The Starfish in the Kilo - RTE distances
 

Hi again

I've been trying to use the Starfish in the Kilo with limited success. I am playing a variant of the MH-60 demo mission which has the player in a Kilo, hunting a Victor III.

I can reliably find and track the Victor and get a reasonable solution on him, and I am experimenting with using Starfish against him (I am at the right depth for a launch and in general the target's depth is within parameters) because often the range is too great for conventional torps and he can evade at 30 knots.

However, I'm finding the torps are splashing down well past the Victor, allowing him to run clear. The range to the Victor is expressed in thousands of metres (say 6,000), but the RTE for the Starfish is expressed in nautical miles. I figure a rough "bit less than 2" to convert thousands of metres to NM (ie about 3NM to 6,000m).

I set a pattern of three Starfish. One at 3NM (ie just short of 6,000m), one at 4NM in case he lengthens the range if he runs, and another snapshot on a bearing to cut his escape to the west off at 4NM.

When I fire the missiles, the torpedos splash down about double the distance I want them to and the torps run out of steam before they can reach the target. The RTE seems to be the distance that the missile drops the fish and they continue on a trajectory.

Do I need to halve the RTE distances for Starfish? When I first started using them, I tried a zero RTE figure, but the torp splashed down right on top of me!

Any guidance or rules of thumb for setting RTE for Starfish appreciated, thanks.

smith

Are you just playing the demo?

In the full game either the lattest patch or LWAMI fixed this.

There are SUBROC RTE tables here:
http://subguru.com/downloads.html

Full game - 1.04.

Then I would give the LWAMI mod a try, we put a doctrine in that fixed this problem.

Thanks - I'll give that a try (been a bit nervous about mods).

There is nothing to be nervous about. It can be enabled and disabled at will with JSGME. You just have to make sure you don't mix up savegames.

Make a radius circle on the target to measure the exact distance in nautical miles.

The RTE must be set lower than that distance.

RTE means the range at which the missile drops its torpedo payload. The torpedo would still travel some distance after being dropped in mid air. You need to take that distance into account by guess approximation and experience.

If you want to launch 2 missile torpedoes to sandwich between the target both RTE's must be set lower than the range or at max equal to the distance. You need to get those torpedoes to hit the water(not just dropped) as close as possible to the target since these torpedoes are only going to go circle and their endurance due to their small size is not great at all.

The thing I loath is that these have small warhead and in DW 30% damage is just a superficial number while in RL even a 30% hull and shock damage is probably going to incapacitate a submarine rendering it out of combat or severely crippling it effectively making it a neutralized target.

There's no way a starfish or the like hit submarine in RL going to simply say 30% damage to our submarine, flood tube 1 and 2 set bearing 60 degree RTE 8000 yards, active! Open torpedo tubes, launch tube 1, launch tube 2! No way!

In RL they are going to have destroyed compartments, severe flooding, fire, substantial casualties and crew shock, equipment and electronic failure, etc.

Double hull may sustain less critical damage but they aren't going to operate like usual at all still.

DW 1.04 warhead for the UMGT-1 is 100, and the Armor value for the 688I/Seawolf is 110. So that's 91% damage with a single hit, which would incapacitate the target. System damage was a nice touch.

IOW, I don't think your issue is with DW. They more or less got this one right.

Ah then it's the RA/DWX mod. Been a while since I played stock :DL.

Oh RA...they really made the ASW missile and air dropped torpedoes quite useless. :damn:

Thanks for the correction.

Well, RA is unfortunately in good company. SCX and NWP did the same thing.

well I don't mind the small hull /health damage as long as other damages are quite taken into account rendering the hit submarine capability to pose threat to drop significantly like a much degraded noise performance, maneuverability, degraded or malfunctioning of some of the sonars and the torpedo tubes and longer response time at least in some minutes after it just had been hit.


Damn it I'd love a game against human opponent atm. :)

Other three MODs sources (SCX-2; NWP; RA), are more less identical, and only LWAMI - ignores it.
The "Gold Standard" means, only LWAMI Mod - ?

Mods do NOT count as sources. Sheesh.

The convincing answer, tnx.