I just finished a 49 day-patrol this weekend with manual naviagtion. I was out in the North Atlantic south of Greenland, time was February to March 1944.

My rules: If I can see the sun at noon, I made a mark of my position on the map, if not I go dead reckogning. I missed the sunset / sunrise navigation opportunities intentionally to make it more interesting. I almost never zoomed above the 13 km radius map and logged time, course and speed in a paper notebook just like a real nautical log. I calculated the time when I had to change courses to get to my assigned patrol grid and back home.

My observations:

1) I couldn't "shoot the sun" on 22 of the 49 days and had to rely on dead reckogning. This was mainly during three longer bad weather periods without navigation check. One time I had 9 continious days of storm w/o positioning and a two times six days without positioning each. The worst distraction from my dead reckogning course was 77 km off after 6 days, resp. 30 km after 6 days of storm and 50 km after 9 days.

2) I had no problems navigating to my patrol grid, my waypoints and back home.

3) I found it almost impossible to "keep track" while on attack and being hunted. I helped myself with the idea that I must be in a rough 50 km circle somewhere, estimated a bit and waited for my next chance to "shoot the sun".

4) Keeping the course and playing helmman is a pain in the ass, you need to correct the course continiously. Max TC was 256x and once I used 512x I got off course prety badly.

5) It adds much fun to the game during the usually boring "from/to" passages, as you need to "find" your grid or convoy and your way home; one mistake in your calculation and you are screwed until the next time you see the sun and check your position. In a long storm / bad weather phase, this can become a critical issue.

6) Having said this, I found it extremely time consuming as I continiously had to maintain my log, calculate the distances and times etc. After a while you are becoming practised and in good weather you are quite as good as the stock GPS tool. In good weather, nothing really worse can happen anyway, as you can check your position every 24 hrs (if you use sunset/sunrise, too, even around every 8 hours).

CONCLUSION: Using manual Navigation gives you a new "helmsman" feeling of uncertainty to the game; the dull "from/to" parts are gone, you are busy every hour especially as your boat doesn't keep course in bad weather. Than again I didn't found it too challeging in good weather with many possible position checks, but the longer storm periods let you keep guessing if you are right on track or not, that was very nice and thrilling.

Cheers,
AndyW

Thats ok you added more chalenge to your navigation but realistically speaking, as long as the u-boat navigator could see the sun he would always take measurements of it(i simulate this by not clicking on the rose) and fix more or less their position. Of course at noon,sunrise,sunset would be the most accurate times of the day to fix their position with less margin of error, but anyway im glad you liked this method of navigation it adds so much more to gameplay:up:.

Thanks mate, any doubt feel free to ask and welcome to the forum:up:.

Following the post from AndyW, I second that manual navigation is not for people enjoying playing high TC. In bad weather the inability of the helmsmen to keep the sub on course force you to frequent manual adjustments if you want to stay not too far from your course and surfaced (the big dials from simfeeling mod also help a lot). However it is always possible to submerge to eliminate the problem and surface only for reloading batteries.
As I personally play max 128 TC it's not disturbing and keeps me busy.
For the attack/hunted part, it's not so important to have a precise position on the map because during these phases it is the positioning of others relative to your boat that counts. You can even draw your attack plot on a separate piece of paper, it will make no difference.

I also use 128 max and the 6 dial mod, its very useful to correct the course deviations, regarding the combat he means that when you are hunting or being hunted in bad weather ,you make several changes of course and speed and its very difficult to keep track of your position due to this.

Agreed, but during these phases you are usually moving slow and for short periods of a few hours, so having a general idea of which direction you moved you can't be that far away.

Agree.

Yep, I was. I hadn't seen any of the sonar lines when I posted this last night as reported this here as soon as I saw it (i.e. as I was leaving port) but afterwards I managed to intercept a convoy (love the uncertainty of this with manual navigation btw! Knew roughly where they would be but thanks to stormy weather and no sun I wasn't sure of my precise position.). Once I submerged though I knew exactly where I was as all the sonar lines pointed straight back to me.

