possible answer for odd combat results

[Nikademus]

I'm over two months into my current campaign now (17), not alot of time game-turn wise, but thanks primarily to the AI it's been packed with action, land sea and air. (especially sea)

Thanks to my development of the Lunga base i've had my hands full with agressive bombardment missions being preformed by the AI. The first couple suprised me as after having pasted the AI's carriers (in two months i have already aced 50% of the fleet carriers that will eventually be made available to the Allied side for the entire campaign if one includes the ersatz US stand-in HMS Victorious)

I was ready for it the next couple of battles with a quick reaction surface force generously supplied with CA's and in the 2nd episode, a BB. (Kongo class)

Sure enough, the first battle i ran into the DD vs CA phenomenum which left my jaw somewhat dropped. The Allied CA's didn't do all that much better than mine, and were outnumbered 3 to 1 in that catagory. It was the DD's that killed me, pummeling my CA's (and one CL) to the point that 2 sank a couple turns later due to cumulative progressive flood damage.

I was admitedly a little miffed that this force got the upper hand on me, after all the IJN force had a fairly good night battle exp edge however i realized that with the variables worked into the game, there are many possibilities that could have accounted for it (including the precence of radar) so i didn't sweat it. What did cause me concern though was the effect of the gunnery hits. Even at greater standoff ranges (7-12 thousand yards) i found most if not all of the 5 inch fire penetrating both belt and deck armor to cause internal damage.

Again, i had to hold off judgement, the CA's present with one exception were of the "tin clad" variety so it did not seem too off kilter, except in the case of deck armor penetrations. There does not seem to be a logical distribution of hits where this is concerned. If the "Tin clads" were vulnerable on the verticle, they were even more so for their horizontal protection, but this should have been minimized by the close range and therefore flat trajectory of most of the shells creating such high oblicity that even 1inch deck armor would be tough to penetrate.....more so if one considers that 5inch weaponery such as those on DD's only shoot HE or common shells.

The next night battle clinched the concern for me. This time, in addition to a battlewagon (8inch side armor.....3 inch deck armor) i had 4 CA's that were not of the "tin clad" variety. 2nd generation cruisers with more substantial armor (turrets excepted....cant have everything) Coupled with my edge in experience and having picked a strong leader, i was again confident of the results as my float planes detected another CA group attempting to sneak in another bombardment.

The battle was fought at 4000 yards initially. Suprise hit me once more as the American TF got the better of me, hitting first and then continually hitting more often. I could only conclude that once more a "variable" had rolled against me and that the Allied formation had gotten the jump on me. Fortunes of war. Here's the clincher though, and the genesis of this post.

To my horror, i saw even the Kongo.....thin skinned against BB shells, but adequate for 8 inch fire) getting consistantly perforated by 8 inch shells. (belt armor hits) OK before any posts....there is controversey over whether any 8inch hits pierced the Hiei during her historical fight. Maybe at point blank range, but not at 4K.....(The steering control hit that doomed her was caused by flooding outside the citidal) There is room for doubt, so i kept my jaw shut and awaited developments. The range opened to 7K and then to 10K. Yep. You guessed it. 8inch hits continued to penetrate the belt at a ratio of about 8 out of 10
times

It got worse though. Back at the 4K range.......6 inch shells managed to penetrate the 8inch belt protection, though on a slightly better ratio of around 6-7 out of 10 times. Worse though, both 6 and 8inch hits scored "deck armor" penetrations......simply impossible at that range aginst 3 inch deck armor. a BB shell would be deflected at that range against 3inch deck armor!.

Worse still......a couple 5 inch shells did the same thing against the deck armor.

Same thing with the CA's... (remember....'non' Tin clad variety) the 5 inch weapons perforated both side and deck armor with apparant ease. Same thing again at 7K. Only after the battle got to 10K+ were the cruisers able to shrug off these HE pinpricks with the exception of deck armor hits which continue to be exploited by all shells as the achillies heel of cruisers and light battleships.

