Merchant ship damage durability

[RAM]

ORIGINAL: marc420

From what I remember of my reading, historically tankers were rather difficult to sink. Even loaded, those individual, sealed off compartments tended to limit damage to just the compartment that was hit. But that's just a memory from reading books about submariners many years ago.

true on the sealed off compartments, however if the fuel was ignited...once the tanker caugt fire, it was doomed. There are hundreds of accounts of tankers blazing from end to end during the german submarine offensive in the Atlantic, with just one torpedo hit which set the fuel on fire.

Tankers carrying fuel should be doomed with just one hit involving fire. Fuel is highly flammable, you know, and if you're carrying 9k tons of it there's nothing in the world that will stop the ship from turning into a living hell of fire.

As for the Hood, a critical hit system aught to take that into account. Perhaps with some extra cases for ships with idiotic designs that left the magazine vulnerable to plunging fire. But yes, for the Hood, for the Arizona at PH and some other cases, there should be a chance for that one shell, bomb or torpedo completely blows up the ship. There should also be critical hit cases that allow for what happened to the Bismarck ... ie one lucky torpedo hit which didn't kill the ship, but did make it uselessly immobile.

agree, the Yamato during her last battle had to fight hard to control a very dangerous fire raging into her vitals because one 1000lb bomb penetrated one of the 6' turrets and the weaker armor there into the inners of the ship, exploding there.

Had there been no torpedo hits, the Yamato would've survived (there was a small chance that the overheat could cause a magazine blowing but that seemed to be not probable in this case in particular), but would've certainly had to face a quite good deal of SYS damage...

In the game, if there's no armor penetration, there's almost no SYS damage caused,which is something correct.

However there should be a small chance (say 1% per hit for bombs equal or bigger than 1000lbs -that should cover japanese bombs of 500kg or more) that the bomb hits a weak spot or badly covered place and penetrates into her vitals causing some SYS damage, even while they were not supposed to have the AP power to go trhough the standard armor. As it is now, it's impossible to cause direct SYS or FLT damage to battleships using dive bombers, thus is impossible that the historical hit which set the Yamato ablaze could happen in WitP.

This means that if you get 20 hits on a battleship you got a chance to cause some decent SYS damage to her. She won't sink with one or two bombs going off in her vitals, just impair her and send for a longer time to the shipyard.

IF you get EXTREMELY lucky you might even, after that 1% roll, get a magazine going off and causing some truly major damage, even the loss of the ship.

Seems realistic to me.

[Tristanjohn]

Couple of points: burning ships are death traps, burning oil tankers . . . multiply that by whatever number you wish; strafing IJN ships with .50 caliber ammo proved to be a highly effective means by Allies of visiting real damage on these targets, and not just merchant vessels but warships (especially the more lightly armored one like DDs and CLs)--enough damage to put these ships out of commision for awhile and/or cause grievous casualties. I doubt either of these effects is realistically modeled by WitP from what I've seen thus far and certainly were not realistically modeled by UV. I also doubt we'll see any change as the patches roll out, as this strikes me as something part and parcel of Grigsby's perception of events and/or a limitation of his various systems as they've been designed and implemented over the years.

Re "out of commission": something should be done with the AI constantly employing ships with considerable damage, especially in combat. This shouldn't be hard to code, it ought to be easy to direct the AI to send thes damaged products back to some decent-sized port for refit.

Another case in point: someone mentioned the latent potential for critical damage contained within the American 1000-pound GP bomb, yet where is this seriously addressed within the model? The answer is it is not, nor ever will be in all likelihood. But a ship taking a penetrating hit from one of those babies inside its bowels would not in real life have come away feeling good about itself, and quite possibly might not have come away at all. Yet the model might only award 26 damage points with perhaps some modest flotation damage thrown in. This I've seen countless times in UV with re to Dauntless attacks on IJN flattops, much to my everlasting disappointment.

Bottom line: in many respects the combat model's off by plenty, and has been since forever. Old story.

[tsimmonds]

Yet the model might only award 26 damage points with perhaps some modest flotation damage thrown in.

And should you get three hits, 3 X 26 = 78 plus raging fires, and that bad boy is history. Even two might do it. It's now too slow to get away, and its own fires will finish it off. If it doesn't sink during the night it'll be easy meat in the morning.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Yet the model might only award 26 damage points with perhaps some modest flotation damage thrown in.

