Matching depth of opposing submarines!
 

Just a quick question from a newbee, "How do you match depth of an opposing submarine(i.e. determine the depth of another submarine)?" Am I missing something in the manual? Need help!:arrgh!:

There's generally no need to. While submarines fight in a three-dimensional battlespace, TMA is essentially a two-dimensional problem.

I asked this question a few weeks ago and got no utlimative answer... I suspect those procedures are classified?

Whether or not they are is irrelevent.
A) You don't need to
B) You don't have the capability in DW to do the things that you'd need to do in to do it anyway.

Btw,
In light of the latest torp tweaking in LWAMI-4.0 - giving the torp a limited depth tracking cone, wont this lack of tools be a problem? what can we do assure that we are in the right depth for launch (or at least the idle depth for the given situation)?

Or is it a "shot in the dark"...wet dark it is...

In absence of other means I would check if the sub is over or below the layer, and then fire a combo at each 1/3 of the size of this layer (hoping he doesn't switch layer) :hmm:

As a precautional measure, if he's below the layer I'd fire from over the layer and vice versa.

Well, it's not really that bad. :)

Any torpedo that is going to be seriously effected by the changes will have the ability to set a vertical search pattern (actually all have some vertical pattern now, even the ADCAP).

If you are in water less than 1000ft, even with a layer, a few hundred feet oscillation will be more than enough in moderate sonar conditions to get reasonable coverage with an average torpedo. In deeper water with a layer, you can judge your opponents position using the layer...

In any case, I find my depth considerations just "come to me" after I've been doing the work of tracking the target and getting a 2-D solution. I guess, at least for me, I'm happy with a good guess on the depth of my target, and set my torpedoes to account for me being partially wrong.

Cheers,
David

Ok, good answers.

on another subject, I installed LWAMI 3.02 -jsteed version, is there a way for a noob like me to know that the mod is actually loaded when i load the game again?

Is there some kind of guide for the mod? or just the readme?

thanks,

That's because you don't do it. I am a current, real-life ASW operator and do not exactly determine the depth of the opponent. You can relatively easily determine if it's deep or shallow, above or below the layer, and that's all the depth information you need. You can determine more or less exact depths in certain situations but it is not tactically useful and you certainly can't do it in DW so it doesn't matter.

You have to realize you're dealing with 1,500, maybe 2,000 feet of vertical movement at most. Submarines are not airplanes operating in a 50,000 foot envelope, so anti-air warfare thinking does not apply to ASW.

Nothing personal, but that's a minor pet-peeve I have about answering questions around here - I or Henson or some other current, serving ASW guy or submariner will provide information and no one will believe it.

I wouldn't worry about it. If one just posted the relevant documents, I have a feeling someone would second guess them, even as they hauled the poster off to prison. It's the nature of computer geeks.

Yes it will be.

Nothing.

Honestly, I was perfectly happy with torpedoes as they were.

Good point. We call them NCPMs up here (Naval Combat Procedures Manuals).

In think-tank land, we get a whole class of documents. They're probably similar to the things you see. I dunno... this conversation is rapidly going places we probably shouldn't go. It's probably not a smart idea to post exactly what we all have access to on the Internet, ya know? It's a good way to end up with an Iranian calling us up telling us about the kiddie porn they're going to find on our computers if we don't do what they say.

NOw there's a reason why I have doubts, and I think a good one. I once did talk with a real submarine officer of a TMA station and asked him exactly this question. answer: "of course you can!". But then going into details the answer turned into "we are quickly entering the classified zone here", and so I was denied that info.

But if it looked like deniyng you respect I am sorry, that was not meant to be. I use to consider your and Henson posts of high quality and "thrustable".

It isn't that it can't be done. A good sonar guy can get a pretty good feel for all kinds of things. The point is that it really isn't necessary, and DW doesn't have the stuff in it you'd need to do it anyhow.

True SeaQueen...there are a lot of tell tell signs that gives away the depth of a boat and just a few have been discussed. One thing that I've begged for is the sound of hull popping to be "hearable" thru your BB display instead of only that player who's performing the evolution.

What version is this?

jsteed has not be directly involved in the production of LWAMI, although we are using some of his tools and guides and he has advised us on particular game engine issues, for which I am very grateful to him.

The readme is all this is available for LWAMI 3.02 currently, although LWAMI4 will necessitate further documentation I'm pretty sure...

Well, I think you see DW as a tool with the necessary resolution.

Most of the people who are interested in mods see it as a simulation with variable complexity and verisimilitude.

That's not the case at all. If all I wanted out of DW was another tool, I'd live at work. I've got tools galore, many of which make DW look like a tinkertoy. That's not what I'm in it for.

There is something to be said, though for asking about necessary resolution. This is something we run into a lot at work as well. Sometimes it actually gets kind of nasty. Just the other day I thought it was going to come to blows across the hall from me.

With wargames, as in all computer models, it is possible to be "precisely wrong," with simulations. It makes no sense to attempt to model details which the simulation lacks the tools to exploit, understand, and interact with in a realistic way, and, don't really matter anyway because if you had those tools it'd stop mattering. I wish I could be more explicit here, but I really can't. It gets into details that I can't talk about. It is sufficient to say, though that in this case, it is actually more accurate to have less detail in the sim.

Wargames like DW, Harpoon, Global Conflict Blue, Sub Command, Jane's Fleet Command, are always abstractions. They're computer models. You can't avoid that. DW makes you a CO, XO, OOD, AO, and FCC all rolled into one. You can't do the job of what in real life takes a small team of individuals. Why bother adding a bunch of stuff that a subordinate would take care of so you wouldn't have to worry about it? It makes no sense.

You actually end up learning less about naval warfare that way.

Do you think I'm not interested in the mods? If I wasn't interested I'd say nothing. :-)

I agree. Transients like that would definitely be the coolest thing they could add to the sim right now. I want to be able to look at the that gram, or listen to my headphones and be able to tell you about every time my opponent twitches. If they did that, I also wish they could take out the TIW call and let me figure it out by looking at the grams and listening.

THAT would rock and it'd make the sonar station even more interesting.