Map Contacts and Realism

[strenface]

I can make a very strong argument that having map contacts on is realistic.

That said, I went on my first patrol last night with the option turned off. Let me describe my experience:

When approaching Japanese waters, time compression shot down to 1. This was immediately followed by the announced "radar contact." Shooting down to 1 over 8 informed me that an aircraft was responsible for reflecting my radio waves. Instinctually, I searched the map for said aircraft. Oh yes, I thought, I turned map contacts off. Now I could not determine the aircraft's trajectory. I thus had two options, dive immediately, or man the flak guns, with my mouse ready to click "dive" in a moments notice.

This was Interesting. For the first time in the game, I had to make a decision without having all available information. I decided to man the flak guns.

Previously, I would draw an 8 nm circle around my position, and watch the map until the aircraft crossed the danger zone. Then I would dive and remain fixed on the map screen, waiting for the threat to exit my 8 nm perimeter. At this point, I would surface the boat, and remain at ahead 2/3 until my batteries were charged in order to save fuel, before accelerating back to high time compression. Notice how I would never leave the map screen.

Having contacts off, and deciding to remain surfaced, I found myself on the conning tower, scanning the horizon for those depth-charging warbirds. With wind at 15 m/s, I struggled to keep my view over the horizon, and was occasionally blinded by the few waves that washed over the tower. This is awesome. I felt a sense of danger. I thought how cool the sub looked, as it rolled over the passing swells.

Aircraft spotted! Enough danger, I'm diving. Of course this spotting was mutual, and the seaplane changed course directly towards my position. So I went to the map screen....wait, no contacts! Back to the control room. Set depth to 550 ft, and turned 60 degrees into the approaching aircraft (they always seem to overshoot the sub slightly). The sound of the depthcharges detonating as I was passing 400 ft was awesome. With no way of knowing the aircraft's position, I remained under for 15 minutes before going to periscope depth and scanning the horizon prior to surfacing.

Now I had to close the game and go to bed, but I can imagine that future vessel contacts will be very interesting. Without knowing precise trajectories and speeds, I can no longer set up and approach my attack entirely from the map screen. With no way of perfectly setting up my attack 15nm away from the enemy, escorts will now pose a serious threat. I play with TMO, and have yet to be sunk, or even damaged over a couple of % in my "serious" career game (currently in Feb 1944). This is because I always planned my position such that I never needed to use my engines when in sonar detection range, and always positioned myself such that I presented the minimum cross sectional angle to the escorts active sonar wedge.

Here of some of the things that I am very excited for, as required by having map contacts off:

1. Actually piloting the sub using the rudder when initiating an attack (always used the map to plot my route relative to my targets trajectory)

2. Those cool but unnecessary sonar and radar stations will now be indispensable.

3. Experiencing the sub moving through the water during all stages of my approach, without feeling glued to the impersonal map screen.

4. The real danger posed by escorts: no more perfect positioning. Will have to weigh the costs of exposing myself to update my knowledge of the enemies position (radar depth, active sonar....)

5. Uncertainty. Exciting as it adds an element of danger previously lacking in my experience.

6. Increased cognitive value and reward to sunk tonnage. The impetus being risk and uncertainty.

7. When I am really "tweaking" on the game, I can use sonar and radar to attempt to update the map myself. I love technical and geometric exercises such as these.



Sorry for the wordy post. Feeling lazy? Here is my main point:

While it can be argued that having map contacts on is realistic, it really does lessen the experience of the game for me. Having no God map, I am forced to use the tools available, and it gives me a reason to stay on the conning tower, and scope the horizon for my target. It was hard to justify these less precise yet extremely rewarding exercises when having everything I need on the map. Bottom line, the game was, and will be far more enjoyable and rewarding having the option off.

So for those who use map contacts, may I suggest trying one patrol with the option off. It REALLY adds to the immersion.

[TorpX]

I liked your post. It's good to see some people are willing to try the game without map contacts.

In my opinion, map contacts is highly unrealistic. I know this may offend some, but so be it. My principle objection to that feature is that it provides error-free data. If the game were designed to only plot out what a fallible crew could legitimately obtain, it would be OK, but this is not the case.

