[REL] Ship damage from fires

[Den0]

After that battle I had tonight. I hit the big boy hard. Fire started mid ship but never spread and he steamed away sideways see the pic. By chance could you tell me how you increase the numbers would like to get the full effect from that mod if Dark doesn't mind. He plays SH5 mostly so I am not sure he would do a V2.

[chrysanthos]

so what you saying is that this mod needs some tweaking? or i have to use it right away?

[chrysanthos]

hmm you guys gave me a crazy idea i will test this with peabodys BB Kongo wich the damage model is not working so i have to experiment with it....first i am going to enable realistic sinking and then the damage from fires mod to see any results.....

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Obviously a bit much, but at least it's conclusive proof the mod does SOMETHING besides taking up disk space, but as you said originally it might need to be tweaked for SH4. Confirm, it definitely needs to be tweaked for SH4.

20 minutes after the last induced explosion she starts sinking by the bow.

That seems pretty reasonable to me, I wouldn't go much higher than 4X the original numbers in the mod, but the original numbers need to be at least doubled to even notice any difference at all in SH4. Otherwise nice mod, Bravo Zulu.

While the mod might need to be tweaked by 4 for SH4 I really think that the AP value of the damage inducer is the one you should be tweaking.

Seeing how non-military ships are sinking fine with the mod further justifies just increasing the AP value of the damage inducer.

Your (SH4) military ships must have some really high AP values defined in the zones.cfg file. With high AP values very little damage will be incurred in those zones (boxes).

Those induced explosions you speak of are caused by the mod. I put in what I call secondary explosions that happen on timers set in the mod. Adds to the realism of boilers or ammo mags exploding due to fire

[Sniper297]

It's entirely possible the mod is perfect as is but the game is discombobulated, while programming and testing that Gone Asiatic mod I had setups with 12 US heavy cruisers surrounding one Maya or Takao, hammering away at it from all points of the compass and it just will not sink. My guess is that the Maya and Takao have 3000 armor while the Northhampton has 3 in the game. Ridiculous part is MAYA had eight 8 inch guns, NORTHHAMPTON had nine 8 inch guns. So eight 8 inch against 72 8 inch, place your bets, ALL 12 US CRUISERS SUNK AND THE SINGLE MAYA IS STILL AFLOAT?! This game is rigged!

I take your point though, I have Webster's GFO mod but I don't think he looked into armor and hit points for each ship class. In any case damage over time is more realistic than sink or don't sink. I'll run more tests with mixes of warships and merchies, see what looks most realistic.

[Den0]

Here is my example hit him hard with a torp mid ship and started that fire it wasn't started by setting his deck on fire from above. He never sank but from the looks of that fire and the location in theory if the mod was in full function that would have spread and consumed more of the ship. Its a decent fire as you can see.

[IMG][/IMG]

To be honest I would love to see a version two of this mod because I really think its a great mod just not at full value like you say for sh4 maybe.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Den0

To be honest I would love to see a version two of this mod because I really think its a great mod just not at full value like you say for sh4 maybe.

The biggest factor in whether the mod will work correctly or not is the zones (boxes) defined in the .zon file for each unit. I hook onto two specific effects defined in particles.dat (for sea units). If those two effects are not defined in the unit's .zon file then this mod will not be 'active'.

The two effects from your (SH4) particles.dat are (for sea units):
- #Fire_small
- #Fire_big

[Sniper297]

Well, near as I can tell it DOES work if the numbers are cranked up, in the current form it appears to have no effect or an effect that's so insignificant it's impossible to tell the difference.

We have to be realistic about being realistic.

That's important so I'll say it again;

We have to be realistic about being realistic.

SH4 gives zero credit for damaging ships, so if it doesn't sink you might as well have saved the fish for an easier target. SH4 has a player "world circle", I don't know exactly but I think it's a 20 or 30 mile radius around the player. The game keeps track of movements outside that circle, but a ship does not exist until it's inside the circle, and once it moves outside that circle it's "removed from the game board" and no longer exists. While it would be nice to have the realistic effect of a ship sinking from fire damage and flooding 12 hours after the hits, if the ship don't sink before moving outside the player circle then it's not gonna sink.

