[REL] Realistic Sinking Physics

[WernerSobe]

LATEST VERSION 2.6 (20.07.07)
FOR PATCH 1.3

No matter how you like them sinking.

is it blowing their bunkers?
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/5743/sh42007070812143067xi6.jpg

or maybe their flamable cargo?
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/9282/sh42007070814410912ts8.jpg

maybe you like them just flooding all over?
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6134/sh42007070816255342hv3.jpg

or are you the guy who goes for their keel?
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/1771/sh42007070817092985yu4.jpg

or do you like them down under?
http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/615/sh42007070819065784td3.jpg

or simple turning their decks into hell?
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7808/sh42007070817135306gx3.jpg


In any case, this mod is the right tool for you!

Natural Sinking Mechanics Mod



Intro:Natural Sinking Mechanics Mod will greatly increase your silent hunter expirience by making the ships sink in more natural way. Entire damage system has been reworked, its no longer based on hitpoints but much more on physical action. Ill explain how the new damage system works later on. This is a realism mod. The ship sinking rates and the different sinking behavier has been tweaked as much accurate to historical records as possible.




Some ships will sink in a matter of seconds, another will take hours. But in General the sinking rate were greatly increased. All ships will sink much slower then they do in stock but that is not a rule. You will have to learn to evaluate the way how the ships are sinking and make decissions how to hit them the best way. And you will have to learn where the ships have their weakness.


Installation and Compability
Use JSGME or copy all files into sh4 root directory. Make sure to make backups.

Not compatible with "Die Slowly" by Redwine. NSM will not work when other mods that make changes in zones.cfg are installed over it. Install NSM last to be on sure side.

You can use Torpedoe_US.zon file of your liking.

You can use any Gun Mod of your liking. It doesnt matter how much damage your deckgun does. Its no longer about hitpoints but only where you hit the ship with that.

Fully compatible with TMaru, as long you install this mod last, all functions of TMaru will remain.


The new Damage System:At first some physics. There is only one reason why ships actualy stay afloat Their total weight is less then the weight of the water they displace. And there is only one way to sink them. By increasing their total weight beyond their displacement. In other words they must be flooded with water. Be it by making holes in the hull, explosion inside, or making them roll over. The air inside must be replaced with water in one way or another.

In Silent Hunter 4 ships sink much more from losing hitpoints. Each ship has a certain amount of hitpoints. The game however does simulate flooding and they can also be sank by that. But in Stock SH4 entire flooding system is more about eye candy. Ships still sink by hitpoints. The aim of that mod is to completely eliminate hitpoint damage and add different ways to fill the ship with water until its weight gets beyond the displacement. It sounds complicated but its much easier. You just have to be smart. The damage system was tested and tweaked for a long time. There will be no unsinkable ships. You might have the first impression that they dont sink but they do. Ships will sink even if you havent been smart and hit it not at the right place they will sink it will just take longer and require more hits. You must be patient and sometimes wait to see if you must give it one more hit or if it was already enough...


Recomended Amount of Torpedoes for different Ships and observed Sinking Times

Small Merchants (less then 3500 tons) will require one or two torpedo hits. They are sinking in about 20 minutes in average.
Medium Freighters (3500 - 5500 tons) will in most cases wistand one torpedo hit but not always. Two will sink most of them but some will survive more. They sink in about 40 minutes in average.
Large Cargo Ships (over 5500 tons) will eat two, three or four they can sink up to several hours if not finished off.
Merchants that Carry Fuel (tankers) or Ammunitions will in most cases explode in a huge fireball from a single hit, destroyed and can even damage other ships nearby.
Destroyers will in most cases need one hit. If not sank by its exploding Ammunitions they will flood up fast in about 5 - 10 minutes.
Carriers and Cruisers will take two or three. They could take much more but they tend to capsize quickly that being their end
Battleships will take three and more. This is mostly a luckshot they also tend to capsize quickly after suffering several torpedoe hits on one side. Their weakness are their ammo bunkers. When one of those explode it ignites the other and the fuel too. They will sink quite fast in about 10 - 20 minutes when ammo bunkers explode but they can stay for hours capsized.
Important NotesRemember you must achieve one of that goals to score a kill and tonnage.




1. the vessel must be either observed entirely sinking

2. or you must observe their crew leaving the ship.

you may not damage a ship and get out of area. It might sink 3 hours later from your damage but you will not score a kill when youre not in area. So finish them off or stay around and wait. The crews will act smart. When they know the ship can stay afloat they will try to do their best. When they know the ship is not to retrieve they will leave the vessel and you will score the hit (if you are observing that)

Example. You hit a small vessel and damage 3 of its 5 compartments. The crew knows that the ship can stay afloat with 2 compartment filled but not with 3. In that case they will evacuate the ship before they are fully filled. They will not wait until the ship is filled up to masts. This happened very often in the last version. But you will rarely see that in this version unless you realy make huge holes. The crew will in most cases fight untill the end. So you will get "Enemy Unit Destroyed" Messege when its realy clear that it cannot stay afloat with that holes.


Deckgun
You must use the deckgun in quite different way as you are used to. It is very difficult to sink an undamaged ship with deckgun only because you will need a lot of shells to make a lot of holes. But it is awesome for finishing off damaged ships that are not worth another torpedo. If you see clearly the ship has more serried compartments that keep her afloat. Make few holes on them below the water line and watch how much faster she sinks. Sometimes ships streithen up when sinking and stay verticaly with the stern sticking out of water like the titanic and do not sink. Add few holes to the that kork and let the air inside exhaust. That will make them sink for sure.




Basic Changes (for modders)
1. increased hitpoints for all ships to 20000




2. reworked and ballanced floodings for every compartment of every ship.

3. balanced floatability for every compartment of every ship to help the crew meet the right decission when its time to abandon the ship.


Download: http://files.filefront.com/NSM26zip/;8100796;;/fileinfo.html (http://files.filefront.com/NSM26zip/;8100796;;/fileinfo.html)




As usual there is a single mission for your testings with different ships. Enjoy...

[leovampire]

All the hit points and Armor levels have been adjusted to more where they should be for all ships and effects have been added to show explosions for certain things that are hit and slower sinking times and a variety of sinkings according to the damage they have taken to what part of the ship. Originaly The Yamamoto had hit points and armor like a Freighter now it is the strongest ship in the Jap fleet and with the simulated oil and fuel loaded into tankers when you breach a cargo hold KABOOM and it will sink with a trail of ocean surface fires behind it until it stops drifting.

[kv29]

Great. I will give it a shot, thanks

[tater]

I'd be all over this except that I want to keep the hardcore torpedo mod. What value was changed in the torpedo file?

(guess I can look at it if I can find the torpedo tweak file...)

tater

[WernerSobe]

All the hit points and Armor levels have been adjusted to more where they should be for all ships and effects have been added to show explosions for certain things that are hit and slower sinking times and a variety of sinkings according to the damage they have taken to what part of the ship. Originaly The Yamamoto had hit points and armor like a Freighter now it is the strongest ship in the Jap fleet and with the simulated oil and fuel loaded into tankers when you breach a cargo hold KABOOM and it will sink with a trail of ocean surface fires behind it until it stops drifting.

no this mod does not change anything with hitpoints and armor levels. It just makes ships sink in different way. Not by hitpoints but by flooding.

[panthercules]

Sounds very interesting - is this something that you really need to be in port to install or should it work mid-patrol?

[WernerSobe]

I'd be all over this except that I want to keep the hardcore torpedo mod. What value was changed in the torpedo file?

(guess I can look at it if I can find the torpedo tweak file...)

tater

torpedo damage was reduced to prevent the ships blow up before they are flooded. Anyway you will expirience more powerfull torpedoes because they cause heavy flooding now.

[WernerSobe]

Sounds very interesting - is this something that you really need to be in port to install or should it work mid-patrol?

not sure about that. I think it should work in mid patrol but give it a try and let me know. Run the test mission first to see the difference.

[kv29]

with this mod, would a torpedoed ship sink inevitably by flooding, or can survive?

[WernerSobe]

it can survive of course. depends on the size of the flooding compartment and its cargo. But all compartments can take more water then in stock. means you dont need to fill 4 or 5 compartments to sink a vessel. one or two will do as i said depends on their size and cargo.

example. you hit a ship under first mast. The compartment fills with water in about 30 minutes but that alone is not enough to sink the ship. But because the bow of the ship is now completely below the water line, more water is coming over the deck into other compartments, making them flooding too and finely sinking the ship.

[kv29]

ok, do you know if the damage decal have been affected by the mod? decals are related to torpedo effectivenes

[WernerSobe]

not sure what you mean

[kv29]

decals (holes) are related to torpedo effectivenes and radius, the same happens with the deckgun values. when we set lower values than stock, the "holes" gets smaller, or simply dissappear, as with the rfb mod (you can´t see not even 1 hole made by deck guns).

[WernerSobe]

ah now i know what you mean.

no the holes are looking the same. I think its not the damage its armor piercing. When you lower armor piercing they might disappear. But dont worry they are still there and are same size as stock.

[tater]

Do ships have left/right compartments? Is capsizing a function of damage on 1 side?

According to what I read someplace (dunno where) the USN studied our losses to the U-boats and determined that most ships were sunk due to loss of stability, not flooding per se. It sounds like your mod does this if you see more ships list, then sink, or go down at the bow or stern, then sink...

tater

[WernerSobe]

yes it happens quite often especialy to big ships. All ships besides small vessels have left/right side compartments and can flip over one side. It happens very often to battleships with this mod. They will flip over and sometimes stay afloat downunder.

[kv29]

Its looking good so far, I like it :up:
we only need to mod the water to look like this:

http://xo.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/shipwreck.jpg

[Sailor Steve]

Do ships have left/right compartments? Is capsizing a function of damage on 1 side?

According to what I read someplace (dunno where) the USN studied our losses to the U-boats and determined that most ships were sunk due to loss of stability, not flooding per se. It sounds like your mod does this if you see more ships list, then sink, or go down at the bow or stern, then sink...

tater
I've read a few accounts of ships that did not have longitudinal bulkheads (divided down the middle - that usually was only done with large warships) which still capsized. Some of them even rolled over in the direction away from the torpedo hit. Apparently the water rushing in forced the ship to heel away from the impact side, and then it kept going that way.

Also in those Japanese convoy documents there are a few accounts of ships carrying steel which sank within thirty seconds of being torpedoed.:dead:

[WernerSobe]

unfortunaly there are not many innert cargo types. you can differ between freight, fuel, ammo and empty.

in my mod ammo and fuel will in most cases cause a catastrophic explosion that will instantly destroy the ship and it will sink quite fast. When the fuel cargo does not ignite it will take the longest to flood because fuel is floating on water and it takes long time to replace fuel with water. Freight type cargo will flood faster then empty but be also less important for floatability of entire vessel bacause you can put more water in an empty ship then in one loaded with freight.

[Jace11]

I have a question....

What happens when warships engage each other or planes bomb, or torpedo warships and freighters when using this mod..

I imagine they find it difficult to sink anything with shells.. or maybe not... anyone tested it...

[WernerSobe]

shells are not affected. The battles between ships are lasting just about the same. But killed ships will of course sink slower. Same for the Deckgun. You will need about the same amount of shells to sink a ship because i didnt changed hitpoints.

You can however also sink ships with the deckgun by flooding. Give it like 10-15 shells in each compartment. wait for a while and see if it started flooding. If it does, chances are good that it will sink on its own once it took enough water. I recomend the real deckgun mod with 25 seconds reload time. It fits best to the slow flooding.

[tater]

Very nice so far!

tater

[Bando]

Hello Werner,

I'm no tweaking expert, but my files are tweaked by myself to a great extend, so to merge more mods together without them biting eachother. So I went ahead and downloaded your mod. I use the Die Slowly mod by Redwine and the New effects (not yet released, it's a test version) by Leovampire. I would need to tweak your mod right in. I looked at the torpedo_us.zon file, and to my surprise I've seen you reduced the min/max EF values. I thought they were the explosive power of the torpedo, but than again, I'm by no means an expert in this.
Furthermore in the zones.cfg I see you made the flooding a very long proces, which is good IMO.
Resume, what exactly does the min/max EF value do in relation tt the torpedo. I am assuming T1=MK10, T2=MK14, T3=MK16?, T4=MK18, T5=MK23, T6= MK27

Please advice,

Reg

Bando

[Von Tonner]

Werner, you are de man :up::up:

Hope this works with TMaru. One of my tactics when I get the opportunity is to hide under a crippled ship to avoid destroyers, with your mod it looks like I will be able to do this more often:rock:

[tater]

BTW, this mod des NOT interfere with the hardcore torpedo mod.

