TIL: AI Surface vessels can succumb to flooding.

[Outeniqua]

I just had an interesting replenishment group encounter in the Norwegian sea. Sonar picked up 4 contacts, and I started classifying. Sierra 1 Krivak I, Sierra 2 Grisha III, Sierra 3 Boris Chelikin (My target), and the fourth, Sierra 4 Moskva. I was not too happy about his presence, due to my allergy for sudden death by 4 ASW helos gang bang.

The ambient noise was lowish, around 81dB, but I had a fairly good layer at 128ft. I decided to press the attack - in 688 we trust. I ducked up and down the layer to keep contact, to get myself within 10KYD. Good solutions for all 4 contacts, then I ducked just beneath the layer and let go of 4 Mk48's. I kept the wires and managed the torps on their tracks until I was confident each fish had it's own target to engage.

First to go down was the Krivak I, closely followed by the Grisha III and Chilikin. The last weapon struck the Moskva about 2 minutes later. Predictably, one weapon wasn't enough for the Moskva. The Moskva turned back north, to search for me. I expect heavily damaged from the hit, since he was only doing 12kts, but making a lot of noise, and banging away with active sonar trying to find me.

I started my track again, with 3 tubes reloaded with Mk48's, with the plan to set 2 weapons on him when I have a good solution. I loaded a MOSS in the 4th tube, in case the helo's become a problem, which they bound to be. About 5 minutes later, a helo dropped 2 torpedoes, well off from my position. I stayed at all quiet and slowly made my way about 225, leaving the torpedoes circling behind me, luckily without acquiring me.

It's around this time I started hearing explosions every now and again. I couldn't quite figure out what it was. I thought maybe air dropped depth charges, or the two torps the helo dropped, but they were still running in cirlces. After each bang, I would check the Moskva's position and it wasn't reported as sunk, but it had started slowing down from it's 12kts, to about 6kts, still making the same amount of noise.

When my solution was finally good enough, I took a look at the Moskva, and he was listing heavily, and slowing down. He had nice big hole amidships and I figured I'd keep looking, while I made my way in much closer, to get the shot off and clear datum to avoid the rest of the helos. The Moskva was on fire, and then I finally saw where these bangs were coming from. It was from the burning Moskva. After another minute, he came to a stop, had another explosion and oil slicked out. He was marked destroyed and started to sink.

So I was quite lucky that only one torp managed to do the job in the end. I'm not sure what caused its final demise, flooding, fire or both. I wasn't aware that this was modeled for surface ships. I have seen enemy subs, unable to maintain depth after a hit get the coup de gras from passing crush depth, but never thought the same would be true with a surface ship sinking from damage over time.

I'm playing on realistic with 1:1 scale distances. (Unsure if that's relevant.) Any of you guys encountered something similar?

[Wiz33]

Yes, Damage over time is in the game. If a damaged unit cannot get the damage under control, it will eventually kill the ship. Happened to me in the Kirov mission. I put 2 MK48 into it at long range but then have to turn and engage the escort so it managed to limp off a bit. By the time I finished off the escort and make my approach again. It sank on it's own.

[Outeniqua]

That's excellent. The future potential of this title, makes me salivate.

[The Bandit]

I'm not sure if its flooding as much as it is some type of fire-mechanic similar to what would happen in Atlantic fleet (Also because you will see the fire spread if you watch it for a while). I've had random occurrences of being able to sink big cruisers (Kresta and Sverdlov) with a single Mk 37 if it gets her to burn.

[subunit]

I presume that KF would not let their hard work in buoyancy/flooding/fire modelling from AF go to waste here (probably the damage model was the most sophisticated part of AF). It's probably more or less the same deal.

[Outeniqua]

Originally Posted by The Bandit

I'm not sure if its flooding as much as it is some type of fire-mechanic similar to what would happen in Atlantic fleet (Also because you will see the fire spread if you watch it for a while). I've had random occurrences of being able to sink big cruisers (Kresta and Sverdlov) with a single Mk 37 if it gets her to burn.

I wasn't sure whether it was fire or flooding. I recall watching the torpedo impact, and there was a fire. I couldn't see the ship though. Later when the ship was rendered there was several fires. It was like the fire. That still make me happy.

[Killerfish Games]

Yup, ships will take damage and flooding over time if they cannot get it under control. Out of control fires are especially devastating.

[PL_Harpoon]

One more intreseting thing to add:

Setting enemy ships on fire doesn't mean they will always sink.

In my recent game I hit a transport ship with a missile. After a while the fire started spreading (from a single fire to 3) but then the crew seemed to get it under control and the've put out all of it.

Didn't help them though as it was so damaged that they could only run at 6 knots.

[The Bandit]

Originally Posted by PL_Harpoon

One more intreseting thing to add:

Setting enemy ships on fire doesn't mean they will always sink.

In my recent game I hit a transport ship with a missile. After a while the fire started spreading (from a single fire to 3) but then the crew seemed to get it under control and the've put out all of it.

Didn't help them though as it was so damaged that they could only run at 6 knots.

This is very similar to what I remember about the computer controlled Damage Control in AF, sometimes you'd manage to catch a ship on fire and due to unseen variables it would burn up, other times they would manage to get the fire put out.