This was not a Fog of war issue either. The ships that were hit were all damaged, a couple severely enough to sink and the Kongo, the magnet for alot of this fire....limped back to Truk crippled.....crippled primarily by 6 and 5 inch fire (only a fraction were 8 inch) as were two of the four cruisers.

What i'm not totally sure about is whether reported belt/deck/etc etc penetrations are being reported truthfully or not. I would hope so as if one is interested in strict "FOW" obviously no commander is going to know whether his shells are penetrating or not....this is strictly info that is only pertient to wargamers interested in seeing how the ships themselves preform. A real life commander wont see this. A Grigsby wargamer though gets the treat of seeing this. It allows take a seat in the theater and compare ship classes and gun effectiveness. Its all well and good to FOW up the actual hits themselves, but it serves no purpose to FOW up whether the hits penetrate or not. So i'm hoping this hasn't been mucked up. As i said i dont think that is the case because the reality of the situation certainly supported it the next day as i tallied the damage to my battered and thoroughly humiliated BB/CA spoiler force.

I would suggest that two things need to be looked at here in UV

1) the penetration of the guns needs looking at, particularily the lighter guns 5inch and 6 inch, and after that the 8inch. In the case of the first two they are coming off as entirely too effective at peforating ships, even ships with decent armor.

2) the ratio of horizontal to verticle hits needs looking at. Right now it looks to be totally random as opposed to being based on range. the SSI game "Fighting Steel" calcuated this ratio based directly on range to target, for example , two ships fighting at 5000yards would have a ratio that might look like this (97%//3%)
where the 97 indicates a 97% chance of a shell hitting the side of a ship (belt armor) and a mere 3% chance of scoring a plunging hit (deck armor) The near total liklihood of a verticle side hit represents the closeness of the ships and the corresponding flat trajectory of the shells. This little bit of realism prevents ships with thin deck armor from having that fact exploited in battle.....something which seems to be happening in UV with regularity. As the range opens the chance for a plunging (deck hit) increases preportionally until you have almost as much chance for a deck hit as a ship being attacked by a dive bomber.

3) this last suggestion is just that, "pure" suggestion and probably would involve too much of a change/alteration to make it into UV. However since UV is a prequel to the grand strategic War in the Pacific, perhaps it could be worked into that game.

I have also noticed a limitation due to the limited placement of shell hits. Its either a device, a tower hit, a belt hit or a deck hit.
Thats good variety, dont get me wrong, but what i'm seeing happening in reality is that primarily only two types of hits get scored 95% of the time. Belt hits and deck hits. This produces alot more flood damage most of the time and again might point out part of the issue CA's are having with their little bretheren.

In both of my serious night battles for example, and in a few other skirmishes fought, i have yet to see any ship come away with merely serious fire damage and/or system damage. Its always the latter two, *and* flood damage. Flood damage of course is the most dangerous as anything approaching 50% coupled with non Allied damage control and a good distance from the nearest port can spell eventual doom for the ship.

Flood damage though is (obviously) caused by hits at or below the waterline. In some of these close range fights though, many of the shell hits would occur above the waterline so one would expect at least a few ships to come away burning nicely and with substantial device and system damage but reletively low or even no flood damage. This does not appear to be happening.

I would suggest for WitP that a new catagory be introduced (a superstructure hit) such as in Gary's "Warship" and "Battlecruiser" series from way back in 1986 (still playin em too! ) In additon the code producing a device or tower hit might need looking at as this seems to happen all too rarely even in close range fights with ships spraying each other all over the place. The inclusion of the former especially would help produce a greater variety of damage and help prevent each and every ship hit from suffering flood damage almost every time a hit is scored. It would be a nice enhancement and i doubt it would produce any serious ahistorical results as such a hit would still be apt to cause serious "System" damage, which is the #1 hardest aspect of a warship to fix. Once in a harbor flood and fire damage can almost always be bested, but any serious system damage and its' "back to Japan" or "Back to Pearl Harbor"

on a end note.....fire damage might need looking at. Flood damage provides mucho challenges if present in a large enough % and can increase to the point of sinking the ship. I've never seen fire damage rage out of control though......always it gets reduced. There should probably be a routine (if not already present) for a chance to increase fire levels if high enough, especially for carriers where explosions and uncontrolled fires doomed many of the examples actually sunk in the war.

