ship damage !

[RevRick]

It is the rate at which the system damage accumulates which bothers me! In less than two weeks ops, a birdfarm has 11-12% system damage with only a few strikes against land targets, total strike sorties less than 200 over four days. As has been pointed out, these ships just sailed 19 days from Pearl and arrived pristine - in two weeks of sailing around in the Coral Sea they are already down 10-12% before the IJN shows up,and at 5% system damage their speed has dropped between 3-5 kts. Geez, sail the thing to the West Coast and it would be a total wreck!

There have to be repair, refit, and yard periods figured into a ships active career - but it sure as all get out isn't on the order of they system damage effects in this game. Working with this type of damage would require major material inspections every six weeks instead of six months, and since the speed drops of so fast, the barnacles in the Coral Sea are either on growth hormones or the engineers are really fubar'd..:rolleyes:

[EricLarsen]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Black Cat


Exactlly !! and therein is the problem. I`ve had Saratoga sitting alone in Brisbane for 3 weeks and had only 1 point of 12 sys damage repaired.

While the 30+ ships sitting in Noumea are being reasonably quickly if randomly repaired. There is no way to prioritize the damage repair by specific ship now. Could this be looked at for WITP please.

Black Cat,
I figure it's too late to fix the random silliness of ship repair in UV, but hopefully they'll take these comments to heart for WitP. I still like the idea of having "naval support" squads in the major naval HQ's to control damage repair the way avaition support does for aircraft. That way a certain amount of repairs can be done at a port, even factoring in a random factor for whether the repair was successful or not. That way a few ships in a large level 9 port with a naval HQ would have just as much repair happening as if there were a 100 damaged ships in the same port. Right now it's a case of the more the merrier for ship repair in any port. I think that the damage rates for steaming around should be reduced a bit to compensate for the lame random repair in UV. I'm also going to try using the patrol order more than the retirement allowed order to see if slowing down the ships helps reduce damage from routine steaming.
Eric Larsen

[EricLarsen]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RevRick
It is the rate at which the system damage accumulates which bothers me! In less than two weeks ops, a birdfarm has 11-12% system damage with only a few strikes against land targets, total strike sorties less than 200 over four days. As has been pointed out, these ships just sailed 19 days from Pearl and arrived pristine - in two weeks of sailing around in the Coral Sea they are already down 10-12% before the IJN shows up,and at 5% system damage their speed has dropped between 3-5 kts. Geez, sail the thing to the West Coast and it would be a total wreck!

RevRick,
Isn't that a tad too ironic? Reinforcement ships from Pearl and Japan always arrive pristine, yet a few turns at sea in the game and they're already accumulating damage at a far too prodiguous rate. Coupled with the random ship repair this really makes the ship damage from just plain old steaming around far too excessive. I sure hope something is done to rectify this pernicious problem.
Eric Larsen

[BPRE]

Hi RevRick/Eric,

Reading some of the posts in this thread made me check my TF with Essex and 2 CVLs that have been steaming around the Coral Sea since they arrived in scenario 5. I expected heavy damage but to my surprise it's between 4-6% after more than 3 weeks at sea.
They have been on Patrol all the time and mostly only moved short distances each day. It looks to me like the game models heavy/contra light use of the ships. It would be interesting to see if you get any results to support this Eric if you try patrol more often.

Regards
BPRE

[EricLarsen]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BPRE
Hi RevRick/Eric,

Reading some of the posts in this thread made me check my TF with Essex and 2 CVLs that have been steaming around the Coral Sea since they arrived in scenario 5. I expected heavy damage but to my surprise it's between 4-6% after more than 3 weeks at sea.
They have been on Patrol all the time and mostly only moved short distances each day. It looks to me like the game models heavy/contra light use of the ships. It would be interesting to see if you get any results to support this Eric if you try patrol more often.

