Manual Targeting in TMO different from stock game?

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Gray Lensman

After reloading everything, I decided to give manual targeting w/o map updates. Now that's a challenge, mainly for getting into a proper lead position to shoot. Once in position and close enough, however, the Dick O'kane method is still superior, even if you don't have the exact angle info that you can get with map updating.

Like you I'm now experimenting around with the conventional tracking method mainly for use in determining target course/bearing to plot intercepts with/without end arounds.

Your WernerSobe links are a great help, but a tutorial on determining distant target course/bearing w/o map updates would be great. I haven't been able to find any such video example

That's because it just isn't possible. Our radar screens on real subs gave ship positions to within 15 yards, regardless of range, as accurate as our map updates. But our game radars are nowhere near adequate to giving us the same accuracy as the real submarines had. Our nav map suffers from error due to binning, so it is not perfectly accurate either.

Therefore map contacts off becomes like crossing eight lanes of traffic on I-75 in the middle of Atlanta with a blindfold on. It is possible, especially if you are blind and have developed the necessary abilities. But is it in any way realistic? No, like map contacts off, it is difficult and I suppose some points must be offered for the sheer difficulty of it, but it is not historical, accurate or any reflection of the actual situation of a radar equipped submarine in the war.

It is a major travesty that the settings are called "realism" settings. They are difficulty settings and nothing more.

As long as you are using TMO or TMOPlot, map contacts on is much more historically accurate than map contacts off. I've read most of the war reports of American submarines and not one brags about the Commander conning the boat with a paper bag over his head. So far.