damage, what are your thoughts.

[9th_cow]

I just had this conversation in MSN and wondered if im alone in missing this part of SHIII


a memory from SHIII
sailing south of london i was searching for shipping and keeping an eye out for planes when suddenly BANG! water fired into the sky, and before i know it im submerging rapidly,. damage reports are going of the scale, heavy flooding, hull damage, engine destroyed, bow torps destroyed, crew wounded. and 4 dead.
and i smash onto the sea bed. where i am effectivly dead in the water. flooding is insane and it takes all my crew in that compartment to get it under control. this was at dawn.

at around 10 o clock that night we got on to the surface again.
we had hit a mine. and ran out of fuel as we sailed into the mouth of our harbour
very very good time it was, it had me nervous the whole time :) i couldnt even surface at first till we had done a lot of damage control although my patrol was ruined i hadnt engaged any enemies yet, just sailed into a mine trying to skirt around the brits destroyers.
fankly the whole thing was nerve wracking and exciting too.

SHIV
we have damage ( every damage report possible pops up instantly and i die, this takes about 10 seconds)

:( that makes me sad. now if i get flooding, its game over.
so u just give up.;

in SHIII i could very easily have died in the position i found myself in, it was a crazy race against time to control the flooding,. and then it took ages to get back onto the surface, and i made it literaly into the mouth of the nearest harbour before i ran out of gas.

i miss that.
what about all of you ? i will say this is damage controll in SHIV is more realistic than in SHIII then its a concesion to realism i would happily make to have it back to SHIII levels again.
in SHIII you could die, but you could survive with a historic (das boot) tail to tell.
in shiv you die....

[AVGWarhawk]

I can honestly say I had the same moments in SH4. I have had massive damage, flooding down by the stern. Took two days to get it right and headed home. Sure, I have had the instant death screens also. Another fellow had a thread were he could not surface nor submerge, needed days to repair. His air was running out, men passed out on the floor. I think he grounded the sub so as to vent the sub.

I just wish they had a better indicator how bad the hull is.

[Bane]

I don't know, I've had a somewhat similar situation in SH4.

We were surprised by a plane, which got off a direct hit on our stern. There was critical flooding in the two aft compartments and the stern was slipping below the surface. The plane was coming around again so even though I read the stories here on the forum, and against better judgement, I dove to prevent more damage.

I only ordered periscope depth but because of the flooding we went deeper than that, with the stern much lower than the bow. I had to go ahead flank to keep the boat from sinking totally.

Much of the equipment in those compartments was damaged. The stern drive plane transmission was destroyed (the planes acted normally though). I prioritized the flooding and the crew was able to keep up.

As the flooding decreased the stern would rise until the boat leveled off and I could drop to ahead slow. Once they switched to repair something else the flooding would start again. The stern would drop and I'd need more power to keep her near the surface. I think the aft compartments flooded totally twice.

After the crew drained the water the second time I blew ballast (only because I hadn't yet in SH4 and this seemed as good a time as any). Once on the surface the stern was still low, but we made it back to Pearl.

I think the interface needs some tweaking for sure (isn't there some info that you can only get on the crew screen in a tooltip?). The overall integrity of the sub would be nice to know, for example. I can't really comment on the insta-sunk situations, they haven't happened to me yet. My only insta-death has been by being rammed by a destroyer.

My experience with damage control has been positive for the most part, once I figured out how the interface worked and what it was telling me.

[U-Bones]

The most important part of damage control is good decision making under stress. What has priority vs what should have priority. This requires good information, so you could argue for good info as the most crucial part...

This tactical info is very lacking in SH4.
Component level damage detail is not exposed.
Damage applied to system component groupings (port and starboard electric #1 engine always get same damage, knocking out both propulsion systems)
Systems that should be functional are not.
Systems that should not be functional are.
Hull damage is always hidden.
Other damage is sometimes hidden.
Flooding is sometimes hidden.
Water is WAY TOO HEAVY (both visible and invisible).
Everything topside is hard/impossible to repair because of efficiency issues.

