TDC speed
 

I tried to use the method to estimate speed like the manual says: When everything else is ready, I select speed mode, and then clock and start it. After 2 minutes I stop it. The manual says, I should now get a speed estimate on the dial, but it remains on zero. What is wrong? Is this a bug?

Other issue: Manual says, that you can ask crew to calculate solution, like in SH3, but I haven't found a way to do it so far. Is this a feature, that has been dropped?
I really miss the crew management of SH3. Commanding officers is fun and feels realistic.

Yes to 1.

Don't know to 2nd.

r.

Also one thing, the manual says that once you have lock on target, you can move the periscope to the section of the ship you want the torpedo to hit, but I haven't got this working.

There are plenty of things that don't work like the manual says they should unfortunately.

For the TDC speed calculation bug I would urge the devs to release a hotfix patch asap. They may have already fixed this and be working on other patch issues. If that is the case please just release the speed fix now.

Yesterday I fired all 12 torps in my S-18 and they all missed despite taking my time to get into a great firing position. Now I'm know I am not very good at manual TDC at the best of times but trying to estimate the speed without the stopwatch feature is made more frustrating by the highly inaccurate range measurement tool.

While I think SH3 being just perfect, I am little dissapointed to SH4. A working concept has been redone and not nearly as well as it was. I am seriously considerint to keep up with SH3

SH3 is very good (not perfect) now, it was not perfect when it came out!!

BTW crew management is more realistic in SH4. Captains did not tell their men to go to bed.

In my experience, the Stadimeter works well enough when used correctly.

So I'd suggest you use the auto TDC. If you don't want to manually determine speed, then there's no reason to have manual TDC on, since speed determination is the only tricky part.

r.

How do you mean "works well enough when used correctly"??
Is there a way to use this "correctly" that you know about in the manual mode or do you mean it works well enough when you have auto TDC?

Well, firstly I'm not talking about the Stadimeter, I'm talking about the stopwatch.

Secondly, I'm sure actual submarine crew had the use of an accurate 'ruler' to calculate the speed/movement over time with, which we don't appear to have available in SH4 (the range tool is highly inaccurate)

Thirdly, you may consider it not worth using manual TDC if you don't work out the speed manually.. I consider it to add a great deal of challenge over auto TDC even if the stopwatch worked. There are some functions that would be performed by other crew members!

Ive found using 2-3 minute intervals on the nav map can give me the speed despite the ruler only having 1 decimal place. Certainly near enough.

You can semi-cheat and tweak it later by comparing the position keeper white X with the target on a solution to see if it keep space with it.

Agree though the nav ruler needs 1 more decimal place than it has. Thats one thing the metric version has at least - more accuracy for distance.

In this screenshot I used the range tool and clicked it just as it reached 0.1nm and then drew a second plot and clicked as soon as it reached 0.2nm.

You'd think the 0.2nm line would be twice and long as the 0.1nm line, but it's almost 3 times as long. I don't know if it is rounding up (so at 0.06nm it shows 0.1nm?) but either way it makes speed measurement a headache.

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/810...1338296wr3.jpg

I mean that I play with manual mode, and the ranges I observe using the stadimeter are working out OK.

Another thread talked about bad stadimeter ranges so for a while I put the map updates on and the ranges I got with the stadimeter were within reasonable accuracy of where the target was....

Bear in mind, the range hasn't got to be exact to determine a solution that will hit.

r.

Well you said "made more frustrating by the highly inaccurate range measurement tool." - I'm simply saying I don't think the stadimeter has a problem.

As for an accurate ruler - yes that is irritating. However, there are probably 5 ways to determine the speed of the target - only one of them requires requires a ruler with accuracy greater than 0.1Nm and only then if you're trying to shorten the time required to get the speed.

While I agree there are functions that the crew should do, the reality is that this is not a simulation in that regard at all - Ubi have degraded the crew assistance further over SH3 unfortunately, when I was hoping for a much greater "living crew" element. However, SH4 is what it is and we're stuck with it.


Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the range and AoB determination are such basic tasks as they stand, that they're barely worth doing. If you're trying to simulate the presence of a crew plotting bearings and working things out and making TDC settings, the Auto-TDC is probably closer to reality than the manual one.

But if you're using manual because of the extra challenge, then the speed calculation is the only significantly challenging part.

r.

I'm not sure I follow you: would you rather have the range determination part - which is done with the split image stadimeter - more difficult or different than it was done in real life?