New Guy, Odd Question.

[JgzMan]

Greetings all!

I am new here, but not new to the Submarine Simulation World. I have been sinking Ownship fairly regularly since before Janes 688(i). I don't recall the name of the particular game, but it had the same feel to itmany of the same details, and it was released on 3.5 in floppies.


Having recived my copy of DW just today, and having ploughed through some parts of the manual, and some of the Videos, I have encountered a problem with the first mission, to whit, HOW do I ID targets from a P-3? I can't seem to find a good way to do this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-The Jigsaw Man

[LoBlo]

I almost never play P3 so I can't tell you specifically how to play the stations. You could try visually identifying them yourself with the mounted camera station and then assigning the class in the navmap yourself. Or maybe classifying them by their EW signiture if they are active.

hope that helps
lb

[Sea Demon]

The P-3 is a very interesting platform to play, definitely. When I do play it, I use visual with the camera turret or the ESM if the platform is radiating. Also if you look far enough on radar, you can place sonobouys ahead of where the contact may be going and analyze the signal in directional mode.

[JgzMan]

Thanks for the advice. I'll try the sonobouys. As far as Visual, I can ID them well enough for myself, but it dosn't seem to give me mission credit. Possibly I'm mis-iddentifying them. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my IR camra picked out a Submarine. It certainly /looked/ like a sub.

I'll be hanging out.

[OneShot]

The camera photo trigger on the P-3 is kinda tricky sometimes. For ID you have to use the camera and then click the "Photo" button. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't nevertheless keep clicking till it works. I'm not sure if you have to be in normal mode for it to work, or if it works in the other ones as well ... it should work in normal tho.

Aside from that issue, to ID a target (in a general sense) you have buoys, ESM, the camera, the Pilot (he'll give you a visual ident if in range), MAD/SAD and even Radar (well sort of, at least it can help to distinguish/differentiate between various options). In other words, all sensors take part in ID'ing a target, tho some of them help you more then others.

Cheers
OS

[drEaPer]

Though trying to visually identify an hostile surface contact will probably make you use your countermeasures ;)

[wetwarev7]

The thing that bugs me is there is no easy way to set the autopilot to circle around a location while you are trying to detirmine contact IDs.

Those of you who use this platform, how do you setup your waypoints when you are trying to ID someone or just want to be in a holding pattern, and what distance do you remain from unknown contacts?

[OneShot]

Check out the P-3 OWTOP on a way to set up a holding circle pattern. The safe distance really depends on the situation. A human played sub in MP ... good guess would be around 3nm for starters.

[JgzMan]

Thanks for all the tips. I did finally find a range that was close enough to get positive ID on the targets, but not so close that they shot me down.

Don't talk to me about sonabouys. Those things are giving me such a headache. But I suppose I'll get the hang of them soon enough.