Mk 16 torpedo tactics?

[WH4K]

How do you use the Mk 16 torps? Or do you? I've found them quite useful for blowing away docked ships without getting anywhere close, but it's hard to really use their maximum range.

Some of the difficulty probably reflects historical limitations of submarine fire control equipment, but some is just because it's a computer game. Here's what I mean.

The chief problem is, it's very very difficult to hit anything moving from anywhere near the maximum range of over 6 nautical miles. The slightest error in TDC inputs (range, AOB or target speed) means your torp misses aft or astern. Not good for relatively expensive (in Renown points) shots.

Part of that is the difficulty of seeing and measuring things with the limits of the computer display. I've mitigated those factors somewhat by using things like the Ship-Centered Accuracy Fix and MaxOptics IV, but the small margin for error remains.

Historically, I'm fairly sure skippers would have wanted to shoot from as far away as possible. They couldn't simply re-load a savegame if things went south. Stuff I've read about the Mk. 14 employment tactics suggests that they tended to use the long-range, "slow" speed setting whenever possible.

Also lots of shooting spreads, as a means of compensating for errors in the fire control solution.

I've also been wondering whether the significantly larger warhead makes a difference. There seems to be some disagreement on the size of the Mk. 16's warhead. Wikipedia says it carried 723 lb. Torpex vs. the Mk. 14's 643 lb. payload. However, when playing with TMO 2.0, the game told me the Mk. 16 packed a whopping 900+ lb. warhead.

That should mean I need fewer Mk. 16's to sink a given ship vs. Mk. 14's, based on the game's "hit points" sinking model. But I haven't noticed this to be the case. Seems like I need just as many Mk. 16 shots as I did Mk. 14 shots to sink a Nippon Maru, for instance.

Nevertheless, I have had a few perfect shots, for example taking out a Nagana Maru with a pair of Mk 16's from about 5 n.m. after stalking its convoy from afar over the course of a day or so. It was just awesome to see that ship down like a cable-cut elevator, and be far enough away as to be able to thumb my nose (metaphorically) at the escorts.

[Armistead]

In game, it has a bigger warhead. I sunk the Yamato with 6 once. As for as using the range, really doesn't come into play in game no more than the M14. You'll end up wasting them if shooting at long range. In game they carry a wake, I assume as strong as the M14, although in reality the wake could barely be seen.

The equipment you have just doesn't give the data, even if it did it would still be luck. I think the M16 was around until the 70's.

[TorpX]

How do you use the Mk 16 torps? Or do you? I've found them quite useful for blowing away docked ships without getting anywhere close, but it's hard to really use their maximum range.

Some of the difficulty probably reflects historical limitations of submarine fire control equipment, but some is just because it's a computer game. Here's what I mean.

The chief problem is, it's very very difficult to hit anything moving from anywhere near the maximum range of over 6 nautical miles. The slightest error in TDC inputs (range, AOB or target speed) means your torp misses aft or astern. Not good for relatively expensive (in Renown points) shots.

Part of that is the difficulty of seeing and measuring things with the limits of the computer display. I've mitigated those factors somewhat by using things like the Ship-Centered Accuracy Fix and MaxOptics IV, but the small margin for error remains.

Historically, I'm fairly sure skippers would have wanted to shoot from as far away as possible. They couldn't simply re-load a savegame if things went south. Stuff I've read about the Mk. 14 employment tactics suggests that they tended to use the long-range, "slow" speed setting whenever possible.

Also lots of shooting spreads, as a means of compensating for errors in the fire control solution.

I've also been wondering whether the significantly larger warhead makes a difference. There seems to be some disagreement on the size of the Mk. 16's warhead. Wikipedia says it carried 723 lb. Torpex vs. the Mk. 14's 643 lb. payload. However, when playing with TMO 2.0, the game told me the Mk. 16 packed a whopping 900+ lb. warhead.

