SC Campaign - Beginner - Sonar/TMA "Helmet-Fire"

[kg6eyr]

Heya guys n' gals,

After finding that having just Silent Hunter 3-5 wasn't enough, I went and bought the NCP off Amazon that had SC, FC, and 688(i). (Boy, did I wish I had bought the 4-pack off Steam, but then I couldn't cash-in on the Amazon commissions given to SubSim if I had... Oh well, I can buy DW later...)

Anyhow, I ran through the tutorials just fine, and actually re-did the TMA tutorial, just to hone my skills. My issue? Halifax. I'm not more than maybe a minute in, and my SO keeps tossing me contacts almost every five seconds. I've found the cargos nearby, clogging up the scope (actually dropped one accidentally. Thought I had the Akula pinged, but I had fired on the wrong contact. Maybe I had too much on my mind from playing Silent Steel just prior... "Someone bring me some coffee!")

Now I'm all for reading the scope, changing course to get a fix via the towed array, and staring at waterfalls all day, but when I've got umpenteen contacts, including a submerged contact right below an Arleigh-Burke friendly, what's the best way to get a grip on the situation, and not be overwhelmed by your SO's constant "New contact, bearing..." updates? From what it looks like, I don't need to rule out ambiguous contacts, which cuts my time at the sonar station in half, but the downside is that if needed, I can't adjust my ADCAP settings without switching auto-crewing off. I'm sorry, but a 15k RTE seems a bit too long a distance if you're about 8k away, don'tcha think?

Maybe I'm just trepidated by the number of contacts, but I can't seem to get the right fix on the proper target, especially when new contacts arise to distract me.

Also, just so I make sure I do it properly, how does one complete the wargames without firing actual ordinance? From what I recall, you're not supposed to utilize live rounds, yet I didn't see any options to set anything as such.

I refuse to let my purchase go to waste in vain, so let's see what I can work out here.