Torpedo Depth using Magnetic detonator?

[hachiman]

Playing using Metric.
Shooting at Ise and Fuso Battleships with Drafts of 9.5m and 9.7m respectively.
Set the depth on my torps to 10m and none of them detonated despite the difference being 50cm or less.

Why?

[elanaiba]

What submarine are you commanding?

[PingOfDeath]

I have done extensive testing on this using a home made mission with ships just sat there waiting to be torped. I shot a spread of 6 torps with on 'click' change of depth on each under a battleship, any that did not impact the ship just went right under with no boom. I ahve tryed this with metric and imperial.

I did get them to work before the patch, but lacking the knowhow to read the.sim files I can't see where the issue is.

Can anyone else confirm that this ever works ?

-POD

[ryuzu]

I have done extensive testing on this using a home made mission with ships just sat there waiting to be torped. I shot a spread of 6 torps with on 'click' change of depth on each under a battleship, any that did not impact the ship just went right under with no boom. I ahve tryed this with metric and imperial.

I did get them to work before the patch, but lacking the knowhow to read the.sim files I can't see where the issue is.

Can anyone else confirm that this ever works ?

-POD

Hmm - I thought I'd seen them working in the first tutorial mission, but that may have been with v1. When I tried it a couple of days ago with v1.1 none of the torpedos detonated. I do have duds enabled though...

Today, attacking a convoy, 3 of my torps passed under a ship (not my intended target!) would have been about 6 feet below - none of them detonated. If I remember right the manual suggests 6-7ft below the keel, but whether you trust that or not is a different Q.

Anyway, either mag. fuses are completely nerfed now, or the odds of malfunction are set so high, they may as well be.

r.

[WFGood]

I was wondering if this was a bug myself. I know that historically the MK14 torpedoes suffered from depth keeping failures early in the war, but I have found the most success using the stock setting as my torpedo depth regardless of the target. Using the stock setting I have managed to sink 2 BB's, 4 CV's, and various other ships. All of the damage appears above the torpedo bulges, but the ships invariably turn turtle and sink. Shots aimed at proper depths may strike, but I get no damage shown, and the ships rarely even slow down. In one instance I attacked the Yamato with my 4 bow tubes all set at proper depths. Several hit, but there was no apparent damage. I passed in front of her and quickly fired the stern tubes using the default settings. The result was four hits which stopped her DIW. After reloading a final shot set at 6' sank her.

[hachiman]

1944 (After i believe all the Torp Bugs were resolved in reality).
Attacked Taiyo Carrier.
Draft of 7.5m and set for 8m
So only a difference of 50cm.

Passed straight under it .
Repeated the same again with 2 more torps and still the same.

[Egan]

I've had a zany old time tonight with the Mags. Hit a Cruiser with three set to go off under him, same settings each time. One worked, one ran under and one detonated about 300 yards short. Tried again later on with a troop ship. First one hit, the next two ran under. This was in dec '41 and it seems good to me. Can't comment about late war as I haven't played yet. It would be a shame if the dud rate didn't change.

[NefariousKoel]

Unlike SH3 which I liked to use magnetic on, in SH4 the American magnetic influence detonators are highly unreliable. In my experience many of them explode prematurely due to being too sensitive. Mix that with some unruly depth keeping at times, now I only use Contact fuses. Much more reliable.

Historically the magenetic detonators were often disabled due to such problems.

I recommend using contact only guys. ;)

[Tobowsi]

Personally, I've found the drafts listed in the recognition manual to be basically worthless.

For example, a large modern composite freighter is listed as having a draft of 24.6 feet. In order for me to put a fish under the keel for a magnetic detonation, I run the torpedo at a depth of 20. Silly me, I'd think the depth would have to be somewhere in the 25 to 27 range, but a depth of 20 seems to work.

I've seen other ships like the liners with 28 foot drafts where I had to run the torpedo at 24.

I've actually had to run the depths as shallow as 10 to get keel shots, and I don't go after small stuff. About the smallest ships I'll attack are listed as medium, and those are typically in the 21 to 24 range.

(and those depths are with torpedo duds turned off)

Like Nefarious Koel said, it may be a good idea to go contact only. Maybe you can even get some secondary explosions to help the ship go down quicker and save a torpedo or two.

[NefariousKoel]

I've also noticed the in-game Recognition Manual is wrong - at least once. I noticed a maximum speed from the poster & manual was different from the in-game Recognition manual. The poster & manual was the correct one. I think the in-game Rec manual missed an update. ;)

That.. or the merchant I had been tracking for about 8 minutes had some serious burrito power pumping out an extra 7 or 8 knots over it's in-game maximum.

[Crosseye76]

1944 (After i believe all the Torp Bugs were resolved in reality).
Attacked Taiyo Carrier.
Draft of 7.5m and set for 8m
So only a difference of 50cm.

Passed straight under it .
Repeated the same again with 2 more torps and still the same.

The US disabled the Magnetic feature of the torpedo fuze in June 1943, for Pearl Harbor boats. The Fremantle boats did the same later in the year. Adm. Christie sent young Nimitz out in March 1944 to test a new batch of them before finally giving up for good on the matter.