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Vals that sunk Cornwall used 250kg bombs exclusively (!) no depth charges. From 15 bomb hits described in the report only 6 were near misses, these opened up the hull, shut down boilers and caused critical damage to the ship. If there were only 9 direct hits, heavy cruiser, although badly damaged, could make it home.

ORIGINAL: Nomad

I'm pretty sure I have seen bombs return the message that they scored a belt armor hit. That always seemed to me to be a near miss. To me the problem is that they never seem to penetrate the belt armor of warships.

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: Nomad

I'm pretty sure I have seen bombs return the message that they scored a belt armor hit. That always seemed to me to be a near miss. To me the problem is that they never seem to penetrate the belt armor of warships.

Since most bombs can't penetrate the belt armor hit location of heavily armored ships, you could interpret it as a non-damaging near miss. (there was such a thing) A "close" Near Miss hit location (a seperate HL vs. "belt armor hit") that i wanted long ago would have resurected a mechanism i'd seen before in a previous SSI title, whereby the warhead size would be compared to the belt armor size of the target ship + a random to see if some flotation damage and maybe a little bit of SYS occurs. It would make the larger targets more wary of bombers due to the random's potential to skew the straight up comparison of warhead to armor thickness. Ok so its not in AE......release the hounds! There's alot of other new features and tweaks in the game so like i said....anyone feeling cheated will initially be too busy to complain about it because your going to have a task scrutinizing all the other changes/tweaks/new additions that did make it in. A learning curve all over again.

JWE was right when he said the team can't do everything that everyone wants. It never could in the first place. Been there....heard that....been accused of it...you name it.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Harry, I understand everything in your post except for that last bit... how does an underwater near miss, causing the hull plates to buckle, increase the chance for a magazine explosion? Boyle's Law?

Typically, the near miss causes flooding - and flooding the magazines is a tactic used to prevent explosions.

Please help me understand. [&:]

A near miss produced a hot gas bubble expanding at supersonic speed. It was the shock of that bubble hitting the hull plates that caused the damage. If the shock wave got beyond the hull, you hoped that the underwater protection system (UPS) prevented it from getting into whatever was behind the UPS, such as the magazine. (Note cruisers and smaller carriers lacked a UPS.) If the shock wave damaged the magazine, you prayed for flooding.

How often were ships actually sunk by near misses in the war? Especially from magazine explosions? I don't think it's a matter of what CAN happen but of how often DID it happen in reality. I assume the chances of a near miss translating into a magazine explosion would be relatively rare. Ships weren't just blowing up from magazine explosions left and right in the war, were they? And I believe WITP-AE factors in things like magazine explosions. Who is to say that some of those magazine explosions are not due to near misses?

ORIGINAL: Dili

Vals that sunk Cornwall used 250kg bombs exclusively (!) no depth charges. From 15 bomb hits described in the report only 6 were near misses, these opened up the hull, shut down boilers and caused critical damage to the ship. If there were only 9 direct hits, heavy cruiser, although badly damaged, could make it home.

Well that is a wrong paralelism. The correct one is if those 6 bomb have not been near misses and instead hit the ship. Would it sink?

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Other than that deck and armor issues are much more important than near misses.

Probably not.

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Because it's assumed in Gary's games that the entire hull of any ship has the maximum thickness of armour everywhere. Just like deck, tower etc.

ORIGINAL: Dili

Probably not.

I rate the ship armor deck specially carriers, armor coverage and torpedo defense systems as more important issues than near misses, same for AA fire control or not fire control, sonar and lack of damage to naval and AA fire control. I think tower hits maybe can simulate Fire control hits and degrade hit probablity from a ship.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Because it's assumed in Gary's games that the entire hull of any ship has the maximum thickness of armour everywhere. Just like deck, tower etc.

What do you want? 100 pound bombs crippling battleships because they happen to hit just the right spot and just the right angle? 1000 pound bombs aren't causing enough damage?

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

What do you want? 100 pound bombs crippling battleships because they happen to hit just the right spot and just the right angle? 1000 pound bombs aren't causing enough damage?

They aren't by a factor of 5 or 10. On the other hand, the pHits are high by a factor of 5 or 10. The reality of bombing was that the threat was enough to cause warships to rebase.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

What do you want? 100 pound bombs crippling battleships because they happen to hit just the right spot and just the right angle? 1000 pound bombs aren't causing enough damage?

They aren't by a factor of 5 or 10. On the other hand, the pHits are high by a factor of 5 or 10. The reality of bombing was that the threat was enough to cause warships to rebase.

What do you mean by pHit? What is a pHit? [&:]
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Shorthand for probability of hit. Often written p_hit on an html page.

Too much detail--implementation will be opaque. It's that sort of thing that people already complain about. Instead, someone can read through the existing publications on ship damage during WWII and produce a statistical model that could be used by the game to assess the effect of various kinds and amounts of damage. I did just that many years ago, and the data are more available now than when I was working. (I had to use USAF translations of Soviet analyses to get access to the Kriegsmarine war damage reports.)

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I think Harry means that in the game the percentage chance to hit is too high, while the damage done by each bomb (on average) is too low.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

It still baffles me. WITP is probably the most detailed grand strategy game on the market and it is somehow full of flaws. Axis and Allies OTOH is about as undetailed as they come and somehow it is well made. Why even try? [:(]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

I think its pretty safe to say that if you go on the Axis and Allies forum you arent likely to find a heated debate about how effective the bow mg was on a Mk IV tank.