Since i am pretty much drunk, i feel OK to post one :up:

TMA is an ART (art) and while attendig ASAT i got skilled at it just in face of a war i preferred to go the "secure" way.

That yelded a distingushed servie medal within Seawolves, but yet it was not the simulator being played :nope:

To pretend to understand TMA in 30 minutes is ridicolous... you can manage to have a straight dot set on the T but that won't be a good solution many times...

That's my personal point of view and was also underlined during instruction...

A straight dots solution might not be the good solution. The good thing in doing it manually, and properly... course changes, speed changes ecc. ecc. is that you will have a firing solution... and if something else is close to your target, you will be able to hit the right contact.

I must admit the pool answers i set available are sort of limiting.

While you can do well with manual TMA in single games... that's gonna be another thing in MP games.

The statistical value of my pool goes herewith to nearly zero :88)

Always played manual TMA from day one, kinda thought I was cheating myself by letting the auto-crew do it. Having said that, for a very long time I was really terrible at it. But after setting up a few practice missions and reading some of the many available guides, I got better. Now that I've started playing again, in SC single player, I've found I wait 'til I've got contact on both towed and bow/hull arrays whenever possible. Then I can run perpendicular to the target and triangulate the exact range more or less. That comes in really handy when they're evading while you're trying to steer a torpedo at them. :D

Of course, I'm not telling the gurus here anything they don't already know... but for the newer players, if you haven't already skimmed through the guides that are available (at Subguru.com I believe) then do so immediately. A little reading can go a long way to making either SC or DW much more enjoyable.



P.S. Ordering DW tomorrow!

I tend to leave it on auto unless things aren't happening too fast. I'd much rather do it myself as I can be more sure of the solution, but if there are many tracks or if things are generally busy, I just leave it to auto and cross my fingers.

Running sonar, ESM, weapons takes precedence over TMA.

Auto all the way :up: I would think in RL that the computer would do it anyway.... :up:

Selection of the 'right' manual inputs to an auto system is a good gameing hook and 'realistic.'

In Falcon4, for example, the air to air radar is fully automated but the pilot selects beam width and search elevation range.
Vital, realistic, and fun, as you focus your 'torch.' I dont claim that the two are fully comparable.

Perhaps following flight sim proceedures a choice of 'Simplified' (full auto) , semi-auto or full manual TMA would be attractive ? :up:

It's hard to compare the two as the radar is active. If you pop up you radar mast or use active sonar all the time, that will considerably simplify TMA, but we obviously don't like to do that.

If you want to approximate the passive sonar situation in F4, try getting position information on enemies while only using the RWR.

I seriously doubt, no i am certain that in RL the puter doesnt do that.

Instead, there's people that will request ownship maneuvers and put the ruler in the bearing lines manually :lol:

:sunny:

Yes Wim thats a good comparison, but not quite what I had in mind.

We are talking manual or auto TMA here and all I was saying is that SC auto TMA (which had'nt got ESP like in DW)
required manual inputs. Those manual inputs required a degree of skill and interpretation.
A halfway-house between full auto and full manual.

As for Falcon 4 ' I dont claim that the two are fully comparable ' merely that there may be a need for the sort of
choice that F4 provides in the automation of radar egs :-
Easy Mode - Fully automated (god's eye view)
Simplified Mode - Halfway house - finds targets quicker than RM -
Realistic Mode. - Closely simulates the AA/APG-68 Block 60 radar in the F16-C
(Requires manual inputs as described earlier post)

So we discuss the level of automation of a system.

RWR ( Radar Warning Receiver) is fully automated and the only manual input required are overides of
threat selection/priorities/Naval/unknown and Target Separation. Mere selectors/filters.

To spin off to your point - I do agree that the RWR, or azimuth indicator, is an excellent comparison with
passive sonar but the RWR ' tonals' were a lot simpler to sort, for my battered ears anyways. :)

I prefer to rely vital information to an human "interface".

When you have to understand the "way to behave" of something, AI isnt just supposed to be able to as an human brain is.

:) Yes I'm with you there - thats my preference. AI usualy is currently pretty stupid - that is changing.

The simulation has to account for many skill levels - at present we have two options, full auto or full manual.
To cater for all players, I would like to see, like F4, an intermediate 'simplified' TMA, part auto part manual.
SC 's inadequate auto TMA needing the players intervention, nearly achieved this requirement. :up:

TMA is hard! FFG TMA is impossible!

In terms of mathematically possible solutions, a computer can go through all of these quite quickly (such as to find that there has must have been a maneuver since this line, because that line (and maybe those before?) fits nothing - of course excluding lines from a bent towed array)

But when there are several possibilities (as there usually is), a human should be selecting which one to go with.


My best results with FFG TMA have been a target (that would have fired on me a long time ago, because it had to be that close to be within range of the lines) that ended up being 500yds or so behind its real position. That's not something I could adjust.
(Once line lenghts are extendable, longest range (max unzoom) on the drawing is increased, and the offset bug fixed, I'll be available as FFG TMA guy)

[i]...hey, will halifax plots ever be available...?

I'd really like to see the "line wipe" function in the subs tma, though. Removing bogus lines would help a bit.

Is the function to select history time (right click on TMA plot) not useful for that?

The human woudln't be selecting wich one to go with like it was a brothel... the TMA operator would know witch one to go with, as he built his solution, step by step...