TDC and realistic playing
 

Atm I am playing the game (with my own megamod-soup) on nthe hardest settings, meaning no mapupdate, no targeting assistents etc. and I realized one thing:

The TDC is rather useless! The way one usually plays (with autopdate etc) the game gives you way too precise target data, however if you are using your own position marks and try to find the data yourself the TDC becomes virtually useless.

Why?

-During the day you will not be able to use the periscope w/o being detected.
-During the night you will not see the target good enough to get useful data
-If the weather is good your periscope is easier to see
-If the weather is bad it will ruin your target gathering procedures

This changed my way of getting target data and attacking completely.
The radar becomes the sensor of choice, followed by the active sonar, the later being restricted to targets w/o hydrophones, meaning that every warship and most late-war merchants can hear you etc.

It also slows down the attack speed, whereas you can normally (with map-updates) can use the 3 minute-rule to get target speed and course I now use a 30 minute rule with the radar.

It basically boils down to RockinRobbins/Dick O#Kane methods with some guestimating and more manoeuvering during th final attack phase. :DL

I can simply not see a way to use the TDC here in a practical manner.

What are your observations, do you have better ideas for the TDC "problem"? Or do you agree to my observation?

Unfortunately, no map updates, is not a realism setting, it is a difficulty setting. With no map updates you lose the plotting of radar contacts. The in-game radar is nowhere near as accurate as the real thing so you cannot plot radar contacts with any accuracy approaching the abilities of the real submarines.

In effect, the no map updates option is like learning to drive a car with a paper bag over your head, relying only on the verbal instructions of your passenger. It's a commendable skill. If you survive you surely have bragging rights. But it certainly has no application to a desirable way to drive.

Right now the most realistic way to do business in a submarine is the masterful TMO plotting system. It removes the target ID, course and speed text. It removes the hokey ship silhouettes and velocity vectors and shows contacts only as position points. You must develop course and speed. Even the MOST reliable part of visual targeting, estimated AoB, was no longer necessary. Targeting was now an empirical process.

It does, of necessity, leave exact position plotting of visually detected objects. Taking that away removes plotting of radar detected targets and attacking planes. It puts the paper bag over your head, killing more essential realistic information than its "improvement" is worth.

But everything else corresponds to what you would know as a real submarine. Why not just refuse to reduce visual positions to firing solutions? Develop all your firing data through radar and sonar. Then you are on solid realistic ground.

There is no realistic basis for map contacts off.

As far as your observations above:

I use my periscope during the day all the time without being detected. Keep periscope exposures of short duration. My limit during the daylight is 30 seconds. I am detected very infrequently.

Why do you concern yourself with the difficulty of obtaining visual data when you have radar and sonar? Radar was the gold standard for targeting in WWII. When Dick O'Kane lost his radar during a cruise, he shot off a bitter message to Pearl saying in effect "there goes half of my torpedoes, wasted!" That was the exact truth.

Radar for the very first time refined the targeting process further than educated guesswork. No longer was target identification, the least reliable parameter in targeting, essential to get visually targeted hits, even a part of the targeting process. Even the MOST reliable parameter, eyeballed AoB, was no longer necessary. Targeting had progressed from an art to an empirical process

Thank you, RR. This is good advice.

I also find that the periscope is safe to use for extended periods if the target is at medium range or longer. At close range, you're limited to short observations, but by that time you should only need it to refine and verify your firing solution by checking what you observe against what the TDC/Position-Keeper says, and adjusting the TDC accordingly.

A good solution to the maps/no-maps contacts dilema is the Assisted Plotting Mod V1.4 (check the downloads section here). It removes all map contacts unless you hover the mouse cursor over the contact on the map - in which case you get a large circle to indicate the contact.

You can control at what zoom level this symbol first appears by editing the maps.cfg file in the mod (the SymbolZoom line IIRC). At a high enough zoom level, you can get a reasonable degree of inaccuracy in your plots, or you can set the zoom high enough that no symbols appear on the map at all. What you don't get is 100% accurate situational awareness the instant the periscope breaks the surface.

Aircraft contacts are similarly treated, but I believe that the radar of the day could only determine the range of an air contact and not the bearing, so this is not so great of a loss. You still get sonar contact lines.

If you use TMO 2X, your watch will report ranges to all contacts in feet! If this number is not directly divisable by 3, you can get some more imprecission when you convert to yards in your head (or at least I do when using my head).

I also like the OTC mod, which gives you calibrated periscope and TBT reticles. They allow you to calculate range and AOB by observation alone. The mod comes with a corrected and accurate ship ID book - if that bothers you, you can always ignore it and estimate the ships hight and length just like the real guys did,

Real submariners didn't calculate AoB by observation alone unless they had radar. They eyeballed the target and used their experience to tell you what the AoB was. No measurement there at all.

