Guides and Training

[Rockin Robbins]

And Scurvy has a point. They didn't pluck some bozo from the street and say "You're in command of a submarine! Good luck!" They had an extensive training period where they played war games. The most detailed discussion of this wargame training process is in the Run Silent Run Deep trilogy. Edward Beach (every submarine captain had his own firing party proceedure and some were quite diverse. Sometimes the captain figured he should be the one looking through the periscope, Morton and O'Kane figured the captain was a supervisor and the exec should be getting the periscope experience to move up to command of a submarine.) where was I?

Edward Beach explains how the war gaming procedure worked (really primitive and fascinating how they actually achieved enough realism to do the job!) and in that, they DID have the freedom to freeze time, talk over how they would run the procedures on the boat, learn to use all the tools, etc. Of course, with experience they evolved into a completely real-time process to have as much transfer as possible between dry land training and submarine application.

We should probably progress the same way, feeling free to stop time, puzzle out our procedures, work the tools, set the settings and then resume time again, when we are learning manual targeting. I think the whole thing could get really overwhelming otherwise, because even for an experienced player who knows what keys do what, is that starboard or port AoB, what do I do differently to set up a stern shot, what's that time/distance formula again, when all that is automatic, we STILL get pressed by time sometimes to the point that the prudent thing is to pull out and set up another attack. You have to develop the spider senses that tell you "the attack is blown" or "we're still good to go, shoot stupid!"

Please keep in mind that when I say my preference is to play in real time with no external tools, part of the reason is that it is appropriate for my level of experience. That advice would be foolish for a beginner unless he were learning the Dick O'Kane technique. Even then I bet he would want to pause the game and think about it a couple of times at first.

Part of what Silent Hunter teaches us is that there is a reason why there were so many misses in the war. Shoot or don't shoot wasn't a simple question of "are we still good" but also "if I don't shoot now will I get another chance before he kills me?" A shot not taken never hits. In combat, time is a harsh mistress. When lives are on the line, torpedoes get mighty cheap.

[Arlo]

My kingdom (or what passes for it) for audible commands and information I could speak into a mike while looking through the scope and a crew that mans the TDC and other stations inputting the information I give verbally.

Alas .... meh.

Still the best submarine sim evah.

[I'm goin' down]

Arlo, If I started barking voice commands to raise the pericope, take her to periscope depth, etc., my three poodles would certify me as "nuts."

Speaking of pausing the game and having more than one person on the firing team, yesterday I forgot to slow down my boat's approach and overshot its ideal firing point by several hundred yards. By the time I realized it, the Bizo Maru, which I had tracked for an hour, was almost on top of me. I fired from a few hundred yards off of its starboard beam, and all shots failed to detonate -- too close to detonate. I was so close the gunners on the target fired at the torpedoes' wakes. If I had only paused the game to check out the details .... And my Tambor had no deck gun, so the target escaped unscathed. A rare miss at close range with the OTC/real scopes/map contacts disabled....Arrrggghhh!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Arlo

My kingdom (or what passes for it) for audible commands and information I could speak into a mike while looking through the scope and a crew that mans the TDC and other stations inputting the information I give verbally.

Alas .... meh.

Still the best submarine sim evah.

I'll take a pass on your kingdom, but there is an add-on that works fine! Let me get back to you on that one after I find all the links and local files.

Okay, there are two, count 'em! two solutions. One is a program called Shoot! 1.6.4 Main page. Download page. It comes with an SH3 configuration file that I used extensively. When my wife began looking at me as if I were possessed, I kind of quit using the program. I THINK I have a configuration file I made up for SH4 somewhere around here. This program works magnificently, translating your words into keyboard commands and passing them on to SH4.

The second is a mod made specifically for SH4 called either shSpeech or sh4Speech, by minsc_tdp, because the author discovered that his program was useful for far more than SH4. No kidding!!! Anyway, you can download this at http://knepfler.com/shSpeech, and you can read the original thread at http://www.subsim.com/radioroo/showthread.php?t=119430. I've used it too and it works wonderfully.

Both have configuration files that you can edit. Shoot! has a configuration editor program that I like. I've edited it in my favorite text editor (notebook ++) too.

It's about time somebody asked the question that brings these two great additions to Silent Hunter back in the public eye!

[19Herr_Rapp86]

Voice mods.... I like that!

[I'm goin' down]

"!#ck yo!, you SOB," he said, as the crew fired torpedoes, ordered to do so upon hearing utterance of the voice command.

