[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by Sigurd

Ok, I just did a little work, and I think I managed to come up with something. It does involve Sines and inverse sines, so grab a calculator. I dont have the ability to check to see if this works, but here it goes:

Let:
l be the length of the target ship
d be the range to the ship
S be the spread angle
a be AoB

Then:
S = Sin ^-1 ((sin d * l)/d)

Sin^-1 is the inverse sin for those who arent aware. Should this formula work, a table could be easily generated. The only real requirement for this is that both 'l' and 'd' must be the same unit (i.e. meters).

I don't think we need such a complicated formula. In fact preparing a sheet containing as much as 4 different variables would be too much. The chart itself would have to be really huge.

Instead we could prepare just two separate sheets, each of a tolerable seize, and also easier to use I think:
1. for finding relative length of the ship (variables: real length, AOB),
2. for calculating desired spread angle (variables: distance, spread angle).

Formulas for both the tables are:
L - length
S - distance,
A - spread angle,
AOB - AOB
The exact formulas would then be:
1. for finding relative ship length:

relative ship length = sin(AOB) L

2. for finding offset of torpedoes after a certain distance with a certain spread angle:

offset = 2 tg(A) S

These two formulas can be easily used in OpenOffice's Calc. Tangent function is: "=tan()" and sinus function is "=sin()".