Using ship guns

[Mongoose]

  Can someone meet in the training arena, and show me how to use ship guns?  I have tried following the directions, and I can't find how to zoom in on a shore target.

[RTHolmes]

this should help:

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,327498.0.html

the only correction I'll make is that the visual rangefinder (bottom of the yellow grads) is actually extremely accurate for sea battles. at <15k I can usually hit a carrier or cruiser with the 2nd or 3rd salvo if neither fleet is changing direction, the limitation is being able to see the waterline of the ship clearly.

[bustr]

Cruiser Battery Dope Sheet.

Cruiser circle reticle = 18Mil
Cruiser = 558m length
Cruiser @ 12,000 yds = 51Mil (aprox 3 reticle rings wide.)
Cruiser @ 16,000 yds = 38Mil (aprox 2 reticle rings wide.)
Cruiser @ 18,000 yds = 34Mil (aprox 1.8 reticle ring wide.)
Cruiser @ 20,000 yds = 34Mil (aprox 1.6 reticle ring wide.)

Knowing all of this you can visualy range within 3 salvo. I've engaged and hit CV groups from 24,000 yards using zoom only. You have to turn off horizon to see the CV group at that distance. The farthest I've sunk a CV and cruiser is 21,000 using visual only. Becasue our CV groups travel at fixed speeds and we know rounds take 1sec for every 1000yds aproximently. You have the timing for your lead and elevation adjustments.

Hitting a cruiser on the first round from a shore battery is a great way to rattle a ship borne base capture assault.

[RTHolmes]

pretty sure this is about hitting shore targets with 8" batteries in land mode, no circle reticle involved. same for ship vs ship

[Mongoose]

  Thanks for the info.  Someone has posted that you can zoom in using the map, and spot your fire that way.  I can't find how to do that.

[bustr]

Giving you an alternative method for a quick range estimate to narrow down your ranging ship to ship or shore to ship time. Been doing it this way since the reticle was a cross 10 years now. Not all snipers carry a range finder. But, they can determin range by the relationship of their reticle to common objects at or near the target.

It's like being told to hit the black on the paper one hill over and not given how far the target is. You know aprox the diameter of the black on your target. How many Mil is the black circle at that range is your next job to find out. You use your dope sheet or calc in your head.  Exact same thing with ranging estimates, the 8 inch batteries 18Mil ring on full zoom and your first salvo against another ship.

How many divisions of that ring your enemy cruiser is on full zoom is your first salvo ranging shot. How do you deterimin the range of your con in the AvA through your gunsight reticle since they have enemy icons turned off in there? How many Mil Dot wide is a man's chest or head at 600 yards? Exact same principel.

Sea Mode always locks my gun battery 90-180 away from the ship I'm shooting at for some reason and won't allow me to move the turret since Hitech made the change to the new mode system. I can wipe out towns from 32k using land mode. An 18Mil ring on full zoom is a fine range guide once you know how Mil works in this game. Just wish he would put a horizontal Mil hash in it or next to it for those fractions of a circle so I miss less than 100 feet. I've run into a few players who can get their Sea Mode to work and salvo 2 or 3 is closer than mine.

[RTHolmes]

just use sea mode, it has an extremely accurate builtin rangefinder.

[bustr]

So how do you range that very first sight picture on full zoom befor you toggle sea mode??

[RTHolmes]

hop in a gun, traverse the guns to the enemy ship (just roughly), enable sea mode, zoom all the way in, use the rangefinder to set the range.

adjust for lead, then fire.

adjust for lead, then fire.

...


simples!

[bustr]

Then why does mine lock itself off 90 degrees or so away from the enemy ships when I toggel it?? Is there some setup criterion so it locks on to the enemy fleet? Or does it do something like lock to your LoS allowing you tiny input changes and you have to toggel it on and off to make large heading changes as your fleet commander writes his name on the map?

Sea Mode actualy "aimbots" for you? You just enable it, place the Sea Mode reticle on the enemy ship, and your range is auto set to that ship?

