You are correct, a Computer Screen can not replicate reality.
That is why you do not have to deal with random drops of water on your lens, and why you do not have to look at your target through a tiny eyepiece.
Also your Monitor will not vibrate if your sub is moving, which the real periscopes did if you moved too fast.
The real periscopes also were quite dark since the periscope head did not let much light in.

I bet any submarine commander in WW2 would have killed to be able to see targets as clearly as you are able to on your PC Monitor :D

There are reasons why submarines where encouraged to get as close as possible to their targets, and also why they preferred surface attacks at night.

Being able to see and identify your target is one of those reasons.

+1
A simply perfect answer :salute:

All very cavalier; but does anyone know the min, median, mean, max and std deviation for identification range of a typical Kriegsmarine sub?

Thas what I'm talkin' bout.

Assuming a target with a reasonably high profile . . . 15 or 20 meters . . . what is the max possible (perfect clear weather 2 meter high observation point) sighting range for that? 15 or 16km?

Now the identification range should/would probably be broken into a couple components: (a) overall identification of ship type; (b) probable filters on nationality based on discernible ship silhouette features; (c) highly probable filters based on ship silhouette; (d) positive identifiers like the flag, or other markers.

I realize that players of these subsims like to bask in the glory of "realism," but if the design of the game did not take factors like the above into consideration then the effect of "realism" factors like imposing some representation of the actual historical magnification values on an optic will not (necessarily) be to create outcomes in play which closely resemble historical outcomes.

You can dismiss my points all you want, I'm not here to convince or cajole; just trying to provoke thought. The goal of these sims after all is to achieve the perfect balance between playability and realism, in order to convey the experience of being the skipper.

Two functional questions about the mod suite:

1. The "reserve torpedoes." With a bit of googlefu I learned that, apparently this functionality did not exist for the beginning of the campaign in the vanilla game, but I see that my Type VIIB has one for the front compartment and two for the back. On the night of 1 Sep 1939 lurking in Danzig Harbor (and after sinking ~10k tons so a bit depleted on torps) I surfaced, stopped and drag-n-dropped the front compartment reserve into an empty inside reserve slot. I time-compressed for a good while, and the torp is still in the external reserve slot and says "99% unloaded." More TC = nope still not inside the sub.

Any suggestions or clarifications on that?

2. The navigator getting fixes with Real Navigation: his accuracy seems pretty variable! In one instance, I parked the sub right at the end of a pier (in Danzig) which I could identify by the map and asked him to do a dead reckoning and he estimated we were somewhere in the northern suburbs of Warsaw! :)

Obviously, errors are to be expected and particularly for less capable navigators, but . . . is this WAD? Any tips? Things I can do to make his job easier? Does he get better with (even more) age? I assume I can replace most or all of my officers later in the campaign, and maybe this guy is both a Dinosaur and nearly extinct?

Celestial fix will give you much better result. Dead reckoning error is based on distance between fixes, so if you didn't ask navigator for a fix for some time, his error will grow (by default, up to 15% of distance travelled since last fix - you can change this in OFEV). Unfortunately he lacks common sense to realize that with all that sea around he can't possibly be in Warsaw.

Interesting . . . I must say, he doesn't seem very good at his job. I spent some time lurking in daylight about 15 or 18 km away from the northern promontory in Danzig Bay. I had come to a halt sometime after my watch crew identified the coastal battery and I did some observations on the bearings to the right-hand and left-hand edges of the visible land. I then (with the boat at full stop and motionless) asked the navigator to get a fix with celestial. His estimate was just simply BAD, and literally impossible given the measures I was observing.

I've noticed him doing this type of thing at least a half-dozen times.

In contrast, after departing Memel, his initial fix (in daylight at stop after Harbor Pilot dropped us off) for the boat wasn't too bad. Just eyeballing it, it seemed a bit off (he seems to want a Mediterranean vacation cause he does seem to error in the southward direction :)), but only a minute or less (~<500m). Plotting a course toward Danzig at like 235 or 245 and then sticking to that course at a slow or 1/3 speed . . . his estimates also seemed pretty good. But once I got into the Bay, and started alternating between various courses, depth settings, forward motion, backward motion, etc. his estimates seemed to get worse.