[Jace11]

yup thats all in the torpedo sim file, so even better...

Yes I like this mod too...

New questions:

Can you disable a ship easily.. Will a direct hit on the engine room stop a ship in the water still? Or will she only stop when that compartment is completely flooded...(which now takes much longer)?

What mods is the zones.cfg combined with... The aircraft section looks different... any changes to sub flodding also??

[tater]

I tested a little last night with this mod on. I hit a tanker (large) and she kept steaming. The convoy as a whole did the "mill about" nonsense, but for my second spread (aft tubes) I got a speed of 6 knots on her (quick set up, not sure how accurate, but 2 fish hit, one was a dud).

The escort held me down, then a DD showed up (a subhunter patrol near Truk) to help him. When they finally left 30 DCs or so later, the tanker was dead in the water listing to starboard and settling by the stern. After a couple hours I got the ship destroyed mnote, but she was still wallowing, she eventually capsized. VERY cool.

:up:

tater

[Stealth Hunter]

Yeah, quick question: does this mod also affect YOUR submarine?

[ReallyDedPoet]

Nice work, have been reading some of the posts here.

Will give it a go:up:


RDP

[Jace11]

Here are some screenies from a quick test in the convoy attack mission from the submarine school..

I got opposite results to tater, the instant my torpedoes hit I got the target destroyed message.. weird!!

Nippon was hit at stern by only one torp and I got the message instantly!!! Even though it took her 15 minutes to go down..

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4813/sh4img77200715534678od9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The Biyo rolled onto her side and went down nicely.

When the first Nippon did go down, as she went down stern first there was a massive splinter explosion which I thought was a bit odd. But on the whole much improved.


http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/9012/sh4img772007155951578zz8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)


I hit another Nippon and she started to go down stern first slowly, then about 5 minutes later her back broke and the bow went down quickly while the stern settled and sank slowly... nice... lots of fires etc..

[kv29]

what do you think about deleting the "target detroyed" message?

[Stealth Hunter]

Could just be a bug caused by modding the file. When you changed the values, it probably caused the game to instantly recognize that the hit was a fatal one in this instance and that the vessel would be doomed eventually.

[Jace11]

Can you remove that message entirely...??? if so, i'd love to know how..

I expect you would still get the message log button flashing which would be a give away that the ship was finished and the ship would be added to the "Ships sunk" list but that would be acceptable...

[Stealth Hunter]

Hmm...

I'd think you'd have to completely change the confirmation files on sinkings to get the message to go away.

As for the mod, it's pretty good. However, I don't like how a good portion of the deck can be underwater and the ship can stay afloat for hours if not days.

[Stealth Hunter]

Oh! I forgot to mention that the mod is great. I just found an annoying problem with the sinkings, however.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g17/Sgt-Smithy/Silent%20Hunter%20III/sh42007-07-0710-24-34-12.jpg

I took this screenshot after downloading and installing your mod. The ship stayed like that, with the water over the deck, for 3 days before I got tired of it and decided to finish it. That gets very annoying, as the ship would, in reality, go down in a short time. The water covering so much of the deck and part of the cabin area would cause a rapid sinking.

[CaptainHaplo]

Excellent work! Thank you for the effort!

[WernerSobe]

Could just be a bug caused by modding the file. When you changed the values, it probably caused the game to instantly recognize that the hit was a fatal one in this instance and that the vessel would be doomed eventually.

Its not a bug it seems to be another feature noone knows about because you have never seen ships sinking from flooding before.

Let me explain. The crews seems to know when to many compartments are flooding and they cannot save the ship. In that case they abandon the ship and you score a kill. However the vessel will keep flooding slowly.

The mod has greatly increased floatability for each compartment. I will try to explain on example:

Lets say in stock SH4 we have a small ship with 4 compartments of equal size. The general floatability of the vessel is 100 and of each compartment 35. When two compartments are flooded the general floatability will be reduced by 70 and the ship stay afloat. Now with this mod the floatability for each compartment is increased to 60 each. When one is hit it will go on but it cannot take two. When two compartments are taking in flooding the crew knows that the floatability will be reduced by 120. So they just leave their ship because they know they cannot save it.

So basicly the crews will not wait until their ship is flooded up to the masts, they will evacuate the ship when they know they cannot retrieve it bacause to many compartments are flooding. In some cases even big ships will be abonded instantly when your torpedo hit exactly between two essential compartments and make the both taking flooding. Sometimes ships will go on with maximum floatability reduced to almost zero for hours. When their damaged compartments are full the water can come over the deck into other compartments making them flooding also and finely kill her.

The kill message can be removed. You will however still score a kill as soon they board their lifeboats.

[WernerSobe]

Hello Werner,

I'm no tweaking expert, but my files are tweaked by myself to a great extend, so to merge more mods together without them biting eachother. So I went ahead and downloaded your mod. I use the Die Slowly mod by Redwine and the New effects (not yet released, it's a test version) by Leovampire. I would need to tweak your mod right in. I looked at the torpedo_us.zon file, and to my surprise I've seen you reduced the min/max EF values. I thought they were the explosive power of the torpedo, but than again, I'm by no means an expert in this.
Furthermore in the zones.cfg I see you made the flooding a very long proces, which is good IMO.
Resume, what exactly does the min/max EF value do in relation tt the torpedo. I am assuming T1=MK10, T2=MK14, T3=MK16?, T4=MK18, T5=MK23, T6= MK27

Please advice,

Reg

Bando

Youre are right it is the amount of structural damage the torpedoes inflict to the vessel. Ive reduced the damage because i wanted the ships sink from flooding and not just blow up. Let me explain:

Each ship has a certain amount of structural hitpoints and a certain amount of floatatation. You can kill every ship in two ways. First reduce its structural hitpoints to zero by hiting it with to many torpedoes. That will cause a huge explosion, the ship will blow up and sink very fast because all compartments start flooding. The other method is to reduce its floatatation by hiting different compartments. Flooding compartments slowly reduce the general floatatation and once it is zero the ship will sink regardless of how many hitpoints it has left.

While "Die Slowly" Mod has tweaked all the hitpoints to be more realistic, ive gone another way and increased the amount of floatatation taken away by each compartment when flooded. At same time i needed to reduce the structural damage from torpedoes to avoid ships taking maximum structural damage before they are flooded and their maximum floatability is used.

[WernerSobe]

Werner, you are de man :up::up:

Hope this works with TMaru. One of my tactics when I get the opportunity is to hide under a crippled ship to avoid destroyers, with your mod it looks like I will be able to do this more often:rock:

works with TMaru. You just have to install it aftar TMaru because TMaru also make changes to same files. These changes are lost but ive looked at them that are not many and they are not very important.

[WernerSobe]

Oh! I forgot to mention that the mod is great. I just found an annoying problem with the sinkings, however.

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g17/Sgt-Smithy/Silent%20Hunter%20III/sh42007-07-0710-24-34-12.jpg

I took this screenshot after downloading and installing your mod. The ship stayed like that, with the water over the deck, for 3 days before I got tired of it and decided to finish it. That gets very annoying, as the ship would, in reality, go down in a short time. The water covering so much of the deck and part of the cabin area would cause a rapid sinking.

The mod does take in account water coming over the deck and it can also flood other compartments that are not damaged from the torpedo. But in your case you have hit the ship under first mast (that part contains a huge compartment with a floatability of 65) The water that comes over the deck only covers the bow. The compartment below it is already flooded so it cannot cause more flooding. If the stern part would also drop below the water line the water would come into other big compartment too and reduce the maximum float by another 65 and propably sink it.

[WernerSobe]

Yeah, quick question: does this mod also affect YOUR submarine?

no it doesnt

[Stealth Hunter]

I are still happy lad...:()1:

[Jace11]

Ok, in a few of my tests I have hit tankers with a fuel cargo...

The tanker does not blow up even after several hits, there are only small fires etc as the tanker starts to slowly sink. Once the tanker is completely flooded, and underwater, with maybe just the stern or bow showing but going down fast, the massive series of splinter explosions occurs, sometimes many of them...

Why is this? And can it be fixed so when we hit a fuel cargo we get a big explosion again as the torpedo ignites fuel / ammo...

As it is, we have the explosion after a 3 hour delay and when the ship is under-water - this is unrealistic and I've observed it several times now...

I expect the problem is the cargo fuel / ammo compartments I will take a look and do some testing...

[tater]

My tanker I hit almost certainly had fuel as cargo (since I added it, lol), but I saw the same thing, jace, no fire.

[leovampire]

And Tater

That is all fixed and set up in Die Slowly 16 for the tankers and fuel bunkers and engine rooms with the effects. Plus the zone's file has now been properly set up for the Fuel and Oil cargo's which it never was from the get go.

[tater]

Cool, I'll be trying that.

[Bando]

Ok, in a few of my tests I have hit tankers with a fuel cargo...

The tanker does not blow up even after several hits, there are only small fires etc as the tanker starts to slowly sink. Once the tanker is completely flooded, and underwater, with maybe just the stern or bow showing but going down fast, the massive series of splinter explosions occurs, sometimes many of them...

Why is this? And can it be fixed so when we hit a fuel cargo we get a big explosion again as the torpedo ignites fuel / ammo...

As it is, we have the explosion after a 3 hour delay and when the ship is under-water - this is unrealistic and I've observed it several times now...

I expect the problem is the cargo fuel / ammo compartments I will take a look and do some testing...

In the zone.cfg file there are settings for crushing depths for each and every ships component. If a ship sinks with it's fuel bunkers intact, the crush depth for the fuel bunkers is set at 100 ft for example, that at that depth the fuel bunker is destroyed. It will blow up at that depth. I've observed with some ships that the blast was so huge it even consumed liferaft at the surface.
It adds a way of sinking. There are a lot of ways for ships to sink, as are in real life.

I think I'll stick to the Die Slowly mod, for the compartment job and the effects added.

Werner, thanks for your reply.

Reg
Bando

[kv29]

yes, I heard several ships expoding underwater, this is not good. The explosions are related to hitpoints, so ships loose all their hitpoints only underwater with the mod.

[WernerSobe]

yes i have extended crush depths. maybe to much for the fuel bunkers.

and @jace are you sure you have loaded it? the propability for ignition of fuel and ammo is 90%. If you are not sure run the test mission coming with mod. The last cargo ship is a tanker full with oil. Ive only seen it slowly sinking once it almost always explodes.

@leo what i dont like about "die slowly" its dealing with hitpoints. I like to sink ships like they realy sink, by flooding. Back in the past there was a mod for sh3 NYGM that completely eliminated hitpoint damage. All ships had like 100 times more hp as usual so only flooding damage was possible. I didnt wanted to go that way so im somewhere in between. Its still possible to sink a ship by structural damage when it is hit by several torpedoes in one spot. That was not possible with NYGM. In "die slowly" the most sinkings are still due to loss of hitpoints and structural damage. There is also some flooding but thats not enough. They blow up sooner before they take to much water.

Extend the flooding times, increase floatability for all compartments and increase all hitpoints (or reduce torpedo dmg) and ill be happy wit that.

[Bando]

It's the compartments that get crushed, destroyed and blows up. It's entirely possible. The beauty of it (although I've seen this only once) it can trigger the next compartment. What I mean is , when an aft compartment blows (by torpedo or guns or crushdepth) it goes of with whatever is in there (oil, fuel, ammo and so on). This may trigger the next compartment, then the next and so on. You probably seen that in the movies as a submerged sub blows. It looks like the blast is travelling through the ship. As said, only saw it once in this game with the new effects added (the new effects are in die slowly 16 as of now) but what an awesome sight it was.

Bando

[Jace11]

yup i added fuel to them, I can't work out why I get the catastrophic explosion just when they go under...?? No idea, could be crash depths, but I doubt it.. The only structures that have big explosions are the NavDeck and CommandDeck, but at the end of the Zones.cfg is the oil explosion effect. I am guessing Fuelbunkers are not taking enough damage on the first hit to trigger the big explosion, it shouldn't be flooding related...but that is the only thing you changed...right....

