to play them back outside the game.

Bonus disc too, some nice historical footage. No "deluxe" version or anything like that, just because. Sonalysts rates pretty high in my book because of it.

If Sonalysts made a new game...:

-Computing Bering Rate accurate. Real solution and not estimated!!!!.
-Range Rate Calculation.
-Chart SVP analyzed along its propagation.
-More chance of correspondence in the NAVMAP.
-NAVMAP in 3D.
-Azimuthal Display.
-Opportunity to display.
-Chat can only be activated at an altitude of radio. Train radio communication, with ability to chat and communicate vocally.
-..........
-.......
-.....

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by cristianfalchi

If Sonalysts made a new game...:

-Computing Bering Rate accurate. Real solution and not estimated!!!!.
-Range Rate Calculation.
-Chart SVP analyzed along its propagation.
-More chance of correspondence in the NAVMAP.
-NAVMAP in 3D.
-Azimuthal Display.
-Opportunity to display.
-Chat can only be activated at an altitude of radio. Train radio communication, with ability to chat and communicate vocally.
-..........
-.......
-.....

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
and
Yes

Those would be awesome.

[Castout]

Engine sound in map station

My mouth is foaming and no sound of new game?

[tonibamestre]

Replying some posts I will say that perhaps preparation of the ships at port,refueling and ammunition can be as important as the mission itself.Also capability to navigate till the scenario,reposition vessels etc,can be challenging,you never know what you can expect on the midway .
Would be useful in that case a H24 server IVAO style,making every player/ship able to conect whenever.
Mid ports like Naples,Tarragona,Palma de Mallorca,La Valleta,etc could be implemented I think,if not in a first release later on.

Regards.

[Castout]

This:


How would depth in RL be included into consideration? There's rumors that the bow sonar is able to find direction thus depth estimation but I'd like to see this implemented in Sonalysts next game or DW successor. Thus the TMA may need additional functionality to take into consideration depth estimation from the bow sonar.


Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze

Another suggestion is to make the game mod friendly. ArmA 2 benefits much from ACE mod for example. Well maybe that's a wee bit of lying as it's me and the people like me who benefit much from ArmA 2 being mod friendly.

[streakeagle]

First: range is always an estimate unless you are using active sonar, have a visual/radar contact, or have collided.
2nd: while fire control computers automatically plot tracker bearings which are then fitted to curves to determine bearing rates, sonarmen and officer-of-the-decks use manual bearing marks (i.e. written in grease pencil or in your head) and stopwatches to get bearing rates and have simple slide-wheel computers calculate range. After nearly 7 years of sitting sonar, I could call out a range off of the visual bearing rate on passive broadband and be accurate to within 500 yards of what radar indicated at ranges over 10,000 yards. Since submarine contacts were usually only detected at such ranges and shorter, "mental gym" was more than adequate for getting into a firing position. I had one captain that would spend tons of time maneuvering at maximum detection range trying to get the perfect solution before firing, and we almost never won the training exercise. I had another captain that would do a beam/point maneuver, and use the estimated range to quickly get one or more shots off. We won even when outnumbered.
3rd: depression/elevation angles are almost never useful for determining target depth. Depths are usually assumed based on target type, environmental variables, and observed enemy tactics. Given an assumed depth and knowledge of the most probably sound path being used, you can use D/E angles to estimate range. Of course, the nature of sound in water is such that you may be receiving target sounds from multiple D/E angles. The game is not really in a position to cover this area, mostly because the type of information and the techniques used to get that information from D/E angles is classified. As a former BQQ-5 and BQR-21 sonar operator/technician, I can say that adding multiple D/E displays for broadband and D/E tracking to trackers would not add very much to the game. Most of the time that information is of limited value and largely ignored. I could adequately train basic operators. Anything of a higher level of realism would cross Navy security rules. The BQR-21 had a fixed D/E angle, and most of the time performed comparably to BQQ-5 passive broadband. The difference in detection range was usually the result of the BQQ-5 being optimized for a lower frequency, but that lower frequency would also frequently be degraded by additional noise.

If Sonalysts made a new game, I would simply want more platforms as I see no real need for any additional systems modeling/features for ASW combat, unless the Navy declassifies several things.

[Castout]

Thanks Streakeagle for that information.

Originally Posted by streakeagle

After nearly 7 years of sitting sonar, I could call out a range off of the visual bearing rate on passive broadband and be accurate to within 500 yards of what radar indicated at ranges over 10,000 yards. Since submarine contacts were usually only detected at such ranges and shorter, "mental gym" was more than adequate for getting into a firing position.

A clear demonstration of the importance of the Bearing Rate.

Bearing Rate for fast and accurate fire solution is essential, in DW, unfortunately, is calculated with the estimated solution.

[Dr.Sid]

Nice reading .. but you can only estimate range from bearing rate if you estimate speed before it, right ?

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

Nice reading .. but you can only estimate range from bearing rate if you estimate speed before it, right ?

The range of Target is intuible by Bearing Rate without knowing the speed of the target. Why the change of the Bearing Rate is more influenced by the Range. Target speed is negligible compared the influence of the Range.
Bearing Rate, is also very useful to know whether the target is approaching or moving away.

