How are we defining noob?

[Captain Dave]

Wutzthedeal, also an ex USAF in a sub. Welcome aboard.

[Crannogman]

As a relative noob myself, who's afraid of the TDC, I feel your pain. I did my first career patrol on easy, then set it to medium when I got back to Pearl because it was just too much.
My advice, at least at first, is to avoid convoys. You can usually find lone or pairs of cargo ships, travelling unescorted, without too much difficulty. There seems to be a shipping lane for such between Japan and the Marshalls, just a few miles east of the Marianas. Usually the first thing you'll get is a sonar contact; on your map (which is where your screen should be when cruising), you'll see a black line (representing the sonar contact) that connects your sub to the other ship. Immediately turn time compression to x1, zoom in on the far end of the black line, and mark it with the black pencil. Set your boat's speed to 1/3 and wait; the black line will move with the (enemy?) ship, and after it moves a reasonable distance mark the tip again.
Now you can use his two positions to plot his course. Using the ruler tool, start at your first pencil mark (x) and draw a line throught second x and several miles beyond; this should be a pretty reliable prediction of his course. Next I use the compass tool to draw a 1-nautical-mile radius circle centered one the first mark, and an identical circle at the other end of the plotted course; I try to make the radius line perpendicular to the plotted enemy course. Next I draw another line (using the ruler tool) connecting the two radius line tips; the result should be a line parallel to the enemy/target's course, and 1 nm (2000 yards) apart. I consider ths second line my firing line. I guesstimate the direction from my sub to the far end of my firing line (in the direction the target is moving) click that on the direction wheel (e.g NE on the middle of the 3 control circles in the lower right of the screen, and set my speed to full ahead on the left of the 3 control circles.
Use low time compression, and adjust your direction accordingly to steer your sub to the firing line. I also keep an eye on the sonar contact line to see if the target is deviating from my plotted course; often he will be a little to one side or the other, but hopefully not too far. When I get my boat close to the firing line (near the intersection of the radius line, circle and firing line I drew earlier), I turn my sub so it is parallel to the radius line, and thus perpedicular to the firing and course lines. I slow to 1/3 and go to periscope depth, then stop my engine and wait. Usually I've arrived well before the target. I watch the map and wait for the sonar contact line to be almost directly in front of my boat (ie almost parallel to the radius line I drew earlier); I'll usually pop the periscope up a fee times as he approaches to check what and where he really is. At this time, I should be pretty close to perfect position to fire.

Once you get used to plotting enemy ship courses and racing on the surface to get ahead, you can start doing the same for convoys. But lone, unescorted merchants make for good plotting (and torpedoing) practice.
You can adjust your firing line distance as circumstances dictate. You'll want to be closer for faster or zig-zagging targets (you can usually tell these by watching the sonar contact line), or in poor visibilty (storms, fog; 2000m is usually adequate on a clear night). Conversely, I'll shoot from farther if there are escorts (so I can get farther from the firing point before they come looking) or if I can't get closer due to the target's relative position/speed).

I hope this helps you use the map to figure out where a contact is going and where to need to go to sink it

[fireftr18]

Originally Posted by wutzthedeal

Thank you all for the warm welcome. Now I have hope; I can just play on easy settings. That I can do. I'm watching the Noob guide (you won't believe this but it's true) for the third time now, trying to fully understand everything. One thing I gotta give sub sim people and I'll pat myself on the back for a second, too, is the patience required. Sub sims and those that require similar patience (realistic sniper games, hitman games, etc.) separate the men from the boys. Anyway I went ahead and started the career mode and am heading across the Pacific. Who the hell puts an airman in a submarine? Thank you computers and software.

I can very easily believe you watched it three or more times. There is a lot of information, and a lot to learn. There is a large learning curve, but once you learn it, it's great.

[CapnZero]

Thanks to those who bid me welcome.

Whether we were zoomies, grunts, pounders, or civvies, I guess we are all skwids now!

[wutzthedeal]

Excellent post Crannogman; you were reading my mind. That is what I needed to see written down. I'll use that with a fourth run-through of the Noob vid. I have sunk two individual merchant ships. One took 5 torpedoes, and one only took 2 (or perhaps one would have worked if I had waited around because it must have struck something to make secondary explosions; it was in really bad shape but I launched another anyway). Those two patrols with all their contacts and random aircraft had me buzzin' about, but I'm starting to understand this some. One mistake I am making is predicting an accurate course for the target. I think they're moving way faster than I thought they would be because when I get there, nothing is there. But that's just going to require more reading and videos.

Yep, no matter what branch we were in, we're in the Navy now! I have a decent amount of experience with flight and flight combat sims (I was just a calibrations guy in the AF) and some of those missions can take some real patience, too, so I already had the patience in place. What a freakin' fun game this is. I could play SH4 for years to come, and $6 on Steam is no joke! (I would play the others but I just hate being German anything... got a thing I haven't gotten over in my thinking yet).

[Spraug]

Originally Posted by wutzthedeal

Who the hell puts an airman in a submarine?

Well, the IJN - especially the air arm - did that to quite a few pilots, if only for a limited period of time. Ask G.W.Bush sen.