I rationalised that this is OK as it's showing my position relative to the other ships. After the attack I delelted all marks I made during the attack so that I still wouldn't know my exact position in a broader navigational sense (but the sunk ship icons still remain:arrgh!:). Ultimately, I just don't know if I can live without nav map updates. I cannot imagine I how could have possibly set myself up for this attack without them and without knowing where I am. Any suggestions?
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TreneSexy live

To each player his own, play with what you feel comfortable, and then, pretty soon you'll be wanting to up the ante once you've mastered that. For me, getting rid of the GPS on the sub is not so much about manual navigation, but rather about shooting more from the hip when engaging targets. Once you learn the basic math involved in setting up a good shot, it'll start to become mechanical and even boring with the auto-update feature turned on (a.k.a.: God's eye view). By removing your sub, and removing the automatic sonar conact lines, and removing the automatic ship icons that keep all-to-perfect track of the enemy, you make the game more about manualy obtaining distance, speed and AoB info to feed into the TDC (a closer experience to what a real life captain had to figure out) instead of just going through the motions of an easy kill.

Again, it depends on your level of game. But, I assure you, once you've figured out a few math principles, you'll be able to take waaaaay to much advantage of all the info derived from the "God's eye view" mode, and you'll feel that the game is just too easy... you'll be "in the know" and by then it'll be to late to fake yourself into going back to dumber, but more challenging, times that have long gone by. By then, the only way to get any real enjoyment from the game will be to get rid of all those "unfair" advantages that lower "realism" settings give you, bringing you back to a situation where you don't always sweep the oceans clean :up:

I know what you mean. I've been gradually ratcheting up the difficulty over time to make the game more interesting. Not seeing exactly where the targets are on the map is one thing however I have no idea how I would manually attack without knowing my own position too. I'll have a think about it over the weekend and perhaps try a few things out in the naval academy missions.
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Cyaraa

To intercept contacts i do the following:

Once you have your contact spoted by bdu on the map(lets assume is a convoy)order all stop and make note of the speed the convoy is making(usually slow wich means about 6,7 knots) and the time it was sighted, consult the speed charts, and draw a line with the ruler in the direction of the convoy reported course to a spot where it will be in a future hour and mark it with the compass.Then fix your own position, if there is sun you are ok, if not its a bit more difficult to fix it but you shouldnt be far from it, then draw a line with the ruler from your assumed position to the spot you assumed the convoy will be, see the distance and once again consult the speed charts and make a speed that will get you to the spot before the convoy arrives. When you arrive to the spot and about 15 minutes before the estimated time of convoy arrival make depht of 30 mts and make hydophone sweeps yourself to try to locate the convoy if you maked the right calculations and the convoy didint changed his course you should have the convoy in sight soon;) . To intecept targets with this kind of navigation the speed charts are of key importance, i use this method and it works most of the times, but not always one bad calculation and you are in a wrong position, but thats what real kaleuns had to face in reality:up: .

I repeat myself, sorry, but the main concept to grasp is that you do no need to know your exact position on the map to plan an attack on open sea.
During that phase your sub is the center of the world. You just need to choose and mark any starting place when you get the first contact (which can be anywhere on the map or even on a sheet of paper on your desk) and from then on plot your moves and the position of other ships relative to your sub.

To attack when you have the target on sight or in the hidrophone you dont need to know your exact position or the targets position but if you dont have the target on sight or hidrophones you do because if you dont fix a more or less exact position of your sub to intercept the convoy how can you know if you go south or north or west to get to an intercept point? In das boot when they were trying to intercept the convoy, the captain asks to the navigator and he says we should be more or less about here and the enemy is here because the target was not on sight they needed to fix their bearings to reach an intercpt point.

Sorry mate was answering in fact to Ironx who talked about the attack planning phase.
For the long distance intercept, well you have to start your drawing from where you think you are... If your guess is wrong you probably will miss the intercept.
But anyway the convoy can also change speed/heading and you can miss it as well even when you start from an exact position. Can't win them all !!

Actually the most accurate sextant readings could be made when the sun was below 45° height above the horizon, but not too low due to atmosphere refraction. The moon could be used as well (both during night and day). Actually you need two sextant readings (e.g. sun and moon) to have a coordinate fix (the two objects must be at different azimuth to hace a good reading, 90 degrees azimuth spacing was the best). Or you could compose reading done at different hours on the same objects (e.g. the sun).

During the night also stars could be used.

So practically when the sky was clear, the position could be estimated with a good accuracy.

Suggested readings:
http://www.dc3airways.com/TechEd/te_nav_lr_nav.html (long range navigation in the '40s, thought for aircraft but somehow applicable also to submarines)

http://www.celnav.de/ (Henning Umland's excellent site about celestial navigation)

In Flight Simulator there is an axcellent mod that simulates a sextant reading, I wonder if something could be made for SH III too...
http://library.avsim.net/search.php?...4gau&Go=Search

Cheers
Maraz