Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks

[Rockin Robbins]

It was the use of the technical scientific term "gobbledy gook" that did it!

[Frederf]

I think it's rash to discredit any of the graphs or math for not taking in all possible tactical factors. The base assumption in pretty much all of these targeting tools is a contact that will continue to travel in a straight line throughout the attack. O'Kane or Cromwell methods are similarly lacking in their encompassing of all factors.

Another big one is these all assume our ordinance works perfectly which, don't mention this to the Admiral Lockwood, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. All methods are limited by their driving factors. This is the only thing that makes the problems tractable. It is up to the commander to utilize the various methods with the brainglue to bridge all of them together.

I'd like to throw a red flag at this notion that "fastest speed-made-good to target" is somehow the best. A meeting of greater than right angles means a slower effective torpedo speed...boohoo. If torpedo approach speed was such a boon, we'd all be shooting straight down the bow's of targets. I could even argue that the slower torpedo approach speed places the torpedo in close vicinity of the target for longer which should increase the odds of impact. Obviously shortest physical run and endurance are nice things but the balance point between that and other aiming factors likely skews the best combined track angle away from 90.

Practically, my track angle depends on a lot. Due to the problems with the MK14's impact detonator, my TTa windows are currently 50-60 and 120-130. I hear that shallower tracks are better for magnetic detonation too. It's really nice to know what the best TTa's are for perfectly functioning hardware for when I get some more reliable fish. Against convoys I'll most certainly be using a convoy speed-directed TTa as the chance of picking up secondary impacts outweighs first target accuracy.

[magic452]

@ distortion

Good luck with this, it could be very helpful.
I'm working on it as well but from a different track.
I got a couple of ideas I'll try tomorrow.

Magic

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Frederf

I'd like to throw a red flag at this notion that "fastest speed-made-good to target" is somehow the best. A meeting of greater than right angles means a slower effective torpedo speed...boohoo.

Perhaps in real life you would be correct, but this is a game in which a target can accelerate from 15 to 30 knots in about five seconds. Shortest time to impact is very important in Silent Hunter 4 compared to real life.

[CaptainJack]

I tried to search this thread, but did not see this question. Sorry if I missed it. I am playing SH4 1.5 with RFB 1.52 and the Easy AOB.

Can we talk range here for a minute when using O'Kane? I've been using this method fairly successfully - I say fairly, because it seems mostly accurate, but I also experience occasions where the torp will run mysteriously just ahead or astern. I get hits, but lots of time not in location where the ship trips the wire when I fire. Sometimes, I will set-up being careful to double-click on AOB and bearing, yet I can tell by arrows on the TDC that that shots will go terribly awry - and they do - mystery

After watching Rockin Robbins tutorial for the 4th time today, I finally noticed something. When he drags his range triangle as far counter-clockwise as possible, his range on TDC goes to about 1240 (IIRC); when I do same, my range on TDC goes to 241 - 1000 yards less, that is not a typo!

OK - so I go back to save game and try something: My range to target is 750 so I drag range triangle until range on TDC is 800 before clicking range and bearing having previously set target speed at 12 and AOB at 75 (target bearing is set at 345). I've tried this shot with mixed results before and the only change now is range setting. Fire four torps - bow crane, 1st funnel, 2nd funnel, stern crane - guess what: four precise hits. Go external and check damage on ship - four precisely spaced holes exactly where I aimed.

Conclusion: perhaps range does matter, and I can't simply drag my range triangle as far counter clock-wise as possible. In fact, playing with range meter, I seem to be able to drag around a max range of 12030 down to 241 - so where that range registers when you drag the triangle to the right seems to be a function of where it started - results will vary wildly. And since the arrows on the TDC will move as range is adusted, it seems to matter. With O'Kane, I am now going to be setting range at least higher than my actual - or maybe just 1000 is the magic number - just not sure. Please tell me what I am missing! Thanks

[Rockin Robbins]

Yup, you're right. You're experiencing an Easy AoB hiccup, where it acts differently from the stock dials I'm using in the tutorial. However you have to do it, entering a range of 1200 yards or so should make the technique deadly accurate for gyro angles of under 30º.