I noticed some critical chance changes tooo..

[kv29]

How could a compartment being crushed by pressure make the oil to ignite or even explode underwater, and with no air?
Pressure does not make such things in rl. If a tanker sinks and there are no fires, they go quietly underwater and start leaking oil all over the surface, that would be a nice effect in water.

[WernerSobe]

the chain reaction works from compartment to compartment and even from ship to another ship. During my tests ive placed the tanker and the freighter with ammunitions to close to each other. Once the freighter blew up the tanker also catched on fire and blew up too few seconds later without taking damage from torpedoes.

[leovampire]

Certain compartments on a ship in real life were set up with extra armor during the war to help protect vital area's that would sink a ship faster or disable it. Second in the ZON files for each ship some of the merchant ships have armor and hit point levels higher than the Battel ships which is silly. So they have been adjusted so that the biger war ships are harder to sink than they use to be. Second with the actual compartments set up for the ships you can get a cascade flood effect that will move from compartment to compartment sinking the ship. But with no Ammo set up in an Ammo bunker you can't get an explosion out of that compartment that would damage the one next to it as it would in real life. A fuel bunker you have to have for the engines to run but with no fuel in them to burn or explode why bother having them in the files in the first place other than sinking times for the ships themselves.

There is a lot more that comes into play on a ship at sea than just how long it takes to flood a compartment it is what they are carrying in each compartment wether it is Ammo, fuel, oil, or regular cargo or even nothing. But how many ships in WWII had wodden decks on average? Almost all actualy so without fires or reactions to the deck gun hit or torpedo hit that you can see at times just having a longer sinking time isn't enough. I agree yes some ships should take longer to sink but at the same time there should be a reaction to certain cargo's or area's of the ships that are vital to it's running or being able to stay afloat.

If you shoot a car in the gas tank with a gun what happens? It explodes and damages the rest of the car correct? And if you use a 50 caliber rifle and shoot the engine the oil ignites and burns and leaks out and the engine won't run anymore. If you don't set up the Zone's file to understand and have those reactions to situations like an explosion type breach from a torpedo you do not get realistic sinkings.

I am not knocking what you are doing don't get me wrong what I am trying to say is that there is so much more to a and in a simulation like this than just flooding times. In real life it depends on how thick the Steal or Iron is for that area of a ship wich is the hit points equivelant in a Simulation on a PC and Armor is a fact of life for ships tanks planes and buildings in war and survivability. So all of that has to come into play in your adjustments. Just consider it when you adjust your Flooding times what else comes into the picture for that section of the ship.

[Jace11]

Well the only thing I can think of is that the reduced damage of the torpedos Min25 max 50 is not delivering enough HP damage to completely destroy the fuel bunkers and trigger the oil explosion...

restoring the old torp damage may fix this... I will test...

alternative may be to reduce hitpoints on fuel bunkers to 50 also?!?!

[leovampire]

That the game comes with and patched with. And to be more realistic I reduced the effect of the deck gun shells also so that you have to hit an area a couple of times before you get a hole. But what's nice is when you catch a ship carrying Ammo Containers and you hit one on the deck BOOM and it does help sink a ship faster especialy if you penitrate a cargo hold full of them. Like taking a fire cracker and holding a closed fist around it when it goes off well needless to say that takes care of that hand. Same for an enclosed area of a ship with weapon grade explosioves.

[WernerSobe]

Its not just flooding times i have increased this is just an eye candy. I guess you havent tried the mod right?

I want to say that the both mods are not quite about same thing. While "die slowly" is much more about how the ship is taking damage and geting destroyed, Real Sinking Phyisics is much more about sinking mechanics. So much more about how it sinks.

But all the damaging effects like exploding engine rooms and fuel bunkers are also in here it all works the same. Also i have different sinking mechanics for different type of cargo. Fuel in example is lighter then water and ships with fuel bunkers intakt will more likely stay afloat. Fuelbunkers will also flood longer because it must be replaced with water etc... there are just few examples.

Basicly what i am trying here is to get away from overall hitpoints. We are not playing quake after all. Thats a good example. When you get hit with a bullet you die not because your hitpoints are all gone but because you lose blood or your heart stopped beating.

Same with ships. Naturaly ships sink not because they have no more hitpoints but because they have took to much water. Physicaly that means to sink a ship you must increase the total weight of the ship over the weight of the water that ship displace. In other words there is no way around, to sink a ship you must fill it with water. Be it by making holes in its hull or capsizing it. If you want to sink it, put water in, in one way or another.

So Hitpoints are not that important. Give a ship one million hitpoints and you can still sink it by puting more water inside then it can take to stay afloat.

Now the problem with stock (and "die slowly") is that the hitpoints are in most cases consumed first, before the ship realy has a chance to be filled with water. And when the ship loses its all hitpoints it instantly fills all its compartments and sinks in a very unrealistic way (like a stone).

The problem is not entirely with flooding times but much more with floatability with each compartment. To send it down by flooding you need to destroy to many compartments. In my mod ive increased their floatability. Meaning that each compartment is much more important for floatability of entire ship.

Ill try explain on example.

Lets say we have a vessel with 300 hitpoints and 100 floatability. It has 4 compartments of equal size (to make it easier) and each compartment has a floatability of 35.

Now it takes a torpedo hit with 160 dmg in its first compartment. The compartment fills with water. Overall hitpoints are now reduced to 140 and overall floatability is down to 65.

Another torpedo hits it for 160 dmg in its second compartment. Now it has no more hitpoints and will just explode and sink like a stone but lets ignore this and see what happens with compartments. The overall floatability is now down to 30. One more compartment must be filled to sink it.

Now what i have done with this mod is i have increased the floatability for compartments to lets say 65 each and reduced the torpedo damage by half.

First torpedo hits the first compartment and reduces the hitpoints to 220 and the filling compartment reduces overall floatability down to 35.

Next one reduces the hitpoints to 140 and the filling compartment reduces the floatability to zero. Meaning ships total weight is now higher then its displacement and it starts sinking, not like a stone but like a real ship. Depending on how the water is distributed inside the hull it will maybe flip over one side or dive in with the bow and then break appart like titanic. Thats what this mod is about.

[leovampire]

I came on a little strong and did it improperly and should have approached you
in a private message I appologize for that.

Second I do see where you are comming from and what your trying to accomplish and recognize that your putting some serious time into it.

Now for a question did you actualy set up new and seperate cargo type holds for the ships to get the results you are talking about? I am asking this because this wasn't done from the getgo in the game files from what I can see. Or are you using just what is available already?

And yes I did download it and have started to go through it as of yesterday to compair your work and results with what I am doing and Redwine and PCelt came up with as well.

But if you want to get the proper results your looking for then you should make the stock torpedo's for the game get the desired results. I know Redwine hasn't changed anything for the torpedo's except make it so the impact blast tends to give the ship a quick lift up from the water or a quick down draft from the sudden intake of water rushing into the ship from the hole it made.

If you can make this work with the stock torpedo's then my hat is off to you and I'll bow as well.

But the ships do not sink like a rock with Die Slowly. Have you played the game with all the stock stuff and see the results of the ships sinkings before checking his out now that was a rock sinking.

[Redwine]

Hi WernerSobe... :up:

At first, many thanks for your job and effort improving this game for the subcommunity ! :up:

Your "way" is so good ans sounds interesting.

The game give us many ways to send a ship to the sea floor.

You can reach its hit points, you can flood the ship, you can produce secondary explosions to reach the hitpoints, you can have a blend.

All ways are interesnting.

Was not my intention to make a comment here, specially because i like your way.... but you wrote some things wrong about Die Slowly.


Now the problem with stock (and "die slowly") is that the hitpoints are in most cases consumed first, before the ship realy has a chance to be filled with water. And when the ship loses its all hitpoints it instantly fills all its compartments and sinks in a very unrealistic way (like a stone).

Another torpedo hits it for 160 dmg in its second compartment. Now it has no more hitpoints and will just explode and sink like a stone

Die Slowly produce many diferent ways to sink into ships...

Some times you reach the ships hitpoints and they sinks like as a rock... but not always.

Some times the hitpoints are reached by the secondary explosions.

Some times they NEVER sinks....

Some times you hit a ship, and fail some of the torps, or you are enforced to dive by escorts, and you hit a single torp into a ship... and it sinks by flooding, exclusivelly by flooding.

It was our intention to make all them well balanced but may be not a good balance reached, may be the ships sinking by flooding are not too much, but they are there.

Just today, testing some new adds, i play a mission where i attacked a task force, and two of the ships sinks only by flooding.

Some others was hited and explodes into a big ball of fire, and sinks as a rock as you commented, but it is not the only way to sink into Die Slowly.

Die Slowly produce a sink by flooding, of course if you launch 4 torps against a merchants it will not happen, but according the ship, you can hit it with one or two torps and the ships still sailing and maintaining speed, and start up to flood and after many minutes it sinks far from you by flodding exclusivelly.

In real life there was many extrange ways to sink, WW II Kaptains report some times, ships sinking in less than 30 seconds by a single hit... ( i remember the Kpt. Krestchmer comments) but he comented some times his bad feels when some times there was ships taking many torps.

There was ships which flames by days before sink, o never sinks.

It is too hard to modelate all those probabilities, and it is more hard to obtain them modding.

I played many time ago the NYGM settings, and IMHO, all extremes are not my pleasure.

If you have the ships sinking only by reaching hitpoints, you will become into the rutine and tired of that, but if all ships sinks only by flooding, will be the same... just a personal opinion, it is not a rule.

Then IMHO teh best is too have lot of diferent behaviours.

More easy to say than to obtain....

Ships sinking by reaching hitpoints, using few and using lot of torps.

Ships sinking by hitpoints, using few torps and having the remaining hitpoints after some time by secondary explosions.

Ships sinking by flooding only, with few damage by torps.

Ships with severe damage wich NEVER SINKS.

But we are modders, not developers... we work with the files we can have access.

We attempt to do that, the best we can, but not always the things result as we want... :rotfl:

Plus, it is imposible to satisfy all the diferent people's tastes and requests. :damn: :rotfl:

With the new settings into Stage 16, ships become a little bit more easy to sink... sure we need to rework it if we have claims, but one of the initial objetives of Die Slowly was to eliminates the ships wich need too much torps to sink.



After all it is a game, not the real life, many people want to enjoy, have amazing explosions and graphics, extrage ways to sink, to take wonderful screenshots...



Any way i love your job, and apreciate a lot your effort and job to improve this game for the subcommunity. :up::up::up:

Here it is not the matter a match between mods, the matter is to work and to improve the game for the subcommunity.

And all we are done that...

So... if you need some thing from our experience, please, do not feel limited to ask or request some thing.

A new time... manay many thanks for your job and effort... !!!

:up::up::up:

[ReallyDedPoet]

Here it is not the matter a match between mods, the matter is to work and to improve the game for the subcommunity.

Just stuck my head in here for a bit. Liked what you said above in the quote RW :yep:

The community appreciates all of the great work done by modders in an effort to make the experience the best it can be:up::up: Discussions like the ones in this thread are part of that process.
Again, thanks for your efforts :rock:


RDP

[WernerSobe]

i must admit i have only tried an older version (i think it was 14) and i felt like the ships are sinking only by hitpoints. Ill check the newest one.

[WernerSobe]

ok ive been testing version 16 for about 1 hour here are my foundings.

ive sank 20 ships (different kinds of merchants from small to big ones)

- more then half sank from first hit after suffering a huge explosion
- 2 of 20 sank by flooding (1 hit) 18 either didnt sank from 1 hit or sank by hitpoints from second hit
- only the tankers sank longer then 5 minutes. all other in less. some in a matter of few seconds. especialy those that exploded.

what i did like:
nice effects like burning oil and huge smoke stacks from burning tankers. But that slowed down my game a lot. Also very nice splash effects and how the ships jump out of the water when being hit.

what id like to see improved:
more sinkings by flooding :-) more hitpoints especialy for warships. Less big explosions. Longer sinking times: that being a quastion of taste. If you want to make it more fun the sinking times are ok. If you want it to be more historical multiply the flooding time by at least 5. Historicaly some ships indeed sank in few seconds when being criticaly hit or loaded with steel. But that not being the rule. The big majority stayed afloat for a long time, hours and even days were common.

