Review of armor on IJN destroyers

[Wallymanowar]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

It is quite possible for a 3" or 5" shell hit to a PT boat to happen and for it to survive. If the shell is solid shot it would most like pass straight through. If the shell is HE it is more likely to cause damage, but only if its fuse is set to explode before it passes completely through the boat. The most damage to a wooden boat would likely be caused by an HE round that is fused to explode on contact. It should be noted that even a solid shot will cause damage especially if it hits something like the engine

True, but arguing this in lieu of any near miss damage from same shells (shredding the PT with splinters etc) because is not modelled once again causes an all or nothing situation. That was the whole point of adding a few mm of armor to simulate plating...to address these issues (no armor should be on PTs...that was a mistake but having .303s kill DDs is a long shot at best and should not be modelled if other more prevalent instances are ignored by the model).

I agree with you Ron, but in the game code, is the hull already factored in and the armour rating used to simulate extra armour.

By what Tankerace is saying, Matrix is telling us that that is the case, so in other words we shouldn't be adding armour to the ships above what is already in place (or historically considered).

From what you are saying, which I accept as quite possible although I haven't experienced it myself, ships are getting destroyed by small arms fire at an unrealistic rate so we should add a minimum armour rating to such ships as DD's and DE's. This, in turn, is likely to prevent small arms fire from destroying any ship with this minimal armour.

Using your logic from my example in the previous post for PT boats, you are saying that the model doesn't account for damage from things such as near misses, which would have a far greater chance of causing damage than small-arms fire would, so preventing small-arms damage to these minimally armoured ships is not a great deviation from reality. I hope I am understanding you right, because you make quite a good case for including this minimal armour for these previously unarmoured ships.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735
Here is the problem that was happening in the game that caused the CHS guys to add armor: Ships were being sunk on a semi-regular basis because of magazine explosions. Yes, they did tweak magazine explosions in a later patch, but they still happen. In the game, a DD being strafed will take a small amount of damage, and I doubt that either player will be bothered by this. However, there is a significant chance that that same DD will explode from a MG hit. If it happens more than 2-3 times in the entire war, then something is wrong. That is what the 5mm of armor was trying to stop.

And this is the problem. Some say that there is no excess of critical hits by MG file on unarmoured ships. Others say there is an excess. That makes it difficult to reach an informed decision...

[Ron Saueracker]

I am not sure you understand the issue: the vast majority of ships that were unarmored have NO armor in stock, CHS and proposed CHS. It even appears ships that had armor added mysteriously lost it - and that from several quarters - including Andrew. No set of files I have seen EVER applied a UNIFORM standard that makes any sense - it was always a SELECTIVE add for a few (pet?) ships. To make this work properly it is easier to remove it from the few ships that have it (improperly in my view). To go the other way is a massive task - requireing review of over a thousand classes - well over.

Software is easily confused. But in this case I think it may not be very confused - I think the idea 5mm of armor is reducing hits may not be valid. Note that

1)I have not seen a SINGLE instance of an improper hit in the first place.

2) I have not noticed a SINGLE instance of any effect of 5 mm of armor vs mg fire whatsoever.

I tentatively accept it might have an influence - but if it does - I don't regard that as an asset in the first place. I have two issues with the concept:

1) It is false. I don't want false data in listings of historical ships to confuse people reading the data.

2) If there is a problem with code, it is wrong to fix the data. The right answer is to fix the code. Now if that is impossible I will fix the data - but I want it to be done where players won't see it - and it better be a major problem that cannot wait for a real fix. This is not a major problem IMHO. I have never noticed it at all in UV or WITP - I never felt a mg was too powerful. They hit - but what do they do?

[My secret weapon to sink subs was 25mm - not .30 cals]

1)I have not seen a SINGLE instance of an improper hit in the first place.

You don't play the game, or are just beginning too. Means nothing compared to the many who have and do.

2) I have not noticed a SINGLE instance of any effect of 5 mm of armor vs mg fire whatsoever.

See above...

1) It is false. I don't want false data in listings of historical ships to confuse people reading the data.

