Situational Awareness, Map Contacts, Tracking and Plotting

[Uber Gruber]

I would like to use this topic to discuss the ideal nav map situation for those who perform manual targeting.

Over the years I have used quite a few mods in this regard, mainly OLCs, Mikhayl's and the old Assisted Plotting Mod (can't seem to find the modder's name).

My overall preference is for the Assisted Plotting Mod so I have included a list of its main features below (for your information).

The goal is to make our in-game situational awareness equivalent to that of a real life U-Boat commander. I accept that in real life teh commander did not really involve himself in the information gathering process, prefering to delegate these tasks to his senior crew and thus leave his mind free for tactical considerations of the attack. Yet, we, as manual targeting types, get quite a bit of enjoyment from tracking and plotting our own solutions.

So, given your knowledge of U-Boat submarine warfare, do you think that the Assisted Plotting Mod detailed below is the nearest we can get to achieving the situational awareness goal without providing too much information and thus robbing us of our track and plot pleasures ?

I hope, from this discussion, to finally put this baby to bed AND provide feedback to the Dev team of SH5.

Cheers, Ug.:salute:



Assisted Plotting Mod Features
1. Have coloured campaign radio contact icons so you can no longer see tails in the boxes. Have decided not to remove friendly and neutral colours, as this would have been reported via radio. I could do this if many request it.

2. Have removed the ships from appearing at higher zoom levels and icons representing the subs precise contact systems i.e. visual and radar.

3. Have made it so if you move hand to location of visual contact a small circle should appear, this represents your man on the periscope giving you info. It is best to get the bearing and run the ruler up that line till circle appears.

4. You just have to add your mark somewhere in the centre of the circle. I never put a crosshair, as I wanted some small error factor to be included.

5. When fully zoomed you will not get the circle and instead just get a text sentence. Again I imagine to myself that it is just me and periscope operator making longer and more precise calculations.

6. You can click on circle and watch one at a time, a bit like following a target to get a feel for its movements.

7. You will still get surprised and sneaked up on if you are not careful with viewing, love that I do.

8. Sonar lines have been reduced to dots on screen and it is not possible to get an accurate range from the dots as they fade over distance. This represents updates from sonar man but only a general idea as to contacts distance.

9. You will lose contact circle the second your scope disappears below water.

10. At longer ranges the circle will not appear (7000) so you may still do your long plotting to get info but anything within 5000 metres comes under the assistance rule.

11. This mod still makes it so that you can influence your shots by taking that last range and bearing through scope just before firing.

12. This mod makes it easier to calculate speeds with minimum scope above water and mathematics as long as you use a nonograph provided by Wazzoo.

[Uber Gruber]

What I personally think would be "realistic" is:

1) Far Radio TX Reports of ships/convoys/taskforces etc should provide grid square, course and speed estimate but nothing should show up on the nav map. (aka Mikayl's mod)

2) Near Radio TX Reports of ships/convoys/taskforces etc should drop compression to 1x and provide the player with an indication of "something in the area" but nothing on the nav map untill the target has been visually spotted (the Luftwaffe were notoriously inaccurate with sea navigation anyway, as were the RAF for that matter)

3) Ship spotted contacts should appear on the map but using a big circular icon to avoid accurate range estimate. This icon should only appear if an optic is locked on the ship or the player hovers his mouse pointer over the general area (aka Assisted Plotting Mod).

4) All identified targets should be marked on the nav map but they should not track, i.e. not move over time untill an optic has locked back on them - then their old position icon should be erazed and their new position indicated.

4a) OOpps....if a target has an optic locked on it then it should be constantly updated but again only using a vague circular icon to model the uncertainty of range.

5) Whilst submerged the existing Assisted Plotting Mod works perfectly with gradually fading sonar lines. These should be updated once for all sound contacts each 360 deg sweep of hydro (if sonar man in sweep mode) or only one sound contact updated constantly (if sonar man in follow target mode).

6) Ideally, the player should be able to designate a desired target for the Sonarman to track rather than simpy the "nearest"

6a) A bit off topic but the WO should also be able to provide a range ESTIMATE for any target that an optic is locked onto as opposed to the current system of nearest target only - this is actually a very annoying flaw in the original SH3 game design.

7) The player's sub should always be marked (unless the payer chooses otehrwise for whatever reason).

8) Ideally, aircraft should also be indicated by fading hydro-like lines with line lengths equivalent to long range, medium range and short range (they move to fast for accurate range estimates anyway)

9) All harbours should be marked, i'm sure real U-Boat commanders knew their way out of a port at least!

10) Can anyone add to this or argue against it ?

Cheers, Ug.