Ive been looking at how your mod is designed and have learned few more things thanks for that. Ill however continue on this way and try to completely eliminate the hitpoint sinkings so only flooding is possible in next version. Ill need to rework entire compartment system for every ship to find the right balance that being the hard part of it.

[LukeFF]

This mod is very nice, Werner. Keep up the good work!

(Now, if we could just increase the delay for that #$#$%^&$%$%^&%^!!! "Enemy unit destroyed" message for ship sinkings, everything would be great).

[nomad_delta]

Going to give it a try; will let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

nomad_delta

[WernerSobe]

This mod is very nice, Werner. Keep up the good work!

(Now, if we could just increase the delay for that #$#$%^&$%$%^&%^!!! "Enemy unit destroyed" message for ship sinkings, everything would be great).

heads up for next version. Im working on it and ive already found a solution on that. In new version you will score the kills much later when most of the ship is under water and its clearly sinking.

[Jace11]

Here is an ammo ship exploding underwater, same with tankers... Not seen one explode yet... sure the torpedoes blow up and there maybe a small explosion, but not the BIG BANG.. looking foward to a fix for this as the slow sinking in this mod is great..

http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/8384/sh4img8720071225146av1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Shot at 2007-07-08

[WernerSobe]

ill release the new version soon. im still tweaking and balancing it but there will be far less instant kills, no more explosions under water too. And it will work in entirely another way, the structural damage and hitpoints being completely eliminated. They will sink natural way only. flooding, fires, capsizing and big explosions.

[Redwine]

ok ive been testing version 16 for about 1 hour here are my foundings.

ive sank 20 ships (different kinds of merchants from small to big ones)

- more then half sank from first hit after suffering a huge explosion
- 2 of 20 sank by flooding (1 hit) 18 either didnt sank from 1 hit or sank by hitpoints from second hit
- only the tankers sank longer then 5 minutes. all other in less. some in a matter of few seconds. especialy those that exploded.
Many thanks for your help... :up:

May be we have diferent installation, any way in the las version, i note the add of new effects made the ships a little bit more easy to sink than into early versions, may by due to the spead of damage caused by the explosions effects.

Here a mission i played yesterday night...

I hit a Kuma Light Cruiser at 2200m, it have a high flooding but dont sinks, i put on it a second torp, at 11:25....

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3743/sh4img87200701344531xz2.th.jpg (http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sh4img87200701344531xz2.jpg)

It start to sink by flooding....

It sinks at 12:01, 36 minutes later of the second impact...

It takes 36 minutes (after second impact) to sink by flooding.

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2223/sh4img87200701530343ec5.th.jpg (http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sh4img87200701530343ec5.jpg)

Of course it not happen often... but some time you need to give the ships many minutes to sink by flooding.



what i did like:
nice effects like burning oil and huge smoke stacks from burning tankers. But that slowed down my game a lot. Also very nice splash effects and how the ships jump out of the water when being hit.
many thanks... :up:

what id like to see improved:
more sinkings by flooding :-) more hitpoints especialy for warships.
The matter is, not always the same ship needs the same quantity of torps, as you see above, it takes about 45 minutes to sink a light cruiser from the first impact, and 36 minutes to sink by flooding after the second one.

If you want to sink this ship (a light cruiser) quickly, you need 3 torps, wich seems too unrealistic, a single one must be enough for a Heavy one.

Based on that mission, i we can soupose, i need to lower down the ship hit points, but not...

If you play more, more and more, you can see this same ship, can be easy sinked by a single torp if it hit the apropiated compartement.

The critical compatement explodes, and spread the damage and kill the adyacent compartements... and kill the ship, even it can kill a DD if it is so near, even can kill the life boats, and even your onwn sub if the explosion if from an ammo cargo.

In other hand can happens.... nothing as in the screen shots above...

This is what i like too much of the results in Die Slowly... yoiu never can know how many torps will need a ship to be killed.

I remeber into SH2 and SH 3, i previously know how many torps needs each ship, i ensure the just quantity and let that ship to take another... and the kill was ensured...

Here not, some times this ships can be killed by a single torp.... and some times needs 3 as in this case, or two torps, and 36 minutes to sink...

Less big explosions.
Not agree with that ! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

It is a game ! I want to enjoy many Hollywood FX effects ! :rotfl:


Longer sinking times: that being a quastion of taste.
Complettelly agree with that !
With both things, agree with longer sinking times, and with it is matter of personal taste.

IMHO we need to reach a balanced status... not too long times, not too short, but some of both, some quick sinks into less than 30 seconds, and some long sinks as in the screen shots baove... 36 minutes after the second torp on a light cruiser... wich seems to be much more than in real life for a light cruiser one.


If you want to make it more fun the sinking times are ok. If you want it to be more historical multiply the flooding time by at least 5.
I was under the tentation of that, the problem was, some times the flooding times become so long...

Just imagine the ship of the screen shots above, wich like it is takles 36 minutes to sink after the second impact... if i multiply the flooding times by 5, it sure will sink beyond of my visual and sonar contact.

I can do that, and improve many sinks, but it can ruin other sinks....



Historicaly some ships indeed sank in few seconds when being criticaly hit or loaded with steel. But that not being the rule. The big majority stayed afloat for a long time, hours and even days were common.
Completelly agree... and i like that.

Any way we are still reworking the mod, as wrte before, the new FX effects added, rised up the probabilities to sink a ship easy...

The big explosions spread the damage too much.

Sure a rise up of hit points will be welcome.

But... there was a probelm, wich was one of the cause which generated Die Slowly to born, was the "unsinkable ships"

If we make a good sink on the most common ships, we roll back the problem of the unsinkable ships, wich take more than 10 torps to sink and generated the claim of people into the forums.

Ive been looking at how your mod is designed and have learned few more things thanks for that.
No due of request any help or tip to me or to leo if you need, i love your job and we can learn one of the other. !!! :up:


Ill however continue on this way and try to completely eliminate the hitpoint sinkings so only flooding is possible in next version. Ill need to rework entire compartment system for every ship to find the right balance that being the hard part of it.
So good... will be intersting to see what happens with the "unsinkable ships" with you way....

I think so, that way will be fine for most of the ships, but when you found one of the misterious "unsinkables" you will spend 20 torps and they will not sink.

They are really a nightmare, in the early verions when all seems to work properly, i receive reports about .... in that yer... near Salomon... a cargo ship take me 10 torps and dont sink...

What ! ?

Take a look on them...

But not sure... please share results...

Many thanks for your comments, if you have more, please do it into the die slowly topic.

I do not want to disturb your topic with Die Slowly things, but i apreciated too much your comments, we need fedbacks...

many, many thanks for your job... !!!

:up::up::up:

[Jace11]

Are people trying to hijack this thread...?

Anyway, Werner, I have transposed your changes to floatability and flooding times into my old zones.cfg and left out the critcial changes you made... and now they sink slowely and explode at the right time, so I am happy now, thanks for all your work...

[Bando]

Anyway, Werner, I have transposed your changes to floatability and flooding times into my old zones.cfg and left out the critcial changes you made... and now they sink slowely and explode at the right time, so I am happy now, thanks for all your work...

Hello Jace,

What are those criticals in your view?

Reg
Bando

[Redwine]

Are people trying to hijack this thread...?

No... :shifty: if you read before to write you will note i put some comments here due to some wrong comments/impresions about Die Slowly.

And all i put here, may be useful foe me and for Werner... to share experience is useful for both...

and if you read more i wrote this...

Many thanks for your comments, if you have more, please do it into the die slowly topic.

I do not want to disturb your topic with Die Slowly things, but i apreciated too much your comments, we need fedbacks...

many, many thanks for your job... !!!

:up::up::up:

Read before to write. :up:

[Jungman]

Hey look, another sinking mod! :cool: Takes forever to sink a ship indeed. Be nice to remove that 'ship destoyed' instant message though.

It is a nice start, but I find not too many big explosion as Jace11 stated.

I too adjusted the criticals and most important, changed the MaxEF for torpedo back to normal (not the modified MinEF note) so the randomly big hitpoint destroying giant explosion will occur more often (as now they really never do at half unless you hit a very good critical spot). I understand that was intent by the Mod (flood only), but a bit boring.

Ie, change criticals back to normal per Jace11; change the higher MaxEF for torpedo damage only higher to alow for more complete hitpoint detruction by chance.

It is a simple quick mod which is nice. I have not played Redwine Mod yet until this new version they made to test out. There are alot more changed going on in Die Slowly Mod 16 to evaluate.

I do say though, good job to both of your efforts and insights. The more Mods the Merry!:p

Better than stock, thanks guys.

[kv29]

werner, red and leo, why don´t you work together in a same mod??

[tater]

Yeah, I'd like the "instant success" to just go away. They can confirm my sinkings back home based on sigint, ULTRA, etc.

tater

[Bando]

It's easy to get rid of the words. But instead there will be a message saying nothing. Don't know how to eliminate the trigger.

Reg
Bando

[tater]

yeah, I want nothing at all.

tater

[Jungman]

Some more testing. What does the Crash Depth do? It is doubled for many ships. Is that the depth the 'big bang' occurs?

The BB is not changed and it will explode while going under water as it sinks.

The merchant has one set for 56 feet, so I see no big Hollywood explosion -until it is way underwater where you cannot see it.

Does the big bang only occur once the hitpoints reaches zero? That would come about from many torpedos, critical hit explosions. Maybe by having the Crash Depth back to normal that would also zero out the hitpoints and cause a big bang effect as it slips into the water? :hmm:

[WernerSobe]

The new version is finished. I am still running testings on all ships and tieng everthing together. It is a complete rework and the damage system works entirely different way. There will no more hitpoints anymore. And ships will always sink in different ways. Sometimes in only 5 seconds when being ripped in two parts and sometimes several hours. No more instant kills. The crews will fight until the end and do their best to save their vessel even if it is only sticking out with the stern out of the water, you will score the kill once it is completely gone. No more explosions under water. Everything happens on surface. Chain reactions on decks are possible so the fire can catch on from one side of the ship to another and sink it. And many more. Heads up for release in an hour or two.

And there are no unsinkable shipss i promise. you wont ever need more then 5 torpedoes and that only when being very unlucky on large merchant. Most merchants will sink from one or two hits.

[Jungman]

:rock: Wow, that sounds great! If you can pull that one off, your da Man!

[602Sqn_Puff]

Can't wait..:)

[WernerSobe]

The crews will fight until the end and do their best to save their vessel even if it is only sticking out with the stern out of the water...


look at his. This vessel has been trying to escape like that for an hour. Then it finely stopped and i decided to surface and finish it off with the deck gun. Guess what? it rerturned fire at me: you can see the deckgun firing.

http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/9880/sh42007070816235674xm0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[haegemon]

err.....well, I supose a ship in that state would be abandoned, no mater how much disciplined was the crew. I mean, if half-ship is underwater, there's no hope left.

[WernerSobe]

thats what im talking about. The crew is acting smart now. When they see the ship is sticking out of water and does not sink any further they stay aboard and shoot back.

But on the other hand hting a small merchant with 3 torpedoes and making 3 huge holes in it making them leave much sooner before the ship is filled up to its masts. They know when its time to go... :-)

[kakemann]

Looks promising! Will try it out. Thanks mate!

[Uber Gruber]

Just played a war scenario with it and very much enjoyed the sinkings. Not sure why I now have green torp explosion effect but the yamamoto went down very realistically after 6 Torp hits.

Thanks:up:

[loreed]

I have noticed that all Target gun crews stay at their stations until the are in water up to about their waist, then they disappear.:yep:

[WernerSobe]

no this ship was not a scored kill. It was still going on. It looks like its sinking but it has been sticking out of water like that for almost an hour. The deckguns even fired at me when i surfaced to finish it off.

[ReallyDedPoet]

thats what im talking about. The crew is acting smart now. When they see the ship is sticking out of water and does not sink any further they stay aboard and shoot back.



I had this effect the other night with Die Slowly, a larger tanker was listing quite bad, but still had lots of fight in it. Add in some heavy fog and rain and the patrol thus far has been excellent.