It is only false if you can't wrap your brain around the concept of hulls not being made of "Newskin"

2) If there is a problem with code, it is wrong to fix the data. The right answer is to fix the code. Now if that is impossible I will fix the data - but I want it to be done where players won't see it - and it better be a major problem that cannot wait for a real fix. This is not a major problem IMHO. I have never noticed it at all in UV or WITP - I never felt a mg was too powerful. They hit - but what do they do?

I'm not about to feed steak to my 3 month old nephew knowing that while his teeth will one day come in, the fact that he has none now makes using formula and later baby food a false solution.

Whatever guys, do what you will, I can always add hulls to my ships later.[:(]

[Ron Saueracker]

Getting cranky...going to have a rare smoke, that should help.[8D]

Oh, yeah...it was GOOOOOOOOD!

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

That begs the question though, even if it is the case (and the only way to be sure is through some proper testing) - how effective are unarmoured steel hulls at stopoing MG rounds?

They're not. Have you seen footage of US Coast Guard vessels knocking out the engines on merchant ships (full size ships) with .50 cal MG's firing single rounds at a time?

[Mike Scholl]

Standard hull plating on a merchant vessel or a DD is 1/4 to 5/8 inch steel. A 50 Cal. AP round will penetrate up to 1/2 inch of armour at a couple hundred yards, but will bounce of even 1/4" steel plate at about 1200 yards. So every one is right and wrong..., and the programming is mostly wrong. A 50 cal. WILL penetrate a DD or a Merchant, but not from any reasonable range of ship-to-ship combat. PT's will use their 50's to supress the crew on the deck of a target when they are making a torpedo run, but taking a plywood boat into 200 yard range of anything that can fight back isn't standard practice. Later in the war when PT's spent most of their time hunting Japanese barges, they put larger guns aboard (37-40mm)

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

In my opinion, anecotal evidence is not anywhere near as convincing as test results. So saying "I saw a ship explode" or "I have never seen a ship explode" doesn't help much, unless there is a big preponderance of evidence one way or the other. Sadly, I have not played the game enough to add much anecdotal evidence of my own.

Its not anecotal if not exactly "test results" either as I based my comments on many hours of surface play which has involved the straffing of warships. A current PBEM i'm involved in has seen many strafings of unarmored ships. (posted) There, as in my other games there have been no catastrophic hits nor major damage caused. I could set up some static tests but i'd rather devote the time elsewhere to be honest. My apologies if that sounds TristanJohn-ish, but I simply, based on my own play experiences, don't see unarmored hulls vs. MG's as a major issue and i'd say its up to those who say it is an issue to prove it with these tests that you mentioned before yet more negative comments are directed at the game-engine by those persons.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

In my opinion, anecotal evidence is not anywhere near as convincing as test results. So saying "I saw a ship explode" or "I have never seen a ship explode" doesn't help much, unless there is a big preponderance of evidence one way or the other. Sadly, I have not played the game enough to add much anecdotal evidence of my own.

Its not anecotal if not exactly "test results" either as I based my comments on many hours of surface play which has involved the straffing of warships. A current PBEM i'm involved in has seen many strafings of unarmored ships. (posted) There, as in my other games there have been no catastrophic hits nor major damage caused. I could set up some static tests but i'd rather devote the time elsewhere to be honest. My apologies if that sounds TristanJohn-ish, but I simply, based on my own play experiences, don't see unarmored hulls vs. MG's as a major issue and i'd say its up to those who say it is an issue to prove it with these tests that you mentioned before yet more negative comments are directed at the game-engine by those persons.

So, you have not seen it so it does not exist, but if others have their word is just that and they must prove it? Well, given that I'm playing CHS the odds of this happening are next to nil. I will agree with the fact it is a minor issue because it is correctable with the editor. I'm just going to leave the "armour/hull plating" on, but I think I'll reduce it to 2 mm (again subjective) because it is not specially forged armour plate.

[trojan58]

I dont have a problem with MG hits not causing damage, however, 20mm and larger cannon had a explosive capacity and in quantity could cause extensive damage to smaller vessels and merchant ships. Giving these ships armour greatly reduces the effects of straffing aircraft. Trouble is how do you model this. Would it be possible to give these weapons an armour penetration rating?