In that case, if for nothing else but training purposes, I recomend Aaron Bloods Electronic Plotting Board (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...do=file&id=648)

It has a feature which gives you a zoomable periscope view of a freighter which you can rotate, and then guess the A.O.B. Clicking a button gives you the correct figure.

Arrrrr! See the animated MoBo logo on my siggy pic? There's a reason for that. :D

Many thanks for the answers, guys. You really helped me a lot. My campaign continued (before I read these tips) and I now am rather good at getting a target course and speed with radar. It is incredibly accurate and error-tolerant when you use longer time-spans between the measurements, that way you can even track the target in real-time, no need for frantic PAUSE-F3-Click-UNpause etc sessions anymore. :DL

I will try the mods you recommended, they sure sound like a big improvement!

Talking about error-tolerant (a word I heard in your great video tutorials, RockinRobbins): I always wondered why EXACTLY the Dick'O'Kane method is so tolerant and after some calculating and drawing on a piece of paper I found the reason: The target is in such a good position (90 degree angle and close), the method simply maximizes the area that you can hit. At close ranges (<750yd) you have a incredibly huge field/spread angle that will still hit the target no matter what happens. OK disregarding major faults of course... and if you shoot several torpedoes it is almost a 100% hit and maybe even a kill.

I am having fun here as you can maybe tell.


Ok thanks to everyone and keep on sinking them! :up:


p.s. regarding the MoBo: I made myself a Vector attack "board" (a simple piece of paper actually) and use it to quickly measure my lead angle when shooting as I simply grew tired of drawing the vectors in SH4's navmap. NO need for lists or anything, I simply measure the angle (with a protractor if that's the correct word) between two distances on the piece of paper where I marked important things like 46 knots, 29 knots etc and get the needed lead angle in a split-second... Geeky, I know, but I am a geek, so what?

I tried using the TDC with radar data (no map contacts; OTC mod and 3D TDC and RRU enabled)... my radar data was spot-on, because the target was not zig-zagging and maintained constant speed and course. I input my data into the TDC, and all my fish missed astern. I've had so much success with the Dick O'Kane method that I immediately went back to that instead of using the TDC. However, I've always wanted to figure out where I went wrong with entering the data into the TDC, so i could use the real O'Kane method...

Perhaps another reading of the OTC and 3D TDC/RRU mod instructions is in order, but if anyone has any advice, I'd welcome it.

TG

See the posts in the Sub Skippers' Bag of Tricks thread where I discuss the importance of the order information is input into the TDC. Nobody talks about it, it's not mentioned in any manual anywhere, but order of input is vitally important.

How do you know you are doing it wrong? You miss astern.

Specially so in SH3, where manual targeting and data input procedures are not well worked-out as in SH4.

Same here, TDC = miss, O'Kane = kill :DL


Anyway, I did include the mods you guys recommended (e.g. no-icons etc) to my mega-mod-soup and now I am back to Mapudate ON and the game starts to feel complete. :up:

One thing I learned when using "manual" radar is that you have to use the right-most bearing from a target on the A-scope to get the exact position. The target usually "stretches" over a 4 to 5 degrees detection area in the Ascope. If you use the center then you will have inprecise data to work with, always use the right side (as right as you can go w/o losing the contact).

I've got a question?
You're using "Optical Targeting Correction" for a stock 1.5 game.
The "3D TDC & Radar Range Unit v1.02"
And something called "RRU"? (Guess I need to get out more)

If that's right, I should point out that the "3D TDC" mod overwrites some of the files of OTC that permit the PPI radar screen to function correctly. Neither the range accuracy, or the capabilities of the corrected radar sensitivity/detection function will work as intended from the OTC mod. 3D TDC & Radar Range Unit v1.02 changes the A-scope but does not accurately modify the PPI. Nor does it work on all sub classes.

OTC reworks both A-scope and PPI radar for accurate reading (as much as the "scale" overlays permit) and changes the sensitivity/detection abilities of the radar to allow for not only better surface ship finding but aircraft detection as well. I'm not saying which is better, but I do want to point out that adding the 3D TDC mod over top of OTC will not give you the results you may expect.

As far as your missing a target astern, you may have had the correct range and target track (AoB) inputted. The third factor, target speed, could have been the major reason for the miss. Inputting a targets speed short of what it actually was going will cause a stern miss every time.

Of course, you can use the Dick O'Kane method and stick your nose up the target's butt, so close that you can't miss. I remember watching on a Sunday morning a guy named Oswald take a "gut shot" in Dallas Texas on live TV. Don't need to know anything else than how to pull a trigger to get the job done.

I know this has been discussed ad nauseam before, but even using the TDC is more a question of difficulty than realism, because you're basically doing the XO's* job in addition to the CO's job. If you also add plotting and navigation, you're doing the job of many officers.

Automatic targeting is probably more realistic for the CO's job, but a lot less fun.

* or another specialist, depending on the CO's decision.