You know, the key to explain the real differences in how we see it and how they did its TIME. We play just some minutes or hours, and are on a rush to kill something, sometimes because we must go do something else in our real life. But real Kaleuns had all necessary time at their avail, no time compression and their job was just that. I have sailed in real ships a lot when I was younger, and life in general goes so much slower that you tend to have a different approach to everything. I remember during sailing races how I observed a rival ship coming closer and it took so long that I could observate many details carefully, understanding perfectly what he was doing to take advantage and go faster than myself, as well as I could easily say how many degrees he was getting closer to the wind direction than me, and also the speed difference between their ship and mine.

It's just a matter of patience, and being dedicated to what you are doing, as well as a lot of practice :up:

This might be just what I need. I've been playing SH3 in seven months now, (four in 100%) and I'm getting bored. This would be a great challange... not use the WO's perfect "estimates", that is. Why didn't I think of that?
How much does the degree ticks stand for in GWX at the UZO and the scopes different zoom levels?

If you zoom out, on the map view, then a the convoy will be marked on your map. The convoy will be represented by a single large marker. Its position will not be super-accurate because of the map zoom, which is intentional, but if you put an X there and record the time and then shadow the convoy for a while (say 30km or whatever) then put another X on your map at the convoy's new location, then voila - you have the course and speed of the convoy! Now you can flank before submerging for an attack, and when you attack you will already have speed and AOB data and will only need to calculate the range to each target.

I like this method because it's how they did it IRL, and it's not complicated to do. You just put an X where the convoy is. How hard is that? ;)

I also use this method. Just the other day, I positioned myself ahead of a convoy. Sea state was bad and targeting through the scope would have been near impossible. I positioned my sub at what I guessed would be 1km from where they would be passing. Already had AOB (90) and speed. So I set the dials and fired a spread salvo when I heard ships on the correct hydroscope bearing and viola! ...a hit and one to the bottom.

While searching for new plotting techniques, I've noticed that there is something fishy with this. I've been calculating on it, and I've got a reason to belive the WO is ~200 meters off at a distance of ~2000m. At least in the one specific occation I made the measurement. This confirms a small suspicion I've felt for him for quite some time now.

I'll dig deeper into this...

I am curious how you came to your claim. What tools/calculations did you use/make to provide a better distance?

Well, The conclusion is that the WO is quite right with his binoculars. As a matter of fact, he's better than the persicope @ 10x and a advanced calculators trigonometry. The periscopes ticks are obviously very wrong. At 10x the ticks are 0.1578 - 0.1580 degrees... not 0.1 which would be the logical in this case.

I honestly don't know if they where that lousy on optics at WW2, but I doubt it. It has been around for a while, you know. I guess if you're out for realism, the WO is closest to it. The attack periscope is - for real - useless...

Well, I thought the periscope and trigonometry was right to begin with, but it was not - my bad. I calculated it in a live game and career so I didn't have the time to get down on it. I made a rough estimate to consolidate the periscope and WO and came to the conclusion that the WO was ~200m off.

In the results above, I've been using a estimated FOV (~60), a for the purpose made mission and - a whole lot of torpedoes at different speed and their average time to impact, to measure the true distance. (This since I don't trust neither the scope or the WO). I'll dig deeper into this later, since I can't find all answers here. But for now it will do...

EDIT: The WOs estimates seems to be floored and not rounded. May have been mentioned around here but anyways...

Those marks in the stock periscope are not to be trusted anyway. In stock they seem to be for decoration only. Their rendering seems to be hardcoded in the game, to much discontent of modders trying to use a different image. They can't get rid of it , only enlarge enough making it go out of view. And then overlay their own image. So in the end what you measure also depends on what version/mod of the game you use. If they changed the optic values.

Also, there is no reason why a mark should mean 1 degree or 0.1 degrees. What is important is that those marks signifiy some ratio between size or height and distance. If it has the right ratio you can 'easily' convert appearant-size to distance (if you take it's physical-size into account)

Imho, the WO is actually way too precise. No way he could tell 11km apart from 11.1km in real life with just his eyes

All I'm saying is that the periscope is not to be trusted. It's all wrong... GWX for sure... that's all I'm playing.

I disagree... You don't have to use height, (which is awful if you get in to rough wathers). You're usally better off, using lenght of the target and estimated AOB. It's good enough for me though.

Imho the WO is more realistic than the error of optics in SH3 and GWX, despite his accuracy. (Optics from 1700 would have done it better.) I might be wrong though...