[Paul Vebber]

I've posted on this to the dev team- you may want to try what I did and set up some task forces and run them into each other to see what happens.

Note that in Head to head you can't just replay form a saved turn as the same result will keep happening (this to prevent "replaying turns to get better results")

So you have to start the encounter over from the beginning.

[Nikademus]

thanks Paul, i'll do that.

(back to the trenches!)

[dgaad]

Originally posted by Nikademus

I would suggest that two things need to be looked at here in UV

1) the penetration of the guns needs looking at, particularily the lighter guns 5inch and 6 inch, and after that the 8inch. In the case of the first two they are coming off as entirely too effective at peforating ships, even ships with decent armor.

The "armor" of any ship, aside from dreadnought or superdreadnought class, is really not enough to stop a direct low deflection hit along the ship belt. Obviously, due to its sheer mass, a larger ship sustaining such a hit will take less damage, but penetration is for all practical purposes inevitable. The most heavily armored areas of most line ships are not the sides of the hull, its the gun turrets.

2) the ratio of horizontal to verticle hits needs looking at. Right now it looks to be totally random as opposed to being based on range. the SSI game "Fighting Steel" calcuated this ratio based directly on range to target, for example , two ships fighting at 5000yards would have a ratio that might look like this (97%//3%)
where the 97 indicates a 97% chance of a shell hitting the side of a ship (belt armor) and a mere 3% chance of scoring a plunging hit (deck armor) The near total liklihood of a verticle side hit represents the closeness of the ships and the corresponding flat trajectory of the shells. This little bit of realism prevents ships with thin deck armor from having that fact exploited in battle.....something which seems to be happening in UV with regularity. As the range opens the chance for a plunging (deck hit) increases preportionally until you have almost as much chance for a deck hit as a ship being attacked by a dive bomber.

Whether or not a shell hits "deck armor" or "belt armor" can be calculated with some relatively simple mathematics, and good source data on the firing guns, their height off the water in calm seas, etc. However, a flat trajectory hit on the deck is problematic in that the deck itself is flat, therefore you are hitting "armor" at close to 90 degree deflection. My position is that while it should be calculated and done correctly, it won't matter that much. Belt armor of all but the heaviest battleships can be penetrated by a 5 inch gun. The amount of damage it does on penetration relative to the total amount of damage the target ship can take is the issue, not whether it can penetrate.

3) this last suggestion is just that, "pure" suggestion and probably would involve too much of a change/alteration to make it into UV. However since UV is a prequel to the grand strategic War in the Pacific, perhaps it could be worked into that game.

I have also noticed a limitation due to the limited placement of shell hits. Its either a device, a tower hit, a belt hit or a deck hit.
Thats good variety, dont get me wrong, but what i'm seeing happening in reality is that primarily only two types of hits get scored 95% of the time. Belt hits and deck hits. This produces alot more flood damage most of the time and again might point out part of the issue CA's are having with their little bretheren.

In both of my serious night battles for example, and in a few other skirmishes fought, i have yet to see any ship come away with merely serious fire damage and/or system damage. Its always the latter two, *and* flood damage. Flood damage of course is the most dangerous as anything approaching 50% coupled with non Allied damage control and a good distance from the nearest port can spell eventual doom for the ship.

Flood damage though is (obviously) caused by hits at or below the waterline. In some of these close range fights though, many of the shell hits would occur above the waterline so one would expect at least a few ships to come away burning nicely and with substantial device and system damage but reletively low or even no flood damage. This does not appear to be happening.

