Near misses

[Howard Mitchell]

Thank you sir!

[Subchaser]

ORIGINAL: Dili

Well my point is that you overstress that.

Okay, in this case, I hope US Navy technical Intelligence officers will be more convincing.

US Naval Technical Mission to Japan.
Issue S-06-01 - “Reports of Damage to Japanese Warships. Article 1”

For some more details on this subject see also:
USNTMJ. S-01-3- IJN Vessels Part 3- Surface Warship Hull Design
USNTMJ. S-01-9- IJN Vessels Part 9- Underwater Protection

[Ron Saueracker]

I love this thread.[;)] Great stuff guys.

[Dili]

This is quite false. Different bombs of the same weight have different amount of explosive ('bursting charge'). For example an AP bomb has far less explosive than an HE bomb. Also, an AP bomb might not even explode if it misses, or might explode much farther down in the water column to matter. This is only a sample, there are great variations among different bombs of the same weight.

Obviously, but for proposes of argument "look what a EVEN a Bf109 have done!" it is.

Okay, in this case, I hope US Navy technical Intelligence officers will be more convincing.

What's that to do with my arguing? An aerial torpedo also hit the bottom of Taranto exploded and made a big flooding of one of old Italian Battleships/Battlecruisers there...I am against your argument that a cruiser cannot be sunk by 250kg bombs excluding near misses. The armor is not impervious and ships are not perfectly armored there are also a lot of things that could go bang.

(seriously, has anyone seen a torpedo NOT penetrate the belt armor?)

Usually belt armor is not designed as a torpedo defense. Ships would weight too much or would have a too thin belt.
A torpedo hit the belt of Bismarck and did not much, one example i remember , might be circunstancial. Note that many (empirically from my reading i would say most) of side torpedo hits in Battleships hit outside main armored belt: Torpedo defenses or in bow or stern where there are not much defenses.
----------------
A question for those probability minded: does trying to run from torpedos increases the odds that when hit, that hit is outside center of the ship where most protection are?

[John Lansford]

Dili,
 
I'm talking about the way WitP models a torpedo hit, not the real life outcome.  Every WitP torpedo hit I've seen has the phrase "torpedo hit penetrates belt armor" go along with it, but IMO the belt armor is irrelevent to the damage a torpedo causes.  Most times the belt armor isn't even aligned where a torpedo would strike; that's why blisters and void spaces were built into large warships, to dissipate the force of a torpedo blast.  Belt armor is for shells fired from short range primarily, not underwater explosions.

[Dili]

Okay, sorry for my mistake.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

I love this thread.[;)] Great stuff guys.

OK. But what is this thread accomplishing other than making us all painfully aware of perceived inadequacies in AE. Bottom line, AE will not perfectly account for near misses. What should we do? Sit here and wait for the second coming of WITP to deliver us from the evil of having to play an imperfect game? How does harping endlessly on what the game doesn't have help with our enjoyment of the game? Or should we not rest until we have the ultimate in perfection? [&:]

[Dili]

Why to be so dramatic. If people keep interested it will be improved.

[Nomad]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

I love this thread.[;)] Great stuff guys.

OK. But what is this thread accomplishing other than making us all painfully aware of perceived inadequacies in AE. Bottom line, AE will not perfectly account for near misses. What should we do? Sit here and wait for the second coming of WITP to deliver us from the evil of having to play an imperfect game? How does harping endlessly on what the game doesn't have help with our enjoyment of the game? Or should we not rest until we have the ultimate in perfection? [&:]

I don't expect to live long enough to see WitP 2, so they had better do a good job on AE. [:D]

[Subchaser]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

I love this thread.[;)] Great stuff guys.

OK. But what is this thread accomplishing other than making us all painfully aware of perceived inadequacies in AE. Bottom line, AE will not perfectly account for near misses. What should we do? Sit here and wait for the second coming of WITP to deliver us from the evil of having to play an imperfect game? How does harping endlessly on what the game doesn't have help with our enjoyment of the game? Or should we not rest until we have the ultimate in perfection? [&:]

Why so pessimistic? I had no intentions to slander, upset or discredit anyone, I was talking more about historic events, I didn’t criticize game engine that much. There are no perceived inadequacies in AE, warships can be sunk by bombs, and if something is missing -there is no drama. AE team knows about near-misses effect more than we do (see Don Bowen’s post) if they decided to keep it that way, I’m sure it was best possible decision given the shortcomings of the code.

Anyway, I don’t think major overhaul required here. Don said that near-misses would spawn a desire for distance, depth, concussion calculations and so on, I can’t understand why, current direct hit routine seems to be a lot more simplistic. I’m not a programmer, so I can’t say how difficult it is to change a certain line in the code and avoid possible bugs, on the other hand I feel that it can be modeled, simply, in “ammo storage explosion” way, which is a random roll. When ship is bombed, there is a chance for “near-miss explosion”, when any GP/HE bomb that hits ship can cause 15-35% flooding and 10-30% system damage, it’s not perfect of course but I would be happy to see this. If AE team will find it possible to look at this issue again, we can expect to see some improvements here when the first patch comes out… well may be not. And again nothing critical here.

[John Lansford]

If any HE bomb can cause up to 30% flotation damage by a near miss, I'd think that definitely was on the order of a critical hit.  Perhaps the damage would be also referenced to become a function of the ship's tonnage as well; smaller ships were more vulnerable to a near miss than larger warships were, after all, and civilian ships more vulnerable still.

[m10bob]

Anything will be moddable in AE, if I have read the reports correctly, and this includes devices..

Surely something can be modded once the AE project is available.

I will bet a mod is released within 60 days.

