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Originally Posted by Linton
SQ,could you post on here or pm me the formulae to have a look at please?
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The formulas I use are mostly in all in the books I recommended already, except for the stuff I work out myself. If you understand the methodology in the books, though, doing your own calculations becomes easier and you can get creative. The Ekelund ranging formula is detailed in Wagner. It's a little bit subtle, honestly. It's well worth the read, though.
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You obviously take a very scientific approach to your game play-
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Regarding my approach, ASW
is part science. That's what makes it interesting. It's the science of decision making in the face of uncertainty. That's particularly the case in the scenarios I make. I like them to be open ended enough so that there's not always a clear course of action, just better and worse ones that might or might not be obvious. The ASW game, to me, is fun because it's part science, part educated guesswork, part puzzle solving... There's a lot of room for shades of "maybe" in ASW and that's why I like it.
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how log does it take you to input all the data and can you quantify how your calculations improve your solutions compared to the game generated ones?
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In general not long. I believe in simple calculations. Anything complex that I need to think about, I work out ahead of time, so that way, when I want to apply a particular tactic, I have something "canned" so that I just need to plug in my numbers and go.
Like my torpedo preset calculator - If I want to shoot a salvo of torpedoes in a fan against a target with a certain maximum speed, all I have to do is plug in two or three numbers. Then I just need to read the bearings off the screen and plug them into my torpedoes. DONE. It's not a whole lot slower, just more rational.
That being said, the more steps you stick in any given process the more things can go wrong. I HAVE goofed things up before, like read the wrong number off my screen and shot my torpedoes in the wrong direction, and other goof-ball things. I'll chalk that up to learning, though. :-)
Ekelund ranging may proove to be a counter example to my usual philosophy, though. In an effort to minimize error, I need to take in data a lot more slowly.
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Finally I use 1 degree bearing error at 60 nm=2000yards,obviously you wouldn't be shooting from that far away so bearing error in minutes/seconds of a degree at maximum torpedo range should fall well within the capability of the seeker head.
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In terms of what direction I shoot my torpedoes that's not a problem. However, Ekelund ranging (and all bearings only ranging schemes) is very sensitive to small errors in bearing. The way to minimize the error is to drive very long legs.
Sometimes, actually, things I come up with don't improve my performance. That was why I posted about Ekelund ranging. I was trying to duplicate a what I found in a book, but couldn't. Ekelund ranging (which only ever yields an approximate range) in that case was coming up with answers that were so wrong that I couldn't explain it.
In the test case, I created, I was better off just using DEMON and building my solution that way.
Now... here's where I think it could be lethal, or at least helpful:
Slow, quiet, contacts -- you don't get DEMON until you're REALLY close, so you have no speed. Therefore, you have a very difficult time accurately estimating his range. I needed a way to more accurately estimate range based on bearings only. HOPEFULLY that will confer some tactical advantage to me. I hope it will be really helpful with accurately shooting ASW missiles.
Quantifying improved results, it's difficult to do that. This is a problem with real life experiments as well as video games. Some of it I just take on faith. I think the biggest payoff is not necessarily in having a better plan than anyone else, but have A PLAN at all that has some logic to it. :-)
I win some, I lose some. As long as the scenario distance scale is realistic, I'd like to think I usually have a pretty good advantage. I still hate these little "9 platforms are in a 10x10 box, have at it!" scenarios. They're lame-o.