That should mean I need fewer Mk. 16's to sink a given ship vs. Mk. 14's, based on the game's "hit points" sinking model. But I haven't noticed this to be the case. Seems like I need just as many Mk. 16 shots as I did Mk. 14 shots to sink a Nippon Maru, for instance.

Nevertheless, I have had a few perfect shots, for example taking out a Nagana Maru with a pair of Mk 16's from about 5 n.m. after stalking its convoy from afar over the course of a day or so. It was just awesome to see that ship down like a cable-cut elevator, and be far enough away as to be able to thumb my nose (metaphorically) at the escorts.
From what I've read most skippers prefered to shoot from 500 to 1500 yds. However, later war they were sometimes forced to shoot from longer range due to more/better escorts.

The U.S. torpedos had different warheads through the war; at least the Mk 14 did. It was incrementally improved, but the biggest improvement was using Torpex instead of TNT.

I wouldn't expect to see big differences in the game though. The damadge models your using (TMO or RFB), will be the most important factor in how many torps you need. I read of people sinking the Yamato with 5 or 6 torps, but in RL it took 20 bombs and torps before she sank!

[WH4K]

I have yet to run into anything near a battleship size, except for the very occasional carrier.

Actually there seems to be a capital ship "parking lot" just west of Yokosuka at several points in the war. With the stock TMO campaign (no Run Silent Run Deep), I found a pair of cruisers parked there at many points during the war. Usually it was one Maya heavy and one light cruiser. Once it was two Mayas and a large fleet carrier (can't recall the class).

Up until I started getting crashes every time I tried to sail into that area (see other thread), I would swing by there whenever I had torps to spare & try to score a heavy cruiser.

I couldn't test whether the Mk 16's larger warhead was better for sinking capital ships, because like I said, the game started crashing anytime I tried to get in Tokyo Bay. So by the time Mk 16's became available I could no longer get in there to test 'em.

But since I "reinstalled" SH4 and applied the 4GB patch earlier today, I think the Tokyo Bay crashes are cured, so perhaps I'll give it another go.

[Hylander_1314]

I had a weird problem in my last career. I pulled a photo recon mission to Rabaul and there were 5 DDs patroling the are, and I could hit them all with torpedoes as they charged in at night, but every time I hit the lone Fubuki DD, the game would lock up tight, and I would have use the CTRL+ALT+ DELETE to stop the game. I just ignored the orders to do the photo recon part, and went out sinking everything I could and returned to base.

What caused it is beyond me. Never happenned again after that, so I didn't worry about it.

[commandosolo2009]

I have yet to run into anything near a battleship size, except for the very occasional carrier.


Ehem, what? :huh: What exactly are you playing? or let me rephrase, how are you playing?

[TorpX]

But since I "reinstalled" SH4 and applied the 4GB patch earlier today, I think the Tokyo Bay crashes are cured, so perhaps I'll give it another go.
What is the 4GB patch and what exactly does it do?

[WH4K]

What is the 4GB patch and what exactly does it do?

There really needs to be a sticky explaining the hows and whys of the "4GB patch." I think it applies to SH3 as well as SH4, although I haven't tried it with SH3 yet. I'll take a stab at explaining.

The "4GB patch" is a nifty utility written by a Daniel Pistelli, who offers it for download at his website, NTCore (http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php).

The patch allows 32-bit applications (which both SH3 and SH4 are) to use up to 4GB RAM when run on a 64-bit OS, such as Windows 7 or Vista 64-bit.

Formerly, 32-bit apps could only use 2GB max, regardless of how much was actually available.

It's a bit unclear what the 4GB patch does for me, because I only have 4GB total. After applying the patch, I did not see SH4's RAM use climb higher than about 1.6 GB. So I'm not sure what the deal is. The patch may not be responsible for the apparent increase I've seen in SH4's stability.

Many of the fan mods cause SH4 to use much more RAM than it was originally intended to require. So anything we can do to let it have more RAM may be of benefit. I'm just not sure how this applies in my case, since I only have 4GB RAM.

