Manual plotting is flat out wrong in SH. The crew has jobs. Plotters plot.

If I take a bearing/range, it should be plotted for me. Someone (crew) can then trace a line between two observations---and since they are well trained, they'll will have used a stopwatch, so I now have the speed and course assuming my observations were good.

That's what I want. Not me playing the role of 3-4 people at the same time, and not magical, perfect, GPS animated plotting.

I largely agree with Donkey-Shot's proposal here. Although, personally I would be happy with a much simpler system. i.e.

1. You enter a distance on the notepad (hey I like the notepad :P ) calculated as usual and centre the scope on the target ship.
2. You start the stopwatch and press a mark button located next to the "send to TDC" button.
3. The crew plots the following info: Own location, target ship location, line connecting the two, index (mark #1, mark #2 and so on) and time. Time could be either game time or, in my opinion preferably, stopwatch time. So mark #1 could have a time of close to zero, mark #2 could have a time of 3:15 etc. Of course if the stopwatch is not running, then game could be used instead.

Implementation details aside, it's good to see that this idea is popular around here. I spotted a lot of modders on the other thread and that makes me hopeful that if such a thing can be modded in for SHV it will happen.

More or less, yes, and it is in that same web. It's the U-Boat commander's Handbook.

I have a paper copy of the U-boat Commander's Handbook and it doesn't really cover the information I'm referring to.

Excellent suggestion! I too would like my observations and target data plotted on the map. So I can see for myself.

I like doing it myself, but it is the job of the crew, not the captain and should very well be in the game - represented visually.

Yeah, want animated crew eye candy that is at least useful? Forget the soup.

You take bearings—give us the ability to tell the crew which target we are observing, BTW—then go to the plotting table, and your plotter is plotting your observations. The firing party is the only interaction I care about.

Ideally, you'd find a target, then hit a button to do what on a US boat would be the skipper saying "Bearing, mark." If you take a range then bearing and range. The additional element would be that you'd then label the contact by hitting a single key (any letter or number). The plotter would plot the contact with that letter/number scribbled next to it. When you take a 2d observation, you need to then take a bear/range AND properly ID which of your targets you are plotting. If you pick the wrong one, tough, the plotter will connect the dots and you'll have a bad solution. Be careful.

No more magical auto-plotting, no more absurdly complicated manual plotting (that the RL skipper would not have done). Player as skipper should be the goal. Design the process and UI to reflect that. The observations are important, and messing up should screw up the shot.

If that were done, then you'd have to go down the ladder to look at the map and pull the scope down. The way it was with magic teleportation between statios, you could quickly flip between screens and see what was what. The 'plotting' way it will take more time and also gives you a potential for losing a target, or losing track of the situation. Which is a good thing.

What specific info/answers do you want?

I want to know the U-boat submerged (surfaced) attack process in detail from a crew member role and process point of view. Who stood where, when were measurements taken, how often, who took them, who operated what machinery, how was target data deduced, etc.

Yes, all this has been kicking around for a long time; I know I and others (and possibly you, too) posted this sort of thing in the forum last year about what we were hoping for from SH5.

They have, essentially, just stuck with the same old system, with the added potential of making it even more difficult by forcing you to move from point to point in the sub like some trained monkey.....

I REALLY hope I'm missing something with the whole "must-walk-to-every-station" thing. I hate to sound pessimistic, but it sounds extremely tedious and would become very annoying very quickly. I wouldn't mind the walk-around thing IF there is a competent crew, and I don't have to do everybody's job for them... but if I have to observe targets, plot dots, listen to the hydrophone, reload torpedoes, and serve soup all by myself...

I'm concerned as well that crew interaction may get tedious rather fast. I suspect the cook dialogs will be some of the first to go, when the mods start coming out.

However, all this is just speculating and we'll have to wait for the final product to see for our selves. My hopes at the moment is that the game is indeed as moddable as it is claimed.

Yes, and I just read Neal's preview. I noticed the details of the "1st mission" as captain: patrol British coastal zone and sink 50,000t on the Eastern coast by June 1940, starting September 6th 1939.

50,000t. Only 84 commanders managed that (or better) in their entire careers.

Sigh. Another stupidly unrealistic yippie-shoot-tonnage-monster.....

Oh well. I won't be playing it, so it hardly matters.

I think the absurd thing here is not the tonnage required for success, but the fact that there is a quota in the first place. Imho, in a true simulator there can be only one absolute objective: Get home alive.

Exactly.

Some things should happen faster—having the crew plot instead of you doing it yourself—while others should be slower.