no, not 24 as in the series, but 24 as in '24' hours since Matrix released 2.0 :p
Hi Apollo. I'll answer your question in two parts.
Here are the stated changes to bomb ratings posted by Matrix
Device Name Current Effect Current Pen Altered Device Name Altered Effect Altered Pen
30 kg Bomb 66 16 30 kg GP Bomb 66 11
60 kg Bomb 132 33 60 kg GP Bomb 132 22
100 lb Bomb 100 25 100 lb GP Bomb 100 17
250 lb Bomb 250 60 250 lb GP Bomb 250 45
500 lb Bomb 500 125 500 lb GP Bomb 500 85
1000 lb Bomb 1000 250 1000 lb GP Bomb 1000 170
2000 lb Bomb 2000 500 2000 lb GP Bomb 2000 340
4000 lb Bomb 4000 1000 4000 lb GP Bomb 4000 670
100 kg Bomb 220 55 100 kg AP Bomb 150 55
250 kg Bomb 551 140 250 kg AP Bomb 370 140
Though a major improvement. More needs to be done IMO and i'm hoping i dont sound ungrateful to what Matrix has been doing because I
am No other wargaming company has ever responded so fast and so often to player input.
I just posted new and more specific info on AP, SAP and GP bombs in my More bomb info thread a few down which gives more detail.
These ratings are indeed better but still represent an overpenetrative ability of GP bombs in the game. I acknowledge that part of this reason may be concerns over carriers that currently have armor stats that could be interpreted by the game engine as 'non penetrative' hits. Again i've preposed an easy solution to this which would require no major rewrite of the UV engine.
The 2nd part of course, is the actual test, where things really count. As of yet I have had no chance to set up static tests yet but hope to do so tommorrow.
What I've seen so far are results i'd expect given what's been posted above. A thwarted IJN bombardment of Lunga by a two BB led TF yielded me three confirmed 500lb GP bomb hits on the battleship Hyuga (125mm deck rating)
Given the new rating of 85mm for the 500lb GP, these naturally did not penetrate (two deck hits , no pen but one 25mm AA gun was destroyed) one belt armor hit (UV's equivilent of a "near miss" right now) which also did not penetrate
Result: SYS 2% FLT 0 FIRE 0
If any fires were caused they immediately extinquished....a problem but one hopefully to be addressed in WitP.
Thats all so far in terms of bomb hits......On an related note, i am loving the new air to ground routines vis-a-vis high altidue vs infantry and airbase infrastructure, the standdown button and the enhanced air to air msg interface
Given the posted bomb stats, the tests though are a bit unnecessary as the Hyuga example seems to show, after all we are all fairly familiar now with how the combat model works.....if a weapon penetrates, damage accrues, if not, none to very minor accures (but with a small FIRE chance) The exception to this though was a post HARD SARGE sent my way over on the bug forum where he claims a Hyuga class BB shrugged off two 1000lb GP hits with one penetration. Since the new 1000lb GP rating is allegedly 170mm.....this should not have happened. The possible explanation for this is that further tweaks were done. Matrix said that they'd added a few more touches to 2.0 before the release but no subsequent updated 2.0 list has been made available either in the patch or on the forum. I'm hoping an updated list will appear soon so i can confirm or dispense with the possibility that the ratings have been further tweaked.
Since understandably UV patches are mainly concerned with tweaking the existing game engine and eliminating bugs, the other more dynamic issues i've brought up with ship damage cannot really be addressed but i hope to see them attempted in the future WitP
These dynamics revolve around the damage model when weapons (such as GP bombs) do not penetrate a HL. GP bombs especially should have a large capacity to cause FIRE damage as what they lack in penetrative qualities they make up for in sheer blast effect and light structure damages. Most of all though they are a potentially serious FIRE hazzard, particularily to wooden decked carriers.
Thus even a BB must remain respectful of the presence of bombers in it's area as enough hits in a short enough "pulse" of incoming damage could start serious FIREs which might prove difficult to extinquish.
If said FIREs are either large enough or prove long lasting enough, it would be "they" that would begin to accrue SYS damage as time/turns go by in the same vein as the progressive flooding rules can accrue and sustain FLT damage. The effect of this is to cause valuable warships, even superficially damaged to withdrawl from the combat theater to focus on damage control and in extreme cases, repair the ship.
A 2nd dynamic is more a clarification and extention of the first dynamic, mainly that FIRE damage should have far greater possibilities to sustain and even increase if the damage 'rolls' go badly. Right now FIRE damage always reduces greatly per turn, rarely staying level and i've never seen it increase. Carriers in particular should be vulnerable to this as they were potential flame traps with their wooden decks, flamable planes and AVgas storage. Further there should be a posibility for explosion as well. For carriers the msg/reason should be either magazine explosion or AvGas explosion, surface warships, magazine. Such an event should be a critical event causing signifigant SYS and FIRE damage with an option for FLT damage as well. In worst case situations, it might even sink the ship.