I don't know how map contacts works in TMO, but even if it hides any mouse-over info, the super accurate positions allows one to obtain, with only two observations, 100% accurate firing data, since you will have the targets true course, range, speed, and bearing. With such an advantage, why would you ever miss? Without map contacts, it's an entirely different game. You must estimate range, AoB, and calculate speed. Since the limitations of the stadimeter are well known, I won't go into this further, suffice it to say, making a good plot is part science and part art. It does take more work to do it this way, but the sinkings are all the more rewarding.

As you found out, the aircraft become a major pain to deal with. I guess there is no easy answer here. I will either dive straight-away, or very quickly attempt to locate the reported a/c and observe. (I hate diving and using the battery unneccessarily.) This is tricky, though. It would be nice if the crew could point out the position of the a/c...oh well.


... I can imagine that future vessel contacts will be very interesting. Without knowing precise trajectories and speeds, I can no longer set up and approach my attack entirely from the map screen. With no way of perfectly setting up my attack 15nm away from the enemy, escorts will now pose a serious threat. I play with TMO, and have yet to be sunk, or even damaged over a couple of % in my "serious" career game (currently in Feb 1944). This is because I always planned my position such that I never needed to use my engines when in sonar detection range, and always positioned myself such that I presented the minimum cross sectional angle to the escorts active sonar wedge.


You are certainly right. I would say, SH 4, going from map contacts to no map contacts is as big a difference as Auto TDC is to manual TDC.

Good luck and good hunting! :up:

[Ewall007]

[QUOTE]
Instinctually, I searched the map for said aircraft. Oh yes, I thought, I turned map contacts off. Now I could not determine the aircraft's trajectory. I thus had two options, dive immediately, or man the flak guns, with my mouse ready to click "dive" in a moments notice.
[QUOTE]

Correct me if I'm wrong; but if your playing TMO your radar should pick-up aircraft. I've seen them on my radar when set to mid range 32000 yards. There the little blips that move a larger distances with every sweep of the line. I know this because I don't like diving either unless I really have to. You can, if you look long enough tell what the direction there coming in on, and there flight path to a certian degree.

:nope:ADD ON: I made a mistake in the above information, it's not TMO that the radar see planes as blips. Its OTC v1.5 mod add-on that let you see planes as blips...sorry for the miss-information...:nope:

(But I play with map contacts set to ON.)

I like the feeling you put into this post. In my opion it makes you want to try (No Map Contacts) just to get that realisim feel out of the game!

Soon as I get better a manual targeting, I think I will have to try it. I found that in RFB map contacts can't be turned on unless you download a mod that changes that.:yep: So you might want to try that mod also.

Oh, I found out the hard way that if your going to fight planes on the surface, its better not to dive. Reason, during the dive phase your not shooting and the plane is lining you up for a depth charge run. With out you shooting back he doesn't have to worry about his flight path to put bombs on target. He now has the advantage. Your boat will take at least a minute to get down to 40 feet that's enough time for him to give you a good spread.

I kind of know this from flying Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 doing anti-sub missions in a both a B-24 Liberator and a Sunderland. If I catch a U-boat on the surface and he's not shooting flak at me the run in is real easy. I don't have to hit him directly just put about 4 250lbs depth charges near him and he's done.:D

Ewall007
"Ranging Far, Sweeping Wide"
Quote from Victory at Sea 1955

[Bubblehead1980]

The problem is radar operator should distinguish between an SJ and SD contact.SD is the air search radar and if radar operator did this, you could have the most realistic option.Now, since the devs were lazy and gave us no SD scope you have the options of playing with contacts on or off.There is a mod that removes all map contacts except aircraft.

Also, stock gave you god mode contacts but mods like TMO remove the god like info and ups the realism as in RL you would have a SD radar scope and a crew to plot ships on the map to work out a solution.contacts off certainly adds to the difficulty of the game.

[Rockin Robbins]

Okay, with TMO you get a position marker, a round point, no ship ID, no course information, no speed information. It is in a perfect spot, but the size of the ID marker means that your accuracy is somewhat less (due to binning) than a real radar contact with a real submarine.