If, for some reason you're shooting at great range or outside the 30º gyro angle it's important to set your range to somewhere in the rough neighborhood of the target range. Several hundred yards plus or minus shouldn't matter much. All the guys who love precision are just cringing right now!

[CaptainJack]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Yup, you're right. You're experiencing an Easy AoB hiccup, where it acts differently from the stock dials I'm using in the tutorial. However you have to do it, entering a range of 1200 yards or so should make the technique deadly accurate for gyro angles of under 30º.

If, for some reason you're shooting at great range or outside the 30º gyro angle it's important to set your range to somewhere in the rough neighborhood of the target range. Several hundred yards plus or minus shouldn't matter much. All the guys who love precision are just cringing right now!

Thanks - makes sense that it was a mod thing. Thanks too for the advice - I will put it to use. And glad I watched your video again. I wonder how many ships that video has sunk?! Looking forward to better shooting!

[OrangeYoshi]

Rockin Robbins,

Thank you for the videos you make. They are very informational, easy to understand, and possibly most of all, you are fun to listen to! I haven't watched all the other videos I've downloaded yet, but I wanted to stop in and be just one more person to try to tell you how good you are at this stuff, and thank you for all your work.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah, when I get the facts all wrong I can always fall back on the entertainment value!

Actually, with the requirements I put on my videos, real time with no time compression, one cut production so you can learn the pacing of the actual attack, complete with dead space and boredom sometimes, "live" production values with no editing afterwards, I'm always worried that they will be too boring and that people will stop watching before they can learn what I'm trying to teach.

I'm glad to learn that isn't always the case.

[OrangeYoshi]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Yeah, when I get the facts all wrong I can always fall back on the entertainment value!

Actually, with the requirements I put on my videos, real time with no time compression, one cut production so you can learn the pacing of the actual attack, complete with dead space and boredom sometimes, "live" production values with no editing afterwards, I'm always worried that they will be too boring and that people will stop watching before they can learn what I'm trying to teach.

I'm glad to learn that isn't always the case.

It isn't really boring at all. The background music is a little loud at times so that people have to struggle a bit to hear, but it isn't bothersome. You fill the time well talking about your failures, or giving little jeopardy quizzes, etc.

[I'm goin' down]

What is missing?

The fundamental concept of aspect ratio and AoB are laid out in Hitman's tutorial (pdf format) by the one and only Hitman. I recommend it be included for those like me who had no inkling of the issue and concepts to overcome in successfully executing a manual targeting attack.

[Rockin Robbins]

I don't use that because it's not realistic. Information on target lengths and heights was not available during World War II. Even if it were, cut-down masts, paint jobs to make it difficult to see mastheads, disguising of ships to look like other ships of different lengths and aspect ratios all took place. That will never be part of any tutorial I ever do. I will never advise anybody to use that method, as it is entirely bogus for use in US fleet boats. It was very rarely used on U-Boats as a last resort.

[I'm goin' down]

the point is that it teaches aspect ratio and AoB. It is a tool to help understand those features for those who are not familiar with them.

[Rockin Robbins]

Aspect ratio is not a legitimate targeting tool, especially for fleet boats. Not once in the entire war can I find a single instance of using aspect ratio or timing the length of the target by the wire. Both of these techniques enjoy a peculiar popularity here at Subsim and both are illegitimate techniques when applied to World War II submarines. As I said earlier, very rarely, U-Boats used aspect ratio as a last resort tool.

After-war analysis of targets sunk and not sunk by American submarines revealed that most of the time targets were misidentified. That means that if they had Capn Scurvy's perfect list of hull lengths, heights of all features and Hitman's aspect ratios, they still couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn.

The fact is that we had very little information of the true dimensions of any non-warship in the Japanese fleet. We routinely misguesstimated lengths by a factor of 2, misidentified tonnage by as much as a factor of 3, failed to identify the identity of most targets and in general made a mockery of any ONI manual that we had. Given all that, using methods that increase periscope magnification, provide perfect dimensions of every target on the ocean, eliminate all errors in the database, are illegitimate targeting tools if you care anything about realism.

