Sonar Bearing errors to TDC?

[Galanti]

Last night I opted to run a sonar attack against a large maru, as seas were pretty high and I was concerned about broaching and alerting the enemy. I took my marks and speed estimate from the periscope, then submerged to 80 feet to continue with the sonar. I pinged for range and continously sent bearings to the TDC.

When the time came to shoot, got a final ping for range, and then fired three fish, sending the bearing via sonar for each shot. The results were wildy off by about 30-40 degrees.

What went wrong? I'd used sonar for ranging before, but have never used it to send bearing data. Could it be because I had the sonar man track the closest target, and then used the order bar to ping and send bearings rather than rotating the sound heads myself and the clicking the varioous knobs at the station?

[Wilcke]

Thats a tough one to analyze and I assume you are using patch 1.4. What MODS you use I do not know either.

My sonar only attacks have been highly inneffective, if I can set the course of the target and speed, I am more likely to do the end around and shoot from 90 AOB left or right. If its a task force with lots of tin cans and lots of targets. I will set up a "shoot and scoot" using the bearing and range buttons on the task bar. I ping three times and just click the send range button till I get a stable range and send that along with bearing to the TDC using the tool bar buttons, I update the TDC with fresh speed and AOB. PK is optional I use as it was SOP on the boats.

I usually set up a 6 shot with spread, fire and scoot down deep and reload.

Sometimes you get hits sometimes you don't, then again there is that pesky torpedo problem, good solutions, bad weapons!:88)

I just love this sim!

Happy Hunting!

[Quillan]

I do wish you had the capability of manually inputting bearing, range, and AOB into the computer the way you could in SH3.

[Jaeger]

in my opinion, the restricted TDC in sh4 is the biggest reason for the sh3 community not to change to sh4. have a look in the olc gui for example. you can enter every data on various different ways, thats the sh3 experience. in sh4, the americain tdc gives only one way to get the data. no chance of editing the readouts yourself. the addon is the right step, because now we have the german tdc with all the working readouts. what is still needed: the olc gui for sh4 u boat missions!

[Wilcke]

in my opinion, the restricted TDC in sh4 is the biggest reason for the sh3 community not to change to sh4. have a look in the olc gui for example. you can enter every data on various different ways, thats the sh3 experience. in sh4, the americain tdc gives only one way to get the data. no chance of editing the readouts yourself. the addon is the right step, because now we have the german tdc with all the working readouts. what is still needed: the olc gui for sh4 u boat missions!

I do agree with that, OLC GUI has revolutionized SH3 for me. I run GWX2.0 and NYGM and I bounce back and forth between the two. There is a big difference...OLC did a magnificent job.

I do not know if the MODDERS will be able to do their magic with USN TDC. Might be hard coded.

[Zantham]

The beauty of the US TDC is you can obtain your targets course, speed and range from a distance where you can see the target but it can't see you (hopefully). You plug it into the TDC, lock the position keeper, submerge if you want, drive around wherever you want, and whenever you feel like it fire a torpedo without raising the periscope again. As long as your solution was valid, the target has not changed direction or speed, and you're within range etc, your torpedo will hit. Obviously you may want to double-check your solution again before you fire, but in theory at least this is not necessary.

[Raptor1]

Just a note, in the addon's U-Boat campaign, you get the original SH3 TDC, so shouldn't it be possible to mod it into the Fleet Boats?

[AVGWarhawk]

Sending bearing via the sonar has not been that great since the beginning. In fact, I never use it. In all reality, using sonar only to sink vessels was not very effective anyway from what I have read. Range when the vessel is very far out is just very general but improves as the vessels get closer and you keep pinging. Be aware and I'm sure you are, the vessels now detect your pings. From very far away not so much but close, you will probably get noticed. Try it once, I pinged a DD and as soon as it hit, the DD screws sped up and headed my way.

[Galanti]

Sending bearing via the sonar has not been that great since the beginning. In fact, I never use it. In all reality, using sonar only to sink vessels was not very effective anyway from what I have read. Range when the vessel is very far out is just very general but improves as the vessels get closer and you keep pinging. Be aware and I'm sure you are, the vessels now detect your pings. From very far away not so much but close, you will probably get noticed. Try it once, I pinged a DD and as soon as it hit, the DD screws sped up and headed my way.

Yeah, I've since tried some dummy solutions, and watching my projected torpedo track in F6, I notice it goes all over the place when I repeatedly 'Send Bearing to TDC' via Sonar. They should probably rename that command to 'Send Random Bearings to TDC'.