Back in the water!

[MarkShot]

Assuming fully extended ... it depends on your speed. It could take up to 6 minutes or 3 LOB.

[jomni]

Hi.  I installed Dangerous waters on Steam.  My problem is that the menus are flickering.  How do I fix this?
(OS Windows 7 64 bit, Graphics card Nvidia GTX460)

Update:  Fixed.  Turning-off Antialiasing and Filtering fixed it.

[MarkShot]

Cool another bubble head!

I have to try out my tracker drop/assign trick and see if it makes TMA easier.  I think it will, since when you only have a few lines its hard to separate out the garbage.  Of course, it would be better to have a TRACKER-QUIET on/off switch in the SONAR Station.  Since if you are making a turn when you have multiple contacts on the same bearing, it may be hard to reset the tracker.  A prime example of that is when you just launched a torpedo down that same bearing.

[MarkShot]

I just tested my technique of discarding DW's TA tracker during a leg turn and I think it is ready for prime time.

I have a faint NB contact which you probably cannot even see here without monitor adjustments.  But you can see I have a tracker assigned and an SNR (signal to noise ratio) of 1.



I order up 12KTS to improve the solution.



The first leg of the solution has been built.



The first leg of the solution is complete.  I drop the tracker from the SONAR NB Station.  I order up a 135 degree zig, the second leg of the solution.



My course has come around, and as you can see from the top waterfall display the TA has yet to straighten out.  When it does, I will assign a tracker again and grab about 4 LOBs.



About 30 minutes have gone by since I started this evolution.  We are at the TMA Station, you will notice a very clean dot stack and solution.  This may not affect accuracy here, but it could affect accuracy with a faint track of sub which you are trying to nail down in 15 minutes with just two legs.



Here you see my solution marked versus the actual contact.  I achieved a 100% accuracy in course and speed with a 95% accuracy in range.  This was done in 30 minutes on a contact 35NM away.



Now, it is off to go practice some random sub duels to improve my Fire Control engagement tactics!

[MarkShot]

My own playground (custom dynamic mission) for SC & DW.

You can take out any of the playable subs.  Within 900 SQNM is randomly generated/located 4 merchants (so you cannot be sure of what you got at a distance and they also tend to obscure and distract at closer range) and 1 Red Force sub which is one of the playables in the game.

Then, it is find Red Force and kill him before he does the same to you.  A simple but effective training area.

[MarkShot]

Well, I just had an interesting dual with an Akula.

After a few merchant contacts, I finally picked it up.

I kept trying to do TMA on it, but all the while it was changing speed and course.  No doubt trying to do the same on me.

It's interesting ... I think the choice of weapons may be somewhat randomized in LWAMI.  Instead of trying to stand off, it closed.  Despite my attempts at TMA, I should have paid more attention to that, since I could see on the ITA (30 minute) waterfall display that the bearing rate was accelerating ... a good indication that it was close and getting closer.

It closed and fire a Skhval (200KTS straight run torpedo with a max range of 6NM and a magnetic detonater).  On the replay, it looked to me like it had gotten off a good shot.  I am not sure why I survived ... perhaps my depth of 2,000' saved me.

There was some more running and exchanges with SUBROCs and torpedos.

Lessons learned:

(1)  As soon as you think you have beaten the torpedo, you should slow and attempt to reacquire the target.  How do you know you have beaten the torpedo?  You have pinging that rapidly changes bearing astern ... typically meaning that the seeker went active, but was too far away to detect you.  Or you have pinging which comes and goes at a very long interval and relatively weak ... this is a torpedo running in a circular pattern.  If you heard it once astern and it didn't home, it is not going to.

(2)  A spread is useful of 3 active torpedos.  Given how close your target will be I would say to take a snapshot on the bearing with a spread of 10-15 degrees.

(3)  Firing a passive torpedo seemed useless.  Perhaps, a sub is just too quiet even at flank compared to a surface combatant.

(4)  With more experience, I think some good range estimates will come by inference.  Like:  Is there a SPHERE contact?  Do you have it on BB or only NB?  If on NB, how many of the five harmonics modeled are you picking up?  Bearing rate?

Things to try:

I think at the point you are ready to shoot at an advanced sub, you are going to give away your position.  It's going to be fairly close (2-5NM).  Generally, it is not going to be moving too fast.  So, at that range, target speed does not matter ... it's effectively a static target.

Since you are about to announce your presence, I think it is time to go active right before shooting.  That should permit an accurate range which should allow you to set the RTE beyond the first kick out of CMs.  The only negative I can think regarding this approach is if you have helos or surface combatants hunting you as well.  This might help bring them to you when they were originally unaware of your presence.  Of course, realistic operational doctrine would probably say it would be bad to a sub and ASW assets working the same sector, since the chance of fracticide it great.  (Of course, there is always the chance that the sub you are engaged with will come to PD and send a radio message reporting its contact.  So, that could happen anyway.)

Well, I am off watch for the rest of today, I think.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Good read.  I never really got comfortable with the TMA.  It seems reasonably straightforward when you're trying to get a solution on something with a constant speed and bearing, but once they started turning on me, my solution went to feces and then I got sent to the bottom.

[Nefaro]

I see what you said about the effectiveness of the TSAMs.  Blowing off all VLS tubes and nothing gets through.  Sort of makes it useless that I can detect and establish the position of a SAG at 50NM when my standoff weapon is such a let down.

Also, I have been watching the LWAMI AI evade torpedo attacks.  It is awfully effective.  It looks to me that an accurately targeted single torp doesn't have good odds unless wire guided.  As it steers into the active CM and by the time it blows through the target has side stepped.  I need to try some new stuff.