These tools stand directly between you and understanding the thoughts and feelings of World War II submariners. Now if you wish to play an arcade game, have at it. That's not why I play Silent Hunter.

I firmly believe that it wasn't the captain's fault when many torpedoes failed to explode against the hull of his target. I don't believe they were in complete control of success or failure every time they mashed the fire button. I think our insistence that we should be makes a mockery of the simulation.

Many submariners died for reasons they were not responsible for. Many had spectacular successes for the same reason. War ain't fair. People die when they do everything right. Only failure can be guaranteed. Success is always a crapshoot. The resulting frustration is a central and necessary part of anything with any pretention of being a simulation.

That is why MaxOptics, SCAF, aspect ratio AoB determination or LOA timing past the wire speed determination will never be endorsed or taught by me. The most important ingredient in simulation is the unknown gotcha.

[Hitman]

Aspect ratio is not a legitimate targeting tool, especially for fleet boats. Not once in the entire war can I find a single instance of using aspect ratio or timing the length of the target by the wire. Both of these techniques enjoy a peculiar popularity here at Subsim and both are illegitimate techniques when applied to World War II submarines. As I said earlier, very rarely, U-Boats used aspect ratio as a last resort tool.

After-war analysis of targets sunk and not sunk by American submarines revealed that most of the time targets were misidentified. That means that if they had Capn Scurvy's perfect list of hull lengths, heights of all features and Hitman's aspect ratios, they still couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn.

RR is mostly right. The aspect ratio and fixed wire methods are not, by any means, historically correct for the us submarines, and in the german uboats were they come from they also weren't that much used.

In the us submarines, plotting was the main way of getting the necessary values for the firing solution. Plot was fed from periscope observations (stadimeter for distance, based on mast/funnel heigth estimates and AOB by plain eye observation) and then checked against the TDC position keeper. When radar appeared, this task was greatly improved in accurancy, because the distance could be accurately determined, but overall the method was still the same, only more precise. Developed in the interwar period, when submarines were thought vulnerable if close to the target, the method ensured that even long range shots could have accurancy, and that firing even without seeing the target was possible (Thanks to the position keeper).

The german uboats in turn resorted to other systems, and the plot was mostly unused. The only time when something similar was used was when overhauling in the surface a target, be it a convoy or a single ship. In those cases, the captain would rely to the navigator a crude estimation of distance and issue the proper orders to keep the uboat in paralell course beyond the horizon. The comparison of own uboat course changes and bearing lines gave the navigator an approximate idea of the enemy course and speed. And when in perfect paralell position, the commander would make some speed variations until the bearing stayed constant, showing true enemy speed. In other circunstances, mainly night and submerged attacks, the commander or IWO estimated all, distance, AOB and speed by naked eye, and if available, used the values gathered previously during the overhaul maneuver.

The aspect ratio system is derivated from the horizontal stadimeter present in early war uboats and interwar periscope makers, which was not unknown to the americans. It was a useful gadget in the peacetime maneuvers, where dimensions of target ships were well known, and it helped the commanders develop the seaman eye. But in wartime, for all circunstances explained by RR, it was mostly useless.

Not so much the fixed wire, which was still used, but again not as widely as plain eye estimate.

The reason I adapted them to a quick tutorial for us submarines was to get people started on manual targetting and familiarize them with some concepts. Since the AR and FW methods were useful in situations where target dimensions are know and there is no pressure on the shooter, they fitted well the concept of SH3/4 gaming. We don't risk our necks, and the limited number of ships in the game allows us to use it. And, in the same run, the player starts understanding concepts such as the non-linear change of AOB, and the sense of relative motion of the target. In my experience, after some time using the system, the user discovers that he has developed enough experience to tell the AOB by naked eye estimation, even in a 2D environment as a game screen. And the speed also starts being judged with some accurancy, at least in some 3-4 knots interval.

I don't however concur so much with the idea that it is impossibel to guesstimate more or less correctly a ship's length (Mast heigth is more difficult), because with some practice it isn't so difficult. There are certain naval construction rules that help a bit, because shipbuilders always tend to keep some proportions, and because a few meters up or down in length don't make a lot of difference for us.