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.

[gollum65]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll keep working on it. BTW, what's TMO 2.0?

[I'm goin' down]

I do not know if you play with mods. There are a lot out there. Some change one detail of the stock game (i.e. Webster's smaller rain drops). Others are mega mods. They change the game entirely-the environmnet, the sub interiors, the deck guns, etc. One is Fall of the Rising Sun ("FOTRS"). Another is Trigger Maru Overhauled ("TMO"). TMO is constantly tweaked by its creator, Ducimus, who strives for as much realism as the game permits without losing its gaming feel. TMO2.0 is the most recent version. I like it because it is hard, really hard.

If you visit to the mod forum, there is sticky by Neal Stevens that lays out many of the various mods, although it is not the whole list. Mods are constantly be updated, etc. While in the forum look around and get a feel for what is posted there.

The Skippers' bag of tricks thread in the main forum of SH4 (the one we are in now) by the ever delightful Rockin Robbins contains many important tutorials which you ought to read if you are going to get proficient at manual targeting. At a minimum you need to know about the 90 degree broadside attack (the Dick O'Kane methed). Also read Hitman's tutorial on manual targeting at 100 percent realism to understand the concept of speed, range, and aspect ratio (very crucial) on a moving target. Since your boat can be moving during an attack run, the US boats use onboard computers called the torpedo data computers (TDCs) whiich calculate the firing angle of the torpedoes, so they run to the target and not off into the wild blue yonder. For a TDC to function properly, a captain is required to accurately input the target's speed, range (which includes its aspect ratio) and Angle on bow (AoB). If you perform an O'Kane attack, the TDC is turned off and is not used, although you do input target speed on the Attack Dial on the upper right of the screen. The TDC screen is the one on the left with the two ship dials on it. The other screen on the left is the TBT screen (Torpedo Bearing Tool), where you arm, set the speed and offset angle of the your torpedoes.

You need to do a lot of reading to address all of the issues in this game.. Some mods are eye candy (i.e. conning tower emblems, better uniforms), some are improvements over the stock game (FOTRS and TMO and Run Silent Run Deep Campaign (RSRDC)), some are fun (the Great White Shark mod) and some are downright brilliamt (the Easy Aob mod, MOBO (a program not a mod) and the Solution Solver (a program and not a mod.), just to name a few. Some of the forum members are simply brilliant.

If you do not know how to install mods, someone here will help. (Note the number of mods I have downloaded [some more than one time]. I figure the true number is around 100. I only use about 10 when I play TMO 2.0 because many are already modded into it.

Now that you are thoroughly confused, welcome aboard. If you get stuck send me a PM. Soon you will talkiing like a bona fide WW2 captain.

[McHibbins]

Don´t forget RFB 2.0

[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.

[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

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!

[Capt. Morgan]

Originally Posted by gollum65

Thanks guys. I think that's my problem is I don't know what direction the contact is heading ...

If you are picking up the sound contact by listening yourself, no contact line will show on the map until your stone-deaf sonar man can hear it too. So you need to get closer.

Point the bow of your boat directly at the contact, then monitor the sonar yourself to determine if the contact drifts left or right of zero degrees.

That will indicate his general direction of travel relative to you. If he doesn't drift either way, then he's either heading straight towards or away from you.

Now that you have some idea of his course; surface, point the bow of your boat 10 degrees ahead of his last bearing and travel in a straight line at flank speed for 10 miles (use your maptools to measure this).

Once there, submerge and find him again on sonar. Repeat until you get a visual contact (that's usually within 2-3 hops).

Happy hunting