To autocrew or not to autocrew, that is the question.

[somedude88]

Do you autocrew any or all stations? I try to man the sonar to understand how to use it but the workload is just off the charts!

Also what does autocrewing fire control do? Autocrewing that station doesn't seem to do anything g.

[ET2SN]

The stations I don't auto crew are ESM and Radio. The radio shack belongs to ET's and RM's and, BTW, keep your hands off my freaking gear.

In DW, you're playing as the OOD. That means you're over-seeing the watch standers in Control. You get to make the call when and how to maneuver the boat so those guys can do their job.

I'll turn off the sonar auto crew if I really want to nail down a contact early or I'll turn off the FT/tracking auto crew if a track is starting to turn sour but most of the time I let them do the heavy lifting.

In the end, it comes down to your style. Playing as a laid-back OOD on the mid watch and hanging out near the QMOW or FTOW is just as valid as playing like a micro manager who is bugging everyone to polish their sneakers and get a hair cut.

[Pisces]

First of all, whatever your understanding level and experience in the game permits you to do. Whatever your playstyle is.

The torpedo fire control autocrew should enter apropriate torpedo parameters. run-to-enable, floor and ceiling depths... that sort of thing. It really isn't the most complicated stuf you have to do. Prevent your torps from running in the floor and not enable after passing the contact. Search depth can help with popping the torpedo up to the other side of the layer and stay stealthy for a bit longer. (torpedo transit at the depth you fired them at) I'm not sure the firecontrol autocrew is really smart either.

I autocrew mostly the tedious tasks. Radar plotting and sonar intercept. TMA on the OH-Perry because it is just practically impossible to do it manually there. TMA on the subs in target rich environments only. But I do want to fiddle with that myself mostly. TMA Autocrew seems to cheat too much. It knows too much with too little information. So I autocrew it as little as possible. I'm not sure what autocrew the helo has, but I think I only let the mad/esm, radar and pilots autocrew.

Sonar autocrew in the subs basically only scan the bearings for contact and mark anything it comes across. Even if it is a false signal or your own noise. TMA autocrew drops it if it is a mirror contact. Generally the sonar crew spam many contact reports (that TMA dropped previously) and doesn't help clarity or situational awareness. Also, I find searching the faint signals, classifying and figuring out who's where on what array the fun part. So I do that manually.

[Gray Lensman]

AutoTMA is flawed per the RedBook in the download section here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=5187

In fact pg. 22, has a specific topic "IX. TMA - THE FLAWS OF AUTOTMA (aTMA).

It does work somewhat competently against strictly AI opponents, which if that's all you will ever play against, you will probably think that you're a great sub commander.

Playing against a live opponent that's reasonably competent in manual TMA and knows that you are relying on AutoTMA (aTMA) will probably result in your losing 9 times out of 10. He will use those known flaws against you and your sub's (aTMA) will NOT get a valid solution.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Pisces

TMA Autocrew seems to cheat too much. It knows too much with too little information.

Ding! That isn't cheating, that's an exploit.
There is no way I can pick up a weak contact before the auto crew unless I get lucky.

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

Ding! That isn't cheating, that's an exploit.
There is no way I can pick up a weak contact before the auto crew unless I get lucky.

That is the one reason to use it, INITIALLY. I totally suck at finding weak contacts on the waterfall. Might be due to some slight color blindness. Once it finds a bearing for you, take over manually, because from that point on, it's flawed in its' following TMA execution steps. See the Redbook referenced above.

[ET2SN]

Gray, I would argue that your auto TMA is only as good as the way you drive the boat.


For example, if you hold the same course and speed during a two hour leg- of course you're going to get a crappy solution from TMA. TMA relies on how your bearing information changes over time. Many times, its up to you to force that change in the raw data. If you start out in a lag situation, change over to lead (or at least a different lag solution) and watch how smarter your auto crew gets.

