Determining speed without map contacts

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, the time it takes the hull to cross the wire works. However, if you're taking all the trouble to be authentic, which is impossible as you give up more authenticity by turning map contacts off than you do by leaving it on, you must also be aware that this method of determining ship speed is totally inauthentic.

We have a target manual that contains every ship on the ocean. The real subs' targeting manual was a travesty. Most targets sunk during the war were grossly misidentified as to identity, tonnage, and length. Therefore, even if they used this method, which they did not, it would have yielded grossly wrong speeds.

No matter how we twist things this is a game. We roll the dice and play it the way we like because........we like it that way! Any arguments about authenticity quickly become jokes as each choice has the intended consequence, then drags along three unintended consequences, making the game even less realistic.

The map contacts on/map contacts off deal is one of those. If you're running TMO, there is only one inauthentic part of the plotting: targets which are visual only are plotted with exact position. In order to kill that you have to kill radar positions, plotting of sonar lines, airplane radar......it's a quagmire that just doesn't justify fixing one element to ruin three or four others.

If you were on a boat with radar, you would actually know the positions of the targets to greater accuracy than the game is allowed to show because of position binning (you have a choice of a dot here or here, not in between on a digital display) and the range readout on real WWII radars, which we do not have.

If you think it is more authentic to keep map updates off (or if not for that matter!) there is no way you can justify the timing of ships across the wire using their length to calculate speed. In WWII that just wasn't possible.