[jimmie]

It's a bit digressing but, I read Hitman wrote somewhere that in history, AOB usually is rather observated visually, just like in default notepad. So in a sense, default notpad AOB thing is representing historical operation.

Not only AOB, but I think also distance and target speed were basically estimated by visual estimation without special tools, especially at initial observation before establishing an attack plan. (please someone educate me)

Apparently it takes experience and even talent to get accuracy. But they must have training for these visual estimation and because of the details of visual information, doing it in real world must have been completely different story. We're limited in SH3 in this aspect.

But since you're doing really hardcore way, you might take every 10 degrees of ships screen (both sides!) and print them out to make physical ship books, mostly for AOB
estimation (training). And speed estimation by wake, splash and smoke etc of course we need to consider sea state and wind direction and speed.

Once you can establish a constant AOB to a target ship (when chasing or intercepting, preferebly undetected), we can estimate target speed by law of sine, very simply by using a sliderule. No need of mathematical skill. Just how to do it. Well, I guess maybe you do it already...

I have one more question, how can the watch officer know the range to the target when UZO or binoculars didn't have any AOB/range finder?

For the distance, mostly by visual, just by the looking, right? Because accurate distance info is not the most important data we need to obtain at first, since EVERYTHING is done within visual range. When a ship is spotted, target course and speed is the things we want to know more firstly to intercept. Thus estimate AOB by appearance and decide how and when to intercept. Did they acutally do stuff like using the stadimeter and take multi observation and measure the distance in between, like we do all the time in SH3? I mean, and get the distance within +-50m accuracy? And yeah, I read Hitman's post describing a way of estimating distance by rather completely different method in the history.

The attack disk of U-jagd tool is a must have in any case. AOB info will bring info about target course and vice versa.

Anyway, since we will never get precise data we need to close to the target. If we can close to at about 1.5km or less and speed estimation is not largely off, hitting chance is not too small. I mean, with this kind of really hardcore playing style (manual navigation!) I don't think you'd aim a keel shot with the magnetic pistol when AOB is 30 :rotfl:

So, is just about planning, so in-game map can be unused for attack.