New Skipper Needs Help Finding Targets

[gollum65]

Ok guys. I'm brand new to SH4 and to sub sims in general. The only experience I have that's relative is I'm a long time pilot of civilian flight sims so I understand headings and bearings and such (I think).

After going through the first 3 training missions in sub school I started my career and set sail. My first mission was to go to Honshu and engage merchant shipping. After spending a ton of time sailing from Pearl to Honshu I reached my target area and started sailing search patterns. On 2 or 3 occasions my sonar would pick up merchant ships and I'd tell him to "follow" the ship while I tried to adjust my course to intercept. This is where I'm losing it. I can turn my boat to the direction of the contact and head towards him, but before I ever get to within visual range or close enough to shoot, my sonar guy looses him and I have no idea where he is or how to reacquire the target.

I've read through the Skipper's tips thread and watched many of Robbin's videos but I'm still not getting it. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Sure would have been nice if "Submarine School" in the game actually taught you something.

Thanks.

[G2B]

There snecksie my precious, yesss they's have shuts down there enginesessss. (probably wrong gollum reference)


At least that's what it sounds like. Have you kept heading toward the last known position to get a visual? Have you manned the Phones yourself to try locating em, sometimes sonar guy gets distracted listening to Dolphins and starts dreaming about mermaids

[gollum65]

It's sort of the right Gollum reference. Took name from the Led Zep song, and they took it from LoTR.

No, I haven't tried manning the phones myself, and to be honest I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Guess I got more reading to do.

[Ducimus]

. I can turn my boat to the direction of the contact and head towards him, but before I ever get to within visual range or close enough to shoot, my sonar guy looses him and I have no idea where he is or how to reacquire the target.

Don't turn towards where he is, but where he will be in the future.

(yeah i know, i'm probably being Captain Obvious here. )


edit:

No, I haven't tried manning the phones myself, and to be honest I'm not exactly sure how to do that

Should be a button on the orders bar or a hotkey somewhere (check the F1 help menu) . Generally, you can hear much farther with the hydrophone then your soundman can (don't ask me, ask ubi ). Use your Home/END keys to rotate your sound gear, the mouse wheel button will allow you to rotate it in smaller increments for "fine tuning" so to speak.

[G2B]

Click on the sonar to bring up the "toolbar" options first icon on the left should be "go to sonar station"

If you find yourself in the conning tower just click on the sonar station. Oh and watch out for the red buttons behind you, they will fire your torps.

You can also use your mouse pointer to direct the dial by clicking on the dial face, hope that makes sense.

Don't try to find the guy at 180 degrees otherwise your going to be chasing your tail

Good Luck

[Captain Vlad]

Also, when you detect a target, don't start chasing him immediately. I usually wait a minute or two, listening, to see which direction he's moving, before planning my intercept. Sometimes I go so far as to stop the boat when I'm doing this.

Also, what kind of time compression are you using when you're chasing a contact? High settings make it very, very easy to lose the enemy.

[gollum65]

Thanks guys. I think that's my problem is I don't know what direction the contact is heading in, so I do end up chasing my tail so to speak. I think part of the problem is on my nav map the contacts aren't showing up. All I'm seeing is a line drawn to where the contact was last observed.

And I always go to 1x time compression if it was faster when the contact was made, and I will usually stop the boat to try to figure out where to go to track the target.

I'll give this mission another run today and let you guys know what happens. Thanks again for the help.

[kvbrock82]

When you click the target on the map it should tell you the general direction which the ship is going. If it says N, then plan a course of intercept north of the target. Never head directly to a target because he will be long gone by the time you get there!

[R4222]

Try raiding an enemy harbour at night. Rabual in the North Solmens is a favourite.

Also you have a pinch point between the islands which is a funnel for traffic.

[Nikeleye]

Originally Posted by gollum65

Thanks guys. I think that's my problem is I don't know what direction the contact is heading in, so I do end up chasing my tail so to speak. I think part of the problem is on my nav map the contacts aren't showing up. All I'm seeing is a line drawn to where the contact was last observed.

And I always go to 1x time compression if it was faster when the contact was made, and I will usually stop the boat to try to figure out where to go to track the target.

I'll give this mission another run today and let you guys know what happens. Thanks again for the help.

Even with Map Contacts turned 'On' in the realism settings, sonar-only contacts won't display on the map as a clickable square showing speed, course, etc, until you have another form of detection - be it RADAR, or a visual.

I would suggest, and this is just my humble opinion, to keep your speed to Ahead Standard (8/9kts surfaced in most boats I think) when you pick-up the contact. If you're surfaced and you get a sonar contact, get to periscope depth or 90ft if there's enemy air cover, and head to your nav map. Sonar works much, much better underwater in my experience (as it should!).