By the way I made a cut and past error earlier. Ive been ranging off this dope sheet for so long I know how far the ships are by looking on zoom and drop rounds on them. My ranging shots often miss by only 100 yards at the start. I wish Hitech would include a hash ladder with the default reticle. Inside of 10k it's faster to use zoom for aiming if the enemy commander is taking evasive action.

Cruiser Battery Dope Sheet.

Cruiser circle reticle = 18Mil
Cruiser = 558m length
Cruiser @ 12,000 yds = 51Mil (aprox 3 reticle rings wide.)
Cruiser @ 16,000 yds = 38Mil (aprox 2 reticle rings wide.)
Cruiser @ 18,000 yds = 34Mil (aprox 1.8 reticle ring wide.)
Cruiser @ 19,000 yds = 32Mil (aprox 1.7 reticle ring wide.)
Cruiser @ 20,000 yds = 31Mil (aprox 1.6 reticle ring wide.)

[bustr]

Why hasen't anyone said this out right??

1. Locking my LoS 90 to 180 off is because you have to enter Sea Mode with your guns at their default postion when you first spawn into the guns position. You cannot be engaging a distant target with the turret turned off to the side. It will screw over the sycronization of the cross hair Mil grid to the yellow horizon lead grid. Front turrets facing forward on the 0 degree line of the ship or rear facing to the rear line of the ship first. Then enter Sea Mode and swing your guns back to your target. Clunky and time wasting when an enemy cruiser is ranging you......

2. You still have to range for your first impact. I beleive the grid is in Mil incraments so my Dope Sheet is very handy to shorten your fumbling time. At least my quick calc for the size of a shore battery at 18k was spot on offline from the cruiser. And the destruction of a ports parked CV and cruisers at 20k, my ranging only took 2 salvos. Dope Sheet, Dope Sheet, Dope Sheet. No difference in the ranging principels between hitting an unknown distance target on the other hill with a 7.62mm at 600 yards or ranging a cruiser or shore battery at 18,000 yards.

3. Engaging the shore battery is better suited to using Sea Mode and ranging to it. For my offline tesing just now I did a quicky aproximate Mil calc for 18,000 yards and got lucky. Probably should build a dope sheet for the battery and post it. We do let our newbies suffer rather than tell them exactly how to do many things in this game don't we.

4. Land mode begins working at 32-36k yards for the 8-inch battery(??), 22-24k for the 5-inch(??) When you are in range toggel land mode. Pull up your clipboard and place your mouse arrow directly on what you wish to hit on the map. Go into zoom view mode and drag that to the center of your zoomed view. Now use the "zoom keys for the map" only to adjust the size of your target. Them fire your gun battery. The reason for zooming in is to make the target, say the map room block large enough that you can click at a different spot on the yellow box and just around it to grid your salvos on the target.

So can I avoid doing a screen capture and counting pixels or having to perform a Mil calc and someone tell me if the Sea Mode sight grid numbers are in Mil? Or is that another one of the player closely gaurded secrets of success in this game? Or does anyone actualy know what units Hitech is representing with his Lead and Azmuth ladders?

[texasfighter]

I'm confused. So I take it that you have to enter sea mode when the gun turret is on the centerline? Also, I tried to set the yellow sight on the ship and then use the red sight to set the range. The shells were always off to one side. I had to offset the yellow sight to get the shells to start to drop where the ship was. But I still was not getting the range correct. However, I was not using the "Cruiser Battery Dope Sheet". Maybe that will help. What we newbies need, I believe, is a video of this.
Tex78

the yellow sight shows where the ship's director calculates the shells will land (it also moves up and down with range so you can get a rough distance by lining up the base of the sight with the target, at least at sea level. very useful for ship vs ship gunnery.)

the red sight is slewable, which is useful if you cant see the target while fully zoomed in (ie. from a high shore battery), and for leading moving targets. eg. if 2 fleets are running parallel, in sea mode line up the target on the yellow sight and fire. slew the red sight to where the shells land, then move the guns so the red sight is on the target. now the shells should land on your target.

[bustr]

I ran an M3 up onto a shore battery and parked it next to the back wall. Then in F3 mode I took screen shots.

M3 - 6.18m long or 20ft.