[Crannogman]

Originally Posted by wutzthedeal

One mistake I am making is predicting an accurate course for the target. I think they're moving way faster than I thought they would be because when I get there, nothing is there. But that's just going to require more reading and videos.

Are you trying to chase down the convoys and task forces that pop up on your map as contact reports every now and then? I haven't tried for those unless they pop up coming towards my and within like 50 nm; otherwise, it's tough to figure their course because you never get frequent-enough reports to figure a reliable course. But you can mark their speed.
Often I will draw a line in their direction of travel; if it says they're making 9 kts, I draw one 9nm long. Then I mark a black pencil X at that 9nm spot. Then I use the ruler to pick-up and continue the line ahead another 9nm, and drop it again. This way you can plot out their predicted positions several hours into the future. You can then use the ruler or compass to figure the hortest distance from you to their predicted course; divided by 18, this will tell you how long it will take you to intercept them; ideally you can bet them there by comfortable margin, say a couple hours. I then turn and go back down that line towards thhe contact report, maybe a thousand yards to one side or the other, at a slower speed.
I don't draw a firing line for a map contact, because it's too hard to make a good bearing from that one point. Once I make sonar contact, I start making new pencil marks to plot a truer course prediction. If it's a convoy or task force, watch because more sonar lines will pop-up quickly and you want to make sure you're marking the same contact. If they're coming right at me, I'll move off to the side.
If I travel down that line all the way to the contact report without finding anything, I call it a wash and move on. There's always more fish in the sea. Sometimes you'll get a contact report for a single ship; if they aren't really close (and really recent) I ignore them, they're too hard to catch.
I rarely fire more than 2 torps at any one ship. If it's a lone merchant, I surface and shell it until it sinks (provided I hit it with at least one torp). If it's something else, I'm probably at 300ft bsl doing 1kt by the time the torps reach their target

[wutzthedeal]

Ah, caught me on a technicality, Spraug. Crannogman, I think that's part of what's wrong; trusting map contacts. Got me chasing my tail a bit. And patrolling for a month and seeing essentially nothing. I've been reading on when to report status/enemies and such (I only play single player in games like this so not sure how much reporting my status is important to friendly AI). I don't mind the long waits; makes it much more realistic--I shouldn't even say that considering I'm sitting in a comfortable, safe chair using time compression but I can channel my severe spine/knee arthritis as a type of virtual reality to feel discomfort. All I need is some type of stink machine and some sea spray once in a while. I'm going to start over because I didn't get credit for those merchant ships... guess they weren't close enough to the Marshall Islands. Can't be failing my first mission with only like 14% realism. The math and tools are starting to get easier!

[Crannogman]

Awesome, congrats on getting some kills. I found seas East and NE of Borneo to be good hunting as well; plenty of merchants, few warships

[CaptBones]

Originally Posted by wutzthedeal

One mistake I am making is predicting an accurate course for the target. I think they're moving way faster than I thought they would be because when I get there, nothing is there. But that's just going to require more reading and videos.

Welcome aboard Air Force

Although I haven't been out on a SH4 career/mission lately, I've used "real world" techniques in SH3 and SH4 that work well in the sim environment.

When you're trying to lay out the track of a convoy, task group, or a single merchant, based on a contact report, keep in mind that the course of the contact is given using a simplified Nautical Compass Card (16 points instead of the full 32-point compass). So, the course given (e.g., SW) is actually as much as 11.25 degrees different from "true" SW.

To plot a useful search pattern for intercepting that contact, you can draw a triangle based on the boundaries of the reported course ("SW" = 225 degrees true, plus/minus 11.25 degrees, adding "farthest-on" arcs along the given course, based on the speed of the contact. IIRC the speeds given in contact reports are "slow" (<7kts), "medium" (7-9kts) and "fast" (>9kts for merchant vessels but usually much faster [18-25knots] for warships).

A zig-zagging contact doesn't seem to screw-up that technique, as far as I've seen anyway; it appears that the contact reports provide the Base Course of the convoy/task group.

I hope this helps you out a bit..."Find 'em...chase 'em...sink 'em!"

[THEBERBSTER]

A warm welcome ‘wutzthedeal’ to the Subsim family.

You will always find someone here to help you.

Link to my SH3 – SH4 – SH5 posts:

Step By Step Tutorials & How To Do It.

Also Included Are Some Useful Download Links.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=211804

If you Are A New Subber My Thread Might Save You Some Time.

You can now use TDW’s Generic File Patcher with STEAM see my Tutorial Post #125

[THEBERBSTER]

A warm welcome ‘CapnZero’ to the Subsim family.

[THEBERBSTER]

A warm welcome ‘Crannogman' to the Subsim family.

[wutzthedeal]

Thank you all for chiming in. Since reading what you wrote and referenced (though I'm just not ready to fully understand all the math yet) I've really started having some fun. So I'm gonna go disappear into this game for a while. There's a war to win, again. Then I'm gonna write a new song. It'll go:
I'm proud to be an American,
Where at least I know I'm... relatively hard to depth-charge depending on your technology and experience.

[Crannogman]

Capt Bones makes a good point; the probability cone makes sense. I usually make plot the line to be as parallel as I can eyeball to the little tail on the contact report icon on the map; I don't pay as much attention to the radio report itself. I've found that line to be accurate within 3000y at a range of ~50 nm