Why do bombs cause huge floatation damage in WitP?

[Akos Gergely]

First of all let me express that I like this game very much and I don't want to be a whiner on this, but among other things the damage formula is quite interesting.

I realize also that it is not a tactical level game, but it is plain odd ( to sayy the least) when large ships take extreme amount of floatation damage from simply AP bomb hits. I had one of my Northampton class CAs hit by two bombs in one of the CV battles and it received about 30 or 40% of floatation damage from these two hits - despite my mods already lowered bomb explosion effects!

Also sometimes my CVs are sung by bombs only whereas this was simply impossible IRL. Just look at the USS Yorktown at the battle of Midway: it got there after sustaining a hit at the Coral Sea which wasn't really repaired and after that it suffered 3 more hits, one of them was a critical one into the funnel but still the ship did not receive any kind of float damage.

Even if we look at the Jap CVs at Midway - where they got a rough handling - even they had to be sunk by torpedoes from their escorts despite massive fire and structural damage - and no floatation at all.

And it is important to note that at the battle of the Philippine Sea in the american counterstrike the only real damage to the Jap carriers were done by USS San Jacinto's VT squad.

So is there a chance to correct this in any future patches?

[YankeeAirRat]

I believe that the designers are simulating near misses and those rounds that will penatrate all the way down into the engineering spaces, that will cause seams, welds, and hull plates to seperate and open a series leaks through out the ship. It doesn't seem that realistic, but I believe it made the math easier to compute after each attack.

[Akos Gergely]

Well to my understanding near misses are simulated by hits on the armour belt but for any instance, near misses by AP bombs! should not cause direct flooding on the magnitude of a torpedo hit...

[AmiralLaurent]

I don't think FLT damage due to bombs is excessive in the game. If it is not a piercing hit, creating a hole where water will get trough, the FLT damage may represent the water poured into the ship by assisting escorts to stop the fires due to the bombs.

Anyway I have seen CVs take 8 250kg bombs (all penetrating) and the US CV was still at 30 FLT.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

First of all let me express that I like this game very much and I don't want to be a whiner on this, but among other things the damage formula is quite interesting.

I realize also that it is not a tactical level game, but it is plain odd ( to sayy the least) when large ships take extreme amount of floatation damage from simply AP bomb hits. I had one of my Northampton class CAs hit by two bombs in one of the CV battles and it received about 30 or 40% of floatation damage from these two hits - despite my mods already lowered bomb explosion effects!

Also sometimes my CVs are sung by bombs only whereas this was simply impossible IRL. Just look at the USS Yorktown at the battle of Midway: it got there after sustaining a hit at the Coral Sea which wasn't really repaired and after that it suffered 3 more hits, one of them was a critical one into the funnel but still the ship did not receive any kind of float damage.

Even if we look at the Jap CVs at Midway - where they got a rough handling - even they had to be sunk by torpedoes from their escorts despite massive fire and structural damage - and no floatation at all.

And it is important to note that at the battle of the Philippine Sea in the american counterstrike the only real damage to the Jap carriers were done by USS San Jacinto's VT squad.

So is there a chance to correct this in any future patches?

This is something for "Nik"... [;)]

Long long long time ago in time of UV he (and we all) determined that bombs are in fact aerial torpedoes... this was rectified a bit in WitP (and in UV in patching process) but never fixed completely...

BTW, I wonder if those old threads can be found...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Akos Gergely]

Sorry Amiral, but even after 8 bomb hits the floatation should be much less the 10 points, especially on a CV. If it would be a 1000 ton 4 stacker destroyer i would say it is OK, but not on a 20kton or even 30kton+ ships, especially not on ones which were converted from battlecruiser hulls....

"If it is not a piercing hit, creating a hole where water will get trough, the FLT damage may represent the water poured into the ship by assisting escorts to stop the fires due to the bombs." Yes that is partly true, but firefighting water is absolutely controlled volume, no sane DC officer would put in so much water so as to endanger the ship's buoyancy. From near misses the flooding should be much-much less. A warship is not a barge with a single thin outer shell, it is pretty much minutely subdivided and most larger ships have some kind of elaborate torpedo protection as well. 

[wdolson]

I have found that the floatation damage to a ship depends a lot on its size. Merchant ships can get severely mauled from bombs, where battleships and carriers don't take much flotation damage from bombs alone. At Midway, I believe the Japanese carriers and the Yorktown both had some flotation damage from bomb hits. In game terms it was probably only 10-20, but they did take some flotation damage. Near misses and secondary explosions on the ship can cause plates to pop under the waterline.

At Pearl Harbor the Arizona was sunk from a single bomb that set off a magazine and blew the bottom out of the ship. That is an extreme example, but bombs can cause flotation damage.

Bill

[Halsey]

Army Air Corps Gen Billy Mitchel proved that bombs do flotation damage.[;)]

[Akos Gergely]

Sorry, but both of you are somewhat off in this regard. First of all it is positively confirmed that at Midway none of the sunk carriers received any mentionable flood damage, including Akagi which suffered a near miss hit at her rudders! Even Yorktown and Soryu, both of which were hit in their machinery spaces have not received any mentionable amount of flooding.

What Billy Mitchell proved was that his extremely slow bombers can sink a battleship devoid of any means of protection - including open watertight doors- after many many attempts...in fact there is a very good article in Warship International on this very issue. Also pls note that they used HE bombs with large burster charges, while in WitP the japs use mainly the 250 kg AP bombs which had only a few 10 pounds of bursters....hardly enough to crack a larger ship's side.