[Charbroiled]

Near misses....Direct Hits....BlahBlahBlah

Heck, I'll just be happy that I don't have to call out .."B-4"..in order to resolve my naval battles.[;)]

[witpqs]

Subchaser,

A couple of thoughts.

Recalling what Don said, an obstacle would be that the engine does not currently account for the diversity in ship design. An example is the issue people have talked about before as far as carriers: armored flight deck or unarmored is the current code. In reality there were armored, unarmored, and unarmored but with an armored hanger deck. So what we have now gives "armor, yes or no" as opposed to the (at least three) flavors. How important is this? Seems to be not very, just a possibility for a minor improvement at some point, although it might take a lot of work to yield a small improvement.

Regarding the near-miss phenomena, it's already in the code as far as counting near-misses as hits. Could the algorithm be improved? Who knows, but at least it's in there. Damage from near-misses is where the code potentially might benefit most from changes. However, that would greatly depend on the ship armor model that's currently in the game engine. Would the model need to get more detailed as far as defining the extent of armor? If so, that would be a big programming change, also requiring lots of data research and entry to get the ship data correct.

Maybe the most desirable approach (if and when changes were ever considered) would be the simple one that you mentioned. Just see if the raw percentages used could be tweaked to give some "good enough" representation of near-miss damage. Maybe a very small chance that the bomb explodes at a depth below the belt armor and close enough to matter (based on bomb bursting charge size), that kind of thing. I agree that getting too detailed would be a bad thing. Any effort that went into getting all the contour details of every floating armored citadel exactly right would be effort that could be better spent elsewhere, or even playing the game!

[Chad Harrison]

This is not a burn on anyone, but I cant believe this is still going.
 
Its not in AE, and from what I can tell from Don's and other comments, it cant be. Discussing the effects of near misses in real life examples is fine, but its not going to be in AE.
 
Let stop irritating the dev team so maybe in their good mood they will get these great AAR's up and running again [:D]

[witpqs]

I can't believe that you read these posts and think that people are asking for changes in the release of AE.

Also, Don looked at the code and pointed out that near-misses already are in AE.

Relax, we're just talking! [8D]

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Subchaser,

A couple of thoughts.

Recalling what Don said, an obstacle would be that the engine does not currently account for the diversity in ship design. An example is the issue people have talked about before as far as carriers: armored flight deck or unarmored is the current code. In reality there were armored, unarmored, and unarmored but with an armored hanger deck. So what we have now gives "armor, yes or no" as opposed to the (at least three) flavors. How important is this? Seems to be not very, just a possibility for a minor improvement at some point, although it might take a lot of work to yield a small improvement.

Regarding the near-miss phenomena, it's already in the code as far as counting near-misses as hits. Could the algorithm be improved? Who knows, but at least it's in there. Damage from near-misses is where the code potentially might benefit most from changes. However, that would greatly depend on the ship armor model that's currently in the game engine. Would the model need to get more detailed as far as defining the extent of armor? If so, that would be a big programming change, also requiring lots of data research and entry to get the ship data correct.

Maybe the most desirable approach (if and when changes were ever considered) would be the simple one that you mentioned. Just see if the raw percentages used could be tweaked to give some "good enough" representation of near-miss damage. Maybe a very small chance that the bomb explodes at a depth below the belt armor and close enough to matter (based on bomb bursting charge size), that kind of thing. I agree that getting too detailed would be a bad thing. Any effort that went into getting all the contour details of every floating armored citadel exactly right would be effort that could be better spent elsewhere, or even playing the game!

The approach I take to this problem is to first model a phenomenon in painful detail for a set of critical cases. Once I understand what the model is telling me, I simplify while retaining the significant explanatory factors. See this link for the process described in statistical terms. Here's a worked example. I also take this approach to non-statistical problems. For example, this abstract and presentation reflect the same approach. So, if I wanted to model bomb damage to a generic carrier, I would start with a few sample carriers, model the effect of bombs of various warhead sized hitting each at various locations, and try to understand the role of the various factors: underwater protection, belt, armour layout, etc. Once I understand those, I simplify.

For my PhD research, I needed an aerodynamic model of a bat, and I used this approach. That produced a hideous statistical and aerodynamic analysis that my supervisor felt was a total waste of time, but I then did a curve fit that explained 99% of the variance, and used that in my behavioural model.

[Kwik E Mart]

ORIGINAL: herwin

For my PhD research, I needed an aerodynamic model of a bat, and I used this approach. That produced a hideous statistical and aerodynamic analysis that my supervisor felt was a total waste of time, but I then did a curve fit that explained 99% of the variance, and used that in my behavioural model.

Then your supervisor is obviously not an American baseball fan....the modelling of bat aerodynamics seems like a perfectly legitimate use of time to me....[;)]

PS - was the curve fit on a sinker, screwball or slider?

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Kwik E Mart

ORIGINAL: herwin

For my PhD research, I needed an aerodynamic model of a bat, and I used this approach. That produced a hideous statistical and aerodynamic analysis that my supervisor felt was a total waste of time, but I then did a curve fit that explained 99% of the variance, and used that in my behavioural model.

Then your supervisor is obviously not an American baseball fan....the modelling of bat aerodynamics seems like a perfectly legitimate use of time to me....[;)]

PS - was the curve fit on a sinker, screwball or slider?

Eptesicus fuscus, so it was definitely a screwball!

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Kwik E Mart

PS - was the curve fit on a sinker, screwball or slider?

How about one of those Luis Tiant / Bill Lee mega-curve balls? You remember, the ones that looked like they were going behind the batter's head until the last instant when they bent right into the strike zone. Actually caused some players who faced them for the first time to dive onto the plate to avoid being hit - just before the umpire called "Stee-rike!" [:D]