[CaptainHaplo]

MudMarine - Heading and Bearing. Heading is the direction your going - the compass course your bow is pointing. Bearing is the direction your looking. Say your headed NE - dead on 045 degrees and spot a ship bearing 090. To steer directly at the enemy, your new course would be 135 degrees. To get bearings - your bow is always considered the 0 degree mark. Bearing is how many degrees from forward is your target. You add the bearing with your current heading to figure out whic direction to go. In this case - the vessel is to your southeast.

In the above example, lets say the enemy is headed in the opposite direction as you - make his heading 225 degrees or dead SW - if you steer 135 degrees you will get to where he WAS - but by that time he will have left that spot.

If you can tell which way he is headed - otherwise known as they way the bearing is "drawing" - you can plot an intercept. As above - setting a course due south would give you the cutoff - allowing you to close not where he IS - but where he is gonna be - this gets you close enough to shoot him. If you just head toward your target - you end up inevitably chasing him. Part of the challenge of submarines is getting a workable intercept so you can sock it to the other guy.

Since your familiar with flight sims, think of it as a knife fight with no missiles. Your intercept course in subs is like a deflection shot - you gotta lead your target. Since sub/target battles are MUCH slower, your putting your sub where the target is gonna be, instead of bullets.

Now you dont want to be right on top of where the target is going to steam, anywhere from 500 to 1500 yards off his "track" or base course is going to get you a decent shot. As in any firing excersize, closer is more accurate, but torps have a 300-400 yard arming distance - so you cant get under that.

As for mods - there are a number of them out there - but I would suggest that you get comfortable with controlling the game before you start worrying about mods. When you are fine with the "school" missions and can enjoy a single battle or 2 with a comfort level your happy with, then Mods are useful. But until then, why worry about changing things until you know whats going on and what you want changed?

Since you asked though, the RFB and TTF mods both are very good. RFB goes for extreme realism, TTF is more "balanced" between fun and history. Both are great, it just depends on what type of gamer you are. If you don't go for either of them, I would look at a few of the mods geared to fix issues, such as the reduced msg mod, campaign retirement bug fix mod (aka career fix), things like that. Then there are a load of graphical mods, what-if type stuff for pure blowing stuff up fun, etc. I use one called super guns (deck gun becomes an 4" machine gun with 32k shells...) for when I just wanna make something go KABLOOWEEEEE. Nuke tipped torps are great except my chine can't handle em!

One tool for mods that is a must - is JSGME - its on the main download page of subsim and is great for applying and removing mods with ease. Not just SH3 and 4 mods either!

Lastly, anyone that uses "ya" and drops a few letters I figure is an ole southern boy like me, so don't sweat your language. Its not our fault them Yankees talk funny!