And should you get three hits, 3 X 26 = 78 plus raging fires, and that bad boy is history. Even two might do it. It's now too slow to get away, and its own fires will finish it off. If it doesn't sink during the night it'll be easy meat in the morning.

Something like that, though even one or two large bombs might well spell finis for the unfortunate target.

Not often (if ever) in the game, though. [:)]

[Feinder]

Just to play devil's advocate here (I'm actually -for- increasing the damage liklihood), but keep in mind...

Players are a LOT more agressive than our historical counterparts. I know you pulled a number out of thing air saying "a 1% chance of catrastophic damage if these conditions are met...". But again, players are much more agressive than things were historically. We see more action in one month of play, than did historically in 4 months. Even is you say, "How many major and minor surface egagements were there historically? How many one-hit wonder were there? It wasn't very many, so let's even say CONSERVATIVELY it was one-tenth of one percent." That's still going to be substantially skewed by players agressive style of play. .1% means that one bomb out of a 1000 is going to do the dirty deed. While that might be historically accurate, and we see historical results if we played with historic agression levels. But we don't we quite zealously send out TFs that we -know- are going to clobber the bad-guys. Players TFs get into more intense action, much more frequently. So those 1000 hits are racked up much faster. And then you see the critical much more fequently (event tho, statistically, it's not; it's only because you're getting into action more frequently). Then people would probably complain that it's happening TOO frequently.

I do think the damage routine needs to be "tweaked" (esp regarding merchants, but it's FAR better than it used to be in UV, trust me). But if they tweak it, it's going to need a lot testing.

-F-

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Just to play devil's advocate here (I'm actually -for- increasing the damage liklihood), but keep in mind...

Players are a LOT more agressive than our historical counterparts. I know you pulled a number out of thing air saying "a 1% chance of catrastophic damage if these conditions are met...". But again, players are much more agressive than things were historically. We see more action in one month of play, than did historically in 4 months. Even is you say, "How many major and minor surface egagements were there historically? How many one-hit wonder were there? It wasn't very many, so let's even say CONSERVATIVELY it was one-tenth of one percent." That's still going to be substantially skewed by players agressive style of play. .1% means that one bomb out of a 1000 is going to do the dirty deed. While that might be historically accurate, and we see historical results if we played with historic agression levels. But we don't we quite zealously send out TFs that we -know- are going to clobber the bad-guys. Players TFs get into more intense action, much more frequently. So those 1000 hits are racked up much faster. And then you see the critical much more fequently (event tho, statistically, it's not; it's only because you're getting into action more frequently). Then people would probably complain that it's happening TOO frequently.

I do think the damage routine needs to be "tweaked" (esp regarding merchants, but it's FAR better than it used to be in UV, trust me). But if they tweak it, it's going to need a lot testing.

-F-

Well, I'd guess many players do play more aggressively than history has it, but a more accurate combat model would cure them of these overly-aggressive ways fast! Afterall, one cannot be aggressive to any degree with surface assets one no longer possesses.

These sorts of arguments miss the point: an accurate model is a superior model to an inaccurate model.

[Ron Saueracker]

Main problem with battle cruisers, British ones mainly as German designs were really fast battleships, is that they were very expensive (more than BBs) and were equally armed, and as such, it was basically unthinkable for their commanders to deline combat between their kind or full fledged BBs.

[RAM]

ORIGINAL: Feinder


Players are a LOT more agressive than our historical counterparts.

root the reason of that agresiveness. The fact is that the combat rules and damage models allow for a very agressive usage of assets without fearing losing the ship as much as the historical commanders did. If the damages (the damage model's ain't bad, but need to be a tad more to the lethal side) and combat rules were more realistic, the chair-commanders we are would be way more cautious using the assets we're given, because if we weren't we'd run a very true risk of losing the ships we are using for good.

IRL four of the KB carriers went down with only something like 8 1000lb bomb impacts on them at midway (not sure about the total bombs, but for sure at least a couple of them went to the bottom with just 1-2 impacts). This is almost unreproducible in the game as it is now, and is a good measure of what happens when your ships meet the ugly face of enemy ammunition raining upon them.