So having perfect position marks is not a problem with realism so long as you have a submarine with radar. You could say that the best thing would be just to look at the radar screen. That is unrealistic because the game radar screen is nowhere near as accurate or readable as the real thing. Like I said, the real submarine could measure radar ranges more accurately than we can using the TMO position markers on the nav map.

There is a problem with visual ranges. But you know whether you have radar or not. If you don't have radar, just plot stadimeter ranges and don't use the generated ones!

Same deal with airplane contacts. So long as the submarine had radar they could tell by the closing speed whether it was on a course for the submarine, and they knew the range perfectly. All we get with map contacts off is that there is a plane. Now THAT is unrealistic.

The so-called realism settings in Silent Hunter 4 are nothing of the kind. It is not realistic to cross ten lanes of traffic on I-75 in Atlanta during rush hour with a paper bag over your head. It certainly confers bragging rights if you survive, but the word "realism" will have no part in the conversation.

Same thing with SH4 "realism settings." They are nothing more than difficulty settings. Sure, map contacts on has its problems, which cannot be fixed. But as long as you're using TMO, its the most real you can get in the game.

Unless you can justify to me that a captain would leave all his other responsibilities to take a laborious radar observation, deriving bearing and range from a hokey scale that isn't enough help to get decent numbers even with lots of time spent. It's equally bad for the commander to take time off from conning the boat to make sonar soundings. THAT stuff is unrealistic and has nothing to do with the actual function of a sub commander in reality.

What are we simulating here? A dead pile of machinery? Then it's a terrible one, where our accuracy with radar is not in the ballpark of the precise capabilities of the original and where our sonar is way too accurate compared to the original and lacks all the filters, differentiation between supersonic and audible range sonars, speed of sound differences due to temp variation and salinity changes. The ocean is dead with not a natural sound in it.....where do I stop?

Or are we simulating the actions of men? No sub commander would leave his post to set a TDC, twiddle with the radar or sonar.....heck, some didn't even look through the periscope! Big fail on that score.

So we can absolutely quit talking about realism settings or any other kind of realism relating to Silent Hunter 4! It just isn't there.

There IS a great deal of knowledge to be gained about many aspects of World War II submarines though. But these are almost in separate universes, not connected by a coherent core experience. And we try to establish "realism" in such a quagmire by trying:

Let's corral every Japanese ship, merchant and warship, and carefully measure them up in all respects. Let's put that information in the Silent Hun ter database so all shots are absolutely perfect. Then let's call it a realism mod.

Let's establish a method where we know the length of every ship in the Pacific and measure their speeds by timing their transit across the periscope crosshair. We don't have to pay attention to the fact that most of the ships on the Pacific were entirely unknown and the ones we did know about our information was wrong. Let's consciously forget that most ships seen during the war were perfectly misidentified anyway, so even if they had perfect information it would not have been any help. Let's ignore that no submarine used that method ever in World War II and call that realism, okay?

Or why not just admit the truth. We are bound by the hard coding within Silent Hunter 4. Although it is possible to include another detail about what it was to be a submariner in the war, it is not possible to connect it to the whole in a realistic way. We can mod until the end of time and realism just is not possible in this game.

At best we are learning generalities and analogies about the real thing. A real submariner would scoff at the notion that we have any useful knowledge at all, except maybe for historical knowledge, and that would not come from the game. I find the game helps me understand historical sources on a higher level, but that is about as far as it goes.

Silent Hunter 4 is a darned good game. And that's about the most you can say about it.

[I'm goin' down]

I knew this subject would bring RR to the surface. By the way, for what it is worth, I agree with his take on the game.

The major problem with map contacts disabled is not ships, but enemy aircraft.

