Originally posted by denisonh
Modelling any process (combat or otherwise) involving some kind of probability will have built in an "unusual" outcome, assuming that there is always a probability for some event to occur.
So even with a .1% chance, it can happen (approximately 1 in 1000 chances). Combat is an activity I would call no sure thing until you are writing the After Action Reviews.
So bombing a BB will need to have that small chance for an Arizona like outcome. No matter how small.
I agree. But thats not what happens now. Right now all ships suffer an "Arizona" by virtue of 100% penetrations of deck armor by 1000ILB HE bombs on all BB's short of Yamato possibly (though the stat given me by Paul V would penetrate even that brute)
Anything up to but not including 5 inch deck armor is penetrated 100% of the time by 500ILB HE.
When i say "Arizona" i dont mean mag explosion of course as i dont think this is modeled in per se, but by penetrating you do get the tripple blow of SYS, FLT and FIRE damage which can often lead to crippled and sunk heavy and medium units (by bombs alone) in but one turn.
The chance for catastrophe should be small, the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
Most ships die hard. It just doesnt often look that way because the few exceptions often do so in such spectacular ways that they overshadow the larger picture.
A good system to introduce a logical probability in terms of armor vs pen would be to incorprate a system similar to GG's Battlecruiser game which allowed each shell hit a 10% chance to half the value of the armor it was striking. That way it was 'logical' in that it prevented certain odd results such as 5 inch shells penetrating 25 inch turrets (reduced by 1/2 to 13 inches) because even having hit a "weak spot" it still couldnt punch through but at the same time within reason, it eliminated the 100% certainy of armor vs pen that an engineer would envision when the warship is on the drawing board.
A weapon whose' penetrative qualities match the armor being attacked should have something like a 50/50 chance of punching through which is part of why I suggested setting the 1000ILBer HE to about 2 inches or 50mm. This way CA's would not be immune but at the same time would not be skewered 100% of the time like they are now and 2 inches in general is reasonable for an HE weapon dropped from well below 10,000 feet.
500ILB HE bombs should have little penetrative qualities. Since UV must deal with certain abstracts, i'd make it 1 to 1.5inches. This leaves unarmored merchants, carriers, CL's and DD's vulnerable.....ships with marginal armor might stand a better chance and of course, ships with 2 and 3 inch decks (like the BB Kongo) would not be getting skewered by even these modest bombs.
Fire damage should be a seperate and dangerous threat of course.
This was the same exact situation that was happening in the 1.0 version of UV in the surface vs surface routines, with shells scoring all the "exceptional" hits as routine resulting in everything including battleships getting a "tin clad" effect 1.10 addressed this and now S v S is much more realistic overall. Obviously with any game where damage and armor vs pen must be abstracted to some degree, its not perfect, but its *infinantly* better than what we had before 1.10 when ships could cripple and sink each other left and right due to armor being a virtual non-factor. Some could justify these results by quoting probability or citing examples of unusual armor/pen interactions but the point was, that these were not unusual in UV....they were the rule! Therin lay the problem.
Hopefully 1.30 and/or WitP can now address the third major weapons group in the same fashion....i.e. GP or HE bombs.
One thing is certainly clear, agree or disagree. A GP 500ILB bomb cannot penetrate 5 inches of armor quality steel, and a GP 1000ILB cannot penetrate 9.8 inches! Alot of battleship AP shells cant even acomplish such results at extreme range