This game has so many damage control issues it is not funny. A simple death screen would be better in many cases (but not all). In my view, it is tied with poor enemy AI for the biggest problem in the game.

[ReallyDedPoet]

My experience with damage control has been positive for the most part, once I figured out how the interface worked and what it was telling me.

Same here, at first it was hell, but has improved somewhat.

RDP

[9th_cow]

total hull damage is displayed by hovering the mouse cursor next to the damage control team.
however this is reset to 0 on loading a saved game, but the actualy damage remains

damage to a certain compartment however is always hidden
worse still it seems that in addition to crush depth being lowered, time below the water seems to be lowered

ok how can i explain this one.

im hit badly and sink. after some time i manage to almost beach myself in a river, over the next few hours i do my repairs, now the destroyers cant reach me and have started to leave anyway.

im not taking more damage, what im doing is lying on the bottom of the sea at about 60 feet. im brining things slowly under control.
my damage reports tear past and i am dead.... this is so confusing, why am i dead ?

all i can think of is that in addition to lowering my crush depth, wich is fine of course, its also decided that if im damaged i can only stay submerged for a small amount of time, after wich you die automatically. now matter how much damage you fixed in the meantime.
i think this is a bug/issue of sorts, because on some occaisions you do indeed manage to get back up.

maybe it has progressive damage, but if it does please let us the players know.
dying without knowing why is the worst thing in a game.

[U-Bones]

total hull damage is displayed by hovering the mouse cursor next to the damage control team.
however this is reset to 0 on loading a saved game, but the actualy damage remains

This is simply false.

All compartments have their own HP (even damage control). All compartments have their own damage. All compartments show their own damage on mouse over. All compartment damage is repairable (unless destroyed).

The hull damage is not displayed anywhere in game that anyone has EVER documented. To my knowledge, the only place you can see it is in save files. Hull damage can not be repaired, except in port.

[9th_cow]

then what is the 0 to 100 display that shows over the damage control screen ? because when it reaches 100 you die.
and like i said if you exit the game when it displays 40 for example when you load back in it shows 0. but if you test your crush depth you will find it is lower. due to the damage, you took before the save. ( wich is no longer displayed)

where is the damage per compartment shown ? and what on earth am i looking at ? i thought it was overall hull damage, if its not then what is it ?

[U-Bones]

then what is the 0 to 100 display that shows over the damage control screen ? because when it reaches 100 you die.
and like i said if you exit the game when it displays 40 for example when you load back in it shows 0. but if you test your crush depth you will find it is lower. due to the damage, you took before the save. ( wich is no longer displayed)

where is the damage per compartment shown ? and what on earth am i looking at ? i thought it was overall hull damage, if its not then what is it ?
I took your comment to be a reference to a mouseover on the Damage Control Compartment in the damage control screen. Deck Gun, AA, Watch, or fwd Torp, or any other compartment, will show damage x/100 if they are damaged, just the name if not.

Maybe you need to post a screenshot of exactly what number you are referring to, so we are on the same page. If it relates to the hull damage (as written in a save file), you will have found what everyone else has been overlooking. I am dubious, but willing to check it out. Heck, I even hope I'm wrong.

[9th_cow]

I took your comment to be a reference to a mouseover on the Damage Control Compartment in the damage control screen.
that was what i meant.
i assumed that was overall hull damage, its not however....

wich makes me wonder what it is,how can the damage control team get damaged ? it shouldnt even be considered an apartmant because they would be working wherever the damage is. subs didnt have a special seperate room for fixing things. and how would you get the damaged hull section to that room in the first place :)

maybe that is a flaw in itself, if the damage control teams is 100% damaged and it causes you to die.
when i reality a 100% damaged, damage controll team, would just mean some dead bodies.

okay so now i realised i can see individual damage control per compartment. i wondered where that was.

however it means im without any clue why the damage controll section of the sub is even considred to be a "comparment"

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4492/dcontrolmi0.jpg

that should not be a compartment. nor should it reaching 100% damage have any effect on anything. so im curious as to why it does. is the fact that it even takes damage a error in the design of the game?

