Very, very well summed up :up:

From the U-Boat commander's handbook (The official doctrine for the U-Boot commanders in WW2):

You will never get good and accurate values if plotting quickly in 5 minutes, as OLC said, and that is correct because nobody got them like that in real life. If needed to shoot quickly, real commanders (and IWOs) just estimated with the MKI eyeball. And trust me, once you have practiced enough it is not a bad method at all :smug:

A suggestion that will not decrease realism, but will make life much easier: When overhauling at surface, ask your IWO each 3:15 minutes to tell you range and bearing to target, you will be able to plot it fairly well that way.

And in any case, AVERAGE the results of the plot. Never, never, plot the enemy in two observations and take the data from them. This can only work in ideal (And unrealistic) conditions.

Good hunting :salute:

Thats exactly what I wanted to hear Hitman.

Using the WO to give you reports every 3m.15s seems a great and easy way to get the plots needed (with god mode off) .Is he fairly accurate then,and are his reports to be relied upon?

I have seen copies of the UBCH on Amazon,and it is extremely rare to get hold of,do you know any other places that might sell it?,ideally UK suppliers.But if it can only be ordered overseas I may have to open a paypal account,something i'm not too thrilled about doing...still :nope:

Again,cheers! :up::up: <-- double thumbs up for that mate!

That would make it very difficult to understand if no one is explaining all the lines and circles would it not?

He does round up the values to the next hundreths, i.e. 5634 metres is 5600 metres, but that is not just close enough, but also realistic for what you would expect when using a small hand-held rangefinder (In fact may be even more at long distances) and is good enough for plotting while surfaced. Once you are underwater, at periscope depth, it will be just you who can look through the periscope and construct the firing solution -again realistically-

Get it here for free and print it:

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/uboat/index.htm

But be aware that there are some minor translation errors in the text.

Good hunting :salute:

Guess what Hitman,

I just ordered a brand new copy of the UBCH at amazon UK,for about £12.00! They finally have some copies,so I snapped one up while I could!

Here is the link for anyone wanting this elusive gem
http://www.amazon.co.uk/U-Boat-Commanders-Handbook/dp/0939631210

:yeah::up::salute:

That all makes sense now mate,and thanks.Getting accurate ranges to targets with the naked eye or as you say a small rangefinder would have took nothing short of god-like abilities.

Just one last little question about this now.Lets say you got your range wrong by about 100,or 200m,how far out would that be after about 50km of tracking,would the contact still be in either visual or audible range?.Getting the ranges wrong,would naturally give you a slightly incorrect course angle,and after 50km or more even a 1 or 2 degrees shift could be quite substantial.But probably not that much,he should still be in sound range,at least.

In SH3 the visibility is just 16-18000 metres when using the 16 k environment mod (And only <9000 metres without it), so you must consider the 50 km figure that OLC said more as a real life matter than something usable in the game.

If you plot the target using the IWO and make an average after say, 6-10 estimates, you should have a fair degree of accurancy and be able to do a good end around at full speed plotting a paralell course in the limit of visibility, i.e. a course parallel at 15000 metres to the target/convoy (in good visibility), so you never lose the sight of the tips of the masts, or at least the smoke plumes.

16-18000 metres? and,the stock game vis. limit is on a clear day about 8-9000m.That is about double,is that correct then?,that is bloody far :o
Would someone be able to see that far with the naked eye?

You can see the moon, right? ;)

In very clear weather the limiting factor on visibility is how high up you are vs how high the ship mast / smoke column is (because of the curvature of the earth). On the ocean, with your eyes just 5m above the surface of the water, the horizon is 8km away (which means that - on paper - you can see things that are 5m tall up to 16km away, and things taller than 5m can be seen further than that).

And of course your crew are not really spotting "with the naked eye" - they have binocs.

I guess that makes sense.
Strange the developers never considered all these technicalities in their stock game,I would have thought the visibility of distant objects to have been an important aspect in the tactical nature of the game.The same goes with the sometimes awful observation skills of the watch crew,who sometimes miss objects clearly coming into view on the horizon line,and you really don't want that if its a warship steaming towards you.

Thanks for that.

No problem. And I'm sure they did consider it. Extending the environment to 16km takes quite a toll on the performance of a typical 2005 gaming machine. Also, in SH3 the world is flat (a little shortcut the developers took). With an 8km atmosphere, and your eye at 5m above sea level, you can get away with a flat ocean... but extend the visibility further out and it becomes quite obvious that the world is not curved like it should be. Let's hope they address the problem in SH5 (and the dodgy crew ship-spotting as well).

Well I would guess they did, but back then in 2005 they probably thought it would put a too high stress on computers and make the game unplayable for those on low spec systems. :hmmm:

EDIT:

OLC and me cross posted, but we said the same :up: !!

Thanks for that both of you.

I can see now why the viewing distances were brought nearer (maybe),a consideration for those on lower end systems.Having said that though,do you think it would be that much of a performance hit having the distance extended to 16000m or so?,after all you can lower most settings on your graphics card,like full screen AA,or Anis.Filt,and other eye candy effects,that could alleviate performance problems.

I myself use 1x AA,8x Anis.Filt (important for distant objects in games),Catalyst AI,geometry instancing (renders objects of the same type much quicker),and Trilinear Filtering (giving 3 draw buffers as opposed to just 2 as in bilinear).With the above settings my game runs very smooth,and when I got the most current version of Direct X9c the game improved even more.

I think the only minor performance issues I have noticed is during rough seas,as at a certain compass point when looking from the c.tower the fps drop slightly.Seems to be just during storms/high waves.And this problem has already been observed by many people in here I think.

Well,thanks again,and I think that concludes all my questions and queries :yep:

Even if they kept the world flat for simple motion dynamics or navigation sake, they could still have made a convincing approximation by rendering the horizon and ships lower with increasing distance. Heck, even Sh1 did that, and that was on puny little 386/486 cpus with barely over 1MB ram. It would have made a world of difference.

@Paul
If you are into realism you should really try one of the supermods (e.g. GWX) if you haven't already.

@Pisces
The SH3 engine does allow for the water to be curved (up or down) to a sphere of any radius, using EarthRadius (make it negative to make the water curve down like it's supposed to) but that's no use on its own because the ships all float on a perfectly flat plane. Maybe it was a planned/unfinished feature?