Add to that the linking between SYS and FLT damage and carrier ops. For carriers with an armored deck (like Taiho) two 1000 pounders cause little or no damage to her SYS and no FLT damage at all, meaning she can keep on running air ops with no troouble. IRL the ship would be intact to sail, but would have a flying deck crowded with splinters, holes, and all the mess created by bombs exploding on impacts. It's hard to take off or recover planes in that state,at least for some hours/days, yet in the game they can do it with no problem. This makes it difficult to put Taiho ,or the british armored carriers, out from a battle when they would've realistically unable to launch more strikes.

I think that putting a bit more of lethality to some of the ammunition that in the game has less lethality than in real life would give the over-agressive commander a run for his money, and make him think his moves better for the next time. It would sum for a (at least for me) a thoroughly more enjoyable and realistic gaming experience.

Said that, I can live with it as it is now...that doesn't mean I won't like to see it changed .

[HMSWarspite]

ORIGINAL: RAM

Add to that the linking between SYS and FLT damage and carrier ops. For carriers with an armored deck (like Taiho) two 1000 pounders cause little or no damage to her SYS and no FLT damage at all, meaning she can keep on running air ops with no troouble. IRL the ship would be intact to sail, but would have a flying deck crowded with splinters, holes, and all the mess created by bombs exploding on impacts. It's hard to take off or recover planes in that state,at least for some hours/days, yet in the game they can do it with no problem. This makes it difficult to put Taiho ,or the british armored carriers, out from a battle when they would've realistically unable to launch more strikes.

I think you should look up the effects of Kamakazis on the British CVs in 1945. In several cases (can't remember all of them now, but Formidable was one) the ships were able to continue flight ops very quickly after being hit - certainly inside one air ops phase of WitP. The planes near by on deck are lost, but any below decks/remote can be operated as soon as the fire is out, or at worst once the quick setting cement is dry!

On the subject debated earlier, given the scale of WitP, logically a 'hit' by a shell/bomb/torpedo is an event that causes damage (or potentially causes damage, but is defeated by armour/other protection). I think everyone in this thread is forgetting that a 'hit' on an AK in WitP by a BB with a 14" might be the genuine 'full 3/4 ton of shell penetrates the outer hull, and explodes deep inside the ship' type of event. It also includes the same shell exploding along side, and causing splinter damage, or unseating the no 2 steam winch, port side forrard and throwing the commander's potted plant into his bath! My point is that just because you 'hit' with a shell, don't picture the first event all the time. The first might be 50% Flt, lots of fire and sys. The second might be 10% sys. Now, if someone would give accurate stats on the damages caused by known warheads to known ships, sufficiently often to see what was happening...

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

ORIGINAL: RAM

Add to that the linking between SYS and FLT damage and carrier ops. For carriers with an armored deck (like Taiho) two 1000 pounders cause little or no damage to her SYS and no FLT damage at all, meaning she can keep on running air ops with no troouble. IRL the ship would be intact to sail, but would have a flying deck crowded with splinters, holes, and all the mess created by bombs exploding on impacts. It's hard to take off or recover planes in that state,at least for some hours/days, yet in the game they can do it with no problem. This makes it difficult to put Taiho ,or the british armored carriers, out from a battle when they would've realistically unable to launch more strikes.

I think you should look up the effects of Kamakazis on the British CVs in 1945. In several cases (can't remember all of them now, but Formidable was one) the ships were able to continue flight ops very quickly after being hit - certainly inside one air ops phase of WitP. The planes near by on deck are lost, but any below decks/remote can be operated as soon as the fire is out, or at worst once the quick setting cement is dry!

On the subject debated earlier, given the scale of WitP, logically a 'hit' by a shell/bomb/torpedo is an event that causes damage (or potentially causes damage, but is defeated by armour/other protection). I think everyone in this thread is forgetting that a 'hit' on an AK in WitP by a BB with a 14" might be the genuine 'full 3/4 ton of shell penetrates the outer hull, and explodes deep inside the ship' type of event. It also includes the same shell exploding along side, and causing splinter damage, or unseating the no 2 steam winch, port side forrard and throwing the commander's potted plant into his bath! My point is that just because you 'hit' with a shell, don't picture the first event all the time. The first might be 50% Flt, lots of fire and sys. The second might be 10% sys. Now, if someone would give accurate stats on the damages caused by known warheads to known ships, sufficiently often to see what was happening...