[KDonovan]

Just thought i'd run a few test's on strafing DD's just to add some numbers to the discussion. Its not a proper test as you would need lots more runs, but i don't have the time to do it...so i just compiled a little one. I set up strafing attacks from Zero's on DD's and Kittyhawks on DD's. Any bomb hits on DD's disqualified them from the test since it would skew the result. Not sure if "durability (Dur.)" of the ships affects the outcome so i listed those values also....but here are my results from a short test:

Zero's attacking DD's
DD Sims (9 Dur) - 8 Hits --> 1 Sys
DD Dewey (7 Dur) - 16 Hits --> 1 Sys, 3 Fire
DD Phelps (10 Dur) - 24 Hits --> 2 Sys, 8 Flt
DD Aylwin (7 Dur) - 24 Hits --> 3 Sys, 12 Flt
DD Russell (9 Dur) - 20 Hits --> 1 Sys, 12 Flt

Kittyhawks attacking DD's (all Jap DD's have 6 Dur. rating)
DD Yayoi - 8 Hits --> 2 Flt
DD Uzuki - 8 Hits --> 14 Flt
DD Mochizuki - 4 Hits --> no damage
DD Oite - 12 Hits --> 7 Flt
DD Asangi - 32 Hits --> 26 Flt
DD Mutsuki - 4 Hits --> 2 Sys, 3 Flt

This is a stock game on Scen 3, so take what you want from my little test. To me it seems like MG's are well moddled in the game as only 1 DD was moderately damaged by MG fire and all the rest encountered light damage.

[trojan58]

Where the DD's with or without armour

[Tankerace]

He said stock scenario 3, so they are without armor.

[trojan58]

Sorry, missed that bit, pardon me whilst I whip out and shoot myself

[Tankerace]

LOL na, we all miss things like that every now and then.

[KDonovan]

i've been thinking about the DD armor situation, and it seems to me people are worried about excessive sinkings of DD's by MG (ie Magazine Explosions). I wonder if this is a manifistation of the number of hits a strafing plane scores on the DD rather than the DD having "too weak" of armor. In my test all "hits" were of the penetrating type, therefore its my understanding that any penetrating hit has a 2% chance of a magazine explosion. Not a big chance, but if you multiply that by each hit...lets say 25 strafing hits, each one penatrating, the probabilty of a penetrating hit touching off a magazine goes up considerably.

So maybe the problem (if there is one), is that strafing planes record to many "hits", resulting in the high probability of that 2% magazine explosion.

Then again...what does a strafing "hit" mean. Does it mean one 50cal bullet hitting the ship...or is it the result of a burst of 50cal from a plane's attack (therefore multiple bullets)...so many questions [:D]

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

So, you have not seen it so it does not exist, but if others have their word is just that and they must prove it?

I didn't say it didn't exist, I said i have not seen it....and there are no "others"....just you Ron with your typically derogratory statements toward the game such as:

The damage model leans toward the extreme and adding a little bit of steel to a data based DD and other ships to simulate steel hulls compensates for the extremems of the damage model and makes sense to boot.

Makes sense? ok....prove it to me in the manner suggested by Andrew.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: trojan

I dont have a problem with MG hits not causing damage, however, 20mm and larger cannon had a explosive capacity and in quantity could cause extensive damage to smaller vessels and merchant ships. Giving these ships armour greatly reduces the effects of straffing aircraft. Trouble is how do you model this. Would it be possible to give these weapons an armour penetration rating?

light MG's (7.7 or .303 etc) seem to do very little damage based on what i've seen

heavy MG's (.50's) do a bit more as KD's test just showed.

Cannons can be devastating. In another PBEM, I was able to do grievious damage to PT's using cannon armed planes.

The two MG types should probably be referred to in the specific to avoid confusion as their damage potential is quite different

[rtrapasso]

Again, not true. As the angle of the object striking the armor increases the relative thickness of the armour increases, until infinity. If the angle of contact =180 degrees you will miss the target, in other words no penetration. Using physics you will also find that as the angle of strike increases the kinetic energy imparted from the projectile to its target decreases - in effect less of the weight of the shell comes into play. If you want to get into the exact math go to this site: http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Hstfrmla.htm
It is theoretically possible for 1mm of steel to resist an 18" shell penetrating it - it would be extremely rare but not impossible.

