[REQ] Automated Planning Mod for Real Navigation

[gap]

Originally Posted by Sartoris

While we're on the topic of real navigation, how do you guys use real navigation in those situations when you're planning an attack? The other day I asked my navigator to give me my position using dead reckoning, but since his calculation was all wrong (and kept getting worse) I was unable to plot my attack correctly. I understand that using celestial navigation is more accurate, but let's say you're plotting an attack in bad weather and you want to plot with just the hydrophone and the map, but you can't get the navigator to tell you where you are: what do you do then?

If you are using the four bearings method, the first 3 bearings are plotted relative to a fixed point representing your current position. No matter where you put this point on map, as long as the plotted bearings are correct, and the time interval between them is constant.

The 4th bearing is a bit trickier: you get to change your position before plotting it. Again, your actual map coordinates are not important. What matters is knowing your current position relative to the first point. You can plot the new position with a reasonable margin of error with no need of a celestial reckoning, as long as you travel along a constant route and keeping a speed as constant as possible, for a measured number of minutes. Once you have your new position marked on map, you can plot the last bearing to your target, as you did with the previous ones.

Eventually, you can refine your calculations once you get the target within visual range, using stadimeter, RAOBF or any other measuring method that doesn't require map plottings.