Then follow the black line to the end, that's where your sonarman is saying he can hear the propellor of the contact. Using the pencil tool, place a mark on it. At the same time you do this, have the stopwatch out (there's a button to show/hide it on the map toolbar) and start the timer by clicking the protruding button on top of it as you place the mark. Now keep watching the sonar as it updates, if the contact's close enough it'll be a smooth movement or if its a distant contact it might jump every few seconds. I put another mark on it every minute until 3 minutes, but you could do anything... every time it updates, every 30 seconds, anything. It's purely to find out the contact's course. Making sure you have the tool helper (it's that compass looking thing above the ruler and pencil) 'open', use the ruler and draw a line through the marks of your contact, getting as close to the middle of all of them as you can - it's a rough science! Look at the course the ruler shows you on the circle marker you should have at your mouse pointer (the tool helper), remember this, then zoom out a bit and extend that course until it's long enough that you're happy you can intercept in that distance. Before you exit everything, when the stopwatch says 3 minutes, mark the contact again, and take a measurement from the start to that specific mark. Take 2 tenths off that measurement (1100yds becomes 11, 12500yds becomes 12.5, etc), and that's a rough average of the contacts speed.

Now you know, approximately, the target's course and speed. If it were me i'd be surfacing and intercepting as best I could at that point.

RockinRobbins' videos can show you everything i've said much better, and much more than that (he taught me most everything I know without ever speaking to me, heh!), but I hope it's helped at least a little!

[gollum65]

Originally Posted by kvbrock82

When you click the target on the map it should tell you the general direction which the ship is going. If it says N, then plan a course of intercept north of the target. Never head directly to a target because he will be long gone by the time you get there!

Yeah, but that's my problem. Contacts aren't showing up on any of my maps even though the option not to map them is supposedly turned off. All I see on my maps is my ship, my charted course, and if there's a target a line or 2 going out to infinity. I have no idea how far a target is so I can't go find it.

For example, I was again sailing from Pearl to Honshu when my sonar guy reported a merchant contact SE of Midway. So I stopped, used the hydrophone to determine that the contact was apparently moving from SW to NE and set a course to try to intercept it. I had the sonar constantly tracking the target and sending it's range and bearing to the TDC (I think?). When the position keeper range got down to under 200 I came up to periscope depth and looked around, but there was nothing there. After trying to look and turn the boat in multiple directions to try to spot the target (it happened to be at night) I finally asked the sonar guy for a range to target and lo and behold it was over 11,000 (yards I assume?). So while my sonar was saying it was 11,000+, my TDC was saying it was 150. And without any targets showing up on my maps I can't see how I can even find a target much less plot an intercept course and go after it.

I can post some screenshots if you guys want. I hope someone can figure out what's going on because it's got me frustrated. I know it can't be this hard can it?

[Nikeleye]

Originally Posted by gollum65

So while my sonar was saying it was 11,000+, my TDC was saying it was 150.

The TDC is only as good as the information given to it.

It will only work if to a pretty accurate level you give it your targets speed, angle on bow, range, and bearing - ideally in that order.

It sounds to me as if you only gave it the information from the sonar, which would be bearing and, possibly, range. Ranging with the sonar is what you might know as 'pinging', or 'active sonar'. I prefer to do this manually, and be aware it has limits. Currently in December '42 in my Salmon my active sonar only gives decent range readings out to 4500yds. In most weather that's visual range.

The way you do it is thus:-

Press H or click on the toolbars to go to the Sonar station. Jack your speakers/headphones up on volume. Using the mouse wheel or the Home and End keys, you'll turn the wheel and change what bearing you're "listening" to. When you find the contact, refine it, by finely adjusting the bearing to where the sound is loudest. This is your contact bearing. Looking at the sonar panel, you now want to click the button on the bottom left, you'll know if it's the correct one as you'll hear your boat send out a ping and the dial on the left will start moving. If the target is within your active sonar's range you'll see the dial stop at a specific range and hear a rebounded 'pong'.

Then press the button to the right of the ping button, and also the one on the notepad top left, which will send both range and bearing to the TDC. You'll want the TDC to have been on/running with your targets speed and angle on bow already calculated before you send this information however, or it'll fail completely to give you an accurate solution (my previous post is a rough way of getting speed, though i'd suggest using radar or visual instead wherever you can as it's much more accurate).

Angle on Bow isn't too hard. But I try to update and refine it as much as I can when I establish visual contact. It's a simple thing to work out once you have the target and the targets course plotted on your map from either SONAR, RADAR, or visual. Simply take the protractor tool, make the first 'arrow' on the targets course a ways ahead of it, then the angle mark on the target itself, and the final arrow on your fleetboat. Read the angle and in the periscope station enter it into the tool and send to TDC. Like I said however, try to refine this as you get closer and get more accurate readings.

So, to sum up, I quote the guru of all things submarinal:-

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

1. Turn on PK
2. Calculate speed and enter it. Why? It takes the longest.
3. Enter the AoB. Why? You found the target course when you calculated the speed. It's available with no delay.
4. Take range/bearing. Your aiming point is already traveling at the same course and speed as your target. All you need to do to put it dead center is that range/bearing position. INSTANTLY when that point is plotted it begins moving at the speed and on the course you've told it to go. It stays exactly on the target.

P.S. - Don't EVER use active sonar on a warship or near a convoy with escorts. It's like sticking a big flag out of the ocean saying "Here I am!" and waving it for all and sundry to see.

[Admiral8Q]

Try TMO 2.0 My first and second contacts were invasion forces on their way to Luzon.

[Armistead]

Did you get contacts on. Remember in career mode you must set your options using the radio in the office to the left of the desk.

[Nikeleye]

As I said above, with sonar contacts you won't get the clickable contact box no matter what your realism setting.