Again, you are ignoring real life facts: the physics you have set up says that the shell is in effect a point centered around the center of mass. In real life, it is not. What will happen is when the shell is plunging straight down, it will be split in two - one half falling outside the armor, the other half falling inside (i.e. penetrating). But this is totally ludicrous situation, and not encountered in shell testing, nor in real life unless you wanted to try a carefully staged event.

EDIT: if the shell hit even with low velocity but exploded the bursting charge in a non-AP 10" shell is going to probably destroy 5 mm. of armor - and it going to "penetrate", again, even if the shell is technically defeated.

Formulas are useful in some cases, but when you try applying them in weird circumstances that they were not intended for (i.e. this case), you get weird and unrealistic results.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

light MG's (7.7 or .303 etc) seem to do very little damage based on what i've seen

heavy MG's (.50's) do a bit more as KD's test just showed.

Cannons can be devastating. In another PBEM, I was able to do grievious damage to PT's using cannon armed planes.

Sounds realistic!

I think the issue is more History vs. Hollywood than it is Real Life vs. WITP.

[Tankerace]

I agree that MGs should not sink destroyers, at least in terms of opening the hull to the sea (which we have found doesn't happen, only sys and fire damage is added, so its a non issue). But so far the only instance we have of them doing so, is 2 times as quoted by Ron. So we have gone to the extreme, and nerfed tin cans where they are invulnearable to strafing, which is not historically correct. So what in effect is done by adding armor is nerfing a rare occurance as observed by one player (Ron), yet in effect nerfed a very real, historical occurance that was common practice.

It seems to me if there is any extreme involved in WitP, Destroyers, and armor, it was adding the armor in the first place.The Destroyer Kagero (as in the passage I quoted above) had her hull flooded by strafing planes. Now strafing a destroyer was a common practice (If you talk to Billy Mitchell, it was textbook), yet by adding armor to destoyers strafing acheives nothing. So it seems to me that adding armor to destroyers is far more ahistorical, gamey, and extrme than the one or two odd occurances of tin cans blowing up (which again, did happen, as torpedoes and depth charges could be touched off).

To a more serious note, in WPO beta we added the 5mm armor at first, because I bought into it at first. But we found at normal combat ranges, 12 pounder shells (roughly 75mm guns) would not penetrate a US destroyer at ranges over about 5,000 yards. What does this mean in the WitP context? Well, you can pretty much right off the US Destroyer escorts, because in a surface fight their 3in/50s will have no effect. The larger 4, Japanese 4.7, and 5 inch gunned destroyers will still be able to score penetrations, that is up to about 12,000 yards, when the 5mm armor becomes proof even against Japanese 5.5" guns.

So, I will now ask for a simple answer. Which is more gamey:

1) Maybe 6 destroyers at maximum blow up to Machine Guns in the campaign ( a rate of 1 a year) [No armor]
2a) Destroyers being immune to strafing attacks. [Armor added]
2b) Destroyers being proof against small (<75mm) shells at normal destroyer combat ranges. [Armor added]
2c) Destroyers able to defeat light cruiser shells at long ranges. [Armor added]

It seems to me that 1 is potentially true (that rate never seen, only 2 instances documented, and both only by Ron), while all three of the "2's" are complete fiction, and are documented by several players, as happened several times, with repeatable results. It seems to me that the only thing that needs to be tweaked here is the removal of armor from the DDs.

We've seen reports that cannons bounce off PT boats that mistakenly have armor added to them, So its a sure fire certainty that they'll bounce off destroyers. And 20mm, and especially 30mm, 37mm, and 40mm Guns should chew up a destroyer, and leave it a burning wreck, temporarily out of action.


Heres a closeup of the destroyer Livermore (DD-429). Note the seams that you can clearly see on the bow, because the metal is so relatively thin! Now, are you trying to tell me .50MGs and 20mm cannons won't penetrate that? Now granted on other destroyers it is harder to see, but it is still there. These were thin hulled ships, and they were vulnerable to machineguns. Maybe that's a hideous fact to some people, but limiting one thing because you don't like it, and creating a ton of ahistorical inaccuracies is exactly what the CHS mod was supposed to prevent.