[paulhager]

If you go over to the SH4 forum, I've posted accounts about a number of long range shots. Most recently for Patrol 8 of CAPT Glenn Ford, using the 3D TDC radar mod, I actually got 2 hits at the amazing range of 13,200 yards on a ship. Since the range of the Mark 16 is 13,700, that's got to be about the max.

Later in the same patrol I sank a Yamato at a little over 4,000 yards with 4 Mark 16's. Unfortunately, a 3,300 yard, 6 torpedo salvo at the sister ship completely missed. I'm still scratching my head over that.

[WernherVonTrapp]

There really needs to be a sticky explaining the hows and whys of the "4GB patch." I think it applies to SH3 as well as SH4, although I haven't tried it with SH3 yet. I'll take a stab at explaining.

The "4GB patch" is a nifty utility written by a Daniel Pistelli, who offers it for download at his website, NTCore (http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php).

The patch allows 32-bit applications (which both SH3 and SH4 are) to use up to 4GB RAM when run on a 64-bit OS, such as Windows 7 or Vista 64-bit.

Formerly, 32-bit apps could only use 2GB max, regardless of how much was actually available.

It's a bit unclear what the 4GB patch does for me, because I only have 4GB total. After applying the patch, I did not see SH4's RAM use climb higher than about 1.6 GB. So I'm not sure what the deal is. The patch may not be responsible for the apparent increase I've seen in SH4's stability.

Many of the fan mods cause SH4 to use much more RAM than it was originally intended to require. So anything we can do to let it have more RAM may be of benefit. I'm just not sure how this applies in my case, since I only have 4GB RAM.
I've been doing some research on this 4GB patch. It seems there have been other, similar apps in the past, including an adjustment in Windows and mentioned on the Microsoft website. It would seem that the consensus of users claim no increase in performace. There are some who claim it helps but they seem to be more a product of the Placebo Effect. In fact, from what I've dug up, anything that purports to allow 4GB of memory in a 32 bit app (regardless of 32 or 64 bit systems) is questionable. There's also some info that these patches involve hacking the Windows Kernel and may leave your system open to exploits. I've also delved into some forums and read what the users of these type of patches write. Though a lot of them claim to have experienced no problems with these patches, they also claim either no noticeable improvement or haven't even bothered to check, benchmark, etc. In essence, they're using these patches blindly simply because someone created them, and/or, says they work.
The whole point to this is that one should thoroughly research any patches to be installed in their PC and hopefully, no one installs it simply on the strength of an unknown who posted the patch.;)

[TorpX]

Thanks for the warning, Wernher. It doesn't sound like something I want.

[WH4K]

The "warning" above sounds Chicken Little-ish.

I can't speak for other "4GB patches," but there is no evidence that Daniel Pistelli's (aka NTCore) 4GB patch does anything to the Windows 7 kernel. I don't understand exactly what his patch does, but I could say the same thing about the Windows 7 kernel itself, or SH4.exe.

I'm not sure that Windows 7 would allow kernel alterations without kicking up a big fuss, if at all. I have had no evidence of nefarious goings-on, such as MSE alerts, bluescreens, or unexplained network traffic. So the simpler explanation is that the NTCore patch is just what it says it is, not some very clever Trojan.

I had not yet run across claims of "improved performance" with the 4GB patch (NTCore or anyone else's). That does sound nuts. Why would anyone think the program would magically "run faster" because of a mysterious software trick? Placebo effect, indeed.