How about this alternative? Map contacts disabled, with Scurvy's Optical Targeting Correction (OTC) mod enabled, coupled with his additional OTC mod option of US Radar from the Beginning (I am paraphrasing its name.) This combination picks up ships and aircraft on the radar screen throughout the war if your boat is equipped with radar. Even though map contacts are disabled, you will pick them up on the radar screen. "Blips" representing aircraft can easily be recognized due to the speed at which they move on radar screen. If the movement is imperceptable, it is a ship. When a plane is spotted on radar, its bearing and course can be generally determined by observing the how the contact reacts on the radar screen, and a captain should then be able to look for it by searching in that direction of its bearings when on the bridge. Most of the time planes are too small or to distant to locate visually even if you know the direction in whihc they are travelling, and even if you have that information, planes are extremely hard to see on a small computer screen, at least until they are diving on your boat (which is too late in my opinion.) When a plane has been spotted by the crew, which is usually occurs when it is distant, you can check the radar screen to confirm its course and distance to see if it is closing, or you can submerge, or both, depending on the dynamics. However, every time you do this, dinner is getting cold, and you risk getting yelled at.

Sometime planes on the radar screen do not close on your boat, and, of course, sometimes they do. With Scurvy's radar mod, it is easy to tell a plane's heading by watching it on the radar screen. However, there are a lot of false alarms (i.e. either the plane does not get close enough to appear on radar or it does not ultimately move in the direction of your boat), so you waste time in the radar room at real time settings. Map contacts enabled avoids this time wasting factor, which is a point in favor for playing with map contacts enabled.

The OTC mod combo is a somewhat reasonable compromise. However, if you use the OTC mod, then you have to surrender the 3D TDC and Radar Range Mod and/or the Easy Aob mod, as those mods are not compatible with with the OTC and US Radar from the Beginning mod combination. (I tried enabling the US Radar from the Beginning without enabling the OTC mod. It did not work, and will not work without enabling the OTC mod, so either you use both or the radar mod will not function. Also, if you are fans of the 3D TDC and Radar Range Mod, or the Easy Aob mod, the suggested combination may to much to bear as you will have to give those up.

There in no easy solution to this dilemma. Maybe its time to go to the dark side and visit the ATO forum?

[Nicolas]

Realism percentage should be:
Manual targeting: 30
Contacts: 30
It changes the game turning off and on these 2.

[cooldeb10]

right and tru.

[strenface]

RR, hi! I always do enjoy reading your posts. I'm not sure if you were addressing me, but I did say that having contacts ON is more realistic.

Or more properly, map contacts on is less unrealistic :know:\

I suppose my point was that having it off increased my level of immersion tremendously, as I found myself on the conning tower (is that the right phrase? I know it's not the bridge....:o) in the control room, and at the radar/sonar stations significantly more than when playing with it on.

With the option on, I found myself on the map screen and tended to forget that I was on a submarine trudging through the swells in the middle of the vast pacific ocean.

I played more today with the option off, and I will say my favorite part is steaming ahead at flank speed towards my target. It is SO cool to see the enemy ship's silhouette and smoke plume coming into visual range over the horizon, as I roll through the waves at 20 knots. I only did that occasionally before, as I was more concerned with the enemies exact position displayed on the map. So rather than a precautionary dive when in x proximity of my target, I would dive when the ship physically looked a little too close for comfort. Way more interesting in my opinion.

[I'm goin' down]

I played more today with the option off, and I will say my favorite part is steaming ahead at flank speed towards my target. It is SO cool to see the enemy ship's silhouette and smoke plume coming into visual range over the horizon, as I roll through the waves at 20 knots. .

Personally, I prefer the ambush, or firing at long range against a TF. What is the best, however, is pentrating a TF defensive shield, say at the Battle of Leyete Gulf, and sinking one of the Big Boys.

Also, I enjoy sneaking into Tokyo Bay, which usually leaves my boat low on oxygen and battery bower, with CO2 problems, and trying to figure out how my boat is going to get out avoiding the well placed shore batteries and occasional destroyer. Talk about biting your nails, that will have them whittled down to nubs in a hurry.

[Dignan]

If the game were able to have an option for "Map Contacts On: with high margin of error" that would be the best.

I agree that having contacts ON is probably realistic in simulating the information a sub captain would be getting fed from his plotting team and spotters. However, it's too accurate, even with TMO. If we could mod it so there was a built in, inconsistent margin of error in the map contact plots, that would be the best of both worlds. Or, if we could make it so contacts only appear on the map at a high zoom level. That way you can see incoming ships and aircraft and get a basic idea of course and speed but when you zoom in to the closest zoom levels, contacts go away, essentially making you rely on your stadi readings. Is this possible?

