View Full Version : No weapons officer assistance, realistic or not?
In SH3 100% realism requires the captain to make the torpedo calculations but I was wondering if anyone knows wether or not this was how it was done on the real U-boats?
I have read somewhere that it's the weapons officer that makes the calculations and that seems to make sense. :hmm:
What is unrealistic is that he makes the calculations extremely fast, in a split second, and that he have an terminator like hit percentage.
kiwi_2005
11-09-05, 09:27 PM
No, the captains did not do the calculations. I still use WO now and then.
About the WO being quick in calculating i wonder if his timing can be slowed down :hmm:
Der Teddy Bar
11-09-05, 10:24 PM
But using the manual tdc you don't have to do the calculations?
I think that the SHIII notepad is an excellent compromise and gives an excellent representation of the Captains role in making a submerged attack. As he gives the information and the solution done from this. The only flaw is the speed calc method. Which can be worked around by clicking the 'full' manual TDC at the bottom of the F6 screen.
I have always thought that no-one has ever got the auto tdc right. It is a difficult problem, in that it must be accurate enough to be real, but inaccurate enough to also be real. SHIII has not achieved this, as it is very accurate and very fast to be so.
The problem with slowing down the WO is that you cannot preplane a shot bearing, thus his calculation is only good for that instance.
So the truest way to be firing torps is to use the notepad data then?
When you say the speed calc method is flawed, are you speaking of it's inaccuracy? As long as the range is correct then it should be ok?
Der Teddy Bar
11-10-05, 01:28 AM
When you say the speed calc method is flawed, are you speaking of it's inaccuracy? As long as the range is correct then it should be ok?
The method used to calculate the targets speed is cumbersom, unrealistic and also as soon as you loose contact it has to be redone again.
Actually the range and the AOB need to be correct. Be slightly out in the AOB and the speed will be miles out.
I use a combination of the notepad and a full manual tdc. Full manual tdc is done by clicking the button at the bottom of the F6 screen. When this is on, the speed must be done manually from in this screen, and the AOB and bearing will not be automatically updated. But that is of little hinderence.
Once I am on full manual tdc I will calculate the speed by plotting the target and using Wazoo's Nonograph Mod to calculate the speed. I then enter it into the TDC, that part is done.
Then I use the notepad to update the AOB and the relative bearing. Distance is of no concern once you know the speed.
So I wait for the target to get to where I want, and then with the scope at that bearing I click (twice to be sure) the notepad tick. This then updates the TDC relative bearing, same goes to update the AOB.
The benifit of this method is that I attack several ships quickly and easily in the one instance.
Hope that you understand the method.
Damn must be doing something right, you described my method Teddy!! :cool:
Now if I can solve my saved game crashes. :damn: :damn: :damn:
Thanks for that info teddy, sounds like a good plan. Did you mean that once you have AoB and speed that range doesn't matter anymore?
Joea, have you tried a fresh install? Does your PC meet the minimum requirements? Any conflicting mods? :hmm:
Der Teddy Bar
11-10-05, 07:02 PM
Thanks for that info teddy, sounds like a good plan. Did you mean that once you have AoB and speed that range doesn't matter anymore?
Range is only important for two things.
1. To plot the target to be used in calculating the speed.
2. To be in optimum range to make a shot and/or determine how long till you can fire i.e. how long before it is in front of you
In essence, once I have the speed, distance is no longer plays any significant part.
AOB and distance have no connection. As ploting the target only involves range and relative bearing.
Using the 100% manual tdc allows me to prepare my shot well in advance of the firimg time. I set the scope up on the releative bearing that I want to fire at, put in the AOB (that I expect the target to have) click the notepad (twice to ensure the update occurs) and wait. Have a quick Look and fine tune AOB, remember though, if you move the scope and update the AOB and click 'ok' then the scopes current relative bearing will be input, so just before firing you might wish to click the 'ok' again to ensure that the relative bearing is correct.
With this method, I have about a 95% success rate. I however rarely am in a position that does not allow me to fire from less than 1000 metres. This is without coming to an all stop.
No, the captains did not do the calculations. I still use WO now and then.
About the WO being quick in calculating i wonder if his timing can be slowed down :hmm:
Wrong...
Pick up a Biography or an auto-biography of a U-Boat Commander and all will be clear.
The CAPTAIN DID make the calculations while conducting a submerged periscope attack. He peared through the scope and called out the range, angle on bow, speed, and bearing. That info was then inputted into the TDC.
During a SURFACE ATTACK the First Watch Officer called out the caculations. But since in SHIII the AI is to fast, and hardly ever wrong it is definately NOT REALISTIC to use him.
Open a Book and READ!!!!! You'll see that the Captain called out the calculations on submerged attacks.
If you need a Movie to visualize it, then reflect back on Das Boot. During the first Destroyer Episode it was the CAPTAIN figuring out the data. During the surface attack on the Convoy it was the 1WO.
