Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks

[ColonelSandersLite]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

The 3 minute rule works for yards, not meters.

To clarify, meters requires 3m 15s

[Tshark]

Doing a little bit of cheating here in that contacts are updated on the chart. As soon as I raise a periscope or am on the surface the visual contacts appear on my chart and I can zoom down to ship outline and watch the movement. I confirmed I was using yards. How do I know I am in error by 2 knots? Well, I replayed the "Midway" quick mission about 10 to 15 times. Each time the Kongo BB plotted out to 16kts. The first half dozen attempts had my fish passing ahead of the ship (if they didn't prematurely explode). I dialed the speed down to 14kts and my torpedo tracks are looking good. I then went out on my first career patrol and got to track a lone merchant. The merchant plotted out to 6kts. Away go the fish and again they passed ahead of target. Lucky for me the merchant was as new to this as I am and continued on course oblivious. I set up another attack and this time dialed the speed down to 4kts. BOOM plus three dud torpedoes! As it stands now I just subtract 2kts from the three minute calculation and it seems to work. Just wondering what I am doing that is throwing the calc off?

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Tshark

How do I know I am in error by 2 knots? Well, I replayed the "Midway" quick mission about 10 to 15 times. Each time the Kongo BB plotted out to 16kts. The first half dozen attempts had my fish passing ahead of the ship (if they didn't prematurely explode). I dialed the speed down to 14kts and my torpedo tracks are looking good. I then went out on my first career patrol and got to track a lone merchant. The merchant plotted out to 6kts. Away go the fish and again they passed ahead of target.

With the stock game, or stock game physics, ships often will spot a torpedo, throw the rudder hard over, and slow down dramatically. Torps mostly miss ahead. It sounds like your speed estimates are ok to me.

[Tshark]

I got a chance to make a couple more attacks tonight included using the "Dick O'Kane" method (hard to go back to the stadimeter now) and the speed calc seemed right on. Not quite sure what the problem was earlier as I am doing everything the same. I know this is a long shot, but I wonder if my earlier audio problems were somehow contributing to this issue. All the previous attacks were done while I was still wrestling with having only half the sounds playing correctly. I didn't notice any lag on the chart movement, but now I just don't know. Thanks for taking your time to help me.

[Rockin Robbins]

Good thing tshark! If you want to see targets juke out of the way, try using the John P Cromwell technique from 45º ahead of the target during the day and with Mark 14s. You'll waste some torpedoes but it's fun to watch.

They'll always turn into the torpedo. Since you know which way they will dodge, it's easy to send a second torpedo up a path to block that maneuver. Then it's only a matter or which torpedo they get to eat.

Of course the disadvantage is that you automatically waste half your torpedoes. If you're going to shoot John P Cromwell attacks in the daytime better to use Mark 18s.

[Rockin Robbins]

Crap! It's always SOMETHING. I'm running GFO/RSRDC, which uses the conventional plotting system. Trying to make a conventional targeting video, but Murphy's Law has reared its ugly head. I found a ship to stalk and.......no position marker, no silhouette! That means that somehow either GFO or more likely RSRDC has a problem.

Now it's not that it isn't possible to do the job without the position marker, it just makes it easer on the newbie to be able to use the basic plotting scheme.

I used up half my fuel just finding this one target. And I guess this needs finding the problem and fixing anyway, so there will be a delay for the first video.

[Barkerov]

I just want to say a big thankyou to everyone who has ever posted a tutorial or created a mod on subsim
All of that teaching paid off last night when I attacked a convoy and sank a ship with realism at 100% (RFB & RSRDC version of realism anyway minus the external camera).

Truth be told I only started playing this game a couple of weeks ago even though I have wanted to play it for a long time circumstances did not allow me enough time to do so.

For me this game is all about the realism. I want to feel like a real sub commander even down to the level of disliking BuOrd but only after I have experienced the Mk 14s failures first hand. I even planned my attack on said convoy to be a submerged sonar only attack according to 1930s US Navy submarine tactical doctrine. I even reported the convoy and did not submerge until I had got the radio reply because receiving radio messages underwater spoils the realism for me.

In the end I had to improvise a little bit since the convoy had a projected course less than 100 yards from my position. I was worried about being detected if I moved too fast (convoy was 5-6nm out) and even if I surfaced at the right moment the Mk 14s would not arm in time to explode. As I was working out what to do I was already headed down to get under the escorts when suddenly I had a bright idea. The convoy was arranged in a neat little line and becasue of the angle they were on, I couldn't see any gaps between ships so I set the Mk 14s to slow, picked a depth I thought would still hit the ship with the lowest draft and fired a spread 1 degree apart at 8000 yards. 2 hits out of 4 that I never actually witnessed. Needless to say I was very pleased as I headed to test depth.

Then came the depth charging. For 3 hours (game time) I tried to get away actually feeling very nervous when explosions were rocking the boat. I changed speeds several times between 1 and 3 kts as we went East making sure my propeller was always less than 75 RPM. Finally I broke contact and headed to periscope depth. I counted 8 destroyers still circling where I left them.

Last night gentlemen, I felt like a real skipper and I have you to thank. Especially you Rockin Robbins

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

...I found a ship to stalk and.......no position marker, no silhouette! That means that somehow either GFO or more likely RSRDC has a problem.

If memory serves, RSRDC adds a few ships. It's quite possible that the ship you've found lacks the whatever_shp.dds file. Identify the ship, exit the game, then look inside the ship's folder for that file. If it's not there, just grab any merchant's whathaveyou_shp.dds file, rename it and hey! presto, working marker! I vaguely remember doing that for a few ships (running a TMO+RSRDC combo).

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by ColonelSandersLite

To clarify, meters requires 3m 15s

39"/36"x3 min = 3.25 min = 3 min 15 sec

Tshark, if you're using 3 minutes by the stopwatch, marking the center of the silhouette with the pencil, measuring the distance with the compass you can't be 2 knots off. Have you been installing and uninstalling lots of mods? And never apologize for setting the difficulty back to learn basic principles of the game. That's why the option exists. And don't make the mistake of confusing difficulty with realism either!

[ColonelSandersLite]

Can you record one of your torpedo attacks? That would probably be the best way for us to to figure out what you're doing wrong.

Edit: Just after posting that, I had a thought. Are you 100% sure you're not accidentally plotting at 4 minute intervals? That would just about match the results your getting.

Past that, yeah, we would probably actually have to see what you're doing to diagnose.