Most accurate Targeting method?

[CassiousClay]

Wow. I've had the forums confused. I do also have SH5 but I gave up on it several weeks ago. It's still installed I just haven't trashed it yet. I do very much appreciate the answers and replies! I've been playing....well trying to play SH3.

Maybe I will give SH5 another shot before scrapping them both for a newer sub sim game. The SH series titles are said to be the best. My opinion of them, so far due to the extremely frustrating and irritating experience I've had with them, is the opposite of reviews I read before getting either of them.

I think I may have just chosen the wrong game for me. We used to be able to trust and make decisions off of reviews and forum threads and google results. Apparently....not anymore.

I haven't totally given up yet. But those are my thoughts. Driven by how frustrated and irritated I am with these SH games.

[John Pancoast]

Originally Posted by CassiousClay

Wow. I've had the forums confused. I do also have SH5 but I gave up on it several weeks ago. It's still installed I just haven't trashed it yet. I do very much appreciate the answers and replies! I've been playing....well trying to play SH3.

Maybe I will give SH5 another shot before scrapping them both for a newer sub sim game. The SH series titles are said to be the best. My opinion of them, so far due to the extremely frustrating and irritating experience I've had with them, is the opposite of reviews I read before getting either of them.

I think I may have just chosen the wrong game for me. We used to be able to trust and make decisions off of reviews and forum threads and google results. Apparently....not anymore.

I haven't totally given up yet. But those are my thoughts. Driven by how frustrated and irritated I am with these SH games.

I knew you were meaning SH3, no problem.

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by CassiousClay

...

Questions, if you'd please be kind enough to answer:

1. Why 3 minutes 15 seconds? For me that's a bit long of a period of time to wait. Is there some reason, besides the multiplier being a lot easier (10), that 3:15 is more accurate? I've been using the chart and 1 minute to figure out speed. Is there a fault in doing it with 1 minute?

The 3 minute and 15 seconds interval is a special case for when you measure distances o the map in hundred meters and kilometers. If you would measure distance in yards and nautical miles (is about 2025 yards, often approximated to 2000) then you would measure in 3 minute intervals. Which you would do in SH4, or Subcommand/Dangerous Waters for modern subs. 3 minutes 15 seconds is actually a rounded time period. The correct time is 194.4 seconds. This is the time it takes 1 knot to move 100m or 0.1km. Similarly for 3 minutes, it is the time it takes 1 knot to move 0.05 nautical mile, or 100-ish yards.

All these aren't exact values, so you don't have to worry about getting it down to two decimals behind the dot/comma. As your distance measurements, especially when from periscope distance and bearing plots, will not be very accurate. But it works great to get a rough value for speed. Even more so when you take the average of more plots. Personally (in SH3) I used the multiples of 3m15s: 0, 3m15s, 6m30s, 9m45s, 13m. All easily marked on the cardinal corners of the stopwatch dial when the seconds arm passes there. Then just divide the measured length by 1, 2, 3 or 4 to get the speed in the unit interval.

2. The attack disk and RAOBF is the most confusing thing for me as of now, and still (I've only played 6 hours. I'll probably get it eventually.) I've been getting AOB with the protractor starting on my ship, drawing the first line to the target ship, then drawing the angle line straight off the target ship's bow center point and dragging the angle line out past my ship's path.
To get a 90° attack position I've then been using the protractor over the angle line again and drawing the angle line at a 90 to my ship, then plotting a course to that line so when I get there I'm really close to 90° from the target ship's side. If I'm not dead on a 90 by the time I get there I don't have to wait long until TDC zeros out (target lock and follow). I fire when TDC gyroangle and the other dial next to it zeros.
The times I've been successful in practicing it that's how I did it.
Is there an advantage to the way you explained to do it vs this way?

3. I don't know what the stadimeter is or where it is in the game to even consider using it. And as I said the attack disk and RAOBF (the dial thing in the periscope???) is waaaayyyyyyy beyond my understanding at this point. I am 100% clueless as to what either of those 3 things even do. I've watched videos on the attack disk and RAOBF and the videos confused me more because one person says this another person that posts a tutorial on it says that. Which is it???

You have to consider that this RAOBF was made in different kinds of modded GUIs (graphical user interfaces) With 4:3 displays and widescreen and zoom calculation peculiarities the modders took some (sometimes neccesary) liberties in how they made it look and what scale works best in theirs. So some required you to double the observed height of the target (early OLC Gui version for SH3) Later mods with RAOBF had customized periscope scales to avoid that.

Back in those OLC mod days I also came up with some neat tricks of using the RAOBF to do the speed calculation with a specially placed mark on the dial. Also another mark to help with calculating AOB and converting zoomed in sizes to zoomed out width and heights. Various mods had to change the position of those marks to make it work in their scales. So depending on which video you watched about them, you have to take into consideration which mod that is uses to explain it. What mod that applies to. And how their scales are arranged. That is likely the part that makes that confusing and contradicting to you.

The RAOBF is basically a multiplication and division calculator. Back in those days there were no digital calculators or apps on smart phones. They had such devices made up of weird looking stretched scales on sliding disks or straight rulers. It works by the math that multiplication and division is mere adding and subtracting of logarithms of numbers. I don't know your age, but maybe your dad/grandfather may have used them in his days at work or school. There are specific routines of lining up the marks to get them to work out the multiplication and division formulas. It can help to know how the formulas goes, to notice when you are likely making a mistake. But in the end you just have to memorize the sequence and follow it to the letter.

Stadimeter is the mechanism in the periscope that helps you measure the distance to a target by it's size, based on a known corresponding height. SH3 has the lines in the periscope with which you measure it's size. By before hand identifying the target in the recognition manual you link it to the corresponding (mast)height. The notepad shows you the result of the calculation. In SH4 you get 2 images superimposed over each other, simulating the view of the light being split through 2 prism mechanism by which the height angle can be measured. On the range readout dial you may see such logarithmic scales as mentioned earlier. (like this image on the tvre.org site: http://tvre.org/images/02_fot_03.jpg)
A few of the German Uboats had periscopes that used the split-prism mechanism but could also be rotated on it's side to measure and calculate the AOB. This is what the RAOBF tool is based on: image: http://tvre.org/images/02_fot_07.jpg (page with both images: http://tvre.org/en/acquiring-torpedo-firing-data)

I don't know how the SH5 periscope/stadimeter interface worked, I have not played that game in ages. Not even modded. So can't relate to that. But many mods for SH3 carried over/were ported to SH4 and later SH5 if they became popular enough and were useful. The RAOBF and attack disk very much so. So that added even more variations on how people made tutorials on how to use it. Different mods and different game versions. In the subsim download section in the SH3 section I believe you should find a pdf manual for the Attackdisk/angrifscheibe if you want to study it later. If not there, then look at the bottom link of my signature.