I usually find that in those situations, it's just best to turn the autocrew on for a while and let them figure out which contacts are the most important. Then you can shut them back off, if you want, and start to prosecute the important stuff.
If you really want to do it all yourself, than it might be better to find ways to concentrate on a smaller group of signals and work your way through those first. Then move on to the next group.
Some other thoughts/tips:
1. If there is a group of related ships you need to deal with (SAG or convoy), remember that they are likely all going the same speed and course. If you can determine one ship's course and speed (one of the outer pickets maybe where its signal is less mixed and easier to isolate), you can relatively safely apply that to the rest. Even better if your briefing provides one or more of those pieces of information.
2. If hunting a surface action group, active sonar intercepts are a great way to track targets because they do not intermingle. Once you mark them once, they just keep updating. If you know course & speed from above, you can TMA them fairly accurately. Plus depending on the ping rate, active sonar intercepts can update a lot faster than your passive sonar tracks.
3. If you have a lot of contacts relatively close to each other, don't be in a rush to merge tracks. It will take longer to plot each track, but one incorrectly merged track can really mess up your TMA work. As the various individual solutions firm up, you can start to see them grouping together on the map and merge them at that point.
Hope those help.
Mike
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