As mentioned, looking forward to tyring this one out as well.


RDP

[WernerSobe]

new version released. Check the first page of that thread.

[tater]

DLing now. What about armor, BTW?

tater

[Jungman]

:p I like your advertisement on first page, it is funny! "How do you like your ship to sink?"

I see you made some very interesting changes to floatibility, and many others compared to your original.

It will be fun to see how it play in test game. I like alot of variety of sinking modes.:yep:

[WernerSobe]

DLing now. What about armor, BTW?

tater

nothing. The armor is just a factor on how big are the holes you make. It all remained.

[CaptainCox]

I think this one might have passed me unnoticed for some stupid reason. Read the thread from start till here. Looks really cool and great job there "WernerSobe" :up:

Gonna give this a my best after work!

[ReallyDedPoet]

d\l the new version, thanks for your efforts:up:


RDP

[tater]

Observations:

1. the smoke seems more intense. A lot more of it.

2. I see more of that bright cone of fire, which would be good, except it is a real FR killer make my machine very choppy (E6600, 2GB, 8800 GTS---not a slow machine)

3. The torpedo damage templates are HUGE now. If you didn't mod the torpedos, how is this happening? I'd prefer the smaller visual holes since with the great slower sinking effect, it kills the immersion when the hole is literally splitting the target in half.

tater

[ReallyDedPoet]

make my machine very choppy (E6600, 2GB, 8800 GTS---not a slow machine)



That is something ^ considering your specs.


RDP

[JayW.]

I have read your all comments and I understand your concerns about ships sinking too fast or staying afloat too long.
Two examples that indictates how dyamic each ship design is better nothing than the Titanic and Andrea Doria.

The Titanic sank with a deck flooded eevery 20 minutes early on before the keel broke theorically a hour before than we thought. At 1:20AM on April 15th, 1912, the keel broke and the flooding increased from every dack for every twenty minutes to every five minute for a deck within 45 minutes. when "B" deck hit the water which was a part of the superstracture, it went like this; "B" deck 2:05 to 2:10AM, "A" deck 2:10 to 2:12 AM, and the first half of the Boat deck 2:12 to 2:17. Now, look at the Andrea Doria which sank within a 23 hr period. It suffered from a 60 X 100 hole in her side. It depends on the design of the ship, what kind of equipment she uses, and the cargo.


JayW.

[WernerSobe]

Today i came across over a taskforce which exposed to be 2 passenger liners escorted by 3 destoyers. Ive attacked both liners with 3 torpedoes each. I dived away before i could see what i actualy hit but i counted 4 explosions. 3 in a row and 1 later. I think the first one was hit by 3 and the second one by one.

Anyway. After dodging the destroyers for a while i came up to perescope depth and looked around. One liner was sitting there suffering heavy flooding, no trace of the other seemed to have escaped (they traveled at 12 knots). I set up another 2 hits for the sitting liner and she sank.

I continued my patrol and two days later suddenly a single radar contact appeared. I closed up and i couldnt believe. It was the second liner. I knew it was the one that i hit two days before because it was badly list to port and there was a hole from a torpedoe hit. She was making only 3 knots. Looks like she has escaped at 12 knots until the flooding was so heavy that she slowed down and couldnt keep up with the task force. So i came across her days later hundrets of miles away from where i hit her.

Finished it with the deckgun below the waterline. Thats something you will never see in stock game.

[jimimadrid]

@ wernersobe

i have installed your mod and load a game where i follows several damaged ships for a lot of hours. Some of them hitted with 2 torpedos and liyng half under water. At the moment the loaded game starts, four ships go down. Very nice to see that they has been overflooded by water but not reached the hitpoints.
Now it makes more sense to follow the ships and see if they sunk or if they need a little help to go down.

Nice, i love it. Thanks

[WernerSobe]

Observations:

1. the smoke seems more intense. A lot more of it.

2. I see more of that bright cone of fire, which would be good, except it is a real FR killer make my machine very choppy (E6600, 2GB, 8800 GTS---not a slow machine)

3. The torpedo damage templates are HUGE now. If you didn't mod the torpedos, how is this happening? I'd prefer the smaller visual holes since with the great slower sinking effect, it kills the immersion when the hole is literally splitting the target in half.

tater

2 > Ive noticed that too but thats not coming from my mod i didnt changed the effects. In fact before i started modding ive made a clean fresh new install of the game to be sure not to steal someones content accidently. So actualy this heavy fire which causes bad framerate is coming from stock sh4 and only from burning oil (tankers and ships that are hit in their fuel bunker). You might have not seen that in stock sh4 because tankers catched on fire not that often. In my testmission there is one tanker that draws that flames and sometimes the fuel from other ships ignites too.

3 > Same here. The size of the holes is somehow calculated from the damage of the torpedoe and from armorpiercing agains the armor of the target. I didnt changed anything of that, so the holes are same size as in stock. Your huge holes might come from other mods that might have changed some of that values.

[tater]

i was using your test mission, and the only torpedo mod I run is hardcore, which is just the .sim file and ups the error rates.

BTW, I torpedoed a tanker, and the superstructure burned off. I mean there was nothing at all left above the hull after a while. DENSE, tall black smoke for a while first...

[WernerSobe]

hm i think the torpedo damage is in zon file not in sim. You also might just be used to smaller holes from playing other mods. I havent noticed them being larger then stock sh4

[Jungman]

I been doing alot testing in the Test mission.

I must tell you that if you break the back of a ship into two pieces, it will never sink. No matter how many torpedoes or gun shell you put into it.

This happens with the Oil Tanker, and the Akisuki Destroyer if you blow it into two seperate peices. They will never sink.

Anyone else see this? If they break into two pieces, the ship will never sink, no matter how much damage you do to it.:-?

[WernerSobe]

yes ive noticed that too.

It happenes to the tankers i think because of the oil cargo. Ive set it up to have more floatability then other kinds of cargo. Oil is floating on the water. Now when you destroy a ship by ripping it in two parts the oil in those parts remain inside making those parts floating around. And since the ship is already considered destroyed there is no chance to make holes in these parts.

Ill adress that in next version. Making the oil slightly heavier then water should solve the problem.

[haegemon]

Good job. I love it.....I miss however some bubbles and splashes around ships while sinking.

[Bando]

Hello WernerSobe,

I see you've changed the hitpoints in the ships .zon files. Did you do this by hexediting or do you have tweakfiles of the .zon files, I have not found them. I would like to try this mod and the appraoch you take to the problem, but I have to tweak things in manually. Can you please tell me how you did that, so I can reproduce your figures??

Reg

Bando

[WernerSobe]

i used hexeditor and floating point calculator.

[Bando]

ok, thanks

[WernerSobe]

LATEST VERSION IS OUT. 2.1 is now 1.3 compatible. check first page for the link.

[Bill Nichols]

Just wondering why 2.0 is over 4 Mbytes, and 2.1 is only 246K... :-?

[WernerSobe]

read the readme... :smug:

there were some ship grafic files added accidently that were not used. Ive removed them

[panthercules]

LATEST VERSION IS OUT. 2.1 is now 1.3 compatible. check first page for the link.

For those of us who haven't succumbed to the temptation of running a leaked patch, can you tell us if this latest version is also 1.2-compatible, or do we need to wait till the patch comes out to use this latest version?

[WernerSobe]

well it should be but i cant say for sure i didnt test it. There are only minor changings to files that already exist. The new files (i.e. colorado battleship) are not used in 1.2 anyway so i think it will work. But let me know if it doesnt

[WernerSobe]

now i have a question to you guys:


do you feel that the ships are to tough now with the lates version? Im seriously thinking of speeding up the flooding by a little and also increase the amount of water taken. What do you think?

[kv29]

werner, I had another ship in half that wouldn´t sink, and another one (broken in half too) that sinks rather oddly, torpedoed right in the middle, and both halves sank starting from bow on one, and from stern the other, exactly the opposite as should occur in real life.

and yes, is taking too much time to sink, I´ve seen ships almost completely underwater and yet they stay afloat. Would tweaking crash depth a little shallower help?

[WernerSobe]

yea im already working on new version.

Bug with broken ships is already fixed they are now the ones which sink the fastest. Also some performance bugs with burning oil and junk that comes out from ships fixed. Ships will sink a little faster now (ive found compartments that were not flooding, they do now). And ships will list and capsize more likely.

Give me two hours for final tweaking and testing.

[Bando]

counting............

:rotfl:

[Uber Gruber]

Tick...tick...tick...tick...tick....:eek:

[WernerSobe]

New Version: 2.2 released. Check first page.


changes:

Bug with ships not sinking that have been broken in two parts fixed. They sink the fastest now.
Performance bug with burning Oil fixed
Bug that caused heavy stuttering when using time compression in campaign beyond 1024x fixed. That happened because cargo crates and junk never sank, they do now.
Added more flooding to side compartments, Ships will more likely list and capsize.
Added flooding (there was none) to superstructures. Ships will sink faster when their decks get below the water line.
Reduced overall flooding time by 15%http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/4927/sh42007071015113270rq2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Bando]

2 hours.
The man delivers:up:

Thanks Werner:up:

Bando

[Uber Gruber]

He be good he be.:rock:

[WilhelmTell]

Outstanding ! :up:
I must say it's hard to decide which mod to use: Yours or the DieSlowly Stage 16 !
They are both great but you can't have both of them.
Take's a while to find out which suits better ....

Regards,
Tell

[Horst Mikaelis]

I sank my first ship after installing your mod and it went down slowly, but in a reasonable amount of time after several hits. My second target, a large, split composite which took one hit under the keel and other amidships, refused to sink. Within five minutes the entire stern was awash. I surfaced (it's December 1941 and the ship had no gun), killed the engine, and hit time compression. Two-and-a-half days passed and the ship was still afloat, with half its deck awash.

And that was the point that Japanese aircraft appeared and drove me down.

Horst

[kv29]

now we know what hit points do!

[WernerSobe]

I sank my first ship after installing your mod and it went down slowly, but in a reasonable amount of time after several hits. My second target, a large, split composite which took one hit under the keel and other amidships, refused to sink. Within five minutes the entire stern was awash. I surfaced (it's December 1941 and the ship had no gun), killed the engine, and hit time compression. Two-and-a-half days passed and the ship was still afloat, with half its deck awash.

And that was the point that Japanese aircraft appeared and drove me down.

Horst

what did you expect? Sinking a large ship with only two torpedoes both hiting its center compartments? Always keep in mind that hitting compartments that are already damaged will maybe speed up the flooding but not add more water in general. So basicly you must hit it on different spots to flood more different compartments. Evaluate which compartments are damaged and estimate their size. Most ships have large compartments under first and last mast (cargo rooms). While the keel, engine room and the fuel bunker are pretty small. When you are unlucky and they dont explode or break the ship they will take less water then cargo compartments.

So basicly if you are not sure how the ship is designed, dont save torpedoes. Give it enough. Take 3 or even better 4 torpedoes for a large ship and MAKE SURE they hit different spots. Set up different torpedoe spread angles.

Dont stay for two days waiting for a ship to sink. If it doesnt sink in one or two hours chances are bad that it will sink at all. You must add more damage to finish it off. Go for compartments that are keeping it afloat. In your case it was the stern. There is a large cargo compartment that was propably dry and saved it from sinking. You could also add 5-10 shells below the waterline with the deckgun on that undamaged compartment that should have done it...

[Horst Mikaelis]

I only stuck around as an experiment to see what would happen. And I understand what you're saying. I guess my question is: was the water covering the stern deck a "real" indication of what was happening to the ship, or was it just a graphics-thing? Could a ship with half its deck underwater continue to float for two days?

Thanks.

Horst

[WernerSobe]

I only stuck around as an experiment to see what would happen. And I understand what you're saying. I guess my question is: was the water covering the stern deck a "real" indication of what was happening to the ship, or was it just a graphics-thing? Could a ship with half its deck underwater continue to float for two days?

Thanks.

Horst

thats what the mod is about. You can sense the state of the ship by its general condition. Remeber there is no more hitpoint damage. When the ship is half under water it will propably sink but must not, if it doesnt it surely doesnt need much. There is just a little missing from making her sink.