Regards
BPRE

BPRE,
Thanks for the tip on your experience with patrolling. I suspect you are setting short one-turn hops, or staying in the same hex to get such results since each hex entered causes a damage check. One problem is when the tf heads for home the program sets it to retirement allowed and that will cause the tf to move fast if within 25 hexes of home. But steaming around slowly in little circles isn't always viable and realistic, when you have to move long distances in a short time then the damage will be a concern to you too. The more I think about how the IJN used their main 6 carriers from Pearl to bombing Australia to the raid on Ceylon and then back to Japan in the space of 4 to 5 months I think the game overstates systems damage far too much. They certainly weren't steaming around in little circles and were used heavily with no real big deal for wear and tear. They were stuck in port in Japan not due to systems damage but due to lack of pilots, not to mention fuel oil wasn't something the IJN cuold waste profusely! That's why the other 4 carriers weren't here in the South Pacific. Then there's Halsey who certainly didn't dilly dally around sailing slowly in little circles all over the Pacific, he pushed his cv tf's to get from point A to point B even through typhoons with a lot less damage than this game models. While patrolling might help ameliorate the problem a little, the systems damage check should probably be only once each movement phase not once each hex traveled.
Eric Larsen

[denisonh]

I am not sure about the system damage algorithm, but I think that the harder you run the ship, the better the chance for system damage.

If you are running night runs at full speed, the greater wear and tear on the system. Whether it ba a car, a tank, or a ship, running it at a comfortable cruise speed should have a much smaller impact on system damage than high speed runs.

If you are driving the hell out of you car at 100 mph every day for 6 hours, it will require maintenance faster than if you drive it for 6 hours a day at 35mph.

So, if you are running your ships on "patrol/do not retire", you should be running at cruise speed and much less subject to sys damage, as opposed to the high speed runs associated with the "Tokyo Express" Night runs.

[Drongo]

Posted by denisonh

If you are driving the hell out of you car at 100 mph every day for 6 hours, it will require maintenance faster than if you drive it for 6 hours a day at 35mph.

Thank God that doesn't apply to motorbikes.

[Black Cat]

Originally posted by denisonh
I am not sure about the system damage algorithm, but I think that the harder you run the ship, the better the chance for system damage.

If you are running night runs at full speed, the greater wear and tear on the system. Whether it ba a car, a tank, or a ship, running it at a comfortable cruise speed should have a much smaller impact on system damage than high speed runs.

If you are driving the hell out of you car at 100 mph every day for 6 hours, it will require maintenance faster than if you drive it for 6 hours a day at 35mph.

So, if you are running your ships on "patrol/do not retire", you should be running at cruise speed and much less subject to sys damage, as opposed to the high speed runs associated with the "Tokyo Express" Night runs.

Good response there.

If I may comment please.


1: Yes, as the US Run a few DD High Speed Transports up to Lunga and the ships burn out into the Red ( and lose speed ) in 3 missions...

2: I`m not so sure, they still acquire SD very fast set on Patrol so I think it`s also associated with distance and time at Sea.

As an aside, I suspect that some of this may be hardcoded in certain ships, somewhat like the Chicago is a torp magnet and Sara takes forever to repair, when I have some time I think I`ll take a look at the stats with the Handy Dandy Editor...

In any case the SD modeling is a nice feature of this Great Game.

[RevRick]

Has anyone had Lex and Sara in the game at the same time to see if Lex takes as long to repair as Sara. She takes virtually forever to take any SD points off. I've had her in port four weeks. In that time Wasp and Enterprise have taken SD points off, steamed and accumulated more, and taken some of them off. Sara is still sitting on 12. If Lex is the same, it could be an attempt to model that turbo-electric drive they had. Complicated beast, that!

[Ron Saueracker]

I think it has more to do with size. Lex and Sara, being ex Constellation class BCs, were the biggest ships in the USN at this point. 1% of 35000 tons takes longer to fix than 1% of 20000 tons.....etc.

[Luskan]

I think repair formulas for system damage need to be more volatile and more random. After Coral Sea, Yorktown put in (to Pearl I think - could be wrong) for what her Captain estimated should be a 90 day refit to repair damage from the battle as well as wear and tear etc. Work and repairs were finished in something like 45 hours and she sailed off to Midway. Couldn't we have a freak-but-brilliant repair job every now and then? Or maybe you put your BB in with 25 system damage and in two weeks she is back to 5 and you think "Great! Awesome! Well done shipyard workers/shiprights!!" and sail her out onto the ocean were shoddy repair work comes apart under real conditions and she goes straight back to 25 system damage (the original damage amount - wouldn't think that a ship would sink due to dodgy rush job repairs).

Just day dreaming . . .