(a)  A spread of two active torps ... maybe with a mile between them.  I used to for SC know the width of the seeker cone.  Do you have any idea?

(b)  An active torp followed by a passive maybe be about a two minutes.  The first one will get duped, but the second follow the noise.  (I haven't noticed LWAMI firing off passive decoys.  I thought stock DW would fire one of each.  Actually, myself I've been loading up on active CMs.)

I stopped loading anti-ship missiles due to the crazy air defense modelling.  If it's a big boat with a big capacity then I'll load two of them for finishing off an individual warship that's dead in the water (although even the crippled ones can still have crazy anti-air capability) or to kill a merchant from a long distance when I don't want to take the time to close for a halfway decent torpedo shot.  Of course, if you have an LA-class boat, you get 'freebies' in your VLS tubes anyway, so loading lots is always good unless you have a land attack mission. 

a)  I think all the seeker cones are still 60 degrees wide.   Or maybe it was 90?  Damn.. I don't remember either.  :-\ 

b)  I get about a 2-to-1 ratio of Active to Passive decoys.  I don't ever recall the AI firing a torpedo on the Passive Homing option unless, perhaps, it was forced to when firing one of those Russian Wake-Homer monsters that have no Active sonar on them.   Even when you use a wake homer, the sucker often passes through the target's wake before turning back around to attack. It sometimes will pass through the wake more than once before going after it's surface target.   Since wake homers won't work worth a damn against a sub, you don't have to worry about Passive homing much - unless LWAMI has the AI toss a Passive one at you on occasion.  I don't recall them adding that, though. 

It has seemed as if a passive decoy will make the AI think that it's you.. like the decoy is a sub 'simulator' type decoy.  Pretty sure I've seen it fire on a Passive decoy before, but I can't guarantee those weren't just old shots finally arriving at where I used to be. *shrug*  But for that reason, I still pop a passive off a short time after dropping an active - once things settle down and that passive decoy is still going it may just be drawing the AI's attention (after it has already fired on you) as if that's where it thinks you're at.  Should be fairly easy to test that out in a controlled scenario.

[Nefaro]

Good read.  I never really got comfortable with the TMA.  It seems reasonably straightforward when you're trying to get a solution on something with a constant speed and bearing, but once they started turning on me, my solution went to feces and then I got sent to the bottom.

I tended to just anchor the last BOL plot, with it's corresponding ruler mark, and turn from there then rinse & repeat until it's course straightened.  I suppose just dropping the tracker and starting fresh would be fine ..... IF you could make a mark on the TMA screen where the last straight-running position was (before it turned) so that you could start fresh from that mark (and the appropriate ruler mark).  So I just tend to deal with the terrible mess of lines and try to keep it plotted to the small vicinity I had it narrowed the target's location to before turning.  Rt-clicking on the TMA display (IIRC) and selecting a shorter displayed time scale cleans up the older ones and helps quite a bit.

The problem with all the TMA work is that it requires a lot of attention when the fit hits the shan, and I often prefer to do other stuff manually, too, so my TMA plots can get quite behind.   Too bad there was no active pause for you to catch up, when playing multiple stations.  >:(

[MarkShot]

Are you talking about terminal TMA?

DEMON gives you the new speed and if the prior solution is correct, then obviously there must be continuity of the track. But now for the tough question ... How do you know if the contact turned left or right?

[Nefaro]

Are you talking about terminal TMA?

DEMON gives you the new speed and if the prior solution is correct, then obviously there must be continuity of the track. But now for the tough question ... How do you know if the contact turned left or right?

The thing is.. you don't.  But what I was trying to say about keeping the last good position on the TMA is this:  If you drop a track, there's no way to keep the last known 'good' spot which helps cut down the time it takes to start up a new track due to having a decent estimation of where it was just a few minutes ago.  The TMA window just flies off from where it was previously focused when you change tracks.. even when switching between your current active trackers it will place the window away from where you had it focused last time you used it, or for each tracker.  That always annoyed the piss out of me having to zoom out, find the plot, move the view, zoom back in, every time.  Wish it saved that stuff.  What this does, when you drop a tracker is randomly shoot your TMA view off onto a different part of the map the next time you bring it up again. 

So as opposed to starting fresh, I just find it a bit helpful knowing generally where to start, and by the time all the AI's turning is done (and no tracker updates by you during that time), the displayed location of your last solution will show the target way off ahead of where it actually is.  I like to keep an estimated location around it's turn radius in that last spot, while it's turning, even if it's not exact.   Am I making sense?  ;D

[MarkShot]

I've been wondering about the utility of manual solutions as place holders in DW. Unlike drawing tools they will display in the Fire Control Station.

[Nefaro]

I've been wondering about the utility of manual solutions as place holders in DW. Unlike drawing tools they will display in the Fire Control Station.

I'm always having to quick figure up my own manual solutions for estimating where the target will go once it detects my first torpedo.  Lotsa guesstimation, but I wish there were more tools for use on both the targeting screen and the TMA plotter.  :-[   The stock "enter & fire" solution in the game is okay for a first sneak attack but once the dancing starts, you gotta go manual and there just aren't tools to do so in the game (as there have been in the last few Silent Hunter games which is a huge plus for that series IMO).

[MarkShot]

There was this utility MOBO, a plotting board, with transparency that be overlaid on a window. So, if you play DW in a window that might work.

[MarkShot]

SH3 had cool plotting tools. However, the convoys didn't zig-zag or change course at sun down like AOD. Also, I liked how freighters could halt and accelerate faster than my car. Or did I mention the time I raised my scope in the middle of 5 escorts, and they shot each other to sh*t shooting at me.

:)