Yet another TDC question - what do these show?

[heartc]

My answer is for people playing w/o map contact updates.

[fullmetaledges]

your more of a purist than I

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by heartc

My answer is for people playing w/o map contact updates.

Thanks - I don't play with map updates on and I don't really use the attack map anyway since you don't seem to be able to mark on it (at least that was true in SH3 - can you mark on it in SH4?).

Yes - I do have the PK activated - I just cropped the picture to blow it up and the red light got cut off. so I guess you just have to guesstimate the 12 o'clock position on the lower dial and check it against your observed bearing to target? Too bad it isn't a bit more easily readable, but at least now I know what to look for.

My biggest problem appears to be speed, especially with the higher speed warships and tankers - spreads help a little but I've still been missing like crazy with any target going more than about 10 knots, even when I had what seemed to be solid speed estimates using the 3-minute method. Also, this TDC seems to require an entirely new method of approach. With the German TDC, most times I could set up my firing solution in advance, entering all the info into the TDC based on what the data would be when I reached my pre-chosen firing position - then, I just fired as soon as my target reached my chosen position. Normally, once I had my solution set up, all I had to do was wait till my target reached (say) 345 degree bearing and then fire, which let me keep my periscope usage to an absolute minimum during the last part of the attack run.

I assume that once you get used to it this new TDC/PK will become just as easy to use - just hope they manage to fix the problems with it by the time I get out of sub school

[Nightmare]

You've got the arrows right as far as the top one is impact angle and the lower one is torpedo gyro angle. The one that you are looking for to check the solution is the inner ring on the own ship dial (the bottom one). If you pop the scope up and the inner dial reads 40 and the target is roughly on 40 degrees on the scope, you know you’ve got a fairly accurate solution.

The great thing about the US TDC over the German one was that it continually updated the torpedo gyro angles. This means that the time it takes for the outer doors to open and for the tube to fire won’t throw off your solution. You also don’t even need the scope raised or pointed at the target to fire either as long as the PK is activated.

If your initial speed, range, and AOB are accurate and the target doesn’t change course or speed, you only have to pop the scope up to confirm the bearing with the PK.

[panthercules]

Is there a key command/toggle that will automatically pull all the TDC consoles out and put them away all at once, or do you have to keep clicking the tab on each one to display them one at a time? I hope there is, or that someone could mod it to make that happen - I like having these things accessible from the periscope/TBT screens, but the tab-clicking thing is pretty cumbersome. I hope they can be resized/moved a little so they don't overlap the field of view, and the recognition manual resized/shrunk some as well - the current set up feels very cluttered for some reason.

I'm still surprised there wasn't some sort of marker/indicator at the 12 o'clock point on that lower dial, to make it easier to read the bearing to target - maybe the dial was so big IRL that this wasn't a problem, but it is kinda tough on my monitor screen.