New player here with some questions...
 

Hey everyone. I'm new to the game, and a little limited. I DID buy the game legally, but I'm running it on a Mac using Paul the Tall's Wineskin wrapper, so it doesn't work perfectly (the mouse doesn't work quite right - you can't select things in dropdown menus, which is pretty crippling). But Paul is apparently working on it.

I have a couple of questions, though. So far, I've pretty much been a Kilo driver, and I've had some success with a couple of the Kilo missions. I've been reading the manual, and I understand most of what's going on. BTW, I have virtually no experience with sub sims, but I've got a basic understanding of how a submarine and its systems work.

I don't think I quite understand how the targeting system works. I understand TMA. I understand the geometry and mathematics behind "stacking the dots". That all makes perfect sense. What I don't get is what the torpedo actually does with the solution the TMA gives it. A fundamental question is: Does the torpedo head for the target's currrent position at the moment of firing, or the anticipated position at the torpedo's anticipated moment of impact? So, does the torpedo leave the tube and head for where the target is, or where it expects it WILL be in a few minutes? This question seems particularly crucial when using wakehomers.

Also, much of the writing on combat tactics talks of "firing a spread". How is this actually done? If you're firing three torpedoes, doesn't that require three different solutions? Do you fire one, go back to TMA, tweak the solution and enter it, fire the next, and repeat a third time?

As for leading or lagging a target (for instance, if you wanted to fire a 53-65K into a ship's wake, instead of at the ship), would you just plot a good solution, then perhaps manually alter the bearing a few degrees aft of the target before entering the solution and firing?

It seems to me that wakehomers should be the easiest weapons to use against cargo ships and such, and yet it seems I have little luck with them. It always looks on the target display as though the torpedo is leading the target, at which point the target just turns away, so the torp never actually crosses its wake.

Any help with these questions would be appreciated! And hopefully, Paul the Tall can get his wineskin wrapper figured out so the mouse works soon (he said he'd get to it shortly). Because everything else I've tried in the game works fine - sound, graphics, etc.

Look forward to meeting you all!

Stavrogin

Torpedoes assigned to a solution are fired on an intercept course. For wakehomers, though, an intercept course is pretty useless because you need it to cross the wake. It's best to use a snapshot for these, manually selecting the heading so that you don't lead the target any more than you feel comfortable with.

@ Stavrogin! Welcome to SubSim, :salute:

@ Molon Labe: would it work, then, if torpedoes assigned to a solution are fired on an intercept course, to take the solution generated by TMA, set the target's speed to zero (leaving course, bearing, and range unchanged), and enter THAT solution for firing? At that point, an "intercept course" would be a course straight for the target's current position, wouldn't it? And the target can't NOT leave a wake where it currently is.

For good measure, would it make sense not only to set speed to zero, but also to alter the LOB a little, to put the torp behind the target?

Unfortunately, the problem for me is that "snapshot" is actually unselectable, given the mouse issue I mentioned. From the Fire Control screen, I can click on the dropdown menu for "target" to assign a tube to a given target, but I have to use the "tab" key to cycle through targets that already have an alphanumeric designation. Since "Snapshot" does not correspond to any of those, I am literally unable to select it. You can see my impatience with the guy writing Wineskin wrappers for this game; the mouse issue is crippling.

Please tell me if I'm understanding all of this correctly, though: a solution with speed set to zero renders course irrelevant, leaving only bearing and range, which is, effectively, a snapshot. I'm just as well to put the numbers into the TMA myself. The added advantage is that if I've taken the trouble to stack the dots, I have accurate range information on which to base my RTE, without having to raise the periscope. It's a reasonable workaround, isn't it?

Of course, I'd be happy to use the stadimeter for range, but because of the same stupid mouse issue, I can't actually drag one side of the image to match the waterline to the masthead. Yes, this is frustrating. But this game has the distinction of being worth the trouble. And in any case, range information generated by passive sonar is more stealthy than the periscope.

Let me know if my thinking is sound. Or crazy. Either way...

And thanks for the welcome!

That should work.