torpedo men
 

Do torpedo specialists improve torpedo aim/effectiveness, or just torpedo loading time?

K.B.

I believe they affect loading times only. It wouldn't make sense they increase accuracy as they are located in the torpedo rooms.

Just my opinion :smug:

Re: torpedo men
 

I believe they also affect torpedo accuracy as well - after all, the torp specialists know how to grease up the eels more evenly, whereas the non-specialists tend to glop on the grease more heavily on one side than on the others and that extra, uneven grease coat tends to cause extra drag in the water on one side of the torp which throws the torp off course slightly, at least over longer firing distances (more than about 500m) - it's amazing what all the devs have modeled into this game ;)

I'm fairly positive that it's loading time only. A shot will be just as accurate if there's no one in the torpedo room - it just won't get reloaded.

Grease glopping :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: sounds like fun!

I've launched my last eel out of the stern tube with no one in the aft torpedo room plenty of times and have never had any problems with accuracy.

Just loading time. That's their job.

I find giving out torpedo crew qualifications to be the most beneficial overall.

Wishful thinking here but wouldn't it be great if you had a torpedo man as a WO and asked him to plot a solution he would do it better than another officer. For that matter depending on the experience of the officer at the station your solution would be better or worse by a cetain percentage. AoB, range, speed off a little or a lot either way rather than dead-on accurate like it is now.

I'm not at the point yet where I am comfortable doing it myself so I use the WO as a crutch at the moment. Don't know if I'll ever be good at doing it myself.

I'm sure that can't be modded unless they release the SDK.

I agree, this is really the problem with the WO, it would had been nice if you had a WO that does mistakes and most of all that takes time finding a solution and not a human computer. Someone, like the hydrophone operator that you could kick out of the chair and say "Give me that wheel boy, let me check myself" :ahoy:

I could see it affecting the time that it takes to plot a solution, but not the accuracy. It's just math, and it's not overly complicated, so I have a hard time believing someone who's gone thru officer training would muff it up. I could see an experienced officer taking less time than a noobie officer though.

Absolutely, it's just math. Math done with figures taken by human being (in this case an artificial human being).

Some examples:

For range you basically had to eyeball it. Sure, you us some neat equipment in the periscope but it's still eyeballing it.

For speed I remember from physics classes back in the day :) having a 2 sec +/- human error factor when doing time calculations.

I can't comment on AoB because that still confuses me. I kinda get it but not yet. But from what I remember dont you almost have to guess the targets heading and compare it to yours.

A more experience sailor will get better figures to do the math that ALL sailors coming out of officer training school should know or at least have some experience in. What's the ol programers battle cry: GARBAGE IN - GARBAGE OUT

The more experienced / qualified the officer, the less garbage enter the calculations.

Errors in manual targeting depend of the time you have to do the solution, the distance from the target and specially on weather. If you try to get a range with the stadimeter in the middle of a storm at night with "No stabilise view" checked, you will have a hard time if the ship isn't really close. So i think that in some extreme conditions finding a solution will be really hard and if you find one it will be most of the time innacurate, and the same should apply even to a crack WO. But it's only my opinion :)

True, but I'm still not convinced. I think the only problem they truly faced(And I am a total landlubber, so take it for what it's worth) is in correctly identifying the target. Using the periscope to take range estimates is fairly simple, and using that book with all the pretty pictures of ships in it, you knew the height(range) and length at (90 degrees), which would have been helpfull in determining AOB(not to mention figureing AOB from the targets course compared with yours)

Now, I could see faulty data being a factor with targets that were far away, like over 3-4Km, but not close up, as in a attack run scenario.

I'm a land lubber too. Funny, to guys who never set foot on a u-boat before (at least I never set foor on a u-boat before). Discussing how easy/hard it was to plot a solution to fire a torpedo.

With that said... hehehe

I've had u-boat training but in the sim when I try to determine the range of a target (let's assume that the WO has already correctly identified the vessel for me and it's under 1km) I'll get a range of 893m. I then let my WO do it and he tells me 917m.

I actually do this a lot: try to plot my own solution then compare it to the WO and most of the time they come out very different. I have yet do do it under "labratory conditions." but I bet we both would still get very different readings. Because he is a computer and I am not. If you and I where sitting at the same computer and I took readings and you took readings I bet they would be different as well.

Heh....Same here. I've allways assumed it was because the WO has access to actual data, and I can never seem to get the range bar right on top of the target's mast, because of mouse resolution.

Does SH3 allow two users to run the same boat in multiplayer? Would be interesting to test this out between a noobie, and someone actually trained in this.