And yes ships can keep going when being half in water. Even ships that have a bad list to one side and are basicly lying on it can in some cases stay afloat.

A sure indicater that a ship has taken enough is when its being abondened by the crew. They know the best when there is no hope. But if theyre still aboard then they is a chance to save the ship and they will fight agains flooding. Its up to you to decide then...

I recomend you to run the test mission that comes with that mod. There you can try differend kind of ships and get an idea about their sinking behavier and indicators.

[Horst Mikaelis]

Will do.

Thanks.

Horst

[supposedtobeworking]

1.3 compatible...any word?

[WernerSobe]

1.3 compatible...any word?

yes. see the first page its in huge red letters "for patch 1.3"

[CaptainCox]

Thanks for the update! Grabbing it as we speak.

[Bando]

Thanks WernerSobe:up:

[tater]

In the work on sinking did you learn a lot about what makes the ships break? I ask because a quick check on the taihosan maru might show a way to work around the CTD. Perhaps we can make the forward split simply impossible to break, then see if it CTDs, even with ammo there.

tater

[WernerSobe]

CTD? i didnt know there was one

[tater]

There is a CTD with the small composite merchant---in the stock game, but it also happens with your mod (I tested). It's a flaw in the model or dmage model i think.

Put AMMO as cargo on a small merchant, and it will CTD when it vblows up if it tries to break forward of the superstructure.

So if we could make it NEVER break there, it might prevent the CTD.

[CaptainCox]

Was just going to load up my last save (1,3) here....should I wait for a fix or?
Keep up the good work WernerSobe! :up:

[tater]

Cox, it is more likely with any mod that adds cargos to ships.

This mod doesn't change the chance beyond the stock game any, it's a problem with the stock game. It is entirely reproducible, however.

I need a "super torpedo" mod to test differently...

[CaptainCox]

Cheers tater! try the Torpedo Cheat maybe
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110505

[WernerSobe]

well i didnt know.

I dont think we can do anything there. It must be a bug with the ship model itself not with the damage system. And you cannot disable that they break when they are hit criticaly. Well one thing you can try... Set the critical chance for the keel in "NEW SMALL MERCHANTS" section to 0.0 and see what happens.

[tater]

I tried setting the one on top =No

I tried setting the chance =0.0

neither worked, still a CTD.

tater

[WernerSobe]

i supposed that. Well there is nothing we can do its a bug with the ship model.

[mgbmike]

i supposed that. Well there is nothing we can do its a bug with the ship model.
Werner,

Just a heads up:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=118352&page=2

Possible fix for the CTD

[WernerSobe]

ok thanks ill get it into next version if i get permission from author.

[nattydread]

I tried this mod today and found myself thoroughly impressed and over-joyed as I sunk a med sized 4k ton merchant.

2 fish hit, one dead center, the other just ahead of the bridge. The ship slowed a bit from the hits, then turned away and poured on the coals in an attempt to evade. I surfaced and put a few not so well place deck gun rounds in her. Shortly afterward two life boats appeared as the ship lost its head way and began to list noticibly. I used a few more better placed eck gun rounds to spread the love around and slowly watched her tak eon more and water. The sinking took about 30 to happen after the went dead in the water. A small fire on the stern might have helped her along. Anyay, once she started to reach the brink of no return, you could see here ability to float rapidly deminish in the last few minutes.

It finally made sining feel a bit more realistic...great job!

[iratecabbie]

Thankyou for taking the time and effort required ot mkae this mod, I have installed it to my 1.3 and will be testing it today and will post back my own feedback...:D

[Vampire18]

Awesome:up:

[BlackSpot]

I would also like to congratulate you on this mod! Thanks.
One question. I noticed when you hole the ship either on the stern or the bow, the ship sinks end up. Very nice. However, the last bit of the hull to sink below the depths "bobs" in the water. ie. The hull rises out of the water slightly then sinks a little further, then rises again etc. Not a critism in any way, but does this happen in real life? Is it due to an air pocket in the last bit of the hull? Cheers.

[WernerSobe]

yes it acts like a half filled bottle.

Once a ship suffers a torpedo hit the crew will seal the sheets to avoid the water being spread in entire ship. However when it has taken to much water the sheets will break sooner or later so more and more compartments will be filled. That looks like a kork.

[nomad_delta]

I was playing around w/ this briefly just before patch 1.3 came out. I've been running without it for the first patrol of my new campagin post-1.3 and I'm already missing it. The ships in stock just sink way too fast. I'll be loading the new version back up as soon as I get back to port.

Great work, Werner!

nomad_delta

[Rockin Robbins]

Werner, you've taken marketing a mod to a whole new level with your initial post there. That is the best-worded, most attractively laid-out announcement we've had here. It reaches the level of effective advertising! Since English is your second language, I have to give you a special award for capturing not just the texture and taste of the steak, but also its sizzle and aroma. I used your mod for 1.2 and almost PM'd you about use with 1.3, and you're ahead of us all. I really look forward to downloading and using your new mod. Great work!

[WernerSobe]

tnx guys. Glad to see that people like it :sunny:

[CaptainCox]

Ignore previous comment, DL works, my bad. Cheers for a great mod!

[peterloo]

Great job :up:

Download the mod in the process...

[cpt_idaho]

This is an absolutely awesome mod... IMHO it changes the whole experience into much more realistic and..well..just fun. I sank my first two merchants I encountered just after installing this mod and 1.3 patch with a deck gun, and it was totally great to see their crews leaving on the lifeboats, while the ships remained on the water sinking very slowly for a few hours afterwards...

And another nice touch: a medium - sized merchant I hit with a torpedo, destroying its engine (?).. so it just floated there with the crew onboard. Then I tried to destroy one of the escorts that kept circling around and was trying to find my - alas, I misfired, but both torpedoes hit the poor merchant. About 5-6 hours later, when the DD's finally left I had to finish it off with another torp. Really tough bastard, that one!

Once again WernerSobe, thanks for an awesome mod!

[Xelif]

This looks like an incredible mod, solving one of the biggest reality flaws I had with the game!

However, File Front is reporting an error right now when I try and download your file :rotfl:

I'll keep trying, it might just be a problem with the site.

(edit) It works, about a half hour later. Someone else mentioned a similar temporary problem earlier on the thread - must be file front

[WernerSobe]

hm check your firewall settings. Just tested download works.

[Grey_Raven75]

Just installed this and loaded up a mission to find out how well it works. I was surprised and annoyed because I mananged to blow two ships in half, but neither actually sank. Well, actually, one did, but it took 2 1/2 hours for it to go down. The waterline on the other never even went below the water. Now, I'm all for longer and more realistic sinking times, but this is a little crazy.

[CaptainKobuk]

feedback...

MOD istalled.


Shot a Mitsuki Destroyer 4 times straight into it's bow as it was chasing me. No effect that i could see with MK14 torpedoes. While in stock mode a couple bow hits exactly like that will usually at least slow it down or show some visible damage.

Shot a huge transport. 18,000 tomn ship. 4 hits to it's stern. Sank ass first then soon the crew abandoned ship. But the ship stayed afloat with the bow straight up. 1/4 of the ship out of the water.

Some of this is more realistic than stock, in terms of compartmentalization ratrher than "hitpoints". But the Destroyers should not be able to take 4 bow hits and show no sign of damage.

Give and take i guess. It's a waste of torpedoes anyways to shoot Destroyers in the bow straight on. When one good side shot sinks or cripples them good enough to outrun them or cause them to evade.

I'll keep the MOD intalled. ;)

[WernerSobe]

use spread angle.

4 torpedoes in one spot is a waste. Remember there is no more hitpoints damage. So hitting same compartment again and again wont speed up the sinking. You must hit different compartments to get more water in.

So basicly 2 torpedoes, one at bow one aft will cause more flooding then 6 torpedoes at same spot. So try to hit different parts of the ship. Use torpedoe spread angle.

Regarding destroyers. From my testings 19 of 20 sank by one hit. You must have been very unlucky or your torpedoes were flawed. Basicly the rule is when there is no visual damage then there is also no flooding. But that is something not touched by the mod. The torpedoes before 43 tend to explode to early. I mean not the prematures but the general problem with influence detonators. They seem to charge to early, only few yards. Thats enough to consume some hitpoints and kill a ship by that, but thats "sometimes" not enough to make a hole and provide flooding.

[kv29]

again....
the problem with half ships remain, and those that finally sink, do it the other way (both halves start sinking bow and stern, never by the broken part).

Also some ships remain floating with only a bit of their decks above waterline.... both things are not good.

what can we do to solve all this?

[Farinhir]

And another nice touch: a medium - sized merchant I hit with a torpedo, destroying its engine (?).. so it just floated there with the crew onboard. Then I tried to destroy one of the escorts that kept circling around and was trying to find my - alas, I misfired, but both torpedoes hit the poor merchant. About 5-6 hours later, when the DD's finally left I had to finish it off with another torp. Really tough bastard, that one!
I did something like this tonight. I spashed a torp into a large composite merch's prop and it was dead in the water. I took another shot when I got to a better angle to put a hole in the side. I only hurt 1 compartment I think because the ship was able to remain floating just fine for many more ingame hours. During that time I was playing hide and seek with the fubuki class destroyer that wanted me. I knew this because I could see it's searchlight on the surface of the water and hear the pinging off my hull. I am not sure if he knew where I was because I placed myself suicidally close to the crippled merch and about 150' below it while I waited for the destroyer to leave. Well, he decided to stop dead in the water with an nice little 180 bearing for me to work with. I rose to about 80' and shot a torp that way without a range check or anything (he was not moving so why worry about it). Well, the torp hit and he hit the gas and ran like a bat out of hell. I surfaced and finished the merch with a few deck gun shots then went after the destroyer. Instead of the destroyer I caught up to the rest of the convoy 1st and decided that I could take out the next big target and catch the destroyer later. Well, sometime while I was setting up for my attack (but after I had hit my target once) I see a nice message about an enemy boat being destroyed. I sat there eyeballing my target wondering if it was dead already. Nope. I see the nose of a destroyer bobbing in the water like a bottle in the distance.

Long story short, I love this mod.

By the way, I have hit the keel of one ship so far and it sunk as it should have. I will have to try for that more though and get back to you on it.

Later, and thanks for the great mod Werner.
~F~

[switch.dota]

I really like the idea of sinking ships by flooding, but splitting a ship in half and not being credited for destroying it is slightly annoying. I'm wondering if it would be best to actually try and balance HP sinking and flooding sinking - with a heavy emphasis on the latter. I mean it should be possible to sink a ship through sheer damage, no?

[Farinhir]

I really like the idea of sinking ships by flooding, but splitting a ship in half and not being credited for destroying it is slightly annoying. I'm wondering if it would be best to actually try and balance HP sinking and flooding sinking - with a heavy emphasis on the latter. I mean it should be possible to sink a ship through sheer damage, no?

When I was able to hit the keel I was credited for the kill. I think it is when a critical amount of the ship is underwater and the crew abandons it that you get credit. When you split a ship I think you get the credit immediately.

~F~

[Xelif]

I love this mod!

Been testing it out and have seen some fun things already - a large cargo ship took 2 torpedo hits and numerous deck gun hits, I got the unit destroyed message, but the cargo ship 'looked' alright. Crew abandoned ship and I waited around, curious. It took over 3 hours for the ship to settle into the water, a slow process that felt much more realistic than the instant-sink of normal SH4. I had evenly spaced the damage all along her water line and it was quite satisfying to watch the cargo ship simply slip beneath the waves while upright, without tipping to one side, breaking in half, having massive explosions, or other unrealistic interpretations of her damage. She just flooded from all damaged sides and compartments evenly :D This was, by the way, the LONGEST ship sink time I observed in my first patrol.

About firing at destroyers: I've done the same thing using the mod, and I watched the explosion on external camera - the torpedo exploded just before it contacted the hull and didn't seem to do any real hull damage. Just a huge splash with no sinking destroyer. I remember this was an actual problem with the contact/influence detonators during WWII, and, I think, the default game itself sometimes shows this behavior. The second torpedo hit and set the DD on fire, with a few deck gun shells holing the other compartments enough to sink.