[Ron Saueracker]

I think this freaky repair job is already simulated. Yorktown was not actually fully repaired, she was just made operational. Kinda like sending her out with 25% sys damage in UV. By having the option, the situation is represented.

[denisonh]

Or more like 15, since you don't have full flight ops with greater than 20 system damage.

[EricLarsen]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by denisonh
I am not sure about the system damage algorithm, but I think that the harder you run the ship, the better the chance for system damage.

If you are running night runs at full speed, the greater wear and tear on the system. Whether it ba a car, a tank, or a ship, running it at a comfortable cruise speed should have a much smaller impact on system damage than high speed runs.

If you are driving the hell out of you car at 100 mph every day for 6 hours, it will require maintenance faster than if you drive it for 6 hours a day at 35mph.

So, if you are running your ships on "patrol/do not retire", you should be running at cruise speed and much less subject to sys damage, as opposed to the high speed runs associated with the "Tokyo Express" Night runs.

denisonh,
It's only logical that the harder you run machinery the more often it will need maintenance, but I still think the game overstates that normal wear and tear. I don't recall the Japs having maintenance problems with their Tokyo Express runs except when ships got damaged in battle. Considering that ships can travel from Pearl and Japan without any systems damage to or from I would think that they should be able to sail around in the game without gaining so much systems damage. My favorite tale of systems damage at sea was on October 14, 1942 when the South Dakota and the Washington went into battle around Gaudalcanal with the Kirishima. Just as they raced into the channel between Savo Island and Cape Esperance an electrical fault tripped the South Dakota's generators and her powerless main gun turrets fell silent. It doesn't say how long it took to repair that electrical problem but it wasn't long (probably less than half an hour) because the SD was able to regain electrical power and take part in the fight. I sure don't see that modeled in the game as crews repair systems damage at sea. I also don't see the practice of rushing repair jobs on major ships like BB's and CV's being well modeled in the game either. Another big problem is when ships with major damage, and therefore very slow speeds, are moving at one hex per turn but since they're traveling at near full speed they acquire systems damage very quickly and there's a chance they'll sink before reaching port. Now the game doesn't handle towing so these highly-damaged ships should not be accruing more systems damage at a high rate. They sure don't once you send them to Pearl or Japan.
Your neighbor enjoying the cool summer fog in not-so-sunny Salinas!
Eric Larsen

[EricLarsen]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Lansford
The damage descriptions are way too simplistic. "Floatation" damage can be fixed by a few turns in a harbor, even if the ship has over a 50% damage level. That to me would signify the kind of damage Chicago or Pensacola took from torpedo hits, which required major time in a US mainland port to repair.

John,
I reread the manual about damage and flotation damage is really flooding and not hull damage. Since that is the case then the way the game repairs flotation damage so quickly is correct. I take it that hull damage is just more systems damage. Since systems damage has so many components it's no wonder that ships gain it so quickly and then there's no difference between hull damage or engine damage or whatever when it comes to repairs.
Eric Larsen

[juliet7bravo]

What the game doesn't do is figure in crew maintenance and repairs at sea. A ship under heavy use will rack up a lot of minor (or not so minor) damage, this is indisputable. But, in UV, none of it gets repaired by the crew, it just keeps piling up and up and up.

And yes, I've been saying it since the game came out...there needs to be a structural damage rating from combat, that will include permanent systems and flotation damage as is pertinent.

[Supervisor]

I have seen ships repair structural damage while at sea. Not real common, but I've seen it happen. These are generally only on moderately to severely damaged ships (because those I tend to monitor them on a turn-by-turn, but not those that only have a few points).

[John Lansford]

Well, if the floatation rating is based only on flooding, a severely damaged ship, especially from torpedoes, would still not be able to completely fix the floatation rating. Chicago lost her entire bow; that's both a flotation and a system damage loss. Similarly, Pensacola had her back broken by a Long Lance torpedo. The main deck was all that held the two sections of the ship together, yet the ship made it back to harbor after welding some patches over the hole.

[Spooky]

Originally posted by denisonh
Or more like 15, since you don't have full flight ops with greater than 20 system damage.

Are you sure ??????

[RevRick]

Should not the converse also be true - and it would take 36 Ktons longer to accumulate damage then a 20 Kton ship? If so, how come Sara has greater damage than either Wasp or Enterprise with the same action?