Near misses and their damage caused was argued fairly to death over in the UV forum. As far as I know these events are not modeled, only actual hits. Too bad, as near missed of heavy ordnance did very real damage as often as not--more so than tipping a flower pot over.

As for 14" ordnance hitting merchies: I've never seen this. Usually only smaller stuff is even fired. In real life the likelihood would be strong for non-detonation of the heavy round as it simply passed right through the superstructure making a swiss-cheese sort of hole.

Still no feedback on .50 caliber rounds and the damage these did in real life and do not do (much of, anyway) according to the model we have to play with around with. That's discouraging, as it's a significant part of this issue of model "accuracy" re damage.

[Bradley7735]

Near misses are modeled in the game. At least for bombs dropped by dive bombers. Have you ever seen SBD's attacking a ship and seen the message "Belt Hit"??? How does something dropping straight down hit the belt??? By a near miss!! The actual hit (where the bomb contacts metal) are deck hits. Belt hits are bombs hitting the water right next to the ship.

I assume ship to ship gunfire would be modeled the same way, but it's not possible to tell (unless you can see the code, which I can't)

Warspite's paragraph above is a great example of how 14" hits can cause large or small amounts of damage. (some hits are only near misses.)

bc

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Near misses are modeled in the game. At least for bombs dropped by dive bombers. Have you ever seen SBD's attacking a ship and seen the message "Belt Hit"??? How does something dropping straight down hit the belt??? By a near miss!! The actual hit (where the bomb contacts metal) are deck hits. Belt hits are bombs hitting the water right next to the ship.

I assume ship to ship gunfire would be modeled the same way, but it's not possible to tell (unless you can see the code, which I can't)

Warspite's paragraph above is a great example of how 14" hits can cause large or small amounts of damage. (some hits are only near misses.)

bc

If so then the model's been changed.

As for "how" it (belt damage) might ocur with vertically-delivered ordnance, the answer is simply enough: vertically, or in other words from the top down. [:)] It'd be rare, though.

[Nikademus]

The model has not been changed. The Hit Location "Belt Armor" is a valid choice for a bomb hit (though the % chance for a deck hit is larger). If the weapon has enough penetration to defeat the armor rating for that HL, it penetrates and causes damage with a much larger chance of FLT vs a deck armor hit.

A true "Near miss" HL that randomized belt armor levels and provided for less damage and FLT (x a random for variablility) was preposed by moi a long time ago but had to be nixed due to other considerations.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

The model has not been changed. The Hit Location "Belt Armor" is a valid choice for a bomb hit (though the % chance for a deck hit is larger). If the weapon has enough penetration to defeat the armor rating for that HL, it penetrates and causes damage with a much larger chance of FLT vs a deck armor hit.

A true "Near miss" HL that randomized belt armor levels and provided for less damage and FLT (x a random for variablility) was preposed by moi a long time ago but had to be nixed due to other considerations.

Yes, I thought I remembered reading that in an old UV thread from way back, along with some other arguments you ably brought forward re hit damage and the like.

So, the model's the same. At least in that case we're dealing with a known constant. [:)]

[Oznoyng]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Near misses are modeled in the game. At least for bombs dropped by dive bombers. Have you ever seen SBD's attacking a ship and seen the message "Belt Hit"??? How does something dropping straight down hit the belt??? By a near miss!! The actual hit (where the bomb contacts metal) are deck hits. Belt hits are bombs hitting the water right next to the ship.

I assume ship to ship gunfire would be modeled the same way, but it's not possible to tell (unless you can see the code, which I can't)

Warspite's paragraph above is a great example of how 14" hits can cause large or small amounts of damage. (some hits are only near misses.)

