[Abraham]

I used to have a sig:
Dev team take the GPS off my boat.

It would be great to be able to fulfill the navigation task ourselves, just as we can fire the gun or the torpedoes.
And if we would rely upon the assistance of our navigator, it would be nice if he was sometimes making mistakes in his calculations, due to poor training, lack of experience or exhaustion.
And of course after a day underwater or a few days with overcast, there should be a growing margin of error around our indicated position...

[CCIP]

Given development time constraints - if we can't get a fully-instrumented manual navigation, than it could be a simple as...

-Removing the real-time-updated "GPS map"
-Adding an option to the Nav officer's menu which would be something like "Get nav fix", which would only be available in clear conditions, surfaced. If the conditions aren't right - then you're on your own to guess where you are based on your last known position.

By the way, SHIII's storms already cause some speed reductions and drifts (if you don't have the U-boat set to following a course). It could easily be improved.

[DeepSix]

[don1reed]

Wouldn't it be neat if the Devs created a split-image observation Kollmorgan scope that could be doubled as a sextant for celestial nav?

I guess, first thing, would be to have an accurate celestial canopy...something like 'StarryNight'.

...or, a mouse device that allowed you to click on the horizon and drag a degree protractor to the heavenly body that allowed one to make accurate angle measurements from the bridge.

Cheers,

[Montbrun]

Sounds good, but as an option only.

1) I'm a Licensed Professional Land Surveyor - I don't want to "work" when I'm supposed to be playing a game.
2) I also own my own business. As a business owner, not unlike the Captain of a U-Boat, you must delegate tasks. This is why I like to let the Weapons Officer compute firing solutions, and would like to see a "Take Position Sighting" command for the Navigator. The accuracy af this positional computation can be based on the Navigator's rank, experience, etc. I think that a +/- 2 km error would be about right. Later in the war, radio positional detection through triangulation and signal beams would reduce this error...

Just my 2 cents.

Montbrun

[DeepSix]

[Etienne]

[finchOU]

[DeepSix]

"As on surface ships, the exec played an important role in administration, being in charge of most paperwork, ordinary discipline, navigation, morale, and a hundred other day-to-day details. During attacks, he served as assistant approach officer. A good exec enabled his skipper to remain aloof from routine problems so that he could concentrate on the objective of the mission."

That's from Blair's Silent Victory (p. 108). There's no reason why the skip can't take over any of these things from time to time, but if he gets overly engrossed in one detail, he winds up ignoring many other details that are equally (or more) important.

As I said before, introducing some of the uncertainty of navigation into the game makes perfect sense, but I'd rather not do the work of it myself. Having that as an option would be ok, but GEEZ that's a lot of development time and money spent on an option.

I dunno. I just hope my boat will have an XO.

[SilentOtto]

I think including uncertainty in actual position due to bad weather is a must.
As many of you stated, sub sims tend to get too easy in a few weeks for advanced players (that's most of us!) so no doubt it would add tension to the gaming experience.

As for the navigation being manual or auto, I think the logical thing is to make you find star fixes (in game this translates to getting some good weather) or land fixes (go _carefully_ find some known island or coast).

We have talked about this one so much that it would be a big disappointment if its finally not included!

[MadMike]

The black out map mod in SH2 was great, had to rely on a chart near land masses. One thing that I really enjoyed in SH2 was the readout giving the longitude and latitude when the mouse was passed over your boat icon. Nothing like that in SH3.

Yours, Mike

[Sixpack]

Here is my vote for a realistic navigation mode !

[Fab]

[sober]

I hope this is incorporated as a toggle on or off anytime feature .

[Trout]

Fishou gave me an idea,

What if your crew got some sort of performance bonus (ie, they do their job quicker and better with less error), if you, as the captain, periodically do a specific task that captains don’t normally do on the boat.

So if the captain periodically (even just once per patrol) plots his own attack, does a navigational fix, dives the boat, whatever, his crew learn from his example and are motivated to do better?

In this way, none of the specific tasks become burdens for the captain as he still delegates them. But he has an incentive once in a while to do it himself.

Believe it or not there are guys out there who would like to really get hands on in these boats, much the same way that with Microsoft Flight Sim, you can actually USE all the controls in the cockpit if you want to (even just turning on the heat!)

If SH4 had a usable radio where you had to dial in frequencies and filter out noise, calculate atmospheric conditions ect., there would be guys who would do it. Same thing with navigation, or with using all the mechanical controls to dive and trim the boat (which IRL is quite challenging and would kinda be fun!)

Provided you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, nor do them all the time, don’t you think it would be cool to get hands on once in a while, especially if it improved crew performance?

So who wants to drive and fight a fully modeled submarine, raise yer hand!

Trout