[19Herr_Rapp86]

Kapitanleutnant Rapp

[19Herr_Rapp86]

Off topic I know. Sorry guys

[Rockin Robbins]

He really should quit smoking. That could kill him, you know!

[19Herr_Rapp86]

Smoking was the cause of a majority of the u-boat crews deaths in WWII!!!! LMAO

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

And as a bonus, I found something else. You can put your target abeam and eyeball a relatively parallel course, right? You don't have to be accurate: 25 degrees off one way or another still yields pretty good results. Some idea of range is necessary too. But for what it's worth:


OK, that means that you're on a parallel course with your target. Your courses are the same, but of course, your speeds are different. We'll just say he's a mile, 2000 yards, away. Taking a series of bearings, his bearing is decreasing, he's falling back of 2 degrees per minute and you're going 10 knots. So he's traveling two knots slower than you are! Peg that guy at 8 knots.

I could not tell from your post whether these were your words or someone else's words you were quoting.

I do not believe that would work. It is really designed for a stationary observation viewpoint where it is simple trig function to calculate the angle. Hence the warning about the statement disregarding the movement of the submarine.

This is because, if stationary, you are constructing a simple triangle with the submarine at one of the vertexes and the ship movement forming the two end points of the opposite side of the triangle. Knowing the relationship between the angle changing over the period of observation and the range, it is possible to calculate the speed. However at ranges over 2,000 yards one would either need to be able to measure the bearing to 0.01 precision or extend the period of observation for longer (10-15 minutes minimum). This can be demonstrated using Excel with the formula =DEGREES(atan(b/a)) where b= the target ship and a= range.

All this works great at long as the submarine is stationary. Once the submarine moves the simple triangle problem becomes a very complex quadrilateral problem.

I just don't think we would ever have enough information to be able to solve a single quadrilateral problem like this. I am trying to work out whether a series of contiguous quadrilaterals might be workable but so far it does not look good.

If, and this is a large if, I can steer my submarine on a parallel course with the target ship, the problem becomes a trapezoidal problem. But the only immediate payoff of that would be that I could calculate the target's AoB and, therefor, the target's course.

AoB = 180 - bearing to target (expressed as a number 0-180 not 0-359). Note, this only applies when the submarine is on a parallel course with the target.

If, I somehow know the target's speed, I can take two bearings over a measured interval and calculate the range...this is not a simple formula but a combination of separate geometry and trig calculations. I am trying to find them and baring that I will try to create it.

Surprisingly calculating the range using this method is pretty straightforward if you use plotting paper and scale drawings, but trying to find a series of equations is challenging.

[Rockin Robbins]

Actually the post tells where the method comes from and the info is a screenshot. It's part of the official US Navy Submarine Torpedo Fire Control Manual of 1946. And it is self-validating. Just reading it and understanding what it says reveals a proof of concept from within the method.

It's a simple concept of relative motion. You are constantly in motion. In fact, if you are at the equator, you are rotating with the earth at 1,000 mph, while simultaneously orbiting the Sun at about 100,000 mph. However, in our relative motion calculations with the submarine and target, we ignore both of those components and do not end up with a multiple variable solution.

This method simply stops the motion of your submarine and calculates the target speed relative to your stopped submarine. Let's say you calculate 2 knots, Yeah! But the sub is moving 10 knots. Fine. We know he's going 2 knots more than we are. 10 + 2 means our target is moving 12 knots.

If our method "stops" our submarine, we eliminate that variable. The result is that our resulting single variable solution is only calculating the target speed relative to ours. It's the simple method of eliminating a variable by expressing it in terms of another variable, then ending up with a single variable equation.

It works. Don't believe me, it's not my idea. Believe the US Navy!

[Solidsnake2234]

I need the Sonar manual targeting, yet all the downloads were erased from the website it's on. can anyone help me?

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm still looking for a sticky place to put all the video downloads. The written tutorials and mods are okay, but the videos were all dumped by Filefront when they became Gamefront. They're busily destroying their usefulness and that is somehow supposed to make them money. It's very complicated I'm sure and it resulted in this community losing a lot of valuable information.

I had planned for that to happen from the beginning and have all my material backed up locally. But, as I said, I'm still looking for a good and sticky place to put it all back on the web.

Any ideas?

EDIT: I am uploading the WernerSobe videos to 2shared right now. We'll see how long they live. When the files are uploaded I will update links. Sure wish these tutorials could live on Subsim where they would be valued and preserved.

[White Owl]

I'll toss out the kinda obvious suggestion for the tutorial videos: how about Youtube?