worst External damage ever.

[CaptainMattJ.]

How the hell am i still ALIVE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Apparently a plane did all this at TC while i was underwater. HOWS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE!?!!??!!?? It skinned half my boat. not even destroyers do that. What was this a nuclear Depth Charge? Something was messed up with the CO2 thing, cause when i got back to base (thank GOD it was in Manila), i had 95% CO2. this was seriously FUBAR

Heres The Screenshots









This is just trying to maintain periscope depth. It looks like im emergency surfacing. and this is EMERGENCY emergency surfacing. And yet, i just ordered it to go to periscope.

[TabbyHunter]

Something went wrong here, methinks.
And yet, you have 000 hull dammage.

[Armistead]

One bug that forever remains in the game is the CO2 bug. Most think it happens more if you alt/tab out alot or use TC alot dived, not sure anyone knows. The only way to fix it is to save the game and reload and your CO2 will work as it should.

Planes can do that kind of damage to your skin, almost funny, yet you have very little real damage. It's just the way the graphics render hit zones. I've had that in the rear of my sub and in the front to where my whole sub was almost a transparent frame. Really no different that when you get shot by an enemy deckgun and it leaves big holes you can see through, yet little damage. In reality one hole you would be out of business. It's hard to find and mod that perfect damage zone, just so many factors involved. Course it will vanish if you save and reload.

This happened to me a few days ago, think about 15% damage..lol,
I'll try to find the other one where it's front and back, now thats a looker.

[rein1705]

permitted to abandon ship?

[Rockin Robbins]

Naw, it's only a flesh wound. Swim it off!

[Sailor Steve]

SH4's physical representation of damage is way overblown. Shooting merchants with the deck gun leaves holes a 15" gun would make in real life. The torpedoes are better.

So you have to ignore how the damage you take looks.

[Armistead]

Least you died rein...

[tater]

IMO any damage large enough to make a decent sized visible hole (decent being anything larger than small-arms fire) should sink the boat.

[Rockin Robbins]

But in the game, visible damage is just eyecandy, signifying nothing. Targets visibly damaged beyond survival steam unaffected over the horizon. Lots of targets sink with no visible damage at all!

We have a stupid hull damage meter for our submarine. More eyecandy, signifying nothing!

In the future, with different companies producing the software, eyecandy must become actually significant and reliable!

Let's take the real case of the USS Bergall. I'm going to pull from my collection of "Remember This?" by Bill Wolfe, former editor of the Polaris, official publication of the United States Submarine Veterans of World War II.

REMEMBER THIS USS BERGALL?

On the evening of Dec. 13, 1944 as Bergall (Hyde) was preparing to plant mines off Indo-China, she picked up a distant radar contact. Closing to 26,000 yards, the contact was tentatively identified as 2 cruisers, later determined to be a cruiser and destroyer escort. After attaining a firing position 3300 yards away from the overlapping targets, six bow tubes were fired. Moments later a tremendous explosion occurred, seemingly, breaking the Imperial Japanese heavy Myoku in two. Hauling clear to reload when the escort seemed reluctant to attack, Bergalll charged in for a second attack when, at 9000 yards, the escorting destroyer opened fire, one shell landing in Bergall's wake, another directly into her forward torpedo loading hatch, opening a large hole in her pressure hull. Retreating at full speed. Bergall hauled clear only to find that the damage was beyond repair at the scene, 2000 miles from the nearest friendly port, Exmouth Gulf, Australia. When reporting the problem to Admiral Christie Cdr. Hyde was ordered to rendezvous with Angler, Bashaw and Paddle, remove the crew and destroy Bergall. After carefully reviewing the situation, Cdr. Hyde decided to disobey this order and try to take Bergall home through Karimata, the Java Sea and Lombok on the surface. He removed one officer and 54 men to the Angler, destroyed all confidential gear, set demolition charges by her torpedoes and mines and got underway for Exmouth Gulf, Angler following closely, standing by to remove personnel from Bergall if danger threatened. Five days later, they arrived at Exmouth Bay on 20 December 1944.

First notice that the destroyer escort, identified at the time as a cruiser (!!!), tossed two shells out there from 9,000 yards. One landed in Bergall's wake but the other scored a critical hit. Think about that next time you complain about Japanese ships being too accurate in SH4. Ain't so! So what does "a large hole in the pressure hull" "beyond repair at the scene" and requiring Bergall to travel on the surface for 2,000 miles to get home really look like?

