Range? Aye aye capt'n!

[Herastean]

I wish my crewmen would tell me that! I feel sorry that my highly trained crew is uncapable of telling me if this wonderfull Typhoon I'm targeting is 2 nm or 5 away!

Is there any way to "calculate" the distance to a sonar contact? I know that the bigger the line is, the closer/louder the contact is but other than that? I'm mosty curious as for Harpoons and such you need to be sure of the distance to the target not for your nice missiles to pass over their head and give them time for their tiny Seahawk to take off and kick your-.. Stern.

[Red October1984]

I wish there was a better way too...

When I get frustrated with the game, I just press "Shift+Control+T" which turns the "Truth" on....

Then, I just let every weapon go and destroy as much as I can.

[Pisces]

What class are you playing with? Because the subs and OH Perry have Auto TMA crew that do a descent job at figuring out where the thing is. PROVIDED they have the propper bearing lines to work with:

Maker sure your sonar is tracking something.
Then go to the TMA station, and activate Autocrew (a tab in the corner).
Give them some time (i.e. 10 minutes),
make a turn so your speed across the line of sound changes significantly, (wait until the towed array settled behind you)
then wait some more time for usefull bearing lines to show up
then check what they have done.

Yeah, I know, it's not instant. But they are not qualified to be psychic, you know. (Though it seems they sometimes are.)

[Herastean]

Oh! Never tried the TMA autocrew. I find that the autocrew on other stations are just acting weirdly and barely do better than you but I'll try that out!

I'm playing with the Seawolf only ATM but I'd like to learn how to command the FFG soon. I guess I'll just autocrew almost everything and see how the guys are doing!

[twm47099]

With the SEAWOLF there are a few ways to get range.

If short enough range and you can detect the target in broadband, the WAA range is usually pretty good.

If I can track with the bow sphere, I will triangulate with the towed array. If your heading is right and the water deep enough so you can have a long scope on the TA, the lines from each should cross at approx the target location.

If I can't track with the bow array, I will slow down and launch a UUV. Then I will triangulate with the TA. The UUV is slow (5kts), but you can change it's heading in the torpedo control station to give a reasonable intersection angle. If the bow, UUv, and TA bearings all intersect near one point, that's a pretty good position & range.

I will also merge two tracks for the same target in the TAA station, for example UUV and TA. Then the TAA ruler can be used by putting the reference marks on the intersections (works best before the TAA screen has so many lines that its hard to separate the individual intersections.) The correct solution has the dots from both sensors taken at the same time merging together on the center line.

If you know the target's speed from the Demon station, that helps with TAA.

When I use a triangulation method, I will usually mark the intersection with a manual solution and put the values from the TAA screen for range, speed & course to its TAA track, because if I set a solution in the TAA, the intersecting bearing lines on the NAV chart are replaced with just the solution, and you can't follow the target with the intersecting lines anymore without dropping the solution.

If you can raise the periscope, if range is short enough, and you have a good ID on the target, you can get a good range from the scope. But to get a solution you will need at least 2 good observations and fit the line in the TAA. Once you have a visual solution, if you take another observation (bearing & range - AOB doesn't appear to have much effect) and mark it, the visual solution on the NAV map will have zero speed until you get another TAA solution.

Tom