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Originally Posted by Keelbuster
The thing I'm confused about - doesn't Map Contact Update give you much of your target data free of charge? The way I see it, automatic position and course plotting gives you Range and AOB information free. Then you just have to get ahead of them and abeam. Speed estimation is required, but that could come from the radio report. In real life, skippers had to plot target position as an estimate - but with Contact Update on, you get truth, right?
Kb
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You are right. I played for months with 100%. But the problem as I see it is at 100% I get too little info. I use the MCU as sort of a workaround, let me explain my thinking.
Using MCU gives the generic speed, slow, medium, fast, what have you. In my way of thinking this could be an abstraction of the ability of your soundman to count prop turns and estimate a speed, which a good soundman could surely do. It's not revealing the exact speed, but a range of possible speeds.
The contact on the map could be an abstraction of the navigator plotting the target, which I'm sure was done (definitely on US boats, and I would assume on German boats), although with unfailing acccuracy, as I mentioned early on in the piece above.
I would love to have something in between, but I feel 100% gives the skipper too little info and too much work, and maybe MCU on gives too much info, but it's closer to reality in my mind than having it off. Playing at 100% I found I was spending far too much time manning the hydrophones, so I went for MCU for the contact lines, again I look at it as an abstraction of the ability of your soundman to keep the skipper updated o all sound contacts -- bearing, rough speed and rough range.
So I agree with the comments that MCU gives too accurate info, but it's better than none of this info at all. 100% (and again I played from June to January at 100%) just doesn't give the skipper enough info IMO. For me, MCU enabled is the best compromise to most closely approximate the information a real skiper would have. It's not perfect certainly, but that's my thinking on enabling MCU in my SH3 playing these days.