The last time I recall hearing "runs faster" claims, they regarded "memory manager" software, common in the 1990's MS-DOS era. There were several alleged "run faster" programs or utilities, all of which were powerless to increase your CPU's clock speed and did not magically give you more RAM.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Don't take it personal WH4K. My post wasn't directed toward you. It was a matter of fact statement based on 1 single hour of web research. It's not at all Chicken-Littleish. It's common sense. I mentioned that during my research, I found many forum members (on many forums) that claimed they experienced no problems with the patch. On the other hand, they claim that they haven't noticed any improvements or enhancements to their Windows system either. You have just reinforced this with your own claim.
From what I've read, and I'm not an expert mind you, you cannot allow a 32 bit program to use 4GB of memory (on a 32 or 64 bit system), without altering the Windows Kernel. It's not possible, from what I dug up. Any time you mess with the Windows Kernel, you potentially open up your system to an exploit or hack. Hacks occur every day without the PC users ever knowing that it took place. That's one of the reasons why it's called hacking.
I don't see why, if you do some research yourself, you wouldn't find the same things I did on-line. It wasn't an attack on you WH4K and I'm sorry if I came across that way since I sincerely had no intention of it appearing that way.:up:
Here, I'm not an expert and I don't do programming but, on the same website where you got your 4GB patch from, there is some explanantion involving 32 & 64 bit apps and RAM utilization. Now, from what I can decipher, he mentions "call tos" or other references that sound like he's using or fooling the Windows Kernel. That, in essence, is an alteration of the original Kernel. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this but check it out for yourself:
http://www.ntcore.com/files/vista_x64.htm

Mind you, I had checked other websites also, that contain content about getting 32 bit apps to use 4GB of memory.

[Platapus]

I have yet to run into anything near a battleship size, except for the very occasional carrier.


Ehem, what? :huh: What exactly are you playing? or let me rephrase, how are you playing?

I am in the same boat (pun intended) as WH4K. I can't remember how many careers I have played and I have never seen a single carrier no less attacked one. The same goes for battleships.

But then I tend to stick to the merchant lanes and rarely do harbour penetrations.

[WH4K]

And then again, I'm now running into carriers just about every trip.

Probably just dumb luck, and the fact that I stopped by a place with a recent Japanese invasion (Truk) on the way to my assigned patrol area near Tokyo Bay. Bagged a Shokaku-class carrier.

There seems to be a capital ship "parking lot" northwest of Yokosuka. Almost every time I sneak into Tokyo Bay, there are a couple of heavy cruisers parked there. The last two trips (late 1941 and January 1942), there has also been a carrier - first a Shokaku, then one of the smaller ones (can't recall the class).

Don't know whether this is a feature of the TMO 2.1 patch, or stock campaign. Probably just a case of "right place, right time."

[Jan Kyster]

...There are some who claim it helps but they seem to be more a product of the Placebo Effect...Erhm, but no. And it's not about performance issues either. Or NTkernel...

Have a look in this thread, post 14 and 15: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=177503

SH4 can max. address 1.65 GB. Trying for more = CTD (as loading OM Museum).
A patched SH4.exe loads OM Museum fine and use 2.21GB...

A noticable find is that the memory overhead in SH4 is actually very small, 80-160MB, which you don't need that much traffic to use.
And I've feedbacks from many users that confirms their SH4 doesn't crash anymore after applying the patch.


The LAA-patching simply allows a 32-bit program to be aware of memory above the 2GB barrier. The patching itself is only a bit being set to "1" in SH4.exe

"This is an application that assists in making applications large address aware. When a 32-bit application is Large Address Aware, it can access up to 4 GiB on x64 operating systems and up to 3 GiB on x86." Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556

[WernherVonTrapp]

Well, then, maybe I am missing something here, if trying to get Windows to utilize it's full 4GB of memory (instead of just having it display 4GB) is not a performance issue. If the patch actually does stop SHIV from crashing, isn't that an improvement in performance to some degree? I understood what the programmer meant when he spoke of "Large Address Awareness". As far as the Kernel is concerned, that word pops up quite a bit on that web page, and I didn't only rely on the info found on his page. I was checking other similar apps and Microsoft's own website.
My reference to the Placebo Effect was an inference drawn upon the many users (in my searching) who claimed that they had the patch installed but didn't see any effect, improvements or enhancements to their gaming. In fact, many never checked their systems or had them benchmarked to compare the before/after effect on their PC. To me, that's tantamount to a placebo effect.
If one wants to install the patch blindly, that's their prerogative. I refer to the closing in my original reply, "The whole point to this is that one should thoroughly research any patches to be installed in their PC and hopefully, no one installs it simply on the strength of an unknown who posted the patch."
There was no malice intended in wanting users to beware of a patch that involved, from my searching, some serious questions.