Werner: It seems pretty easy to sink things with the deck gun - I just sprinkle shells all along the water line. Part of it is the high default rate of fire, but I'm still sinking ships using 1 torpedo and about 20 shells, or no torpedoes and about 40. Maybe look into reducing the flooding each deck gun hit can cause?

On my first patrol I've been impressed with the ship sinking times. Very rarely does a ship plummet to the bottom within 10 seconds of being 'killed'. Also, I've seen some remarkably damaged ships still struggling along, just as would happen in real life. Sometimes a large ship can take a lot of bow damage, have a lot of flooding, maybe even be shipping water over the bow, but she won't sink as she is still is displacing enough water from the non-damaged compartments and still has engine power, etc :) Very refreshing!

[WernerSobe]

I love this mod!
Werner: It seems pretty easy to sink things with the deck gun - I just sprinkle shells all along the water line. Part of it is the high default rate of fire, but I'm still sinking ships using 1 torpedo and about 20 shells, or no torpedoes and about 40. Maybe look into reducing the flooding each deck gun hit can cause?


Yes this is due to unrealistic deckgun.

It fires way to fast and way to accurate. The real deckgun on Us subs were only firing a round every 20-30 seconds. And it was not gyro stabilized so placing a hit below the water line was a gamble. If you take this aspects into account, and say you can sink a ship with 40 shells. Lets say you miss 10 so you need 50 rounds. 50 rounds 30 seconds each is about 25 minutes.

Thats beeing better but still far from real things. Making the holes from deckguns smaller would cause less flooding and you would need more shells of course. But i didnt wanted to change anything to the deckgun files because so many use their own deckgun mod of their liking and i didnt want to have compability problems.

I highly recomend however using realism deckgun mods with that mod.

[CaptainKobuk]

Had to remove this MOD. Not a problem. Had fun testing it just like any other excellent MOD idea.

The way i attack any convoy is i first ambush a Destroyer to get some room to fire. Then i let the cargo ships move into my position and mix my noise with the ships and use the ships as shields against Destroyers. Giving great shots at those Destroyers as they swing around to try to drop a can on me.

...what happens when it can take up to 10 torpedoes to sink a Destroyer? Well i found out with this MOD. I took such a huge chunk out of that Destroyer it looked like huge round bite taken out of a sandwiche. Yet that Destroyer had some air pockets so it kept on at 7 knots. Impossible in real life. Because more than just air keeps a ship operational. There's everything electrical and mechanical and no ship can return to port with a 40% hull width deep sized chuck taken out of it amidships.

I think we need to consider a hybrid MOD. "Air pockets" + "physical destruction." The two main factors that destroy a ship are how close to sinking it is from flooding and exactly how much destruction of it's components has occured. If we have to use "hitpoints" to simulate destruction then so be it.

I appreciate the enthusiasm that went into this MOD and look forward to what's next from WernerSobe (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=226710)

[kv29]

Hit points must come back.... but how?

[WernerSobe]

The destroyers are not ment to take so many torpedoes. If that happens then its a bug.

There seems to be something wrong with them. Maybe its just a special one that passed my testings. The destroyers were balanced to sink from one torpedoe. Im trying to find out which one it is and why that happens.

[WernerSobe]

i can confirm there is a bug with destroyers.

Fubuki and Shiratsuyu destroyers are broken. Its not a bug with damage system but with their compartments. They take no flooding. Also all destroyers take not enough flooding in their first front compartment. Making them hard to sink from the front. Im working on both problems.

[Jace11]

I concur, I am using this MOD but the version before hitpoints were taken out completly... I love the slow sinking, but hitpoints are a vital component too for the reasons stated above...

[nomad_delta]

Are hitpoints only used to determine whether the ship is "destroyed" or not, or are hitpoints also used to determine whether the various components (like props, engines, guns, etc) on the ship are destroyed?

If it's still possible to "disable" a ship by taking out critical components (props/engines/etc) without destroying or sinking it, then it seems to me that hitpoints shouldn't be necessary, as long as the ships still sink via flooding w/ a reasonable number of torpedoes.

nomad_delta

[Rockin Robbins]

i can confirm there is a bug with destroyers.

Fubuki and Shiratsuyu destroyers are broken. Its not a bug with damage system but with their compartments. They take no flooding. Also all destroyers take not enough flooding in their first front compartment. Making them hard to sink from the front. Im working on both problems.
Here's why Realistic Sinking Physics is a great mod. Werner listens to someone who probably knows nothing about how his wonderful mod is made, criticising his baby. Werner agrees immediately and starts fixing it! He could get defensive and start a flame war, but highly opinionated as Werner is, he is brutally honest even with himself. Thanks for spending your time here in the English forum, Werner. I can't wait to see the solution. In the meantime, shooting merchants is a blast!

I never thought of the ambush destroyers tactic. I'll have to try that after the fix.

[WernerSobe]

Are hitpoints only used to determine whether the ship is "destroyed" or not, or are hitpoints also used to determine whether the various components (like props, engines, guns, etc) on the ship are destroyed?

If it's still possible to "disable" a ship by taking out critical components (props/engines/etc) without destroying or sinking it, then it seems to me that hitpoints shouldn't be necessary, as long as the ships still sink via flooding w/ a reasonable number of torpedoes.

nomad_delta

Actualy there are two different hitpoints system. The one describing the overall hull damage. Imagine it like a simple hitpoints bar in a first person shooter. A ship is considered destroyed when it runs out of overall hitpoints. These are the hitpoints that i have disabled.

Then there is another kind of hitpoints. Every compartment has its own hitpoints and armor levels. Compartments can be destroyed. Compartments that are destroyed will flood up and make other compartments nearby start flooding. Campartments that are damaged (but not destroyed) will flood to a ceartain amount but not more. There is also a crush depth. If a compartment comes below a certain depth it is destroyed. So a well balanced ship is flooding and sinks slowly deeper and deeper until more compartments are geting crushed and cause even faster sinking...

Destroyed compartments (even those that are still flooding) also reduce the displacement. When enough compartments are destroyed and the displacement drops below the mass, ship is considered destroyed (because it will sink for sure) and you get an instant kill.

So far my findings.

Now the reason why some destroyers are not sinking as they should is that they use compartments settings from battleships section. It was modeled by UBI i dont know why they did that. Of course they dont sink.

However im working on a fix and ive already got the fubuki sink properly. Shiratuyu is better now but still a little to strong. Ill fix her too. Also the first compartment of all destroyers takes more water now so they will sink from bow hits too.

[Bando]

Sounds good to me WernerSobe, awaiting the next one.:up:

[CaptainKobuk]

i can confirm there is a bug with destroyers.

Fubuki and Shiratsuyu destroyers are broken. Its not a bug with damage system but with their compartments. They take no flooding. Also all destroyers take not enough flooding in their first front compartment. Making them hard to sink from the front. Im working on both problems.
Here's why Realistic Sinking Physics is a great mod. Werner listens to someone who probably knows nothing about how his wonderful mod is made, criticising his baby. Werner agrees immediately and starts fixing it!
Relax captain robbins. :|\\

Stock 1.3 PATCHED SH4 still has much too fast sinking times on average.

Yet this MOD still needs more time to perfect in it's 'work-test-work-test' cycle. Let me restate another comment i made...

" I appreciate the enthusiasm that went into this MOD and look forward to what's next from WernerSobe (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/member.php?u=226710)"

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

About the ambush destroyer tactic i mentioned. It's risky business because now ship shoot alot at our periscope. I've been loosing some main periscopes and reverting to the observation scope as a backup. I'm still working on strategy and really it's the most fun of the game, after sinking ships of course. Always the same undeminished thrill for some reason. Guess i'm like a kid that way...

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I understand the basics now about the game's damage system as tought to us by WernerSobe. I was thinking, if it was possible to create some more associative damage in neighboring compartments when a torpedo hits and it's after effects like flooding, then we could minimize some of the problem of compartmentalization. I'm sure he's already implimenting some of this.

The goal i think is to use whatever game engine and code we can to simulate what really happened in WWII when torpedoes hit ships. Clearly there's two obvious extremes to avoid. Too fast sinking and too slow. By slow i mean "partial invulnerability bugs".

Some ships did in fact float around essentially "destroyed" but still on the surface for hours or perhaps even days in calm seas. I like this MODS correct simulation of "abandoning ship". When it's over for the life of that ship the tonnage score is made then and there.

By the way, i noticed that when i destroyed one of the two Fubuki Destroyer propellors it had no effect on it's speed which at the time was 7. Just mentioned that, in case it can be modded to reduce speed if a a single prop goes out.

I will be installing and testing this MODS next version.

[WernerSobe]

well the drama exposed to be a bigger problem.

For some reason the fubuki and shiratsuyu destroyers both use a compartment layout of a battleship. Its programmed like that there is no way around. I guess its a bug. I can return hitpoints for just these ships it seems to be the only way, making them sink by hitpoints. But at least they sink at all.

Another problem i came across are the weak capital warships. No matter how strong i try to make them, they capsize and sink a little bit to fast in my opinion. I cannot say how weak real carriers and battleships are agains capsizing. But they shouldnt do that every time. This is something i cannot change this is due to their compartment layout.

[CaptainKobuk]

I concur that the BB's should not roll so much. Having used your MOD out of Manilla twice now sinking the Fusi and Kongo BB's over near west Borneo i know exactly what is going on. They each rolled twice. However the 2 Heavy Cruizers i killed in each career both went down normally.

It appears as though the BB's are correctly modelled as being extremely top heavy. When the flooding occurs in the hull compartments, the heavy top ALWAYS rolls to one side of the other. I don't know. Maybe by adjusting the BB's various stats a solution could be had.

It's all a simulation. Whatever looks the best is what to go with. Whatever mimics WWII naval warfare the closest is the goal.

The other variable in the equation is the torpedoes. Perhaps adjusting them could help achieve a closer reality. I've some experience MODDING those in the Torpedoes_US.zon file. Blast radius and explosive power are two sepertate variables that can be set there.

Repeated in game testing by tipping the ballances between the variables could eventually achieve the decent simulation we're all looking for. Others here know a lot about WWII sub warfare and have seen a lot of video documentaries. As well as studied the science of it all. I think we should seek their input and see where to take this to.

One thing to keep in mind is how devastating a big hole in a ship's hull really is. I know something of sailing boats and though not near to the way a steel hulled ship, it's clear a torpedo hit that successfully explodes as intended will always cause a major hull breach.

The funniest thing about this game is the way torpedoes hit squarely and often cause no visible damage. Maybe in SH5 that will be corrected. Until then we can just be happy the series has come this far. Way beyond the early days in the mid 90's when 4mb of ram was a lot to have

Aces of the Deep was pretty basic.

[tater]

^^^ interesting observation about the CG. There is a thread about the scale of the ships (looks fine) that suggests that they may be riding too high in the water, wonder if this has something to do with what you suggest?

tater

[supposedtobeworking]

The funniest thing about this game is the way torpedoes hit squarely and often cause no visible damage. Maybe in SH5 that will be corrected.
hmmm I was hoping this was a bug which was fixed .. apparently not? that sucks. Any tips on keeping that from happening?

[switch.dota]

Yes, don't use Mk14s until after '43. The magnetic early explosions just before the hull are the culprit.

[WernerSobe]

The visible damage seems to be defined by the armor level.

twice the armor level for a ship and the holes appear only half that big. remove the armor level and the holes appear huge.

It seems to be just an eye candy. During my testing i gave 20000 armor level to a freighter. No vissual damage accured but it sank as usual.

Regarding warships: In current versions you can sink a battleship with 2 torpedoes in about 5 minutes. Same with heavy cruisers. Maybe that could happen to real battleship but that should not be the rule. Battleships are designed to wistand torpedoes so they shouldnt sink faster then middlesize cargoships.

The good news are, i have found the variables that made them weak and i am working on an entire rewamp for all warships. The bad news it will require a lot of testing and can take a while. The new version will also adress the issues with the destroyers.