I would suggest for WitP that a new catagory be introduced (a superstructure hit) such as in Gary's "Warship" and "Battlecruiser" series from way back in 1986 (still playin em too! ) In additon the code producing a device or tower hit might need looking at as this seems to happen all too rarely even in close range fights with ships spraying each other all over the place. The inclusion of the former especially would help produce a greater variety of damage and help prevent each and every ship hit from suffering flood damage almost every time a hit is scored. It would be a nice enhancement and i doubt it would produce any serious ahistorical results as such a hit would still be apt to cause serious "System" damage, which is the #1 hardest aspect of a warship to fix. Once in a harbor flood and fire damage can almost always be bested, but any serious system damage and its' "back to Japan" or "Back to Pearl Harbor"

on a end note.....fire damage might need looking at. Flood damage provides mucho challenges if present in a large enough % and can increase to the point of sinking the ship. I've never seen fire damage rage out of control though......always it gets reduced. There should probably be a routine (if not already present) for a chance to increase fire levels if high enough, especially for carriers where explosions and uncontrolled fires doomed many of the examples actually sunk in the war.

I support the notion of greater detail in ship to ship shell hits. For example, the current schema can be expanded for deck and belt hits to "bow, amidships, aft". None of this will matter however, if there isn't anything but "floatation" or "systems" damage, with some weapon mount or critical hit variation thrown in. For example, numerous times in the war surface ships suffered rudder damage to the extent that all steering control was lost. The ship might have been perfectly fine, but couldn't steer. You can't get a result like that in this game, as yet.

I should also like to point out, before it gets forgotton somewhere along the road to game modification, that the chance of fuel storage explosion or whatever should remain greatly reduced for US ships after June, 1942, due to the use of carbon dioxide flooding to make it difficult for any kind of explosion to take place.

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by dgaad


The "armor" of any ship, aside from dreadnought or superdreadnought class, is really not enough to stop a direct low deflection hit along the ship belt. Obviously, due to its sheer mass, a larger ship sustaining such a hit will take less damage, but penetration is for all practical purposes inevitable. The most heavily armored areas of most line ships are not the sides of the hull, its the gun turrets.

Thanks dggad, i knew that already. Obviously there must be some 'fudging' in a game where hit damage must be generalized to some extent. "armor" indeed only covers a certain preportion of a ship's hull, generally the most vital areas. especially so in the "tin clad" heavy cruisers which tended to either have only a thin strip of armor along the machinery spaces or in some others, a 'box' like armor protecting the mags.

One cannot expect UV to distinquish between this type of an armor scheme and say that of a dreadnought battleship. Especially as not all of the cruisers share these traits. The New Orleans and the later Japanese heavy cruisers had more substantial armorings along the vital areas.

Since the game has to generalize a bit, one can accept a certain level of randomization, such as the 10% weak armor hit variable Gary put in his Battlecruiser game that i had mentioned previously. What is consistantly happening in UV though is that 'every' time at certain battle ranges, shells that should not penetrate armor (should they strike it) are in fact, doing so. Hits in non armored areas tend to be non-armored because they are not vital to the combat effectiveness of the ship nor it's survival. When shells "penetrate" in UV, they are attacking the vital systems of the ship, system and floatation. the size of the shell only helps determine the extent of the damage. A ship that is hit say 30 times by light shells in non critical areas can exit from a battle with little impairment to it's operability, such as after the cruiser Aoba exited one of her first engagements with the US. Her topsides were a bit of a mess, but her engines and floatation were fully intact. This only can happen in UV when a shell does not penetrate the "armor" rating of the ship

Whether or not a shell hits "deck armor" or "belt armor" can be calculated with some relatively simple mathematics, and good source data on the firing guns, their height off the water in calm seas, etc. However, a flat trajectory hit on the deck is problematic in that the deck itself is flat, therefore you are hitting "armor" at close to 90 degree deflection. My position is that while it should be calculated and done correctly, it won't matter that much. Belt armor of all but the heaviest battleships can be penetrated by a 5 inch gun. The amount of damage it does on penetration relative to the total amount of damage the target ship can take is the issue, not whether it can penetrate.