[CaptainHaplo]

The damage model has made improvements since 1.1 to be sure. Its nowhere near perfect, but a good bit better than it was.

Biggest issue now is getting us the correct info so we can make proper decisions on how serious the damage is so we know whether to fix stuff and go home, or fix stuff and fight. That could be accomplished by a hull strength display as in SH3 - with the option to remove if for those that don't want it. Or give it some random spread where it might be off by 10% or so....

Second issue that needs addressing with it is the stuff getting repaired and the "redamage" spawn. They do those 2 things, and damage control will be a manageable item.

As to why damage control teams are injured - they are spread throughout the boat You will often see some of them hurt but not al of them. Figure some where in the compartments that got damaged - and so took a part of the damage. Usually the harm to fall to crew is not severe. In reality - members of DC teams were spread out so that any damage could be immediately addressed - while others were summoned as needed.

While many of us would love to see a true damage explanation - its not going to happen unless the dev's have alot of time on their hands (or unless Ubi rewrites the manual for dispersion with a patch). So far, there seems to be little in the area of modability compared to SH3. There is some there- but its not very extensive.

[U-Bones]

I took your comment to be a reference to a mouseover on the Damage Control Compartment in the damage control screen.
that was what i meant.
i assumed that was overall hull damage, its not however....

wich makes me wonder what it is,how can the damage control team get damaged ? it shouldnt even be considered an apartmant because they would be working wherever the damage is. subs didnt have a special seperate room for fixing things. and how would you get the damaged hull section to that room in the first place :)

maybe that is a flaw in itself, if the damage control teams is 100% damaged and it causes you to die.
when i reality a 100% damaged, damage controll team, would just mean some dead bodies.

okay so now i realised i can see individual damage control per compartment. i wondered where that was.

however it means im without any clue why the damage controll section of the sub is even considred to be a "comparment"

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4492/dcontrolmi0.jpg

that should not be a compartment. nor should it reaching 100% damage have any effect on anything. so im curious as to why it does. is the fact that it even takes damage a error in the design of the game?
OK thanks for posting - that is what I thought you meant. The 18/100 you see there is directly matched to the 0.18nnnn damage you will find for the damage control compartment in the save file if you save just then. Yes it is weird and nonsensical that it is treated like a physical compartment. Just as it is weird and nonsensical that gun crew get wounded when a DC explodes too close to the Deck Gun.

The whole conning tower has its own compartments, equipment and crew thing should have been tossed IMO, every single portion of it is buggy or suspect. The DC Compartment issue is similar in that it is a "special case" compartment that is not treated special.

[Von Tonner]

I have 2 questions:

Do crew get killed individually. i.e we find empty slots in our crew screen.

When you asign crew to "Damage Crew" can this crew be assigned normal duties and only go to "Damage crew" slots automatically when battle stations is sounded or must they stay in those slots for the entire voyage?

[U-Bones]

I have 2 questions:

Do crew get killed individually. i.e we find empty slots in our crew screen.

When you assign crew to "Damage Crew" can this crew be assigned normal duties and only go to "Damage crew" slots automatically when battle stations is sounded or must they stay in those slots for the entire voyage?

Yes crew damaged/death is individual. The slot does not empty - player icon changes.

The assignment is permanent. You have to imagine multitasking. You have to imagine potatoe peeling in the galley. You have to imagine the galley.

I leave port with Damage Control filled, or one slot empty. My gun slots are empty, and I have the last slot in each torp crew empty. If I need to assign men to guns or reloads, they come out of DC personnel. Damage control is a higher, and constant, priority assignment.