Der Teddy Bar:
Wow, I've been doing manual targetting this whole time and never realized that range doesn't matter. It took me about 30 minutes of pen, paper, protractor and calculator experimentation to realize that it's true. It raises the question of why range is even part of the TDC then? Is it only for the timer to work properly in guessing when the torpedo will hit?
It hurts my brain trying to understand why the range doesn't matter when it comes to torp calculations :-?
It was first brought to my attention when reading about the straight firing method, where everything is set to zero and you basically fire the torp straight ahead when the target is at the correct bearing and let the ship run into it.
If you have some easily explainable conclusions - go for it :know:
Well, I would work on giving you an easily understandable explanation (couldn't guarantee one though.) Only problem is I just went in the game and played around with the TDC a bit. I set AOB to 90 stdb, speed to 20 knots, bearing to 0, and then left them alone. All I did was move the range dial around, and the gyro angle did change as I changed the range, as much as about 10 degrees when moving from 300m to 1000m. This seems to mean that range has a rather drastic effect on the solution, at least with a fast moving, close range target crossing your bow at 90 degrees.. Now my head hurts, since I've just finished proving to myself mathematically that range doesn't matter. I'm gonna have to wonder about this one for a while, hopefully someone will be able to explain this weirdness. I would give a shot at explaining why it doesn't matter, but since this happened, I apparently don't completely understand now, and I can't explain things if I don't completely understand them.
Floater
11-10-05, 09:55 PM
It is a tough one, isn't it? Flies in the face of logic. Yet, it's true. All you need is the speed and direction of the target, together with your own speed and direction, and range is simply there for the "will the torpedo arm in time?" and "will the torpedo run out of juice before it gets there?" questions.
Always does my head in.
Yep, I feel your pain with the head hurting bit as stated, but isn't it great that a game can do this to you :up:
Well, I now believe that range shouldn't matter, I've done some playing around on paper and I can see why, but it certainly does matter in the game for some reason. Try it yourself, do like I did. Set up the TDC with some arbitrary AOB, speed, and bearing and then leave them. Only change the range, and you will see that it affects the gyro angle, sometimes by a very large degree, meaning that you could easily miss if you don't put in the right range. The only thing I can think of is that it may be trying to account for the fact that it takes the torpedo a little while to get turned in the right direction, and it makes up for it by adjusting the gyro angle.
This theory of mine is backed by TDC behavior. For example, if I input a bearing, AOB and speed that gives me a 000 gyro angle, meaning the torp won't have to maneuver and can fire straight out of the tube, adjusting the range dial doesn't change the gyro angle that much, like less than one degree. If I input a different situation that gives me a larger gyro angle, like 30, then adjusting the range can give wild fluctuations in the gyro angle, like a 10 degree difference in gyro angle when changing range from 300m to 1500m.
This means that range really does matter in the game. At low gyro angles, range has a minor effect on the solution, at most 2 degrees or so. At large gyro angles, it has a huge affect. That's all I can say for certain right now, I can't think of any really good reasons for that behavior. Apparently, this needs to be discussed and thought about for a while. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.
Okay, done some more experimenting. This is just going to make your head hurt more, but once I'm sure I'm at the bottom of it, I'll offer a better explanation in a new thread that should be easier to understand, for those who want to understand. I like helping people understand complex things, so you can expect a nice big post once I'm convinced I've figured it all out.
For now, though, I'm looking for some feedback from other physics-inclined people, to see if they come to the same conclusion I do.
While I'm positive now that range wouldn't make a difference as long as the torpedo didn't have to maneuver, I'm also just as sure that it has a significant effect when the torpedo has to maneuver to hit short range targets.
Here's a scenario: Target at 0 bearing, 90 stbd AOB, speed 10 knots. You are launching a T1 at a speed of 44 knots. You can easily come up with a solution yourself with a calculator and some basic knowledge of trig. Do arcsine(10/44) to give an angle of 13.14. This means the torp has to turn 13.4 degrees to the right in order to intercept the target. If you input the same situation into the TDC with a range maxed out at 10,000m, it will give the same result, about 13.14 degrees to the right. If you turn the range dial to closer ranges, however, you will see that the gyro angle begins to increase, making the torpedo maneuver more and more to the right as the target's range gets closer. At 1500m, the TDC comes up with a gyro angle of 13.5. At 300m, the gyro angle is 15.8. That's over a 5 degree difference for the common firing ranges of 300-1500m. That's way more than enough to cause you to miss your target. This means range is extremely important when the gyro angle is not 000, and the difference is magnified as the angle gets higher.
