If you consider the fire control solution to be a system of linear algebra equations, you need as many equations as you have variables to eliminate all of the unknowns. Bearing rate is affected by both range and relative speed across the line of sight, so you need two different equations to solve the problem. You know your own speed across the line of sight and you know the bearing rate... so if you are missing his speed across the line of sight and range. This technique is called an Ekelund Range after its inventor and is apparently now available as an iPhone app
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ekelu...305672427?mt=8
If you simply take bearing rate measurements the way real submariners do, you could use your iPhone in place of our bearing rate slide rules to get solutions. Hint: you have to do two legs (per the iPhone app) to get two radically different bearing rates to permit solving this basic two variable system of equations.
The problem isn't a lack of features in the game, it is a lack of understanding and training of the people trying to play it.
After years of doing this for a living, I don't want to do "mental gym" or fire control. Whenever I decide to play this sim, I swag the range the way I did on Dolphin. To paraphrase a US submariner saying : "close enough for a Mk 48". Submarine combat is not won by doing math to 10 decimal places on computers, it is won by rapidly assessing the available information and getting in the first shot. The first shot only has to be good enough to get the Mk 48 into acquisition range, then its Miller time.
Also, keep in mind that the bearing data being fed to fire control isn't precisely accurate. The bearing is the angle that the sound hits the sonar array. Guess what, sound bends in water AND it fluctuates. So the bearing rate is ESTIMATED by drawing a line through the wiggly dots. The fire control guys do this with the computer screen. The nukes do it on paper. The sonarmen and OOD do it in their heads. Guess whose solutions are usually both the quickest and the most accurate? In the end, the Captain usually takes into account all of the information, then goes with his own gut feeling... because he stares at the repeater screen and does it in his head too