It is not a really big deal in terms of gameplay. If the boat is close enough to land to get a fix on two reasonable locations then one can always do at least as well if not better than the navigator algorithm, so him being in error during harbor lurking operations isn't a big deal.

Mainly I was just curious how it works (the navigator location-fixing algorithm) and if the somewhat variable degree of error is common. Also, I assume it is best to correct the estimates when it is obvious?

Celestial: simply a error between 0 and set maximum (maximum error can be set in OFEV) applied to real position. Dead reckoning: an error based on distance between fixes, so more time passes between fixes, bigger the maximum error.

There is no way to program navigator taking a fix on land, so near the coast you're better off calculating position yourself.

Hi Vecko
I do not understand why there needs to be a time lag in loading external torpedoes.
My torpedo man is telling me I have to wait another day and so many hours before I can order moving external torpedoes again.
https://i.postimg.cc/T1GBwkDh/captur...019-134734.jpg

I have completed one external loading the previous night and I want to do the same again the following night.

Peter

Should I reduce it to 12h or so? Crew need some rest after such complicated and dangerous task like external torpedo transfer after all...:hmm2:

Hi Vecko
Having to wait over 2 days before reloading again seems a bit excessive.
I think your 12 hour proposal would be better for the game.
That would still give the player time to reload and chase down a slow moving convoy.

Peter

10-12 hours will be then, from the next update of course...:yep:

Still in the very early days of the war. Finally managed to get my external torp loading. I had not assigned the skill promotion to the torpedo officer!

One weird thing: I've now received several uncoded messages from HQ basically saying: 'we are now at war with England. We will be sticking to the so-called "Prize Rules" of commerce raiding.'

I'm guessing this was what was actually communicated in the early days of the war, but then unrestricted was announced a bit later?

Sept 3 1939. Finished the objectives for the first Baltic mission and went to Kiel. Refitted and continued without finishing the patrol. Took the Harbor pilot out the canal to the Atlantic. Headed straight for Grimsby.

Got about 2/3 of the way there and my boat became "frozen" in place. No matter what speed I set it to, actual speed is 00 knots.

Any idea what this is?

I'm increasingly feeling like: even with all the fixes from TWoS, this game is a lost cause.

It was a lot of back and forth policy changing in the early part of the war. Gameplay wise, you don't have to care about prize rules or maritime law, only thing you will be punished for is attacking neutral or friendly ships. These instructions (which afaik are real messages sent to uboats at this time) are for immersion and roleplaying purposes only.

The strange thing with my ship frozen in place that I reported: I figured it was because I had gone "too far" outside the radius of the first mission in the campaign, the Baltic Operations mission in Danzig Bay. I had made it to Kiel by about 2 Sept (after having "completed" the objectives in the Danzig Bay mission), and had refitted but not "End Patrol." I had then proceeded through Kiel Canal (by pilot) and toward Grimsby. It was on that route that I dove (because my watchmen spotted something) and after trying running deep for a while (and suffering the zero speed bug) I also tried Periscope depth and surfaced, and had the same bug. Reloading the last save didn't fix it.

So, in this case, I had made it to within a few hundred kilometer of English coast by about 4 Sept, and BEFORE the mission check mark for the "Eastern Coast of Britain" missions showed up on the map.

I backed up and tried a different route. I Ended Patrol, and I was shocked to learn that my boat spent a MONTH! in Kiel!? Wat!?

So I tried yet a different tact: I waited till afternoon of 4 Sept bobbing in Kiel harbor until I saw that the "Eastern Coast . . ." mission widget has been rendered. I wasnt' able to ask for mission (apparently despite the marvels of radio technology and the Kriegsmarines penchant for chatting like school girls on the damned things one has to actually be in a PORT to "ask for a mission!?!" :)). Anyway, in frustration at the obscure hoops the game seems to present to the player, I decided to just chance it, and head out on my own without Ending Patrol.

So I head north past the Danish archipelago and through Skaggerak. Now it is early morning 8 Sept 1939 and I'm outside Aberdeen harbor prowling in for a kill . . . IF there are any British or Oz ships in the port.

I'm guessing that: these arbitrary limits on finishing/taking on missions are a result of lazy programming by Ubisoft and not something easily worked around *sigh*