auto-aim torps way off target?

[loftyc]

Ok, yes I'm not manually targetting, but I'm still just trying to get this thing working right and looking half-way decent on my old ATI 9600. The thing is, I'm dead on in the torpedo school mission, but in a real game, I can't get a torpedo to go even near a target. I made sure that manual targeting is not checked for the campaign, the targets are going straight, I'm inside 1,000 yds, and yet when I watch a shot with an external view, I can see the torp wake curving way off course. What gives?

[Wijbrandus]

Shoot your torpedo men?

[banjo]

Are you using the PK button? You don't need that in auto targeting and if you do it will give you the kind of results you are seeing.

[banjo]

Also, are you manually opening your torpedo doors? You must do that or the lag while that happens will make you miss aft.

[Quillan]

A couple of possibilities:

1) As Banjo stated, the solution assumes the torpedo is going to fire the moment you press the fire button. If you haven't opened the tube doors first, it'll be 5-10 seconds later before the torp actually launches, and that makes the solution wrong. At very close ranges you can still hit, but much farther aft than you intended. At farther ranges or higher speed it'll make you miss.

2) The "Dud torpedoes" realism setting includes all the historical faults of the American WWII torpedoes, including circle runners. You might have just had a faulty fish.

[SteamWake]

Are you using the PK button?

If there veering way off course... this...

Oh... forgot one other possibility. If the target(s) are alerted to your presance they will sail an erratic course screwing up your solutions... manual or otherwise. This is made worse if it a shot from a long distance, outside of 1,000 feet and the torps are set for slow.

[Wijbrandus]

PK Button? This does not ring a bell.

I missed a lot of shots way back when I didn't open my doors far enough ahead of my launch.

I also notice that sometimes the target will spot my torpedos and speed up.

[banjo]

I think the button actually has the initials GPS or something like that on it. It is the greyed out red button on the torpedo setting/solution device in the upper left corner when you are looking thru the periscope/TBT. It turns red when pressed.+

[Wijbrandus]

Ah the Position Keeper. I kept wondering how Player-Kills entered into Silent Hunter. :rotfl:

I never use it, because it is too easy to forget and then your torp is going after a ghost instead of the real target.

[loftyc]

I checked that the PK button was off (gray/white) and I promptly sank two ships! Thanks for the tip, but any idea why it works when it's off, and not on? What does turning it on (red/green) do (aside from sabatage)?

[Quillan]

To get a firing solution, you normally have to input certain data: the bearing of the target, range to target, angle on bow, and target speed. The bearing and range tell where the target is. AOB tells what course the target is on, and speed tells how fast it is going. If you're using manual targeting, you have to input all this data yourself, while if you're using auto targeting it's given to the TDC whenever the ship is in the crosshairs of the scope.

The solution is nothing more than a mathematical calculation. You know the position and velocity of the target, you know the position and speed of your torpedo, so the TDC is solving for the heading it must take to collide with the target. Normally, the solution is only good for a few seconds, because the target is moving. Once the data is wrong the solution is wrong. In auto targeting, this isn't an issue because you can just keep the target locked and the data updates constantly.

The position keeper updates the data itself when it's turned on. It basically recalculates the solution constantly based on the original data input. You knew where the target was when you started, the direction it was heading, and the speed it was going. If none of those change, you can get a new firing solution by updating the target position any time in the future, which is what the PK does. Primarily it's good for firing without raising your periscope. You can get your data early, lower the scope, then wait for the optimal firing position without a chance of being observed before firing. It's largely useless if you're using auto targeting, and it overrides the input from the scope when it's on, so leave it off.

[banjo]

One clarification--in auto targeting you don't actually have to ever lock the target. As long as the crosshairs are on the target the solution is updating. Locking the target in auto targeting does two things; it automatically keeps the periscope/TBT on the target until it is unlocked, and, in 1.5 it automatically sets the depth of whatever torpedo is selected to 3 feet above the keel depth. This can be a problem because if you don't fire that torpedo it's depth can be wrong for a future shot if you or auto targeting doesn't reset it. Again, this feature is in 1.5 only.

[SteamWake]

You should get into the habit of double checking the torpedoes before firing them anyhow.

Cant tell you how many torps Ive wasted by setting up a under keel shot and leaving the trigger on impace.

How many times Ive missed that pesky DD because I left the torp on 'slow'.