Growl. My Weapon Officer has a mind on his own

[Safe-Keeper]

I've got to be missing something here. Last patrol I came under attack from a task force of five destroyers. After some fighting, most of them broke off and headed back to their station, and two stayed behind to hunt. They ran out of depth charges for their main racks and had to resort to harrass me with their K-guns, doing no damage at all (you'd think they'd compensate and aim their K-Guns at where you were, but oh no, they still drop one charge on each side of you).

Either way, eventually they lost contact (gotta love them Bolds) and I go to periscope depth some distance away. I turn the sub around and aim my periscope to 350°, right between the two hunters, and fire all four torpedoes in a spread. They all head off to port as if my gyro-angle was 300° or something, and of course the escorts hear the launch and come straight at me.

Why can't the damned eels just go in the direction I tell them to go? What the Heck am I missing?!

[TarJak]

Where they pattern runners or plain vanilla straight shooters?

Did you have manual TDC on or off?

What speed were the DD's doing when you fired? If they were running fast then you might get them scew to one side to get in position?

Also how fare from them were you when you fired?

[Safe-Keeper]

Where they pattern runners or plain vanilla straight shooters?

Two Type I and two Type II torpedoes, I seem to recall.

Did you have manual TDC on or off?

Off.

What speed were the DD's doing when you fired? If they were running fast then you might get them scew to one side to get in position?

I wasn't even locked on to either of them. I pointed my periscope between them.

Also how fare from them were you when you fired?

Several kilometres.

Thing is, this has happened to me before. I sit aside a crippled merchant with automatic targetting turned on. I've got a perfect shot lined up and she's dead ahead, dead in the water, stationary. I line up the periscope so that it points straight ahead, 0°, and fire a torpedo. It heads off the left, missing by more than a merchant-lenght.

It's also reflected in the TDC screen: The brown line that marks the torpedoes' trajectory upon launch is turned not in the way the periscope or UZO is turned, but in some other direction. I don't know what's going on, but I seem to recall it only happens after submerging. Maybe if, say, your torpedoes are aimed to 45° before diving, they'll be at 45° after surfacing, too, regardless of where your scope is headed, until it's locked on to something again? It feels so sometimes...

[U-snafu]

[quote=Safe-Keeper]

Thing is, this has happened to me before. I sit aside a crippled merchant with automatic targetting turned on. I've got a perfect shot lined up and she's dead ahead, dead in the water, stationary. I line up the periscope so that it points straight ahead, 0°, and fire a torpedo. It heads off the left, missing by more than a merchant-lenght.

It's also reflected in the TDC screen: The brown line that marks the torpedoes' trajectory upon launch is turned not in the way the periscope or UZO is turned, but in some other direction. I don't know what's going on, but I seem to recall it only happens after submerging. Maybe if, say, your torpedoes are aimed to 45° before diving, they'll be at 45° after surfacing, too, regardless of where your scope is headed, until it's locked on to something again? It feels so sometimes...

In reference to a sitting (dead in water merchant) I believe with auto targeting & w/o assistance on---if you unlock the scope-the torp will go where you point the crosshairs. when locked--the solution given at fiiring will send the torp slightly ahead of the target ship as if adjusting for "leading" the target no matter the target speed. this becomes more pronounced the further away the distance of the target is--thus the wild angle of your torp shot---look at the F6 map and notice the black line representing the torp path is always a little to the side of 90 degrees even when no target in sight. I could be wrong though (I usually am when it comes to these matters)

[TarJak]

I'm at work right now I'll take a look when I get home though and see what I can come up with. I've seen conditions where the projected torpedo path is hanging out to the extremem left or right after you have lost visual contact with a target that you were locked on. The only way I know of fixing that is to lock first then move the scope to where you want to fire or use manual TDC

With auto targetting on if you don't have a little triangle up in the scope on a "selected" target, your torpedomen have no reference for speed etc and will sometimes loose of a wild shot.

When using auto targetting I always make sure I'm pointing at a target even if firing a salvoe.

[Tachyon]

Well...when I use manual targeting, I never lock on to my target, rather I just point the scope slightly ahead of the intended Merchant, and then fire. It's purely a guess that the torpedo will strike in the middle, I use the Merchant's distance (visually of course), and estimate the deviation the scope needs so that the Torpedo is bang on target.