I guess it was inevitable...play around with this sim long enough and it's onjly a matter of time before you give manual targetting a crack.....
I've been happy with the arcade feel of sh3 but after reading a few posts i finally reached the "how hard can it be!" point and gave it a go.
I waited for a single contat which turned out to be a small merchant and lined myself up ahead of the merchant at a roughly 90 degree angle perpendicular to the merchants projected heading.
Opened the TDC and clicked the manual/auto tab to green..
I've played around with these controls before but never in connection with a contact. Anyway...a quick 30 seconds play around revealed that the "bearing" dial seemed to adjust the angle the torpedo left the boat and the "range" dial was the range to the contact.
Exit TDC and opened the map.
Using the plotting tool i measured the distance from the front of my boat straight out at 00 degrees to the projected path of the oncoming merchant which was 900 meters and also noted the merchants speed of 7 knots.
Exit map and opened TDC
Dialled the speed dial up to 7 and dialled the range dial up to 900 meters. I then adjusted the bearing dial until the green line showing my torpedo's path was straight out at 00 degrees from my boat....the pointer on the bearing dial was at 13 - which i presumed to mean 13 degrees - when the torpedo angle from the boat was 00 degrees.
Went to periscope and pressed "q" to open the torpedo door and waited until the middle of the merchant was showing at 13 degrees in the periscope. Also noted that the merchant was at just under 900 meters at that point.
Fired.
40 seconds later a direct hit midships. I hadn't used the AoB dial at all and can't remember now what it was set on..didn't think about checking the gyroangle either.....did i luck out and those dials were within parameters anyway or was that a valid approach to manual targetting?
I can't see how i could have done that though if i was in the thick of a convoy unless i purposly only targetted maybe one or two of the richest pickings and left it at that...The remainder of the time used for extraction and reallignement to catch the convoy further along it's course.
And what about zigzagging targets..how on earth do you get a solution on them..is it just about getting close enough so that their slow turning manouvers provides no protection?
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