As luck would have it a man stood on the dock with a camera upon Bergall's arrival at Exmouth Gulf. You can see the "major damage" from a Japanese 8" shell (much larger than anything a submarine could fire!) had to be delineated by drawing an explanatory line on the photo! Without it, I doubt you could have found the major damage that kept that sub from submerging, even to periscope depth!

Sometimes eyecandy lies. Sometimes eyecandy sucks. For all its good qualities, we're playing an arcade game with ludicrously exaggerated graphics. Much of the time the eyecandy is just irrelevant, inappropriate and ridiculous. Other than that I have no opinion.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

But in the game, visible damage is just eyecandy, signifying nothing. Targets visibly damaged beyond survival steam unaffected over the horizon. Lots of targets sink with no visible damage at all!

We have a stupid hull damage meter for our submarine. More eyecandy, signifying nothing!

In the future, with different companies producing the software, eyecandy must become actually significant and reliable!

Let's take the real case of the USS Bergall. I'm going to pull from my collection of "Remember This?" by Bill Wolfe, former editor of the Polaris, official publication of the United States Submarine Veterans of World War II.

First notice that the destroyer escort, identified at the time as a cruiser (!!!), tossed two shells out there from 9,000 yards. One landed in Bergall's wake but the other scored a critical hit. Think about that next time you complain about Japanese ships being too accurate in SH4. Ain't so! So what does "a large hole in the pressure hull" "beyond repair at the scene" and requiring Bergall to travel on the surface for 2,000 miles to get home really look like?

As luck would have it a man stood on the dock with a camera upon Bergall's arrival at Exmouth Gulf. You can see the "major damage" from a Japanese 8" shell (much larger than anything a submarine could fire!) had to be delineated by drawing an explanatory line on the photo! Without it, I doubt you could have found the major damage that kept that sub from submerging, even to periscope depth!

Sometimes eyecandy lies. Sometimes eyecandy sucks. For all its good qualities, we're playing an arcade game with ludicrously exaggerated graphics. Much of the time the eyecandy is just irrelevant, inappropriate and ridiculous. Other than that I have no opinion.

Impressive marksmanship if I may say so, though not unexpected of the IJN at all. What's most impressive about it is that it appears to have been an AP shell, slicing right through the sub. Not like proximity damage from an HE, but a direct hit. Somebody must've had some real confidence in their gunners. Realized after only 2 shots!

[rein1705]

They were lucky they didnt get nailed right through the conning tower. An HE round would have been tragic even more so.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, I hate to think what an HE round might have done. You have to wonder what they were thinking there when they shot the AP. You also have to wonder how Bergall got away from a surface ship that was almost twice as fast. Maybe after the sinking of the cruiser they were more afraid of Bergall than Bergall was of them!

[rein1705]

True true. Perhaps the Escort didn't know that she had scored a hit and thought that devil boat out there was trying to lour him into a trap. Or they had stopped to rescue survivors.

[Sailor Steve]

I have one minor problem. If it was a destroyer and not a cruiser as originally identified, then it wasn't an 8" shell as those only come with heavy cruisers. It couldn't have been bigger than 5" if it was a destroyer. On the other hand destroyers didn't usually carry AP shells. They did carry a capped semi-AP called 'Common', but it was designed to go through small concrete bunkers.

Actually at the glancing angle seen in the photo and HE shell might have exploded outward, causing no damage to the pressure hull at all. Or it might have exploded on contact with the outer hull, peppering the pressure hull with shrapnel and maybe making a bunch of small holes or not penetrating. HE is designed to explode on contact, which is bad for single hulls but much better for double hulls, especially when the inner hull is thicker and stronger.

[edit] A little more digging:

Hyperwar quotes it as an 8" dud fired from one of the cruisers, which would have a fire-control system capable of hitting a submarine fairly easily at 9000 yards.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/....html#SS-320.1

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm really curious to know how they knew the hole was from an 8" as opposed to a 5" shell.... It seems to be just guesswork to me. Of course the hole can be expected to be larger than the shell itself, but how MUCH larger? How firm is that ID of an 8" shell anyway?

Now, from the wording of the Polaris article, the identification of the surviving boat must have been made after the war upon consulting Japanese records. I would trust that more than the identification of the hole as being from a 50 caliber 8" gun. How in hades can they look at a hole and say the gun was 50 caliber? I've seen some black magic around here lately but nothing quite like that!