New user here with a few questions regarding subs and stuff

[Maiale]

I've only recently installed GWX2 (not 2.1 yet) and although I'm impressed and everything...my machine really isn't up to it and it struggles on occasion. I've been wanting to upgrade since last year but the money I earmark always finds itself to other more boring places ...I'm hoping towards christmas I finally will so I can see what SH4 is really like seeing it looks amazingly life-like and I can finally get out of my cabin while in port with GWX2.

Anyway..I'm a WW2 military buff as I'm sure most of you here are. I was more into planes and tanks before but SH3 made me hooked on the naval part of WW2. I absolutely love subs, ships and strangely, the sea, now.

My questions are (all questions which would be very hard to find using the search so please excuse me if they've already been asked somewhere):

1) Can I mix manual targetting with the TDC? Meaning can I start off inputing data into the TDC, for example range, then set the speed manually? How would this work? Do I have to press the tick afterwards?

2) I can't zero the bearing on the periscope/uzo when I want to "point and shoot". It says to click "x" but it doesn't work...any idea how to do this?

3) Are all the u-boat interiors based on real designs or just the more popular boats like the VII..or not even this? Or are they sort of real but not exactly...seems like they went to a lot of effort into the detailing of the interiors. I'm into mechanical stuff...would love to know what all the pipes and valves do and what the cylinders/tanks hold etc. Anyone know of a website which explains this?

4) Do merchants sometimes attack you by trying to ram you or is it just a coincidence they turn towards me sometimes at speed?

5) What are the major differences between GWX 2.0 and 2.1? And is it worth trying if you already have 2.0? Or is it more a case of a small improvement and really more for people with the orginal GWX to choose it over 2.0?

6) What is the actual weight of a submarine? I mean as how much it would weigh on shore/land? Is it the surfaced or submerged weight? I know it doesn't have much relevance to SH3 but this has been driving me mad...I just like to have an idea how big these things really are.

Sorry if these questions sound mundane...just things which I've been wondering a while.

[Jimbuna]

You ask a lot matey, but that aint a problem....welcome aboard

Seeing as I'm the first to respond I'll answer one of your questions and let others chip in with further answers to the others.

My pick is Question 6.....an easy one

Answer.....look here and all the submarine weights are there for you to see:

http://uboat.net/types/index.html

[Mush Martin]

Welcome aboard


1/ In shIII on the attack map you will see a switch for manual
vs automatic torpedo settings

(sorry atm I cant remember the two letters used but its a toggle switch, Jim?)

2/ could you redefine this question ? point and shoot is done with
speed set to zero.

[FIREWALL]

Welcome

Just to be of more help.

What are your computer specs.

If your not sure Goggle and d\l BELARC. It's a safe, easy and useful tool to tell you everything about your rig.We then might be able to help you with a workaround to run GWX a little smoother.

IIRC danlisa gave a tip about upping virtual memory as an example.

There's alot of sharp and knowledgeable members to gladly help you have more fun with your game.

Hope you post back with specs.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Mush Martin

Welcome aboard


1/ In shIII on the attack map you will see a switch for manual
vs automatic torpedo settings

(sorry atm I cant remember the two letters used but its a toggle switch, Jim?)

2/ could you redefine this question ? point and shoot is done with
speed set to zero.

Not sure there are two letters for that Martin....I've certainly never used them anyway.

I call it the TDC Input On/Off switch, which is activated by clicking on it.

Q 4....Merchants don't intentionally ram/attack you, unless of course your directly in their path whilst they're zig zagging....they will intentionally fire on you if they are armed (especially later in the war).

Q 5....Go to the GWX website/home page (below) for details, or read:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=135224

[Maiale]

I apologise if it seemed like a lot of questions...I didn't think they were worth a seperate thread each. Just stuff I was wondering about. At the moment my targetting is hit and miss...and I still haven't figured out how to mix manual targetting into the TDC...oh well...I'll find out eventually. Mush: Thanks, by asking your question you gave me the answer. Put the speed to zero...of course. I was just following what it said in the manual...to press the "x". Thanks for the link Jimbuna...2.1 definitely seems worth getting just by a few changes I like on there...

I'm surprised that the merchants don't ram...I was convinced they do by the actions of one merchant once. I'd lost the element of surprise on one merchant (denoted by 1 of my torps pre-detonating near to her) and so just surfaced and gave chase...well as I surfaced the merchant made a 90 degree turn towards me and increased speed...I was errm...shocked. So I ordered emergency reverse flank...after a while she went back to near enough her original heading and started zig-zagging...I was chasing but keeping my distance though. I never sunk her in the end... Oh well. The AI though in this sim gives the illusion that there's really a living crew in the ships...can't say that about many games/sims.

Firewall...thanks for trying to improve my gameplaying experience...but I wont bore you with my PC results. I practically know what the problem is...I only have 1 gig of memory...I know, it's pitiful. I should buy at least another gig seeing it's really cheap now...but I hate throwing money away on what is essentially an obselete rig. I'll struggle along...hopefully it wont be for long now...

edit: Oh and, thanks for the welcome

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!

