"New Ironsides"!

[dr.hal]

Folks I have to share this with you. I am playing a PBEM game with a chap in Poland and doing the AE Guadalcanal scenario. Great fun so far! I'm allied and rolling back the "Yellow Tide" so to speak, but something funny happened to me on the way to the Forum! I had three CV TFs in a hex and in wandered a pesky Jap sub! Not a good thing. Sure enough that darn thing but a fish into the side of the "Big E". When I saw this on the combat replay my heart sank...ugh, thinking the the Big E was about to do the same. But when I installed the game for the next turn, there she was with only 4% flooding and nothing else! I was amazed, what's with that, I thought those Jap sub torpedoes were known to be killers? No I don't know at this point which sub it was (or I should say I don't remember). But even that didn't mitigate my amazement that the ship could shake off such a blow and still steam at 31 knots! I'm thinking of changing her name to "New Ironsides". Thoughts??? Can anyone who knows the gaming system explain why a hit would do so little? Experience tells me to expect about 25% flooding at least, if not more!

[Canoerebel]

Sometimes a torpedo will each your ship alive, other times it doesn't do much damage. I had Hornet take a sub-launched torpedo in late '43 - she only had 8 FLT damage and has remained in the front lines during the ensuing 16 months.

[dr.hal]

But how does the game justify such an outcome, especially early on when with contact detonation, you can't have "near misses"??? Hal

[Canoerebel]

Sure you could have near misses. Perhaps the torpedo, though a dud, did a bit of damage when it hit the rudder or propeller. Maybe it was a dud but managed to hit some plates doing damage to some rivets. Maybe it exploded prematurely, buckling some of the plates. There could be umpteen ways that a torpedo might do only slight damage.

[offenseman]

Historically sometimes a torp would hit an area that had a water bunker behind it. That really lessened the effect of the explosive. I would assume that the game gives a certain chance of that sort of hit occurring.  

[dr.hal]

True Offenseman, I agree it is a possibility, I wander what game engine's chance of something like that is calculated to be. Sometimes you do get a VERY luck hit, as happened with the Bismark (but that's in the opposite direction that happened with the Big E), but the game did say it was an explosion (you know how the game will indicate a dud) so I was really surprised by the resulting "damage"... don't get me wrong, PLEASANTLY surprised, but definitely surprised. I know in real life such situations as described by Canoerebel describes are a possibility (former naval officer myself) but I was more interested in the gaming angle and how it was calculated. Thanks for the input.