Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks--Techniques, tactics, tutorials, videos

[Admiral8Q]

Originally Posted by BillBam

One problem I had early in my careers was cruising at too high of a TC rate and allowing the planes to get inside that 5 mile circle before TC reset to normal, not allowing enough time to know what was happening and get to below 100'.

What would the optimal TC rate be then to get the most TC, with the best time for it to switch back to normal?

[BillBam]

I have never had a problem at 1k TC, at 1.5k TC you better be quick to the keyboard to get down, after that it is a crap shoot.

[Admiral8Q]

Probably between 128 and 1k then

I'm going with 128 TC max on my way to recon Osaka.

[Rockin Robbins]

Hey guys! I was innocently stalking another thread on authentic methods of speed measurement in a pre-radar submarine. Someone popped up with the time the length across the wire method, which for some reason is very popular on Subsim. I'm afraid I blasted that great method as completely historically bogus.

So we talked about using bow wave and then stern wave to estimate speed. That works well, and in the game it's very reliable with experience. It was also used during the war.

But I was looking for a more analytical method, because that's my personal character defect , and ended up looking through the Submarine Torpedo Fire Control Manual from 1946 (link later). It was so great that it belongs here in your bag of tricks! It's amazing what happens when you look at what the real submariners did. There sure weren't stupid!

However, the stern wave is tremendously influenced by the hull shape, and of course there is a wide variety of hull shapes. You can also judge speed by the spacing between the bow wave and the quarter wave, which is further away from the bow wave with increasing speed.

Of all the methods, however, the bow wave is the most uniform between different ships.

Now this is all about the real thing and I don't know how closely the game reflects reality in this area.

Now here's an even better method stolen from the Submarine Torpedo Fire Control Manual of 1946. It relies only on achieving a collision course with your target. This can be done at just about any own speed, and even submerged if need be. How do you know you are on a collision course? Your target's bearing doesn't change with time. Your target is traveling from right to left. So let's say you take a target bearing of 15 degrees. Two minutes later it's 20 degrees (sorry, the alt-0186 shortcut for the degree sign doesn't work in Linux and I don't want to chase down the equivalent right now.). This means that the target is lagging behind. Either change course slightly toward the target or slow down. Take another measurement two minutes later. If you're still at 20 degrees, you have achieved a collision course. Make minute adjustments over time until you hold the same bearing for over three minutes. Collision course achieved! It's chart time:



All right, in official Navy terms Ab is angle on the bow. You understand that. LA is the lead angle, that's the angle between the bearing line to the target and your bow. S sub T is target speed and S sub O is Own Speed. These abbreviations are used uniformly throughout official submarine attack procedures. So, reading the formula there, Target Speed equals your own speed times the sine of the lead angle divided by the sin of the angle on the bow. The real guys would work that out in seconds on a slide rule, so you may authentically use a calculator.

Now you have with perfect authenticity calculated the speed and can derive the exact course of your adversary. Is it too much for some game players? Sure it is. Is it possible to do within the game? Absolutely. It's what I will do next time I'm caught in a boat without radar! If I can. The eyeball methods are better for quickly developing situations where you either shoot quickly or not at all. Guess this post ends up in the Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks thread now...


And as a bonus, I found something else. You can put your target abeam and eyeball a relatively parallel course, right? You don't have to be accurate: 25 degrees off one way or another still yields pretty good results. Some idea of range is necessary too. But for what it's worth:


OK, that means that you're on a parallel course with your target. Your courses are the same, but of course, your speeds are different. We'll just say he's a mile, 2000 yards, away. Taking a series of bearings, his bearing is decreasing, he's falling back of 2 degrees per minute and you're going 10 knots. So he's traveling two knots slower than you are! Peg that guy at 8 knots.

Now get on a collision course and do the other calc. This will confirm and give you a reliable range at the same time when you diagram it out at the plotting table!

[WarlordATF]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

There have been several threads lately about problems with planes in Silent Hunter 4, especially with TMO. These posts are quickly followed by advice on how to cheat and modify the configuration files to minimize or eliminate airplanes. I'm sure that's exactly how Dick O'Kane handled the planes....

IMO the planes in SH4 are handled very unrealisticly, patrol aircraft flying maximum duration was the exception not the rule in real life, especially later in the war when fuel became a concern for the Japs. Fuel aside, patrols would rarely fly that far because of the wear and tear on the aircraft. Just because a plane could fly x amount of miles does not mean they did so on a regular basis.

With Sh4 its all or nothing, you have one airstrike.cfg defining maximum range which would vary greatly depending on the aircraft type in the real world. So there really isn't a realistic way to set the game up. If you give them the long range of some of the larger patrol aircraft then planes like the Zero (who don't have drop tanks in the game) behave unrealisticly, give them the shorter range and others are not performing right. You really can't win.

Please don't misunderstand this post as confrontational, i just wanted to explain why i answered the question that was asked and why i see no issue of "Cheating" by modifying the config files that cannot be realistic in the first place.

EDIT: I just checked that post, It didn't ask how to edit the game. The OP was going to give up on TMO Because of the planes and i offered the information as a way to help. My Mistake.

[Rockin Robbins]

Lol! It doesn't matter if the planes are realistic or not in SH4 with any mod configuration. They are not dangerous, cannot see you and cannot hurt you unless they get VERY VERY lucky if you follow my strategy.

The only weakness in my strategy is if you are engaged in a prolonged submerged approach to a target, you have lost situational awareness of the air and a plane accidentally spots you submerged. What can I say? War ain't totally safe.

[rein1705]

OR... if you're commanding the Narwhale.... you'll barely have time to get under. Hope you're a pretty fare hand with an AA gun.

[Rockin Robbins]

In that case you submerge when the plane is further away. When in frequently trafficked areas, running with decks awash would be a fuel consuming but smart tactic. Same deal though. You fight with planes and you're a loser. Either you shoot down cheap, easy to replace planes with your expensive, difficult to replace submarine (and are a chump for it) or a cheap, easy to replace airplane sinks an expensive, difficult to replace submarine (killing over 60 highly trained and difficult to replace men) and the sake flows freely tonight. Heads they win, tails you lose. That's not a good game to play.

Fight your battle, not theirs. YOU choose the game. Then it's heads you win, tails THEY lose. Never fight a fair fight. You have too much to lose.

Very nice sugar boat shot you have there!

[rein1705]

Thank you very much. And your advice has been priceless to me in the past. I was just pointing out that early in the war and even with the better air radar theres not a lot of warning time to dive the Narwhale if there headed directly in your path. i should have been a little more detaled maybe. I pretty much follow your tactics and only dive when i need to, run around 8-9 knots most the time and utilize my heavy guns when its safe enough.
Currently playing as the Narwhale Nov 42 out of Perth.

[rein1705]

PS. thats the S-36 in the pic. I played as her for a very long time and it's still my fave. I got the picture here: Submarine Photo Index

[Rockin Robbins]

Nice! I love playing the sugar boats in SH4! Out of Australia they're a blast.

[sergei]

Originally Posted by rein1705

OR... if you're commanding the Narwhale.... you'll barely have time to get under.

Using the Narwahl in TMO, running trimmed down in areas of high air cover is essential.
Learnt that by bitter experience

[badaboom]

Wonderful info here,Thank You!!

[Barkhorn1x]

OK - maybe I missed it earlier in this thread - but; Can anyone point me to the link that describes - in a step-by-step manner - how to do a Stern/MOT/Bow distribution w/ the JPC method?

[Rockin Robbins]

I was looking at it just a couple of days ago. In order to do it you'll have to have a small bit of tolerance for imperfect solutions because we won't have time to update the AoB while doing this. It won't matter much in the location of the hits.

First of all, we want to do the stern, MOT, bow shot for two reasons. The first is that we are shooting the longest distance shot first. This makes run times closer together and your hits will be very close together, if not simultaneous. but the second reason is that when you shoot the bow, MOT, stern shot, all three torpedoes proceed in a single path toward the target in line ahead. By turning into the torpedoes, the target can easily evade. Evading one of them is evading all of them!

BUT when you shoot stern, MOT, bow, the torpedoes take the most divergent paths possible. Now they are spread out, not taking the same path. This makes it very difficult to evade all three torpedoes.

So let's do this monster for a target moving left to right! Set up your first shot up the 45º line just like normal. We'll estimate a 10º lead, so we'll point the boat up the 45º line and set our scope 10º left of that to the 350º bearing. Our AoB will be 45-10 or 35º starboard in this case with target traveling from left to right. We've got our speed from radar in our original plot of the target course. Our PK is off.

Now we'll diverge from our normal practice. Set our input TDC on the right so you can immediately send range/bearing because we're going to have to do that twice quickly!

We are waiting for our first shot with scope on the 350 bearing and we'll wait for almost the entire ship to cross the wire and aim our first shot to the stern area! Shot away.

Now aim the scope just ahead of the target and press the send range/bearing button. Wait for the MOT and shoot again.

Then jump just ahead of the target again and press that send range/bearing button. Shoot at the bow. Remember that after you press the send range/bearing button you cannot move the scope until after you shoot!

You're done. Taking the minimum time between shots by setting the TDC ahead of time for quick input of range/bearing has kept the consequences of the slightly inaccurate AoBs for shots two and three bearable. You might miss by five feet or so from the spot you aimed. He's still going to make a satisfying blub, blub, blub!

Let me know how your success goes!