[BlackVoid]

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

Sorry, but both of you are somewhat off in this regard. First of all it is positively confirmed that at Midway none of the sunk carriers received any mentionable flood damage, including Akagi which suffered a near miss hit at her rudders! Even Yorktown and Soryu, both of which were hit in their machinery spaces have not received any mentionable amount of flooding.

Then how did they sink?

[KDonovan]

while i agree that bombs shouldn't cause any considerable float damage. It is needed in this game, as float damage is the only way to sink ships. If it were up to players, ships with 99 system damage and no float damage (a la Midway), would just move there ship 1 hex at a time back to the repair yards

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: KDonovan

while i agree that bombs shouldn't cause any considerable float damage. It is needed in this game, as float damage is the only way to sink ships. If it were up to players, ships with 99 system damage and no float damage (a la Midway), would just move there ship 1 hex at a time back to the repair yards

Additionally, there is no auto scuttle. In the case of many carrier sinkings, the escorts sank the carrier because there was no hope of getting the severaly damaged carrier back to base. If bombs didn't cause flotation damage, in a Midway type disaster, the Japanese player would limp the 99 system damage carriers back to Japan. Since the TBDs are useless as torpedo bombers, the US would continually pound the carriers with SBDs and the carriers wouldn't sink. It may take a month or more to get the carriers home, but all 4 would survive to be repaired and fight again.

If the game had a function where escorts would sink a severaly damaged ship if within range of enemy air power, then just bombing not producing flotation damage could work.

Bill

[Akos Gergely]

To BlackVoid mate,

according to Shattered Sword (and there are many other sources quoted for this) all 4 of the japanese CVs that sunk at Midway were done in by their escorting destroyers' 24" Long Lance torpedoes. (I know the urban legend was that Kaga and Soryu sunk due to their magazines cooking off.)

Yorktown were of course torpedoed in the second japanese airstrike and then torpedoed again by sub I-168, so all in all two 18" and two 21" torp hits.

[blockquote]quote:

ORIGINAL: KDonovan

while i agree that bombs shouldn't cause any considerable float damage. It is needed in this game, as float damage is the only way to sink ships. If it were up to players, ships with 99 system damage and no float damage (a la Midway), would just move there ship 1 hex at a time back to the repair yards
[/blockquote]

Additionally, there is no auto scuttle. In the case of many carrier sinkings, the escorts sank the carrier because there was no hope of getting the severaly damaged carrier back to base. If bombs didn't cause flotation damage, in a Midway type disaster, the Japanese player would limp the 99 system damage carriers back to Japan. Since the TBDs are useless as torpedo bombers, the US would continually pound the carriers with SBDs and the carriers wouldn't sink. It may take a month or more to get the carriers home, but all 4 would survive to be repaired and fight again.

If the game had a function where escorts would sink a severaly damaged ship if within range of enemy air power, then just bombing not producing flotation damage could work.

Well TBDs are really useless but after the jap CVs are criplled you can close them on and additionally even the not so well working US sub torps can hit a severly damaged ship, as it was proven in many of my games.

And I think you can pretty much agree with me than IRL no major ship was ever sunk by normal bombs only (well Tirpitz is a really special case ).

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: BlackVoid

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

Sorry, but both of you are somewhat off in this regard. First of all it is positively confirmed that at Midway none of the sunk carriers received any mentionable flood damage, including Akagi which suffered a near miss hit at her rudders! Even Yorktown and Soryu, both of which were hit in their machinery spaces have not received any mentionable amount of flooding.

Then how did they sink?

They were scuttled.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11


This is something for "Nik"... [;)]

Long long long time ago in time of UV he (and we all) determined that bombs are in fact aerial torpedoes... this was rectified a bit in WitP (and in UV in patching process) but never fixed completely...

BTW, I wonder if those old threads can be found...


Leo "Apollo11"

In UV, the damage allocation after penetration was more abstract and essentially the two primary hit locations (Deck armor hit/belt armor hit) caused a near same amount of preportional damage (SYS/FLT/FIRE) The code was tweaked during that time so that the ratios would come out a bit differentiated so Belt armor penetrations would be heavier on the FLT damage while deck armor hits would be lighter on FLT, heavier on SYS in comparison. However the overall abstraction remains.

[Akos Gergely]

That's what I'm saying!

Is there any chance to change the deck hits further to reduce float damage? Also it would be nice to have a more elaborate damage description introduced like in the submarine combat screen...

[Nikademus]

anything's possible when pizza is delivered.....

extra pepperoni.

[rtrapasso]

And I think you can pretty much agree with me than IRL no major ship was ever sunk by normal bombs only (well Tirpitz is a really special case ).

Survivors of the Arizona, Roma, and Marat might disagree (although you could then argue what are normal bombs, i guess.)

[Akos Gergely]

Well Ok, I forgot to add that except direct magazine hits; so I meant via (progressive) flooding caused by the bomb hit's leak(and I think Roma is clearly a special case).

[Przemcio231]

Well Marat was damaged by bombs but not sunk... Both Roma and Arizona sunk becouse of Magazine Explosion coused by bombs but if the bombs would not hit their Magazines well in case of Roma the other factor was poor damage control i think as the magazines did not detonate from a direct hit , any of those ships would not sink.