Me...I've been playing with contacts OFF for about a year now because, like the OP, I enjoy not knowing what I'm dealing with right away (as far as course and speed.) I just never miss with contacts on and that took some of the fun of the hunt away.

[sharkbit]

Excellent post Rockin Robins. :yeah:


Same thing with SH4 "realism settings." They are nothing more than difficulty settings.

I've always hated the term "realism settings" in this game. I too prefer "difficulty settings". It's more realistic. :O:

I play both SH3 and SH4 with map contacts on. I've always felt that map contacts are too extreme one way or the other. With them on, you get the precision but it does free you up to con the boat.
With them off, then you are doing the job of a whole plotting team on top of your other duties. It seems you can get a little overwhelmed-thank God for the pause button.

Both settings have their pros and cons. Right now, I prefer playing with them on and just trying to limit my use of the information.

I know there is a mod for SH3(I believe it may work for SH4 as well) that limits the information available to you. Kind of a compromise between the two settings. Haven't tried it though so I can't remember all the details.


:)

[strenface]

That, sir, is an awesome idea. I think that would be the ideal compromise. :up:

[Sailor Steve]

I know there is a mod for SH3(I believe it may work for SH4 as well) that limits the information available to you. Kind of a compromise between the two settings. Haven't tried it though so I can't remember all the details.
It's called the 1.4b Assisted Plotting Mod. What it does is remove everything from the map. If you move the cursor around, when it crosses a contact all you see is a dotted circle and clicking on it gives you the label "Unknown". If you put the periscope or UZO on a ship and ID it, they information will then appear on the map for that one ship. Auto targetting and WE Assistance will have the same result. Targetting a different ship will result in the loss of information for the first one.

Someone did it for SH4, but I could never get it to work properly.

Here is a screenshot taken in Kiel. There are many ships all over the harbor, but the only one you can see is the one I have targetted.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/mymod17.jpg

[Bilge_Rat]

Map contacts on or off has always been an ongoing debate.

I don't like map contacts since it makes it much too easy to figure out a contact's course, speed, range and come up with an exact firing solution without too much effort. With map contacts off, it is more of a challenge. However, at the end, it is just a game, so how a player chooses to play is up to him.

On another point and with all due respect to RR, I don't agree that the radar in SH4 is modeled worse than the one in RL. Perhaps under ideal conditions, the RL radar could do things that the SH4 one can't, but these conditions rarely existed in RL. WW2 radars were prone to breakdown, merged contacts together or with land, produced false echoes or showed clouds, waves or even birds as "contacts". None of these problems exist in SH4 and with Nisgeis's radar mod, you can also now get the exact range and bearing of a target. The main use of WW2 radar was to point you towards the target until you could see it, at which point, you could carry out a visual attack.

[I'm goin' down]

Please refer to my post above re the OTC mod and US Radar from the Beginning mod.

I use the stopwatch to obtain target speed by timing how long it takes the target to pass a set bearing on the periscope. The target has to be approaching my boat at between 300 degrees from port or from 60 degrees starboard (per karmonovnew in the ATO forum) to get an accurate speed measurement. I also require the target's length, which Scurvy provides in the target manual for the OTC mod.

RR says that American captains did not know the length of enemy ships, thus the above described method is unrealistic. I am not taking issue with his positon, but mention that it is another item that factors into the realism debate.

[Diopos]

The truth of the matter is that, even in the case of a constant speed vector moving target, the deduction of its speed, course and range would require a course and/or speed change by the sub. Speed or course changes are ordered by the commanding officers, that is (in our case) the player. So the "rationalization" that "contacts on" although unrealistic can be considered a substitution for the work of the plotting and navigation team and not a captain's task, is somewhat questionable. Your (the captain's) input would be needed at one point or another in the whole proccess.

edit: I'm talking with "bearings only" methods in mind.

.

[Platapus]

The problem, in my opinion, is that we are forced into two equally unrealistic extremes.