Post Script: I knew I should've posted link references but there were so many and I was too lazy, and I thought that would've been too presumptuous.:nope:

[WH4K]

...On the other hand, they claim that they haven't noticed any improvements or enhancements to their Windows system either. You have just reinforced this with your own claim.

Not so fast. I have had an improvement: After the NTCore patch, SH4 doesn't crash nearly as much as it once did. Hardly ever, in fact.

From what I've read, and I'm not an expert mind you, you cannot allow a 32 bit program to use 4GB of memory (on a 32 or 64 bit system), without altering the Windows Kernel. It's not possible, from what I dug up.

That's not what the article you linked says.

Any time you mess with the Windows Kernel, you potentially open up your system to an exploit or hack. Hacks occur every day without the PC users ever knowing that it took place. That's one of the reasons why it's called hacking.

Any time you step outside, you potentially open yourself up to having a grand piano land on your head.

That doesn't mean it's reasonable to worry about it, especially when the thing (changes to the Windows kernel) isn't even happening.

This line of thought is a dead end.

... Now, from what I can decipher, he mentions "call tos" or other references that sound like he's using or fooling the Windows Kernel. That, in essence, is an alteration of the original Kernel. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this but check it out for yourself:
http://www.ntcore.com/files/vista_x64.htm

There is not a single use of the term "call to" in that article.

Using features of the system as intended is not "altering" the kernel. You apparently skipped the section on Patch Guard. Go back and read it, and perhaps you'll understand.

Another part you must have skipped, under the "Windows on Windows" heading:
...32bit applications have a maximal 2GB space (4GB if explicitly required) and the rest of the space is handled by the system. This doesn't change much of course, since on x86 user mode applications had 2GB of virtual memory space out of 4GB (the other 2GB were reserved for kernel mode). On x64 these two other GB can now be accessed by 32bit applications. In order to achieve this, the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag has to be set in the File Header's Characteristics field. You can do this programmatically or manually with a normal PE editor like the CFF Explorer (http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php), just like this: (example truncated)So we see it is entirely possible to let a 32-bit app access more than 2 GB RAM without "hacking" or in any way altering the Windows kernel. Even if it did try, Patch Guard would probably stop it.

I have seen no evidence that the NTCore 4GB patch does anything that could reasonably be regarded as harmful. The plural of anecdote is not "data."

Rather, the NTCore patch simply keeps SH4 from crashing where it once crashed constantly, regardless of whether SH4 uses more than 2 GB RAM. That is good enough for me.

No insult perceived or intended - I just think you are worrying needlessly, and perpetuating conclusions not supported by the facts.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Not so fast. I have had an improvement: After the NTCore patch, SH4 doesn't crash nearly as much as it once did. Hardly ever, in fact.



That's not what the article you linked says.
I never said that particular article did. I was referring to other forums where other users of the 4GB patch, (as well as other similar apps), didn't notice, well, anything that would indicate they even installed a patch. Many said they never even bothered to check. I reiterate, it was not directed toward you. It was directed against installing patches w/o researching them first.:up:



Any time you step outside, you potentially open yourself up to having a grand piano land on your head.

That doesn't mean it's reasonable to worry about it, especially when the thing (changes to the Windows kernel) isn't even happening.

This line of thought is a dead end.Where did that comparison come from? Of course that line of thought is a dead end, falling pianos and PC patches are as far from each other as East from West.:D

There is not a single use of the term "call to" in that article.