6) No one knows exactly how much a ship weighs, because there is no way to weigh something that big. 'Displacement' is the term used, and it applies to the amount of water a ship pushes out of the way when it's floating in it.

Originally the term was 'tunnage', because an early sailing ship was measured by how many 'tuns' or barrels of wine it could carry. This lead to all kinds of fun when they were transitioning from sail to steam, because they continued to use that measurement even while new ones were coming into play.

Today there are several different measurements of tonnage, and they all have their uses. But first the weight itself has to be defined.

1) When the English-speaking world says 'ton' they refer to a measurement of 2000 English pounds (not the money, the weight).

2) When the rest of the world measures a 'ton' they use what is called a metric ton, or 'tonne métrique', or usually just 'tonne',which is exactly 1000 kilograms, or 2204.6226 pounds.

3) Neither of those is used for ships. Navies and Merchant Marine Services worldwide use what the British call the 'Long Ton', which is 2240 pounds - close to the metric ton, but not exactly the same. This is further divided into twenty 'hundredweights' of 112 pounds each; so the next time you see that term you'll know what it means.

Displacement: Anyone can read the famous fable of Archimedes and the bathtub. Whether the 'Eureka' story is true or not, Archimedes of Syrakousai did publish a two-volume work on bouyancy titled On Floating Bodies. It can be distilled down to what is known as Archimedes' Principle: The weight of a displaced fluid is proportional to the volume of the displaced fluid. Simply put (which is the only way I can understand it), if you can figure out the volume you can figure out the weight.

Shipbuilders realized early on that if you could measure the shape of the hull of the ship you could determine exactly how it would ride in the water, and how much water it would displace, and therefore the weight of the ship.

Design Displacement: This is measured by the designer on paper. An Iowa class battleship is called a '45,000-ton' battleship because that is the expected displacement when the ship is built.

Normal or Nominal Displacement: The actual displacement of the ship as built with fuel and crew aboard. For an Iowa this is about 48,000 tons.

Full-Load Displacement: The displacement of the ship, as it says, fully loaded with fuel, crew, water, provisions, ammunition and everything else you need. For an Iowa this is about 57,000 tons.

Wartime Emergency Displacement: The displacement with the additional crew and provisions for them needed for combat. For an Iowa this is about 60,000 tons.

Gross Rated Tonnage: A merchant ship has to have a certified official displacement that the shipping company uses for registration with the government. This varies for every ship depending on the nation doing the registering. Sometimes you will find a mention of British Rated Tonnage. I have seen one ship listed as having as many as three different GRTs.

Deadweight Tonnage: This is the internal volume (remember 'tuns'?) of the ship, and lists how much cargo it can carry. Sometimes U-boat.net will list a sunk merchant of 2000 tons GRT as carrying a cargo weighing 6000 tons when it was sunk. Also the actual amount it displaces will vary from day to day depending on how many men are aboard, how much food they ate that day, how much they flushed over the side and whether the guns were fired.

So, the bottom line is that the official surfaced and submerged displacements of a submarine are nice suggestions of the approximate size, but don't have much to do with what it actually would weigh on a scale. A surface ship might displace 5000 tons of water, but it had better weigh a lot less than that or it won't be a surface ship for long.

The submerged u-boat seems to be equal to the water it displaces, but it only gets that way by taking on water, so the weight of the steel itself is counterbalanced by the air inside.

The correct answer is that the engineer's guess is better than yours or mine, but even they use the term displacement because they don't pretend to know the exact weight.

[Effigy]

Originally Posted by Maiale

3) Are all the u-boat interiors based on real designs or just the more popular boats like the VII..or not even this? Or are they sort of real but not exactly...seems like they went to a lot of effort into the detailing of the interiors. I'm into mechanical stuff...would love to know what all the pipes and valves do and what the cylinders/tanks hold etc. Anyone know of a website which explains this?

While not a mechanical addition, I always thought it was a really cool in SHIII that the interior aft of the ship had hanging salami, bananas, a leg of lamb (??) and other food stuff hanging from the ceiling, lmao. Was a very fun touch.

[Maiale]

Wow...thanks Sailor Steve. I like to read when I can and like to find out about many things...so it's not everyday I learn something new...but I definitely have to say I learnt something new (and interesting) today. Actually this is something which I was wondering about way back when I was a kid and playing with the trump cards (remember those?). I had a set with naval ships and remember the US Carrier being top trump and always wondering how much the tonnage on the ships would compare to something on land...your post has enlightened me. Thanks! I'm actually going to print it out...it's cleared up a lot of mysteries.

Effigy: I agree...only thing they left out though was a live goat in the captain's sleeping quarters.

[Sailor Steve]

I've spent a lot of years working on my own tabletop ship game (never finished) so I've read a lot about ship design - way too much for my own good.:rotfl: