100% realism & manual targeting help

[nomad_delta]

Hooray!

So I just made my first ever successful 100% realism manual TDC attack using a combination of Hitman's instructions and the "law of cos" calculations that StarvingArtist posted, here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=561234#post561234

Scored 3 out of 3 torpedo hits and sunk a Medium Old Split Freighter. Thanks Hitman and StarvingArtist & everyone else who's posted manual targeting hints here -- couldn't have done it without ya! :D

I'm still confused as all hell out how the whole process is supposed to work, of course, and I had to pause the game for like half an hour while making the calculations and dredging the forums looking for instructions, but it worked!

I'd previously tried several other manual targetting methods (mostly Hitman's) and could never get any hits -- my torpedos kept missing (mostly behind) by a pretty large margin. I was able to get the hits by pausing the game for a while and using the (fairly complex) cosine calculations to find Speed & AOB. I figure Hitman's methods probably work great but I was just doing them wrong 'cause I don't really undetstand how the TDC or PK work.

In particular I still can't figure out:

1. How to clear/reset the TDC/PK -- supposedly there's an 'X' somewhere that I'm supposed to click, but I can't for the life of me find it.

2. Does it matter what order I enter information into the TDC, or how long I wait between entering one piece of information and the next?

3. When should I be turning the position keeper on and off? Does turning the position keeper on with only one or two pieces of information screw up the tracking even after you've entered the final piece? (Like when I'd enter the Range, Bearing, and AOB -- but then waited a couple minutes before entering the Speed. It's like the PK would think the target had just been sitting still that whole time, so it would then show up on the attack map well behind its actual location....)

I also still have no idea how on earth I'd do any of this without having to pause the game for half an hour to do all the math and read instructions... :)

nomad_delta

[Hitman]

I also still have no idea how on earth I'd do any of this without having to pause the game for half an hour to do all the math and read instructions... :)

LOL do you think real US sub commanders got a submarine command just by joining the Navy? We tend to forget easily many important things:

1.- US commanders where guys who had serious and advanced studies, many years of naval academy, many years of real navigation and such.

2.- They had a fire control party of other guys equally well trained to them

3.- They had a real 3D world environment around them, where depth helps considerably getting the dimensions, proportions and distances

So no, it is not easy to hit anything at 100% realism, and accounts from real patrols show how many torpedoes got lost by defective measuring, calculating and such.

my torpedos kept missing (mostly behind) by a pretty large margin.

That's 99% probably due to a wrong measuring of speed :yep: AOB is not so relevant when shooting from close range, but target speed is simply essential:hmm:

Keep doing it and don't worry about pausing the game for half an hour. You will get faster as time goes by and end up eliminating innecessary steps, judging things better by naked eye and getting much more efficient. Do you drive a car? Do you remember how it was when you got started? And how is it now? Well, once you have dedicated enough time to SH4, you will see how everything comes out by itself.

Good hunting!

[nomad_delta]

That's 99% probably due to a wrong measuring of speed :yep: AOB is not so relevant when shooting from close range, but target speed is simply essential:hmm:

I think you're definitely right, there. I'm pretty sure I came up with a speed of about 8 knots when I was missing, and more like 9.5 knots when I got the hits. I'll go back and try the speed measurement again using the "quick" method you described in your manual and see if I can get a better result next time. I think it might help for me to get myself a real-life stopwatch instead of using the one in the game, 'cause it's difficult to click on that along with doing everything else. Plus when you tell it to stop it erases the time, so you have to keep than in your head along with all the other numbers you're juggling.

Curious, I've also seen many references in the forums to the "3:15 rule" for speed calculation, something to do with tracking the distance a target covers in 3 minutes and 15 seconds making the speed calculation much easier, but I've never been able to track down instructions on exactly how it works anywhere -- does anyone know how to do this or have a link to where it's described?

I'm also playing with "Imperial" measurements and I only recently applied CapnScurvy's "Imperial Range Correction" mod (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116221) so maybe that had something to do with it. It's so much more frustrating to learn how to do manual targeting when you're never really sure when you're simply doing something wrong, or the game might just be calculating something incorrectly or showing you incorrect information. (I had the same gripe about most of the ship 'draft' values being wildly inaccurate. I've taken to just setting all my torpedos to run really shallow while I'm learning manual targetting, just to make sure they'll definitely hit if I get my aiming right)

Good points about real sub skippers being thoroughly trained to do all this (plus having plenty of trained people around them to help). I'll try to keep that in mind compared to my trying to figure it out over the course of a few evenings. :D

Thanks for the tips, and thanks again for writing up that instruction manual -- it really helped me a lot in just figuring out the basic procedure.

nomad_delta

[Puster Bill]

Curious, I've also seen many references in the forums to the "3:15 rule" for speed calculation, something to do with tracking the distance a target covers in 3 minutes and 15 seconds making the speed calculation much easier, but I've never been able to track down instructions on exactly how it works anywhere -- does anyone know how to do this or have a link to where it's described?


The 3:15 Rule states that the distance (in meters) that a ship travels in 3 minutes and 15 seconds is equal to the speed in knots * 100.

So, if a target travels 700 meters in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, it's speed is 7 knots. Likewise, if a ship travels 1800 meters in 3:15, it's speed is 18 knots.