Are you kidding me? I respectfully suggest you set up some tests in the game, and maybe read some battle accounts before standing firm behind that statement. The difference between plunging hits and flat-trajectory hits is vitally important in the interaction between ship armor and shell penetration qualities. For example, a shell that can easily penetrate a ship's belt, might, as you pointed out hit above areas not covered by the belt armor. It might for example hit high up on the hull, penetrate and then skip off the armor deck since the oblicity will be such that even a thin layer of armor can often resist the effects of the shell, even a BB sized shell. The shell is thus kept from penetrating the ship's vitals and critical systems damage would therefore be minimized.

This the premise of the Immune zone concept. a range bracket in which a minimum range is depicted to resist a certain type of shell (by belt armor since the incoming trajectories at closer ranges will be flat, making a deck penetration extremely unlikely)
and a maximum range bracket in which the deck armor will stop a plunging hit which are far more likely at longer ranges, the long range and angle of impact then working in favor of the belt armor.

If the distinction between a plunging and verticle hit is not made, then this totally throws into disarray the defensive scheme of the ship. Tests i have made have already shown disturbing results in this matter.....*including heavily armored battleships*

I would love to know what 5 inch shell to which you are reffering to that can penetrate all but a BB's armor? Especially since the US 5/38 only fired an HE shell? A study done with a true "AP" 5 inch shell indicated an approx penetration ability of 5 inches at around 4,000 yards with a virtually nil ability to pentrate a horizontal surface at such range. At 13,000 yards this same shell might punch a small hole in 1inch plate deck armor and probably around the same verticle. Pretty slim pickings, but moot, since the US did not even store AP for the weapon
A good reason for this would be the small size of the burster in a 5inch AP shell whch would probably be in or around the 2ILB range. Even if it punches through that 5 inch armor, how much damage do you think that is going to cause to a ship???

Thats why HE is the better way to go for such a small shell.....it cant penetrate much if any armor, but it will create a decent sized bang for it's size and maybe (hopefully) start fires in non armored areas of the ship and disrupt it's operation.

I support the notion of greater detail in ship to ship shell hits. For example, the current schema can be expanded for deck and belt hits to "bow, amidships, aft". None of this will matter however, if there isn't anything but "floatation" or "systems" damage, with some weapon mount or critical hit variation thrown in. For example, numerous times in the war surface ships suffered rudder damage to the extent that all steering control was lost. The ship might have been perfectly fine, but couldn't steer. You can't get a result like that in this game, as yet.

I should also like to point out, before it gets forgotton somewhere along the road to game modification, that the chance of fuel storage explosion or whatever should remain greatly reduced for US ships after June, 1942, due to the use of carbon dioxide flooding to make it difficult for any kind of explosion to take place.

No argument here, even though i would not expect Matrix and company to go into 'that' much detail given it's a strategic and operational level game.

What i would like to see though is a location indicator for non-penetrating hits with what he have right now. On the rare occaison when the shell hits and there is no penetration, no location indication is given. Makes it harder to access the armor of the ship for the tests i've been conducting

[Nikademus]

I did as you instructed Paul and set up a few test scenerios for surface combat using CA's CL's and DD's (and several BB's)

The results are , "disturbing" to say the least, but its good to reveal this stuff while WitP is in development.

I'll summerize the results thus far.

5inch weapon

can penetrate any cruiser scheme belt/deck out to around 10K

Tin clad, or well armored, doesn't matter. This goes a long way in explaining why CA's are having consistant problems with the little friends. This extends even to daylight combat. outside of 10K the belts of non-Tinclads (4-5inches) start to work but i had 5inch penetrate the deck all the way out to 17K.

10,000 yards + BB's are (thankfully) immune to 5 inch.

8inch

A reallllll interesting set of tests using the Mutsu and Kirishima in a daylight battle vs CA's and DD's

12,000 yards........"both" the Kirishima and the Mutsu, the latter with a full scale BB level belt (12 inches) are easily penetrated by the 8inch weapon. Stunned did not describe my reaction adequately.