I've tried a whole bunch of mods including realistic sinking effect that reduces (or removes, I forget which) the whole "hit points" factor and instead uses flooding - which he reduced the speed of to make it take LONGER for a ship to sink due to flooding. "Realistic" in a game is a matter of practicality, you have to work within the limitations of the game world, and it just ain't practical to use real world damage spreading times or flooding times. Unless the target is DIW and you have the patience to leave the game running while you do laundry and go grocery shopping and wait for 48 hours it won't work anyway, if the ship can crawl at 5 knots he'll be 20-30 miles away in 4-6 hours, so gone forever without sinking.

The trick is to get a balance, fire damage and/or flooding which doesn't happen all at once, but over the space of an hour or two. Not "realistic" but as real as you can get within the time and space limits of the game.

[Sniper297]

Well, I can see testing this is gonna be a beast since the enemy ain't cooperating. Original numbers;

Small fire

Min EF=3
Max EF=6
AP =30
MinRadius =4
MaxRadius =8

Large fire

Min EF=4
Max EF=8
AP =50
MinRadius =5
MaxRadius =10

For those unfamiliar with Silent 3ditor, EF is effect, minimum and maximum hit points the ship loses from the blast. AP is Armor Piercing, the amount of armor the blast is capable of overpowering to get the damage effect.
Radius is minimum and maximum distance from the center of the blast that will be affected, how far the damage is spread.

For the first test I multiplied all number by 100, so for small fires instead of 3 to 6 hit points per blast I got 300 to 600, instead of 4 to 8 meters from center I got 400 to 800 meters. That's the one that sank the entire convoy with three torpedo hits, obviously way too much but it proved conclusively that the mod IS active and does do something.

Next was restoring the original and multiplying all numbers by 4, that was the one where I saw fires spreading and small fires turning into big ones over 3 hours on the Takao.

Next was restoring original numbers and multiplying only the armor piercing by 10, that seems to have no effect at all.

Latest is different multiplications for different factors;

Small fire

Min EF=9
Max EF=18
AP =60
MinRadius =8
MaxRadius =16

Large fire

Min EF=12
Max EF=24
AP =90
MinRadius =15
MaxRadius =30

So just started testing, set torps for minimum depth to do the least damage possible, fire single torpedoes at each target. Hit MAYA class heavy cruiser just forward of number 1 turret, small fire on forecastle started. 15 minutes later had settled by the bow putting the forecastle awash, which naturally put the fire out. So obviously I can throw that particular test out, no fire = no domino effect. Back later, I think these numbers are close but I gotta run all over the pacific trying to damage different ships without sinking them, which is a weird way to fight a war.

[Sniper297]

Here goes nuthin, FIRE IN THE HOLE!!

Fiddling with zones.cfg to try to reduce flooding times so the BBs and CAs sink faster, difficult to do because of the screwy way the file is formatted. "BB" is obviously battleship but most other files I can only guess. Flooding times for "uboat" and "flt" zones, is "flt" fleet sub? Flooding times for smokestacks, hydrophones, and godhelpus sampan masts?

Worst trouble with the fire damage mod is a fire has to start and spread for any effect at all, since torpedoes are underwater explosions luck is needed for a fire to start, then it takes a while for it to spread.

So I increased the radius numbers times 5, 20 to 50 meters. Fired my last fish at a Shokaku, snotty culprit heeled over about 10 degrees and kept on steaming away with no fire on deck. Got mad and surfaced, started hosing him with 40MM BOFORS HE shells. Hit one of the planes on deck, which blew up and started a chain reaction over the whole flight deck (which is realistic) then blew up the carrier which in turn blew ME up 500 yards away. Further testing (why yes, I AM crazy, why do you ask?) being submerged within 500 yards of any ship exploding breaks all the coffee cups and knocks over the piano, also damaging or destroying most of the stuff BuShips considers important for warships.

In summary I would say that increasing the damage radius too much is probably not a good idea.

[Den0]

I would like to see you release a tweaked version of this mod if Dark is ok with that. I like watching them cook lol just kidding but I am a fan of deckguns and if I can set one of fire dive and save a torp for the real show I would be a happy man. I know its not easy getting those numbers right but I do look forward to your final results.