Shore Battery - 120ft x 40ft (120ft = 36.5m)

Shore Battery Dope Sheet

12,000 yds - 3.3Mil
16,000 yds - 2.4Mil
18,000 yds - 2.2Mil
19,000 yds - 2.1Mil
20,000 yds - 2.0Mil

You can fill out the rest of this Dope Sheet with this:

Angluar Mil Formula

D = Distance in meters
S = Size in centimeters - you can use meters in place of s\100.

Divide S by the result of dividing D by 1000 and you get a quicky Mil reference.



Just place your turret back at it's default position unzoomed. Toggle Sea Mode. I gave up worrying about the slight missalignment after 15 minutes of messing with it. I think by default the Mil cross hair hash ladder ascribes an (x, y) postion to the left side of the circle so you can use the numbers on the hash laddder framing it. Could be a bug.

The thing is to get your ranging salvos then rely on the yellow horizontal Mill ladder to tell you your bore line for zero point impact or to calc your lead for the relative motion of both targets. Frankly I'm faster ranging in free mode knowing the circle is 18Mil.

You have an auto range computer in green letters. Use it to micro adjust your range. The best thing Sea Mode did for me was to lock my battery steady to a known center in that yellow hash grid while allowing me to make micro tick elevation and lead adjustments over how loose free mode is. Some players will have a touch for raising the elevation until they beleive the yellow hash ladder is spot on. I've also seen lots of fishing around by players who don't have that magical touch. So I use my dope sheets for my first look at the enemy target to get within 100-200 with my opening salvo. Makes tuneing the yellow hash grid to the water line of my target simpler.

Offline you can target the parked ships at your CV's port along with the shore battery to practice.

Woops sorry wrong game. Our earth cruiser is only 185.4m long.

Cruiser Battery Dope Sheet.

Cruiser circle reticle = 18Mil
Cruiser = 185.4m length
Cruiser @ 12,000 yds = 17.0Mil
Cruiser @ 16,000 yds = 12.6Mil
Cruiser @ 18,000 yds = 11.3Mil
Cruiser @ 19,000 yds = 10.7Mil
Cruiser @ 20,000 yds = 10.0Mil

If the yellow hash grid is in Mil (10+5+0+5+10) . You have been given a ranging tool along with the grey Mil hash cross that follows your PoV.

You ever looked through a pair of WW2 naval "long" binoculars and wondered what the hash reticle was about?

[bustr]

Here is a complete Dope Table for CV, Cruiser, Destroyer and Shore Battery starting at 5000 yards. Anything closer should be like smacking a bull with a banjo. I did post earlier how to create the values for closer. Just turn yards into meters first.

Use the dark gray cross hairs with numbers which look to be in Mils to get your target's width then lookup on the table to the closest range and fire. The dark gray cross hair looks an awful lot like Hitech has you using NAVAL long binoculars with the ranging cross hairs as your default view mode when you toggel on Sea Mode.

In a pinch your aiming circle is 18Mil and you can Kentucky windage with it to determin range.


Ranging Dope

Yards---CV(Mil)---CR(Mil)---DS(Mil)---SB(Mil)
`5000-----46--------40.5------25--------8.0
`6000-----38--------34--------21--------6.6
`7000-----33--------29--------18--------5.7
`8000-----29--------25--------15.6------5.0
`9000-----25.5------22.5------14--------4.4
10000-----23--------20--------12.5------4.0
11000-----21--------18.4------11.4------3.6
12000-----19--------17--------10.4------3.3
13000-----17.6------15.5------`9.6------3.0
14000-----16.4------14.4------`9.0------2.8
15000-----15--------13.5------`8.3------2.6
16000-----14--------12.6------`7.8------2.4
17000-----13.5------12--------`7.3------2.3
18000-----13--------11--------`6.9------2.2
19000-----12--------10.6------`6.6------2.1
20000-----11.4------10--------`6.2------1.9

Carrier(CV) --- 210.0m
Cruiser(CR) --- 185.4m
Desroyer(DS)--- 114.8m
Shore Bat(SB)-- `36.5m

[RTHolmes]

I'm confused.

I'm not surprised ... I honestly have no idea what bustr is doing with those tables and all the rest of it


just ignore the red sight, its the yellow one which shows where the shells are going to land.