Now for my explanation on why this is so. If the target is at close range, and the torpedo has to maneuver to hit it, it will certainly hit aft of the aiming point if it does not account for the time it takes to maneuver. I just did a quick test, and it took the torpedo about 3 seconds to maneuver to the 13.14 gyro angle as in the problem above. In 3 seconds, a target moving at 10 knots moves about 15 meters. This means that if you don't account for the range, the torpedo will hit about 15 meters aft of where you aimed. This is why if you set the range to 10000m, that 15 meters accounts for a very small angle and the TDC doesn't adjust the gyro angle much. If that target is at 300 meters, then that extra 15 meters that the torpedo has to make up for looks a lot bigger than it did at 10,000m, so the torpedo has to turn more to make up for it.
Long story short: Range really does matter, and if you don't want to have to bother with a bunch of math, that's what the TDC is for! It automatically accounts for the time it takes the torpedo to accelerate and maneuver to its course, so you don't have to bother with it. It is probably also why high gyro angles are less accurate. If the torpedo doesn't have to maneuver, then the TDC doesn't have to introduce any error by trying to adjust for torpedo acceleration and maneuvering time. The more time the torpedo has to spend turning to get on the right course, the more calculation the TDC has to do to adjust for that time spent, and those calculations are by their nature much less accurate than the simple trig calculations it has to do based on bearing, AOB and speed.
Like I said, this isn't meant to be the easy explanation, it's meant for peer review, so that other math-minded people can check it out and test its validity. After writing it, I am convinced that it's the correct explanation, but I'd like to hear from others and hear their thoughts. Eventually, I may post a new thread where I explain the TDC as thoroughly as possible, both for people that are new to manual targetting and for those like myself who are interested in how it actually does what it does. Even for manual targetting pros, knowing how it operates means you can use it more efficiently and accurately. On a side note, I wish I were one of those people who can turn a 1000 word explanation into a 200 word explanation and still keep it intelligible, but I'm not one of those people.
Twelvefield
11-11-05, 01:11 AM
Orgy tried experimenting with slowing down the WO. I started some thread on this very topic a couple of weeks ago. Without the SDK, it cannot be (easily) done. The WO calculation algorythms are hard-coded into the game.
Highbury
11-11-05, 01:48 AM
No, the captains did not do the calculations. I still use WO now and then.
About the WO being quick in calculating i wonder if his timing can be slowed down :hmm:
Wrong...
Pick up a Biography or an auto-biography of a U-Boat Commander and all will be clear.
The CAPTAIN DID make the calculations while conducting a submerged periscope attack. He peared through the scope and called out the range, angle on bow, speed, and bearing. That info was then inputted into the TDC.
During a SURFACE ATTACK the First Watch Officer called out the caculations. But since in SHIII the AI is to fast, and hardly ever wrong it is definately NOT REALISTIC to use him.
Open a Book and READ!!!!! You'll see that the Captain called out the calculations on submerged attacks.
If you need a Movie to visualize it, then reflect back on Das Boot. During the first Destroyer Episode it was the CAPTAIN figuring out the data. During the surface attack on the Convoy it was the 1WO.
I am pretty sure his point was that the captain did not physically enter that data in the TDC himself. I think it would be more realistic if you never actually had touch the TDC yourself, but we could sure use a mod that slowed down the calculation among other things, if that is possible of course :)
Marhkimov
11-11-05, 01:53 AM
Trav_R,
don't worry, I understood everything you said! :up:
No, the captains did not do the calculations. I still use WO now and then.
About the WO being quick in calculating i wonder if his timing can be slowed down :hmm:
Wrong...
Pick up a Biography or an auto-biography of a U-Boat Commander and all will be clear.
The CAPTAIN DID make the calculations while conducting a submerged periscope attack. He peared through the scope and called out the range, angle on bow, speed, and bearing. That info was then inputted into the TDC.
During a SURFACE ATTACK the First Watch Officer called out the caculations. But since in SHIII the AI is to fast, and hardly ever wrong it is definately NOT REALISTIC to use him.
Open a Book and READ!!!!! You'll see that the Captain called out the calculations on submerged attacks.
If you need a Movie to visualize it, then reflect back on Das Boot. During the first Destroyer Episode it was the CAPTAIN figuring out the data. During the surface attack on the Convoy it was the 1WO.
I am pretty sure his point was that the captain did not physically enter that data in the TDC himself. I think it would be more realistic if you never actually had touch the TDC yourself, but we could sure use a mod that slowed down the calculation among other things, if that is possible of course :)
His point was that captains did not figure out the calculations, not about entering them into the TDC.
Under realistic setting you do not enter the info into the TDC anyway. That is done for you when you click the "check" button on the notepad. In reality the captain would call out the data to be entered by the TDC Operator. SHIII simulates this calling out of data with the check box in the notepad.
kiwi_2005
11-16-05, 12:21 AM
Sorry U1966
Your WRONG. Yes i have read many biography on Uboat commanders. And the other guy got it write in what i was trying to say.
READ! :smug:
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