bc

Bombs do not drop "straight down". The dropping aircraft imparts it's lateral movement speed to the bomb. Unless the dive angle is 90 degrees from the horizon, the bombs will come in at an angle. See http://www.daveswarbirds.com/navalwar/divebomb.htm for some nice pictures. At a dive speed of 250 mph, the typical Japanese dive bomber's bomb will have a ground speed of approximately 143 mph and the USN dive bomb would have a speed of more like 85 mph. (Differences entirely from angle of the dive.) Now, if the bomb is dropped along the axis of movement for the ship, the bomb has a much higher chance to hit the deck armor. In the event that the ship turns to present a broadside to the diving bomber, then the probabilities of hitting belt armor are higher. Look at some of these photos. http://www.navycompass.com/photo/photoview.asp?p=2388 In particular, look at CV2 and CV-5, taken from angles approaching the angle of the a dive bomber attack (still too shallow for American DB's, but close to IJN DB's). Estimate the percent that you see deck versus side of the ship. While smaller, you can clearly see that hitting the belt is possible, and in fact would happen regularly.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Near misses are modeled in the game. At least for bombs dropped by dive bombers. Have you ever seen SBD's attacking a ship and seen the message "Belt Hit"??? How does something dropping straight down hit the belt??? By a near miss!! The actual hit (where the bomb contacts metal) are deck hits. Belt hits are bombs hitting the water right next to the ship.

I assume ship to ship gunfire would be modeled the same way, but it's not possible to tell (unless you can see the code, which I can't)

Warspite's paragraph above is a great example of how 14" hits can cause large or small amounts of damage. (some hits are only near misses.)

bc

Bombs do not drop "straight down". The dropping aircraft imparts it's lateral movement speed to the bomb. Unless the dive angle is 90 degrees from the horizon, the bombs will come in at an angle. See http://www.daveswarbirds.com/navalwar/divebomb.htm for some nice pictures. At a dive speed of 250 mph, the typical Japanese dive bomber's bomb will have a ground speed of approximately 143 mph and the USN dive bomb would have a speed of more like 85 mph. (Differences entirely from angle of the dive.) Now, if the bomb is dropped along the axis of movement for the ship, the bomb has a much higher chance to hit the deck armor. In the event that the ship turns to present a broadside to the diving bomber, then the probabilities of hitting belt armor are higher. Look at some of these photos. http://www.navycompass.com/photo/photoview.asp?p=2388 In particular, look at CV2 and CV-5, taken from angles approaching the angle of the a dive bomber attack (still too shallow for American DB's, but close to IJN DB's). Estimate the percent that you see deck versus side of the ship. While smaller, you can clearly see that hitting the belt is possible, and in fact would happen regularly.

I don't know about the "regularly" part, but the rest of it is sound.

[tsimmonds]

Estimate the percent that you see deck versus side of the ship. While smaller, you can clearly see that hitting the belt is possible, and in fact would happen regularly.

Actual hits, though, would be significantly less likely than they would be from a dead astern approach. Deflection, you know.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Estimate the percent that you see deck versus side of the ship. While smaller, you can clearly see that hitting the belt is possible, and in fact would happen regularly.

Actual hits, though, would be significantly less likely than they would be from a dead astern approach. Deflection, you know.

Except in the case of skip bombing where pilots looked for a full deflection appproach--not to include strafers, who did attack on beam--none of which is modeled exactly, so what's the point? [:)]

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: steveh11Matrix

Merchant ships: Remember the "Ohio", that stayed afloat just long enough to get into Valetta, enabling the defence of Malta to continue? Always been one of my favourite sea stories.

Steve.

And it's a good one..., but now remember the 1,000's of ships that didn't "stay afloat
just long enough" to get anywhere, or in many cases for the crew to even abandon them.
What makes the OHIO story and the few others like it so memorable is their rarety.
Many, many more Merchant Ships went to the bottom rapidly from a SINGLE bomb or
torpedo hit than struggled heroically into port. You can't use the half-dozen exceptions
out of several thousand examples as "the norm". Well, you can..., because the game
tends to---but that doesn't make it accurate.

[Ron Saueracker]

I find merchies are a little too robust, especially the Allied with damage control on as well. (should only apply to warships I think, not merchants...with the exception of Navy manned AKAs and APAs)

However, I also think that Japanese damage control penalties are too damning. They had no real problem with flooding, it was with regard to fires predominantly, which in turn caused massive explosions and bigger holes. Shinano is not a good example of Japanese damage control as she was in transit without an entire crew and was simply caught with her pants down (no full crew, water tight doors left open or not installed)

Torpedo damage I find vexing as they predominantly cause flooding in the game, which is correctable with time, sometimes without a port. A certain amount of flooding should remain constant until repaired (like system damage is butperhaps have it take longer as there was only so many drydock vacancies) at a naval yard or size ten port (assumed to have a drydock). Big holes don't just go away and mattresses should not constitute a repaired hull once the water is pumped out.[;)]