The weapon also penetrated the deck armor of both ships.....a virtual impossibilty given the weapons stats. Mutsu btw for folks not conversant in her stats is 5inches in the game. As a comparison the British KGV and the US North Carolina were given armored decks that in places equaled around 5 inches, this thickness meant to resist 14-16 inch BB shells.

With these results i didn't need to go into a bunch of night battle tests at 4-7,000 yards. No need to bother.

BB vs BB

Intersting fight between the Mutsu and the North Carolina. At 12,000 yards i expected each other's belts and vertical surfaces to be hideously vulnerable, after all the former was built to have an Immune zone vs it's own guns (initially 2200ILB) in the mid 20,000 yard ranges.......12,000 yards is 'point blank' for a battleship.

On that same token though, any hit on the deck would not penetrate because the oblicity of the shell would make it virtually impossible to penetrate such thick armor. It would skip off.

Only problems are that, 1) there are still way too many 'deck hits' at such a range

2) they penetrated anyway.

Its almost looking as if, instead of the penetration reducing for a plunging hit as it should, instead the game is increasing the penetration value and applying it to both plunging and flat trajectory hits. Plunging hits increase penetration as distances increase and the AoI goes up (and the shell velocity increases as it falls to earth). At closer ranges though the sheer angle of impact will minimize a plunging hit and it's penetrative qualities

On the same ratio, a flat trajectory hit achieves maximum penetration at close range, falling off as the range opens.

Hopefully this will help the developers. I can post the actual results if needed too. (that will take more time though )


Something else i noted too. The daylight engagements tend to start at too close a range by average......usually 12-13thousand yards. Thats ok for cruisers though at times in the war the Japanese tried shooting at longer ranges (not very successfully but they tried)

Battleship vs Battleship should tend to open fire at much longer ranges.....i'd say 18,000 yards at a minimum average.

Assuming the penetration values of the guns and the distrubution of hits are working correctly (which the're not by all indication), opening fire at below 15,000 yards is virtual point blank for the big guys making armor all but useless unless it skips off the horizontal surfaces of the citidal or turret tops

last note: all ships (still afloat) had the usual preportion of system and floatation damage. This kind of sinks the "hits in nonarmored areas" explanation for all these quirky penetrations. Since "any" deck or belt hit can cause it, then for armor vs pen comparisons UV should use the maximum armored rating when resolving it because when a shell gets through, it is causing "vital" damage, the breadth of which depends on the size of the shell and other variables.

[Hartmann]

Well, I think that the penetration ratio is quite ok, but it may very well be that the damage caused by the smaller projectiles is a bit too high (in comparison to what the slow firing, big guns achieve).

What causes the odd combat results is *always* the night battle/bombardment engagements, though. The TF doing the bombardment seems almost always to be "surprised" by whatever TF it encounters. That´s why I´m beginning to resort to "do not retire" daylight bombardments only (if I´m sure of getting away with this, that is).

I propose to somewhat adjust

a) the probababilities for this "crossing the T" of nightly bombardment TFS to happen (I really think that those ships loitering in the port hex, which often are just the escort for transports unloading, should be the ones surprised, usually).

b) to especially *decrease* the effect of "crossing the T" drastically in case of really huge discrepancies in numbers and quality of the opposing forces - such that a single destroyer can´t regularily cripple a mighty BB/3CA/5DD TF before going down.

Hartmann

Edit: when typing my post, the last two (!) of Nikademus weren´t there yet. It now indeed seems to me like there is also something wrong with the small projectiles at least, in the end.

[Nikademus]

Its true that the close ranges will tend to minimize armor, depending on it's thickness, but depending on what ship is being fired and the range, it adds to the frustration being experienced by players when sending in strong forces only finding themselves being consistantly repulsed by lighter forces (and lighter guns)

Example....if most, if not all 5 inch or less weapons are assumed to be firing "HE" then they should have virtually no armor penetration ability. Their greatest value should be the ability (assuming many hits) to create incendiary effects on both cruisers and battleships that dare to fight in such restricted waters.