It's more applicable to SHIII than SHIV, unless you are using metric measurements in SHIV, which seems somewhat heretical.:D

To adapt it to SHIV using Imperial units, you either have to convert the distance from yards to meters and then apply the rule, or simply change the time you measure by the appropriate amount.

or you could just use a slide rule.......

[Brigs]

Curious, I've also seen many references in the forums to the "3:15 rule" for speed calculation, something to do with tracking the distance a target covers in 3 minutes and 15 seconds making the speed calculation much easier, but I've never been able to track down instructions on exactly how it works anywhere -- does anyone know how to do this or have a link to where it's described?


NefariousKoel gives an excellent step-by-step explanation on page 2 of this thread
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110322&page=2&highlight=favorite

Cheers

[nomad_delta]

USS-Permit (SS-178) reporting!

As I was heading away from that first Medium Old Split Freighter, I decided I'd head for the strait between Hokkaido and Honshu to look for more targets. I picked up a contact on my radar and changed course to intercept, but through some poor planning on my part I thought the contact was moving directly away from me when in fact there were two ships moving directly toward me. They were therefore much closer than I was prepared for when I brought my periscope up again to look for them and I had very little time to maneuver into firing position and work up a solution.

I quickly ID'd the ships from the manual as two Large Composite Freighters and tried to run through Hitman's procedure but I'd already lost myself too much time so I ended up having to make a guess on the speed (the max listed in the manual was 18 for these, so I just punched in 9 knots) and visually estimate the AOB.

I think it was mostly dumb luck (and the fact that I was very close and at nearly a perfect 90 degree angle) but I somehow managed to fire off two of my Porpoise's four forward tubes at the first ship, then lined up the stadimeter on the second ship and fired (leaving the same info for AOB and speed) the second two.

Two direct hits on each target, four for four! I almost did a little dance. :D

I stayed submerged for a while to watch the show and eventually the first freighter sank all by itself. The second one was burning rapidly and wasn't moving anymore, but didn't show any signs of sinking, so I surfaced and ordered my deck gun crew to let 'er have it near the waterline.

After a minute or two of shelling a coastal battery apparently noticed all this activity 'cause I started hearing shells other than our own zipping over our heads and splashes in the water near my sub! I let the deck gun fire another couple of rounds before ordering a dive to avoid the incoming rounds, and luckily it was enough 'cause the second freighter broke apart and began to sink just as we went under.

I still think I was just incredibly lucky on the torpedo hits 'cause I still don't really feel like I know what I'm doing, but I'll take what I can get!

COMSUBPAC just sent me a radio report of an "Enemy Large Convoy" heading NNW out of Aomori at 9 knots, so I've plotted myself an intercept course. I'm assuming the convoy will probably have a destroyer escort, so here's hoping I don't do anything too stupid and get myself killed. (I also decided after the first kill that I'm not going to reload saves anymore unless the game glitches. DiD and all that...)

nomad_delta

[Hitman]

Good job Permit:up:

All methods for manual targeting require some time of plotting and tracking the enemy, the reward being you get good hits at long ranges. But when targets of opportunity appear close and you have little time to react, it's the experience and good-eye what pays off, because you will need to forget methods and jump directly into guesstimating everything on the fly.
You did a pretty nice job there, and be sure once you practice a bit more it will become even more intuitive as you understand more and more the basics of it all and make it second nature for you, like driving a car.

The best thing about manual targeting "scientific" methods is that they teach you the real logic behind targeting (Law of sines, speed is distance by time, etc.), and this ends up placing a very accurate idea in your mind of how it all works, which helps later a lot guesstimating. For example, AOB is one of the most annoying concepts in that at 90º AOB you see full length of a ship, and while you would expect to see half (50%) the length at 45º (90 divided by 2 is 45), in reality you see about three quarters (70%) length of it :o. Why? Because the AOB does not follow a linear modification but a Sine progression. And once you know that and the concept is well learnt, you find that suddenly guessing AOBs by eye becomes much easier:up:

[Powerthighs]

1. How to clear/reset the TDC/PK -- supposedly there's an 'X' somewhere that I'm supposed to click, but I can't for the life of me find it.

You don't need to clear it (I'm not even sure if there is a way). It will get way out of date as you cruise around, but as long as you input each parameter at least once before shooting it will be "pointing" to the right place.

2. Does it matter what order I enter information into the TDC, or how long I wait between entering one piece of information and the next?

3. When should I be turning the position keeper on and off? Does turning the position keeper on with only one or two pieces of information screw up the tracking even after you've entered the final piece? (Like when I'd enter the Range, Bearing, and AOB -- but then waited a couple minutes before entering the Speed. It's like the PK would think the target had just been sitting still that whole time, so it would then show up on the attack map well behind its actual location....)

Regarding the on/off switch: if the PK is off then the torpedo will fire based on the last settings you gave it. If it's on it will fire based on the last settings you gave it plus its own calculations of how you and the target have moved since you sent those inputs. If you use the PK you can leave it on the entire patrol and it will be fine. You only need to turn it off if you want the fire control system to stop the extra step of tracking since you last inputs.

Your example is correct, but if you then re-enter the AOB and bearing/range, you will see the ship on the attack map jump to the correct location.

The key is you make constant corrections to each of the three PK inputs. Once you get the speed set correctly you can leave it alone, but you can and should make multiple AOB and bearing/range inputs over time, and you solution should become more and more accurate. It's also a good idea to take one last bearing/range input right before you shoot.