Fires from non-penetrating hits?

[erstad]

I've noticed that a lot of my non-penetrating hits (500 lb GP bouncing off IJN CA/BB) cause a little flame animation to appear). However, I never (?) see the ships listed as on fire in the combat report. Is there a threshold where little bitty fires don't count as on fire, or is the animation only FOW? (I know it *can* be FOW, the question is whether I could be causing *some* small fires which don't show up as on fire in the report)

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: erstad

I've noticed that a lot of my non-penetrating hits (500 lb GP bouncing off IJN CA/BB) cause a little flame animation to appear). However, I never (?) see the ships listed as on fire in the combat report. Is there a threshold where little bitty fires don't count as on fire, or is the animation only FOW? (I know it *can* be FOW, the question is whether I could be causing *some* small fires which don't show up as on fire in the report)

Consider this. They claim the 12/8/41 scnario is the historic start after the PH raid, but you will not see a single USN ship with double-digit fires. Perhaps a mistake by the designer, but we all know the very serious fires we saw on the films. Your repair options you chose at the start of the game could matter quite a bit too. The allies, or maybe just the USN, have a significant repair advantage over the IJN. I think many will tell you, who have bothered to look at both sides, that IJN fires seem to grow quite a bit, whereas the USN ones (and maybe all allies as well) hardly get started most of the time. It's either one of two things as I see it: either these displays that seem in contradiction to what would start a fire are on IJN targets only, or, more than likely, the graphics just like to throw fires marks every once in a while to provide a little vareity, without the slightest relation to the damage. It is certainly the latter case when it relates to air raids over land targets.

[Barb]

12/8/41 scenario begins in fact in the evening of 12/07/41 (Before the night). At that time not so many fires were raging...

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Barb

12/8/41 scenario begins in fact in the evening of 12/07/41 (Before the night). At that time not so many fires were raging...

What really matters is what time the player can do anything with the game, so the fires, I would think, are meant to be accurate for the time the player is seeing it. What they were doing the evening before, which the player cannot see, is gamewise irrelevant. You say not so many fires were raging, but wouldn't at least a couple of them justify a double-digit fire? And yet that's not the condition of any of them come at the 12/8 start.

I was under the impression, that some of the fires burned for days. This account backs up that opinion:

The most famous of all the battleships on Battleship Row that morning, the USS Arizona (BB-39) received a mortal blow when an armor-piercing bomb hit the battleship and promptly ignited the ship’s black powder magazine. This explosion caused the adjacent smokeless powder magazines to ignite as well. The cataclysmic explosion that followed tore through the bow of the ship and set off fires that burned for two full days.

source: http://www.essortment.com/all/battlepearlha_rbxz.htm