[Leitender]

Not really sure about the workings of it

Hi gentlemen,

for the same reason, i did 2 tests with the SH3 version of this mod, experimenting with the gunnery exercise of the naval academy. Approx. 10 to 15 shots on the nearest small coastal merchant till it began to burn on 3 places, and then - i started to wait. During this first test, i set TC to 32 and reset it from time to time, to check if it was still burning (because smoke wasn´t generated at that TC). Well, at 1 o´clock, more than 8 hours later, it exploded and went down!

The second try i did without time compression at all. The exercise always starts at 16.50. I fired on that merchant till it began to burn again (this was at 16.55) and yes, at 17.07: neutral unit destroyed!

So this mod seems to work really fine for SH3 but the sinking time may be dependant on the time compression!

[Sniper297]

That's the part I'm trying to figure out, the timing. Blast EF and AP and radius are self explanatory, "virtual depth charges" exploding with tiny amounts of hit points per explosion. But what controls how often the fire causes explosions?

The only thing I see is in the virtual depth charges themselves;

amun_DepthCharge
Fall_speed=5.0
Detonate_Depth= -2000

If I'm understanding that correctly they're "virtually falling" at 5 feet (or meters) per second, and they have to fall 2000 feet (or meters) to trigger an explosion. Regardless of meters or feet, 2000 / 5 = 400 seconds between bangs. Divided by 60 comes out to 6.6 minutes between blasts. Something like a Mogami cruiser has 500 hit points, knock off 50 for the original damage that started the fire, 450 hit points left. Max EF for a large fire 8 hit points, something over 56 blasts, at one every 6.6 minutes it would take a bit over 6 hours for the cumulative damage to sink a Mogami. If you hit it with a torpedo that took off half the hit points leaving 250, still need 31 max explosions times 6.6 minutes = 206 minutes = 3 1/2 hours. About right for real life, but not for a game that removes ships from the playing board when they get X miles away. Or people who don't have such a large amount of leisure time that they can spend 3 to 6 hours of it to wait for a fire to sink a ship. Again we gotta be realistic about being realistic, 15 to 30 minutes is a more reasonable time limit for a game.

I'll try cutting the time down by setting the depth to -50, see if that gives me a small bang every 10 seconds. With max EF of 8 that would be 48 hit points per minute, so a ship with 480 hit points remaining should go down in about 10 minutes. Give or take, there's a random element in all of this wherever you set the numbers.

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

That's the part I'm trying to figure out, the timing. Blast EF and AP and radius are self explanatory, "virtual depth charges" exploding with tiny amounts of hit points per explosion. But what controls how often the fire causes explosions?

The only thing I see is in the virtual depth charges themselves;

amun_DepthCharge
Fall_speed=5.0
Detonate_Depth= -2000

If I'm understanding that correctly they're "virtually falling" at 5 feet (or meters) per second, and they have to fall 2000 feet (or meters) to trigger an explosion. Regardless of meters or feet, 2000 / 5 = 400 seconds between bangs. Divided by 60 comes out to 6.6 minutes between blasts. Something like a Mogami cruiser has 500 hit points, knock off 50 for the original damage that started the fire, 450 hit points left. Max EF for a large fire 8 hit points, something over 56 blasts, at one every 6.6 minutes it would take a bit over 6 hours for the cumulative damage to sink a Mogami. If you hit it with a torpedo that took off half the hit points leaving 250, still need 31 max explosions times 6.6 minutes = 206 minutes = 3 1/2 hours. About right for real life, but not for a game that removes ships from the playing board when they get X miles away. Or people who don't have such a large amount of leisure time that they can spend 3 to 6 hours of it to wait for a fire to sink a ship. Again we gotta be realistic about being realistic, 15 to 30 minutes is a more reasonable time limit for a game.

I'll try cutting the time down by setting the depth to -50, see if that gives me a small bang every 10 seconds. With max EF of 8 that would be 48 hit points per minute, so a ship with 480 hit points remaining should go down in about 10 minutes. Give or take, there's a random element in all of this wherever you set the numbers.

Don't mess with those, they will not do anything that you are wanting. In order to adjust the 'timing' as you call it you have to play with the ParticleGenerators.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Don't mess with those, they will not do anything that you are wanting. In order to adjust the 'timing' as you call it you have to play with the ParticleGenerators.

Ah, I think I see. They cannot detonate more frequently than they are created. Makes sense.