The Silent Hunter 4 TDC discussion

heartc · 03-21-07, 10:51 AM

TDC instructional video:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=108689

Well, they almost got it. Almost. They made one small mistake which however has a big negative effect on the usefullness of the position keeper.

Take a look at the lower dial of the position keeper. You will notice it displays and updates the GYRO ANGLES (just like the green line on the attack map) but instead it should be the TARGET BEARING.
There are two ideas behind the position keeper: It should continuesly update the fire solution, taking ownship movement into account (which it does perfectly), but it should also continuesly provide the target position (via bearing and range). Without a bearing readout, we miss a MAJOR feature of the TDC: iRL and in SHI, you were able to CHECK your fire solution after entering the data by watching whether or not the actual target bearing that you can see through the scope and the TDC bearing readout stayed the same. If those two bearings started to drift apart, you knew your solution was not the best, and the faster they drifted apart, the worse it was and you knew your torps are going to miss. If it stayed the same or differed only slowly, you knew the solution was pretty accurate at least if you fire soon and the range was not too great in the later case (when differing slowly).

If the solution was bad, you could easily adjust it by changing target speed, i.e. if the target crosses your periscope bearings faster than your TDC showed, you had to increase target speed for example and vice versa.

The funny thing is that actually in the manual of SHIV when you check the TDC description section you will read them describing that possibility of "checking" the accuracy of the solution and INDEED, where we now have the Ship name read out in the header above the two dials, on the pic in the manual there is this readout: "Target 10, 010" and indeed the lower dial also shows the bearing of 010, not GYRO ANGLES as it does now. It baffles me that they changed that and I wonder why.

A small work around might be to note the difference between gyro angles and actual bearing and watch out that this difference stays the same, however this is inaccurate, needs you constantly calculating and would work only for a rather short time since the difference *must* change over time.

Otherwise I think the game is in fact awesome. Especially cause I didn't even know if it will run at all since I'm only on 1.8 GHz, 512 RAM and 9800Pro, but in fact it runs better than SHIII for me (time compression way better, loading times shorter, runs fluid with some settings I don't care for anyway turned off and the gfx card tuned for performance in the control panel). But I hope they correct the TDC, because being able to actually check your solution for accuracy before firing was a MAJOR feature iRL and in SHI.

03-21-07, 10:51 AM	#1
heartc Samurai Navy Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Munich Posts: 562 Downloads: 71 Uploads: 0	The Silent Hunter 4 TDC discussion TDC instructional video: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=108689 Well, they almost got it. Almost. They made one small mistake which however has a big negative effect on the usefullness of the position keeper. Take a look at the lower dial of the position keeper. You will notice it displays and updates the GYRO ANGLES (just like the green line on the attack map) but instead it should be the TARGET BEARING. There are two ideas behind the position keeper: It should continuesly update the fire solution, taking ownship movement into account (which it does perfectly), but it should also continuesly provide the target position (via bearing and range). Without a bearing readout, we miss a MAJOR feature of the TDC: iRL and in SHI, you were able to CHECK your fire solution after entering the data by watching whether or not the actual target bearing that you can see through the scope and the TDC bearing readout stayed the same. If those two bearings started to drift apart, you knew your solution was not the best, and the faster they drifted apart, the worse it was and you knew your torps are going to miss. If it stayed the same or differed only slowly, you knew the solution was pretty accurate at least if you fire soon and the range was not too great in the later case (when differing slowly). If the solution was bad, you could easily adjust it by changing target speed, i.e. if the target crosses your periscope bearings faster than your TDC showed, you had to increase target speed for example and vice versa. The funny thing is that actually in the manual of SHIV when you check the TDC description section you will read them describing that possibility of "checking" the accuracy of the solution and INDEED, where we now have the Ship name read out in the header above the two dials, on the pic in the manual there is this readout: "Target 10, 010" and indeed the lower dial also shows the bearing of 010, not GYRO ANGLES as it does now. It baffles me that they changed that and I wonder why. A small work around might be to note the difference between gyro angles and actual bearing and watch out that this difference stays the same, however this is inaccurate, needs you constantly calculating and would work only for a rather short time since the difference must change over time. Otherwise I think the game is in fact awesome. Especially cause I didn't even know if it will run at all since I'm only on 1.8 GHz, 512 RAM and 9800Pro, but in fact it runs better than SHIII for me (time compression way better, loading times shorter, runs fluid with some settings I don't care for anyway turned off and the gfx card tuned for performance in the control panel). But I hope they correct the TDC, because being able to actually check your solution for accuracy before firing was a MAJOR feature iRL and in SHI. Last edited by Gizzmoe; 03-25-07 at 02:13 AM.