[p7p8]

Most players in discussion autocrew ON/OFF focus on sonar and TMA. For me most important is countermeasures setting: always manual. It allows you to launch Chaffs and Flares which is more effective than in auto mode.

As MP game host usually settings looks:

(Auto.manual means each player have controll over this setting independently)

TMA - auto/manual
Active intercept - auto/manual
ESM - auto/manual
Surf countermeasures - auto/manual
Link data - on/off
All rest - manual

Quick launch for weapon or helo - disabled
Quick repairs - disabled
Engage with menu (from map) - disabled
Show Dead Platforms - enabled


Discussion about auto TMA is usually conducted by people who play only with or only without it. Both settings have props and cons. Auto TMA very often gives you quite good range, course and speed of target in first solution. But after time error can be bigger and even solutions aren't somtimes updated correctly. It happens in more complex MP scenarios.
In my opinion best Auto TMA profits have players who knows how to play with manual TMA. They knows how important is changing course and speed own subamrine. Most "toxic" in manual TMA is style of playing this guys who wanna resolve target solution as perfect as mathematical equation

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

Gray, I would argue that your auto TMA is only as good as the way you drive the boat.


For example, if you hold the same course and speed during a two hour leg- of course you're going to get a crappy solution from TMA. TMA relies on how your bearing information changes over time. Many times, its up to you to force that change in the raw data. If you start out in a lag situation, change over to lead (or at least a different lag solution) and watch how smarter your auto crew gets.

I'll stick to RedBook information. It does in fact suggest course changes every 10 minutes accompanied with Speed changes to screw up the opponents TMA (especially AutoTMA). Now, if you use those same course changes to keep your course relatively perpendicular to the target LOS, then you will also help your own TMA gather better raw data since you are maximizing speed "across the LOS".

Another thing the RedBook points out is that if you have a bearing on a target, he almost always will have one on you, even AutoTMA, or you should at least assume so.

This being a pretty good assumption, you really don't want to purposefully place your ownship in a LEAD situation in regards to your target. due to the advantage it gives his Torp weapons if he decides to solution fire or snapshot your bearing. Basically, it will take you much longer to evade/turn out of the torps' lead targeting course since you are heading into it already.

Besides, attempting TMA on a LEAD LOS on a "single array" is generally useless, read the RedBook to understand why.

Dual array is different. Once converted to a master contact it represents "truth" on the enemy solution, no matter LEAD or LAG. It only takes 2 such readings to determine a reasonably accurate solution, if the target does not change course or speed of course. Basically, the last two tick marks of the ruler placed on the intersecting dual/master "hits" gives you a pretty good solution without all the other dots lining up. A third "hit" (using the last 3 ticks of the ruler) pretty well eliminates "eyeball" error on the TMA display.

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

Ding! That isn't cheating, that's an exploit.
There is no way I can pick up a weak contact before the auto crew unless I get lucky.

Developers exploiting the use of game internal state-variables that you do not have is cheating!

Auto-TMA doesn't detect (weak) contacts at all. (Sonar and ESM autocrew detects). My problem with it is it knows through divine (developer-) intelligence without you changing course that the mirror contact on the Towed Array doesn't have an actual soundsource. It is dropped immediately. And it seems to know the target course from a few lines of bearing before you even made a turn to alter the relative motion between you and the contact. Clearly Auto-TMA knows things it shouldn't.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Pisces

Developers exploiting the use of game internal state-variables that you do not have is cheating!

Wellllllll............ Um.

This might get me shot at dawn, but there was a way back in the old days to perk up that waterfall display. I'm pretty sure everyone in the old community knew about it, but if you had a CRT monitor all you had to do was crank up the gamma slider on the monitor and you'd gain some dB in the waterfall. It looked nasty and you wouldn't gain much but the data was there.

And yeah, of course I tried it on a flat screen but you can't see it anymore. LCD and LED monitors don't process brightness and gamma like the old CRTs.