Welcome aboard. Since you're new to the game I would suggest that you play without manual targetting for awhile. It's more important that you learn the tactics in attaking convoys than it is getting a proper solution to the target.
Once you are fully familiar with the game and it become 2nd nature to you then I'd revist manual targeting. There are some excellent GUI mods out there that make manual targeting faster and easier while still maintaing the skills needed to plot a proper solution. With OLC for example once you get all the rings lined up all your data that goes into the TDC is right there and if done right very accurate.
P.S. If you haven't seen Das Boot yet that's the next most important thing you need to do. Aside from being a great movie there are many aspects of the game a new player can learn from the movie, seeing how things were done back in 1941. It give you a better understanding of your boat and how it functions (among many other things) that help you in forumlating your own strategies or style of play. Unlike every other submarine movie ever made (to my knowledge at least) Das Boot is the only one that accurately re-creates life on board the boat as they used a full scale (sea worthy too) boat to do the filming in. Das Boot is by no means the holy grail of movies it provides massive amount of historically true information about life on a u-boat (the movie is based on book by the journalist that was on board the ship for that particular patrol. What you see on the screen pretty much mirrors at least 90% or more of the way things really went down).
Remember, SH3 is a game and meant to be enjoyed and fun. Don't let things like manual targeting pull you down until you've mastered everything else and are fully prepared to tackle it (to be honest, pretty much all the "old gang/salty members" here knows how to do manual targeting, but a fair number of them chooses not to do so in the game.)
|