Map contacts on - We have access to information either not realistically available to the submarine and/or information too accurate. In other words we have an omnipresent view of the battle-space.

or

Map contacts off and we are simulating that the player (Captain) is the only person on the submarine. Hardly realistic.

There is nothing in the middle.

What is realistic is that the Captain had a well trained crew whose job it was to assist the Captain in the attack. However, this well trained crew only had access to data from three sources. They were, after all, locked inside a steel tube with no windows!

- Hydrophones/sonar (as RR accurately posted, these are actually multiple systems)

- Radar (when available)

- Human sight from the bridge crew and/or human observations from the periscopes.

Each one of these data sources has error in it. This is especially true with human observation. The fun part is that unless there is a conflict with other data, the player may not know that his or her data is inaccurate.

In my opinion, the optimum compromise is a system where my crew will, with absolute fidelity, take the data I give them and plot the battle. The only data they can use are data that can be derived from submarine systems (hydro/sonar/radar/human). Any errors I make in my observation will be faithfully used as if it were truth.

If I, as the player, determine that the range is 2,000 yards, that's what my crew will use. The fact that the range may actually be 2,200 yards is my (player) tough luck.

That, to me, is a good compromise between the Captain having access to "ground truth" and being the only one on the submarine.

[TorpX]

People are making a lot of good points here.

I agree about the lack of info with regard to aircraft. Your crew telling you there is a airplane *somewhere* is hardly satisfactory. The best I've come up with is using [Ctrl + V] to get a bearing. I don't know if this works with TMO or stock. It works with RFB. Maybe someone will come up with a mod that will do more.

[Loudspeaker]

I have been playing with NO map contacts from time to time, and I enjoy it as long as I am dealing with a lonely steamer, but I am completely lost when it comes to setting up an attack on convoys, particularly when firing at more than one target simultaneously. In real life you would have a well trained crew to keep you updated with all the plotting.

I really miss the weapon officers assistance that was available in SH3. You could have him calculate a firing solution (that perhaps was much too precise) or do it yourself without messing with the map contacts on of off.

[Rockin Robbins]

The main use of WW2 radar was to point you towards the target until you could see it, at which point, you could carry out a visual attack.
No, the main use of radar was to give exact bearing and range to a target, which it did well and accurately.

Lack of any breakdowns of any equipment is another of the unfixable flaws in SH4 and since it's hardcoded, we're stuck with it. Radars weren't the only thing that broke.

When Dick O'Kane's radar went down he sent a sarcastic message to Pearl basically saying, "there goes half my torpedoes--you can't hit anything without radar." That definitely shows radar was a targeting tool, not just an interception tool.

If I were to design a submarine simulator, I would assign a random error range to each type of detection. First I would let the player make whatever errors he wanted to make with the equipment, stadimeter, for instance. Then I would apply a random error factor depending on the type of information. Maybe radar would be a random error between plus or minus 1%, visual sighting plus of minus 25%, stadimeter plus or minus 20%, we could arrive at decent and reasonable error ranges. Then the computer would pick a random number within the error range.

It would work like this. You are using the stadimeter and measure 1000 yards (you don't know that, the comupter hasn't spit out the number yet). The computer looks up the stadimeter error range and it's +-30%. So it picks a random number between 700 and 1300 yards and that's your measurement. You know it's likely to be wrong. You don't know how wrong. You don't know if your measured range is too long or too short. Shazaam! That sounds a bit like reality.....:D

[I'm goin' down]

The main use of WW2 radar was to point you towards the target until you could see it, at which point, you could carry out a visual attack.

No, the main use of radar was to give exact bearing and range to a target, which it did well and accurately.

Lack of any breakdowns of any equipment is another of the unfixable flaws in SH4 and since it's hardcoded, we're stuck with it. Radars weren't the only thing that broke.

When Dick O'Kane's radar went down he sent a sarcastic message to Pearl basically saying, "there goes half my torpedoes--you can't hit anything without radar." That definitely shows radar was a targeting tool, not just an interception tool.D

SOMEBODY WON'T BE TEACHING AT THE WAR COLLEGE!::wah: