Hiding the UBoat on the Chart...

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by Dantenoc

As to not seeing your boat in relation to the enemy boats when zoomed in... What enemy boats? The God's eye view should be turned off when you play hardcore !!!

What enemy boats? The enemy boats that I have detected. I play with GW's normal settings (as far as I remember) so the enemy boats are not shown on the map (except I do still get some contact reports for convoys reported at some distance, but they don't move/update on the map) - but I do make marks on the map myself when I spot the enemy ships (visually or by hydrophones, although the latter are obviously just my best guess at distance based on my assessment of the strength of the screw noises so they have a large margin of error), and I like to be able to plot out the distances and such between my boat and the enemy ships I've spotted and am tracking through observations.

I realize that I can just pick any random spot on the map, pretend (for plotting purposes) that my boat is heading due north, and use the bearing circle pull down tool that always points "0" to the north to plot some relative bearings and distances (actually, it's the first time I've found a use for that bearing pull-down, which is kinda cool). In fact, I tried that last night when I stumbled onto a task force with an escort carrier (my first carrier sighting since day 1). I think it worked pretty well too, better than I expected, but I didn't get a chance to put it to a real test as I got detected by one of the destroyers and chased under before I could get into a good firing position (I went ahead and tried a long shot with a couple of T3s but to no apparent avail).

I think this is a pretty cool way of turning SH3 into a "navigator simulator" and not just a "captain simulator", and I think that's a pretty cool addition to the game play. I liked playing around as navigator during my course setting phases, having to make a decision about whether to risk surfacing for a position check at noon and risk being spotted by aircraft (which raised a question - could they do a position check through the periscope or did they have to surface?), and seeing how far off course I was from my estimated position when it came time to surface after dark to charge batteries, etc. And I found myself actually looking forward to a run of several days in a row of stormy weather to see what that would do to my course/position plotting. And I think it would be a good challenge to see if I could intercept a convoy spotted in a certain position on the map a grid or two away when I wasn't really sure where my own boat was.

I'm just not sure if I'm up for trying to be the navigator during the last phase of the attack approach when I need to focus most of my attention on being the captain, so I was thinking I might like it better if this could be flipped so that the navigator could take over and keep track of where we were at those high-zoom levels (simulated by my sub appearing on the map at those close-in levels) while masking my sub's appearance in the further-put zoom levels where I would be plotting intercept course on distant contact reports or setting course to my patrol zones, etc. If I have enough self-discipline to keep from using ctrl+click to locate my boat when I'm not "supposed to" using this method (and I do), I think I'd have enough self-discipline to avoid using my boat's appearance on the zoomed-in map levels to defeat the purpose of it not being visible on the zoomed-out levels.

I may give a try to flipping this around and see if I can make it work - thanks for the info and the inspiration - this is a really neat concept - it amazes me that folks are still coming up with such cool new stuff so long after the game's debut. Keep up the good work