Manual Targeting in TMO different from stock game?

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, where multiple ships are concerned you must make several deals with the devil to shoot several. The further away from 90 degrees from the track you get, the smaller chance for a hit and the less error tolerant the solution becomes. Furthermore, if you shoot from ahead of the track the ships are more apt to see the oncoming torpedoes and only need to turn a fraction of a right angle to turn into the oncoming torpedoes and make them miss.

Of course you can sit 90 degrees to the track and use Mark 18s--too slow and THAT reduces your chance of hits while keeping them from seeing the wake.

Dick O'Kane, and I agree totally, said that we get darned close, target ONE target at a time and put her on the bottom. Again, simplifying the process gives maximum success. Return and target another. Repeat until the escorts split for home because they have no merchies to herd.

Yes I've seen fancy videos of multiple ship targeting and they look cool. But in practice you'll come up empty more than bag two or three. One premature explosion with six torpedoes in the water targeting three ships and all three ships go crazy and you waste a great portion of Uncle Sam's money.

Dick O'Kane said that when you have to schlepp back 6000 miles for a torpedo refill you aim every shot and keep it simple. Limit the fancy stuff!

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Yes, where multiple ships are concerned you must make several deals with the devil to shoot several. The further away from 90 degrees from the track you get, the smaller chance for a hit and the less error tolerant the solution becomes. Furthermore, if you shoot from ahead of the track the ships are more apt to see the oncoming torpedoes and only need to turn a fraction of a right angle to turn into the oncoming torpedoes and make them miss.

Of course you can sit 90 degrees to the track and use Mark 18s--too slow and THAT reduces your chance of hits while keeping them from seeing the wake.

Dick O'Kane, and I agree totally, said that we get darned close, target ONE target at a time and put her on the bottom. Again, simplifying the process gives maximum success. Return and target another. Repeat until the escorts split for home because they have no merchies to herd.

Yes I've seen fancy videos of multiple ship targeting and they look cool. But in practice you'll come up empty more than bag two or three. One premature explosion with six torpedoes in the water targeting three ships and all three ships go crazy and you waste a great portion of Uncle Sam's money.

Dick O'Kane said that when you have to schlepp back 6000 miles for a torpedo refill you aim every shot and keep it simple. Limit the fancy stuff!

Generally, if I setup a multi-target solution, it will only be against 2 targets and of course to keep it simple they will be along the same line of sight using an angular vs perpendicular sub line-up and 10-15 AOB/Periscope lead from there, then almost always go deep and wait for the others to pass and perform an end around for a repeat on remainders.

If they are in line, I'll use slow setting torpedo(s) for the first ship, followed by fast setting torpedo(s) for the trailing second ship

If they are side by side, I'll use the fast setting torpedo for both targets as they cross the wire.

This is the part of the game simulation that I particularly enjoy, shooting, escort avoidance, and scooting, instead of immersing myself in all the stadimeter/AOB complications discussed earlier.

Morton/O'Kane did this for efficiency reasons, I do it for immersion enjoyment. LOL

[Rockin Robbins]

What I enjoy is setting up my TDC by radar information half an hour before I maneuver the boat into position and shoot! The work is already done. All I do is verify and shoot. It really helps to keep the workload down and the situational awareness up.

That being said, I've been working on understanding the wrinkles of the stadimeter/conventional American submarine attack. I don't think it's been taught right yet and I want to make a video as clear and easy to understand as my Dick O'Kane, John P Cromwell and vector analysis videos. I want people not to just be robots, plugging in numbers for unknown reasons, but having a reason and a verification and a backup plan for everything.

I don't do it much, so I'm getting enough experience that I won't be an idiot about it.

[Silavite]

After doing a little bit of mathematical mulling over the 90 degree Dick O'Kane attack, I figured out an equation that can be used to calculate the attack angle required.

Y = lead angle in degrees
X = target speed in knots
Z = torpedo speed in knots

Y = arctan(X/Z) * 57.3

Before you go and run away because this has trigonometry in it, the arctan operation does the same thing that we do when we connect our torp & target speed vectors tip to tail and measure the angle with a protractor. Arctan (or inverse tangent, they're two names for the exact same thing) spits out the angle measure (in radians, hence the multiplication by 57.3) of the angle that is opposite from leg X, and adjacent to leg Z.

Of course, using this equation without a calculator or trig sheet would be quite impractical, but I'd imagine that submariners back in the day had access to trig sheets.

In any case, this equation isn't terribly useful unless you are greater than about 2,500 yards from the target, where getting hits requires closing down on uncertainty as much as possible. For a closer in attack, RR's rules of thumb (10 degrees for slower than 15 kts, 20 degrees for greater than 15 kts) more then well enough do the job.

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

What I enjoy is setting up my TDC by radar information half an hour before I maneuver the boat into position and shoot! The work is already done. All I do is verify and shoot. It really helps to keep the workload down and the situational awareness up.

That being said, I've been working on understanding the wrinkles of the stadimeter/conventional American submarine attack. I don't think it's been taught right yet and I want to make a video as clear and easy to understand as my Dick O'Kane, John P Cromwell and vector analysis videos. I want people not to just be robots, plugging in numbers for unknown reasons, but having a reason and a verification and a backup plan for everything.

I don't do it much, so I'm getting enough experience that I won't be an idiot about it.

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

[Gray Lensman]

Okay, to partially atone for going OT about weather...

Regarding Manual Targeting in game.

Perusing Rockin Robbins bag of tricks thread stickied at the top of this forum. There is a link from ColonelSandersLite regarding Advanced Convoy Simultaneous Hits. Not only is this a great thread from the standpoint of the intended subject, BUT, he, ColonelSandersLite provides some excellent training aids, one of which is extremely useful for target acquisition and approach training. He prepackaged a set of eight single missions to use for such practice. I have found them to be of great value for any sort of practice imaginable. I took the liberty of separating six of them out for posting as an attachment here for anyone wishing to practice manual targeting using whatever techniques they are interested in at the moment. These are much more useful than the canned stock training missions

I just add them to the end of my mod soup whenever I want to practice something and then remove them whenever. I'm pretty sure they won't interfere with any other mods since the only thing they do is add to the Single Missions list without overwriting anything previous.

Note to Moderator(s): I changed the extension to .txt from .zip because your attachment format doesn't cover .zip files. I thought maybe there might be a specific reason for such exclusion but could find nothing in the Rules. Let me know if it is some sort of infraction and I'll find some other way to post the .zip file



ColonelSandersLite's Training Missions (click/download attachment and change extension from .txt back to .zip)


.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Originally Posted by Gray Lensman

There is a link from ColonelSandersLite regarding Advanced Convoy Simultaneous Hits. Not only is this a great thread from the standpoint of the intended subject, BUT, he, ColonelSandersLite provides some excellent training aids, one of which is extremely useful for target acquisition and approach training. He prepackaged a set of eight single missions to use for such practice. I have found them to be of great value for any sort of practice imaginable.

A guy commented on one of those videos a couple of days ago so I thought I would stop in, only to find people talking about me .

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I don't know where the commonly believed fallacy of AoB being dependent on your course came from, but it's dead wrong

Originally Posted by razark

Is that commonly believed? I've never heard of that until you mentioned it.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I've run into it repeatedly. However referencing your diagram shows clearly that owncourse is entirely irrelevant to AoB.

That diagram is wrong. What's labeled as the "Track Angle" is actually the "Torpedo Track Angle". Basically every measure between V Torpedo and V Target needs to have the word Torpedo inserted. See the USN fire control manual at http://archive.hnsa.org/doc/attack/index.htm page 1-12 for a more information. "Track Angle" is actually the relationship between your course and the target course.

That being said, AOB is related to own course. Intercept angle, Bearing, and AOB must add to 180 or it's not a triangle. Intercept angle is based on the difference between your course and target course.

We can say it's a mathematical certainty that if you keep any one point of the triangle constant over time, the other two must change unless you are on a collision course.

The most common constant in a torpedo attack is going to be track angle. Since track angle isn't going to change, bearing and AOB will.

Suppose you want to keep AOB constant though. Why might you do this? Maybe you want your torpedoes to hit the target at a certain angle and you're not happy with the range. In order to keep AOB constant, you must change course and bearing.

Suppose you want to keep bearing constant. Why? Perhaps you're doing an end around to get in front of the target. In this case, you want to keep distance constant so you move around the circumference of a circle centered on the target. AOB and course must change.

In the case of a collision course, all 3 angles remain constant over time, changing the scaling of the triangle, but not the angles.


edit: fixed a small mistake

edit 2: fixed another mistake. I'm on a roll today...

[ColonelSandersLite]

Getting back to the topic of working the TDC, I thought I would state my own data entry procedure when using the position keeper.


Determine target course and speed via any method.

Enter speed into the TDC first.

Enter approximate AOB into the TDC.

Enter bearing and range into the TDC.

Start the position keeper.

Fine tune the AOB.

Get fresh bearing and range entered into the TDC.




If I'm not using the position keeper, my normal procedure is:

Determine target course and speed via any method.

Ensure the position keeper is off.

Set speed to either 0 or target speed depending on method of shooting.

Send range and shoot bearing to the TDC.

Set AOB to either 0 or the AOB of the target at the shoot bearing, depending on method.

Resend range and shoot bearing to the TDC just before firing to ensure that they haven't been messed up by a stadimeter reading or whatever during the approach.

[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.

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

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.

Well, I actually succeeded in a rough approximation of a distant target's course and speed using the radar screen spokes and very rough approx. radar distance rings. When the target got close enough for the sonar man to call out sound bearings, it helped even more, but even the sonar man is off a couple of degrees usually and at a good distance that can mean a lot of error.

Definitely it was a very rough approximation, but enough to start an end around once close enough to visually feel your way around the outer visibility limit. Two readings were required with several minutes between the readings to get the rough course approximation (forget target speed calculations though). It is doable, but I'm not sure if it's something I'm going to enjoy game play wise.

I did it using the X marker tool, marking the sub position and then the line tool drawing out the same bearing angle 10 miles or so then the compass circle at approx. the same distance, where they intersect, place an X and wait a while, rinse, repeat... It's too sloppy to use for 3 minute speed determination usage however.

I think you might be exaggerating a little bit likening it to conning the boat with a paper bag over his head. Really I don't think they had a map with a little dot moving neatly around on it either. The simulation does suffer from accuracy with the radar screen, but the technique they used had to be something similar to above.

Right now I'm hampered by not being very good with the Position Keeper when they are close enough since I've really just used the Constant Bearing for all my previous gameplay due to its ease of use especially with the moving dot using on-map updates.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Gray Lensman

I think you might be exaggerating a little bit likening it to conning the boat with a paper bag over his head. Really I don't think they had a map with a little dot moving neatly around on it either.

Actually the maneuvering board DID have a lighted dot which moved on the course and speed of the target. The light was under the chart, moved by electric motors! Part of shooting torpedoes was comparing the bearing from the plot with actual bearing. If they matched you shot. If not you started the targeting process over.

The analog of that is our attack map, a much maligned and poorly understood part of SH4. Some mods, RFB being notable, actually took away button bar and keyboard access to the attack map, a very unfortunate decision.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by Gray Lensman

... but even the sonar man is off a couple of degrees usually and at a good distance that can mean a lot of error.
...

The one thing I noticed is in SH3, may be the same with SH4, I haven't checked yet, is that the sonar gives the bearing to the screws not the center of the ship.

That may be where your error is coming in.

Barracuda