No, the exact words "Call To" are not. Here is a paragraph from that page referencing those call functions:
And now, the most important things. Calling convention and stack. x64 assembly uses FASTCALLs as calling convention, meaning it uses registers to pass the first 4 parameters (and then the stack). Thus, the stack frame is made of: the stack parameters, the registers parameters, the return address (which I remind you is a qword) and the local variables. The first parameter is the rcx register, the second one rdx, the third r8 and the fourth r9. Saying that the parameters registers are part of the stack frame, makes it also clear that any function that calls another child function has to initialize the stack providing space for these four registers, even if the parameters passed to the child function are less than four. The initialization of the stack pointer is done only in the prologue of a function, it has to be large enough to hold all the arguments passed to child functions and it's always a duty of the caller to clean the stack. Now, the most important thing to understand how the space is provided in the stack frame is that the stack has to be 16-byte aligned. In fact, the return address has to be aligned to 16 bytes. So, the stack space will always be something like 16n + 8, where n depends on the number of parameters. Here's a small figure of a stack frame:

These are some of the "call to" functions that I was referring to. But what does that have to do with any of this? Your misunderstanding about what I was referring to, or how it was spelled is moot point. Look, I'm not going to get involved in a tit-for-tat over using a descriptive term that I never said was written in that exact way on that page. I said he mentions "call tos" and the "calls" in that paragraph are just that. Calling to another file, .dll, kernel or whatever.


Using features of the system as intended is not "altering" the kernel. You apparently skipped the section on Patch Guard. Go back and read it, and perhaps you'll understand.

Another part you must have skipped, under the "Windows on Windows" heading:
So we see it is entirely possible to let a 32-bit app access more than 2 GB RAM without "hacking" or in any way altering the Windows kernel. Even if it did try, Patch Guard would probably stop it.
I skipped a lot of parts because I didn't even reference his site in my original post. It wasn't humanly possible for me to remember verbatim all the information from all the sites I referenced. I'm not going to sit here and try to force it down your throat as far as whether his particular app alters (in any way) the windows Kernel. I was referring to other similar apps that do and just trying to give anyone the heads-up in making sure a patch to be installed doesn't do so in one way or another. I was under the impression, from one or more sites I visited, that getting Windows to use 4GB on a 32 bit app wasn't possible w/o altering the kernel in one way or another. Do you know for a fact that it doesn't? Then, that's fine. If you don't, I would make sure before using the patch, that's all I was saying.


I have seen no evidence that the NTCore 4GB patch does anything that could reasonably be regarded as harmful. The plural of anecdote is not "data."

Rather, the NTCore patch simply keeps SH4 from crashing where it once crashed constantly, regardless of whether SH4 uses more than 2 GB RAM. That is good enough for me.

No insult perceived or intended - I just think you are worrying needlessly, and perpetuating conclusions not supported by the facts.
I never said that the 4GB patch was harmful. I said that it "may" pose a risk for hacks or exploits if the Windows kernel is altered. May means (it might, it could). I said that one should make sure first because I saw some questionable references regarding other similar apps. So, now you have thoroughly researched it and that was all I was trying to say in the first place.;) And yes, I've always been a worrier by nature.:D
(chuckle) God, I hate debates.http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-gen115.gif

[WH4K]

No problem. Certainly, you did get me to look deeper into the matter. We simply differ on the conclusions.

[WernherVonTrapp]

The only reason I researched it in the first place is, after reading your first post regarding the patch I thought, if it could improve my own gaming experience, I might use the patch myself. So, I began researching it before installing it. What I found was that there were some serious questions that I couldn't find definitive answers for. Instead, I ended up with more questions than answers. I'm still not completely convinced that the patch doesn't alter (in some way, shape or form) the Windows Kernel. I concluded that I really don't need the patch and will not be installing it anytime soon. If answers to my questions become more easily available in the future, I might reconsider.;)