Another dynamic that needs to be addressed (in WitP if not UV depending on the coding complexity) is the distribution of damage when a bomb "does" penetrate. FLT damage should be IMO "greatly" curtailed vs belt armor/torp hits which represent waterline damage. My research showed that even in smaller ship's cases (CA, CL , DD) that damage originating from above water....(whether bomb, kamakaze or shell that doesnt strike the waterline) often does not cause FLT damage but does cause serious topside, internal and/or FIRE damage. USN survivability studies for DD's conducted after the war determined that in cases of extreme damage (such as USS Laffey in 45), in addition to heroic damage control the other key factor that influenced ship survival was intact water-tight integrity (as most of the damage was sustained by the hull above water, most of which was flattened by over 11 Kamakaze hits!) In contrast, DD's that suffered moderate to signifigant breaches in water tight integrity were far less likely to survive statistically as war losses amoung destroyers showed
Even bombs that penetrate deep into a ship's hull will not be as likely to cause FLT damage as a torp for the simple reason that torps always breach the hull skin compromising water-tight integrity. Bombs can do this but not nearly as often as a bomb is just as likely to explode well into the interior of a ship vs the hull skin. Lexington, and Yorktown at Coral Sea and Midway as well in the latter's case suffered no FLT damage even by bombs that penetrated more than several decks into their hullls. FIRE and material damage to machinery and compartments were what were caused (SYS damage) Thus i feel that FLT damage from bombs needs to be reduced substantially to reflect this and to better differentiate them from torpedoes. Of course as is well documented, Akagi, Kaga and Soryu...all unarmored carriers in terms of flight decks, were turned into FIRE infernos by 1000lb GP bomb hits....no hull or FLT damage was suffered and FIRE caused their demise in the end.
Hiryu was similarily afflicted. Her flight deck was demolished by four 1000lb'ers that exploded either on contact with the wooden deck or shortly thereafter in the hanger causing again FIRE damage. Damage records from the carrier though state that her hull underwater and propulsion systems remained 100% intact and she actually retained 30 knot capability for a while until heat, spreading FIRES and smoke eventually trapped crewmen and choked the boilers. Next day photo well distributed since WWII clearly show the extent of the topside damage to the flight and hanger deck......the ship is at this point adrift but is on an even keel with no appreciable list or settling of the hull. She was eventually scuttled by surface torps.
In contrast, attack planes carrying torpedos were directly responsible for the death's of Yorktown, Hornet and Lexington (the latter indirectly as it was the two torp hits which released the vapors that eventually ignighted into a massive explosion later) Bomb hits on USN carriers were less vital mainly due to the their smaller size coupled with superior damage control efforts. (Wasp as we all know, was doomed by sub delivered torps and Saratoga damaged twice)
There is one notable exeptions to this.
Bombs that "near miss" very close to a hull can and often do cause FLT damage....but this is a different situation from a direct hit and is easily represented even within the confines of UV's existing model (in effect its already there as bombs can strike the belt armor......a near miss HL would be preferable as this should have a chance to bypass belt armor to loosen plates underneath this layer of protection if the bomb explodes deep enough into the water)
So starting with more realistic pen ratings for bombs is only the beginning and for the most part would represent to radical a change for an existing game. So i'm hoping these ideas will be considered for WitP
What is the goal of all this in terms of the wargame(s) Warships right now are extremely fragile, especially amoung smaller types (DD's in particular) The result in the game is excessive and quick sinkings, usually in #'s greatly inflated from real life, not all of which can be blamed on AI's or brash player tactics. Ships die hard as a rule unless struck by catastrophe, and the examples of non catastrophic damage far outnumber their more spectacular counterparts. We do not see this in UV though.....hits that penetrate tend to cause grevious levels of SYS, FLT and FIRE damage, in greater degrees of severety as weapon sizes increase and ship sizes and DUR ratings decrease. I have reguarily seen fully intact CA's reduced to 65+% damage by one or two major caliber hits (BB size) and Destroyers are routinely sunk with around a half dozen to a dozen medium caliber hits. This is a bit of a seperate issue from bombs but is related to the overall picture. What bombs and shell hits both need is a non SYS and FLT producing Hit Location that can soak up some of these hits. I have named this HL "Superstructure" as this is a very real HL.....ships, even battleships are not all armor, they contain alot of unprotected areas that while are not vital to the ship's survival or operation, are highly vulnerable to attack by incendiary weapons in the forms of GP bombs and HE shells, even little ones like 5" pop guns from destroyers. This HL should have a high chance of producing FIRE levels but zero SYS and FLT since the location does not contain any vital systems or underwater hull. Being an unarmored area all hits "penetrate" but since no SYS or FLT can accrue it wont affect Dur....only serve to soak up hits, cause FIRES, which can increase detection levels, bringing it more potential grief from enemies, suffer real SYS damage from said FIRE levels, suffer reduced efficiency if severe enough and increase surviviability, even among the little warships. Reduced sinkings to more reasonable levels will help to slow operational pace, as navies wont be sunk in a few weeks (heh, like i just did to the AI in my current game)
Here's an interesting statistic:
BuShips, (USN: Buerau of ships) compiled the following data
251 cases of war-damage involving destroyers were reported between 1941 and 45
Of 192 DD's struck by bombs, gunfire or Kamakaze, 162 or 84% survived.
In contrast, 27 DD's out of 48 damaged by torpedoes or mines went down, a survival rate of only 44%
Underwater damage is critical to a warship's health and more often than not it takes an underwater weapon to cause it. Bombs, and a large % of shellfire, will statistically tend to strike the upper portions of warship vs. striking at or below the waterline. For shellfire, range is the major factor here, as the range shortens, shell trajectories flatten increasing the liklihood of impact with a ship's upper hull or superstructure (as attested in numerous night battles in WWII as the range was very close most of the time) Bombs have a better chance in the form of punishing near misses alongside the hull but direct impacts will, like shells, tend to cause non FLT related injuries and especially FIRE damage.