[streakeagle]

The BQR-21 tracker displayed bearing rate, the BQQ-5 did not. The way real submarines get bearing rate (besides fitting curves on fire control displays) is plotting bearing versus time on paper charts and then doing mathematical analysis with slide rules. You have all the tools you need at home to do it the way real submarines at battle stations do it. Get out a note pad and every so many seconds plot a bearing on a time versus bearing graph. At battle stations, the fire control guys were busy doing two things: getting a solution and setting up torpedo shots. The sonar team simultaneously came up with their own solutions using either written tools or their own head. On my Q-5 boat, I used my HP calculator to do some math tricks, but USS Dolphin didn't even have a fire control system. The OOD and sonar supervisor generated solutions manually... and as I tried to point out above, experienced supervisors could just look at bearing versus time on broadband dsiplays and call out a good range instantly from EXPERIENCE... no math, no magical displayed bearing rate. The displays in the game already reflect the actual information you have available in the real world. Adding an automatic accurate displayed bearing rate would be as much a cheat as adding a 360 degree radar to fighter planes in WW2. If you want realism, the sim has had it since Jane's 688i, which was actually used as a supplementary trainer for real submarine crewmen do to the limited availability of the full scale trainers. Both officers and sonarmen are taught to do trigonometry in their head, including memorizing the sine and cosine tables. It seems like the reality of US Navy submarine tactics is surprising to some of you... computers gather the data, but it is people that process it. At battle stations sonar had 12 or more people on my Q-5 boat. Nukes manned the frequency and bearing versus time charts in control (even more crowded than sonar). The US Navy has always believed in solving problems with overwhelming manpower despite the availability of modern automation. The nuclear reactors were run the same way: people staring at gauges, flipping switches, and turning valves rather than using computers that would probably do a better job. Of course, most people don't "blue screen" while working

[streakeagle]

If you consider the fire control solution to be a system of linear algebra equations, you need as many equations as you have variables to eliminate all of the unknowns. Bearing rate is affected by both range and relative speed across the line of sight, so you need two different equations to solve the problem. You know your own speed across the line of sight and you know the bearing rate... so if you are missing his speed across the line of sight and range. This technique is called an Ekelund Range after its inventor and is apparently now available as an iPhone app

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ekelu...305672427?mt=8

If you simply take bearing rate measurements the way real submariners do, you could use your iPhone in place of our bearing rate slide rules to get solutions. Hint: you have to do two legs (per the iPhone app) to get two radically different bearing rates to permit solving this basic two variable system of equations.

The problem isn't a lack of features in the game, it is a lack of understanding and training of the people trying to play it.

After years of doing this for a living, I don't want to do "mental gym" or fire control. Whenever I decide to play this sim, I swag the range the way I did on Dolphin. To paraphrase a US submariner saying : "close enough for a Mk 48". Submarine combat is not won by doing math to 10 decimal places on computers, it is won by rapidly assessing the available information and getting in the first shot. The first shot only has to be good enough to get the Mk 48 into acquisition range, then its Miller time.

Also, keep in mind that the bearing data being fed to fire control isn't precisely accurate. The bearing is the angle that the sound hits the sonar array. Guess what, sound bends in water AND it fluctuates. So the bearing rate is ESTIMATED by drawing a line through the wiggly dots. The fire control guys do this with the computer screen. The nukes do it on paper. The sonarmen and OOD do it in their heads. Guess whose solutions are usually both the quickest and the most accurate? In the end, the Captain usually takes into account all of the information, then goes with his own gut feeling... because he stares at the repeater screen and does it in his head too

[streakeagle]

One more thing. Imagine that you were tracking a frequency from a target and that the received frequency on your sonar display was Doppler shifted by relative motion in the line of sight. Imagine that while maneuvering to get an Ekelund range, you were able to identify the base frequency and thereby calculate the relative speed in the line of sight and subtract your own speed in the line of sight to get the target's speed in the line of sight. So, if your Ekelund range worked out (it is only reliable when the bearing rate difference between the two legs is large enough) you may now have the target's range, speed across the line of sight and speed in the line sight. The two speed vectors are then easily resolved into target's course in speed. If you master this math or program it into a good caclulator (I always used an HP48SX back in the day), you don't need fire control in reality. Of course the game dumbs down the narrowband component a tad to stay away from classified information and techniques, but in the game you can usually determine target speed from turns per knot (TPK) info and combine that with info you get from Ekelund ranging to resolve target course. Of course, in sonar, there is always more than one way to get the necessary information. Think towed array versus spherical array. Can you say triangulation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_location

[Rip]

Thanks for the refresher. I was an ET but stood sonar watch on occasion. I think I developed most of my TMA techniques from being a geo plot supervisor during tracking stations.

Now I actually wish I had an iPhone, never thought I would say that.

I wish the auto crew were as capable as my shipmates were. Sometimes I don't feel like doing all the work and just want to play captain.

BTW have you done PMS on the compensators this quarter?


Rip