Weapons officer... really needed?
 

Well, after almost a week practicing 90% realism (all checked except external view and "eye of god") I finally managed to sink 4 ships on 2 patrols (all my Typ. IIa torps expended).

The question is why a weapons officier if he cannot even id targets? I feel the difficulty params are really too tight, so I will play next patrol with WO assistance. He has to earn his money :)

Just a thought. Thanks for reading / opinion.

To be honset, if your using manual targeting w/o assistance then you really don't need him. Personally what I do is I click on him when i am getting ready to fire, because he can still open the outer doors and bow caps for you and he can fire the torpedos. That and feeding information into the Vorhaltrechner, was really what the weapon officer did in reality. Historically they did not identify targets as they are portraid in the game.:)

Right now the WO assistance is the only thing I have marked. I use him to calculate the solution. I figure it would have been a team effort in RL and honestly I can't be bothered to run all the calculations myself(not yet anyway).

Sometimes he is dead on with his numbers and other times we miss so I enjoy not knowing whether I will get a hit or not.

I think it works out to 94%

I am ususally around 80% with my solutions, w/o any assistance. Of course that sometimes drops a little more when you factor in torpedo malfunctions, or extreme weather.

When you use the OLC GUI you can`t without him.
He will indentify the target.

I am amazed that you don`t use that mod.
With that mod sh3 is much more realistic.

Actually I have heard alot about it. I just havn't gotten around to looking at it myself. In any case I do keep the WO at his station during attacks. I use him to open the outer doors and bow caps, and when I am ready to fire I give him the order to do so.

I was wondering how to use OLC's gui on a surface attack against a convoy since there's no tools for the UZO?

I just did a surface attack by using the attack scope :DL

That's what I do as well. I use Hitman's optics though. I ID all my own targets, though a lot of the steamers from the IABLShips pack are hard to distinguish from each other. Fortuneatly most have a mast of 23m.

So all I use the weapons officer for is to pull up the window to reload external torpedos. I still use the watch officer for range about 50% of the time. I sometimes do the entire process submerged though, then I get range from the periscope. I like Hitman's optics, it uses hash marks on the left side and then you refer to a table that will give range by mast height.

There is something i have been wondering about the weapon officer.
I have him selected in the realism options but i practically never use him.

1/ When you are looking in the periscope, if you move the crosshair over a ship, in the notepad you will get cargo, coastal vessel etc... Does this disappear without the weapon officer?

2/In stock SHIII, when i clicked or double clicked on where it says SHIPS in the notepad, it would open the ship recognition manual at the right page. Is this disabled with GWX? Is this what people mean when they say the WO identifies targets?

I believe it is because I don't have WO assistance checked and in my game I never got the correct page when I had a notepad. There are certain mods, Hitmans Optics for one and several others that replace the notepad with the TDC dials off to the right side of the periscope/UZO.

IIRC GWX has the notepad but I am not sure if the auto page ship ID is available or not as I probably added the optics mod right from the start.

WO assistance
 

I've never really used the WO assistance . Lately i'm experencing alot of misses , not sure why . I would like to increase my chances . Its getting later in the war , for one thing and i'm finding more targets and I need a faster method . What is the proper way to use him ? Thanx Jerry

To get the range, you have to use the watch officer to give range and bearing to nearest target. That's not perfect though if there are other ships closer that are not targets.
I use "god's eye view" and you can figure out course, hence AOB, speed, and range as well by tracking the target and gaining information.

OLC has a good tutorial video out there somewhere. Check his BTS selection or search the forums.

I just started using manual targeting and OLC's gui, so I'm by no means a expert.
:)

Nah..He is not really needed. This lazy bugger always whirling underfoot without use. I usually leting him peel potatoes in caboose while I'm doing TDC solution..