This is what happened to the battleship Hiei at 'Third Guadalcanal'
Her citidal was (arguably) not penetrated in the battle, certainly not by 5 or 6inch weapons. 8inch is under debate, mainly due to trying to figure out exactly how her steering engine room became flooded. Its also known though that that class of ship had weak protection in that area. No reports of eight inch penetration occured along other vital areas (belt/waterline), conning tower, turrets etc)

Along with the steering hit, the biggest headache created was from 5 inch guns starting numerous fires in her superstructure which impaired the ship's ability to fight and coordinate the battle.
Her vitals though remained intact throughout the fight if not for the weak point with the steering gear, she would have made it home.

Non-tin clad heavy cruisers should also be far more resistant to 5 inch fire as well...but would also be vulnerable to incendiary effects.

at 2-4K yes, against 8 inch and even 6inch fire......all would be vulnerable to an extent.

As it is right now, all are vulnerable and even "plunging hits" will penetrate weak deck armor which at such ranges should easily keep all medium sized shells out of the 'vitals'

[dgaad]

Nikademus : if you will read what I said carefully, you will note that I said "flat trajectory hits on deck armor". I know the difference and the ranges at which you have plunging fire, which is the bane of many-a-ship. My comments were directed at the idea that at the ranges where belt armor is penetrated by a 5 inch gun, you are unlikely to get significant damage from a deck hit, because of the trajectory at those ranges. Conversely, at the ranges where the arc of the trajectory creates "plunging fire" it becomes far less likely to get a penetration along the belt. But, I assume you know all this, but there wasn't any need to jump all over what I said in the second paragraph if you had read the "flat trajectory" part of the sentence.

For the rest of your comments in the response, I think we are more or less in full agreement.

[Paul Vebber]

Thanks guys. This is very helpful

[rough44]

Thanks Nikademus for explaining the issue so thoroughly.... very interesting read. I really do hope your posts were not in vain and a patch will make surface combat more realistic. In fact after reading your posts I realized it's so far off it must be fixed.

[Kadste]

To all of those who want to know the angle of flight for the us 8 inch mark 14 gun. Hope that you can see the attachment, it looks cool.

Also the probability of striking the deck versus the belt can be calculated based on the ballistics of each gun.

The penetration of each shot can also be calculated with taking into consideration of the obliqueness of the ships armor.

Hopefully WITP can take advantage of modelling the ballistics of each shot.

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by dgaad
Nikademus : if you will read what I said carefully, you will note that I said "flat trajectory hits on deck armor". I know the difference and the ranges at which you have plunging fire, which is the bane of many-a-ship. My comments were directed at the idea that at the ranges where belt armor is penetrated by a 5 inch gun, you are unlikely to get significant damage from a deck hit, because of the trajectory at those ranges. Conversely, at the ranges where the arc of the trajectory creates "plunging fire" it becomes far less likely to get a penetration along the belt. But, I assume you know all this, but there wasn't any need to jump all over what I said in the second paragraph if you had read the "flat trajectory" part of the sentence.

For the rest of your comments in the response, I think we are more or less in full agreement.

Thats good to hear. If it sounded like i "jumped on you" it was only because I did read your statement carefully and it was the latter portion of that paragraph that i was responding too, most energetically, as i have a vested interest in UV and WitP's credability. If the game isn't going to portrary shell trajectory and hit effects accurately, we might as well go back to Gary's "Pacific War" where only the announcement of a hit itself was registered with astericks indicating various levels of penetration.

As such, judging by Paul's response i'd say it's mission acomplished so we can all relax a little

[Paul Vebber]

The intent IFAIK is to give something between "asterisks" and "ballistically calculated penetrtion of each shot".

Too much has to be assumed about the geometry for the latter, requiring the batte be simulated "in miniature" to get the geometry right for each shot... That's not going to happen.

I'm not privy to the inner workings, but it looks like a few tweaks to the hit location and a few assumptions about the general situation geometrically being adjusted may 'fix" things.

[Mojo]

Nice chart Kadste. Thanks.