[tater]

Wow, that might be useful to mess with the holes that show in subs... hmmm

[WernerSobe]

New Version is out. 2.6 [warship fix]

changes:


returned hitpoints to fubuki and shiratsuyu destroyers due to bugged compartment layout. This is the only way to make them sink without screwing the battleship layout.
Increased flooding of the first bow compartment for all destroyers. All destroyers will be weaker agains attacks from the front.
Balanced compartment strengh and flooding for all capital warships. Battleships and cruisers will appear tougher now
Added ArmorLevels to all warship compartments. The holes from torpedoe hits will appear smaller on warships.
Reduced total destruction chance on Ammo Bunkers
Increased flooding for engine rooms and fuel bunkers (warships only)i couldnt test everything but most of it.

again if you happen to see odd things feel free to post it here and ill see what i can do. enjoy

[Rockin Robbins]

Thank you! This gets downloaded as soon as I get home from work. I'm at 300' under 3 destroyers. I'll bet at least one of them has a date with a torpedo tonight. Hehehehe. I can hardly wait.

[CaptainCox]

@WerenerSobe...have to be in port as usual when installing this?...asking cause i just started a new career:88)

[WernerSobe]

@WerenerSobe...have to be in port as usual when installing this?...asking cause i just started a new career:88)

cant say for sure. Theoreticaly it should work with savegames during patrols. But its very hard to find out wether the settings have applied. Well if you see destroyers still being able to wistand two hits then it hasnt applied :rotfl: let me know.

[CaptainKobuk]

great :|\\

testing now

[Rockin Robbins]

I was pinned under 3 destroyers at 300' but decided that based on experience with U-Boats I could play with the destroyers no matter what changes were likely in 1.3. Came to periscope depth putting the 2 closest destroyers at bearing 180, distance about 2500 yards. Running 1000 RPM, not rigged for silent running. Set up 4 stern torpedoes to run 8' fast, based on ID as Shuiratsuyu class. Preset bearing 180º, raised attack scope. Locked target. Bearing 180. Speed est. 18 knots. AOB 0.

Sent range and bearing to TDC and checked out the solution. Everything good, so I left the scope up to draw him while watching the range patiently. Both destroyers were now heading toward, side-by-side almost. No time to set up the other one, we'll fire a spread and maybe get lucky. Open tubes 7 through 10.

1600......1300.....wait for it...1100.....900. Fire 7. Spread -1.5º. Fire 8. Spread +1.5º. Fire 9. Spread zero. Fire 10. We will now pause for a message from our commercial sponsors.

First torpedo passed perfectly under the bow, almost scraping the keel, but no explosion and it continued on. What the.......BOOM!!!!!! Torpedo 8 had also passed under and detonated magnetically. This has gotta sink her........or........not. She chugged toward me. Torps 9 and 10 either passed under and didn't detonate or missed by a hair. The event camera showed one sliding off the keel. That hurts to watch. I firewalled the throttle and took her deep.

22 depth charges later idling at my usual 1000 rpm I reversed course to approach the destroyer. Sonar said I had 2 stopped destroyers. Took a look with the free camera and they were stopped nose to tail, the damaged one in front. I took the camera under and dead center fore and aft perfectly centered was a huge hole. Isn't that supposed to split the ship in 2 and make a big beautiful explosion?

Defect in Realistic Sinking Physics confirmed then. As I approached to finish off the crip, the following destroyer fired up her engines and started a search pattern, a circle of about 1600 yards diameter with one end over me. I was about 600 yards from the crippled Shuiratsuyu I figured. With engines stopped I ascended to periscope depth. The I waited for the other destroyer to get maximum distance before unleashing 2 bow shots, aimed 1/3 and 2/3 from the bow of the damaged destroyer. Boom! Boom! The destroyer sits there just as high in the water as if she hadn't ingested a single torpedo. She's not moving but apparently not sinking either. In RL the first one would have exploded her into a million pieces.

Dive! Take her to 300'. Destroyer's pinging now so full ahead emergency. Cut to 1000 rpm at 300'. (Thermal layer at ~260). Time to file a report for WernerSobe, switch mods and go for another round on another post.

I've never purposely tangled with destroyers before. Man that was fun! Somehow I don't think it was fun in RL.

[Anvart]

Good job, Werner!!!
Goodluck.

[WernerSobe]

@robins.

I get it right you have updated the mod on patrol? It could be possible that the changes has not applied. Shiratsuyu and Fubuki destroyers were bugged and unsinkable.

In 2.6 all destroyers should sink from 1 torpedoe hit. Sometimes two but that shouldnt happen often.

[leovampire]

Have you checked to see if there is a difference in sinkability of DD's between the crew ranks? Another words if the crew is set to elite maybe the DD's hull is also elite now and Veteran and so forth. It is just a thought I had seeing the Dev's changed so much in those SIM files maybe something got screwed up between the Crew settings VS how hard the ship is to sink!

Somthing to look into!

[WernerSobe]

no its a bug with their compartment layout. fubuki and shiratsuyu are both using the compartment layout of ise battleship. That makes them impossible to sink by flooding because their weight is of course far less then the weight of a battleship.

However ive returned the hitpoints to that two ships in latest version so they sink by hitpoints. One or two hits should do.

[leovampire]

I have been experimenting with making a whole new set of zone's just for the dd's to work with, if I manage to do it! I will give you and Redwine all the data for your MOD's.

It will mean all DD's will have totaly seperate zone's settings from all the other ships in the game.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes Werner, after confirming the old version errors and posting the result, I exited the game and loaded v2.6. So I am on a patrol. Interestingly, I got a very dramatic explosion, but as you said might happen, the destroyer continued on after the explosion, apparently at unhampered speed. I guess I'll just have to wait until I use up all my torpedoes on merchants where I can see your fantastic mod strut its stuff and see the destroyers destroyed on my next cruise. That's OK. This is the most fun I've had with SH4. I never danced with destroyers on purpose before this.

Leovampire, it sounds like you're onto something. Go for it! This game just gets better and better because of you guys. Keep up the good work. We all appreciate it out here.

[SingeDebile]

thank you so much for this, this is exactly what i was thinking of when i made a post some time ago complaining about unrealistic sinking times....

keep up the good work!

as soon as i get home i will be downloading this for my game

[chopped50ford]

can you lay this on top of the Tmaru 1.3a mod?

Cant wait to try it.

[WernerSobe]

can you lay this on top of the Tmaru 1.3a mod?

Cant wait to try it.

yes as long you install it over TM.

the only file that will be overwritten is zones.cfg. This is an essential file for this mod but not that important for triger maru.

[kv29]

Though I really like this mod, I still feel we need some ships to sink a little faster. I read a couple of stories somewhere in Submarine! from E. Beach about some ships going down incredibly fast. I presume we can´t have it both ways (slow & fast)?

[WernerSobe]

well ive seen ships sinking in seconds with this mod. And then ive seen ships taking hours. So yes sinking times vary alot. It depends where you hit them.

[nimitstexan]

With the exception of those that blow up iin a fireball (magazine hit aI presume), I have not seen anything sink in under 20 minutes. I have also seen several merchants float indefinately with decks awash. In one case, a 2/3 of a 10000 ton tanker were submerged, and it had a 15-20 degree list, but it still remained afloat for hours. Granted, emtpy tankers could be the hardest to sink, but any ship with most of its superstructure underwater is going to go down. If the watertight compartments do not burst under the extra pressure, the water is simply going to go over or around them and start flooing other parts of the ship. And in the case of most merachants of the period, the compartmentalization was not that great. According to the first hand accounts of guys like Beach or O'Kane freighters did go down in a few minutes or even a few seconds, not from exploding cargo or magazines, but simply from flooding.

I would submit that the speed of the flooding needs to be increased (if that is possible), and some more work down to ensure that ships do no remain afloat indefiantely with the deck or superstructure awash because one compartment is unflooded.

[panthercules]

Really looking forward to trying this out, now that I've decided to actually play some 1.3 rather than keep waiting for Beery to update RFB :)

Just one question (tried to find this in all these pages but couldn't - may be 'cause it's late and I could have looked right past it) - does the latest version of this mod include the fix to eliminate the CTDs caused by the "NKSCS_Taihosan.zon", or do we need to install the fix for that on top of this mod?

[chopped50ford]

WernerSobe

First...awesome MOd. Thanks.

I just had a chance to use your mod and I have to agree, you have to place your torps in strategic places to get a good/fast sinking. You have to think and place your shots...making manual targeting more detailed. :D

I came up on a convoy and I put (2) torps into 4 different cargo ships (2 large, 2 med split cargos) and neither of them went under. They kept moving with 4-6 knots each and listed and leaned forward but that is it.

I will also add that my torps hit in the same spots relative so from reading the whole post...I know why they never ate the sand below.

One Med split cargo that floated with 1/4 of her stern awash; (2) torps up the rear (from same convoy)...or rather same place; I later came up, hit her in the bow and she sank like a rock w/ an quick explosion thereafter.

A question on the deck gun, I was being chased by a destoyer, I nailed her hull probably about 10 times or more and saw no effect...should there have been or is the armor that thick that it had little to NO effect at all, no holes were made.

Also, in places where (2) torps hit the cargo ships in the same spots...no holes appeared, even on the one that sat 1/4 underwater...the screws kept turning as well while she got 2 knots and kept underway. Is this normal?

also, is the download on the first page of this thread the most current?

Thanks again.

[WernerSobe]

when there is no visual damage then the torpedoe did not penetrate the armor. You have just been unlucky because armor penetration seem to be random from none to a certain value.

Destroyers will also sink from being attacked by the deckgun. But that will take a while, they will rather kill you first with their deckguns.

[Redwine]

when there is no visual damage then the torpedoe did not penetrate the armor. You have just been unlucky because armor penetration seem to be random from none to a certain value.
At bottom of the Zones.cfg file... you have Penetration Threshold, it is the amount of the explosion bubble radius wich must to penetrate inside the ship's hull to cause damage.

;************************************************* ******
[Global Params]
Penetration Threshold=0.2
Armor Level Factor=4
;************************************************* ******

In example, default is 0.2, if you have adjusted a radius of 5m into a torps, it must to explode nearest than 4m to penetrate the hull and make the hole.

If you adjust 0.5 intead 0.2, then a 5m radois torp must to explode nearest than 2.5m to penetrate the hull...

I am using 0.4, almost right now... it solved the dying/sinking DDs bug when ramming my scope.

This value has a lot of influence over the amount of torps needed and the quantity and size of the holes.

Hope this can help... :up::up::up:

[adseal]

Hello!

First at all: Great Mod WernerSobe!!! One of my favourites...

Have question: today Ducimus relesed his TMaru ver.1.4. Could You give us any info (check the Zones.cfg) that Your mod is still compatibile with existing NSM version 2.6?

Thans in advance

Regards!
Ad

[chopped50ford]

when there is no visual damage then the torpedoe did not penetrate the armor. You have just been unlucky because armor penetration seem to be random from none to a certain value.

Destroyers will also sink from being attacked by the deckgun. But that will take a while, they will rather kill you first with their deckguns.

@WernerSobe

I see what your saying, but the ships that did not show any visible damage at all, and were listing considerably...some at most 25 - 30 degrees fwd or aft from centerline...including the one I hit in the rear w/ 1/4 of the stern awash. Nothing was visible. When I sit idle, I like to go underwater w/ the camera to see the damage, and none had appeared.

Any other thoghts to this?

What program are people using to look at the zone.cfg files and such for minor tweaking?

Thanks again for a great mod, I cant wait to get back on the boat to fight again. :)

[Canonicus]

"What program are people using to look at the zone.cfg files and such for minor tweaking?"


It can be opened using Windows Notepad.

Cheers!

[WernerSobe]

when there is no visual damage then the torpedoe did not penetrate the armor. You have just been unlucky because armor penetration seem to be random from none to a certain value.

Destroyers will also sink from being attacked by the deckgun. But that will take a while, they will rather kill you first with their deckguns.

@WernerSobe

I see what your saying, but the ships that did not show any visible damage at all, and were listing considerably...some at most 25 - 30 degrees fwd or aft from centerline...including the one I hit in the rear w/ 1/4 of the stern awash. Nothing was visible. When I sit idle, I like to go underwater w/ the camera to see the damage, and none had appeared.

Any other thoghts to this?

What program are people using to look at the zone.cfg files and such for minor tweaking?

Thanks again for a great mod, I cant wait to get back on the boat to fight again. :)


That comes with stock sh4. I havent changed hull armor or armor pearcing of the torpedoes.

[Fearless]

I have no problems with visual damage models. But then I have maxed out the visual damage in the options settings.

[nimitstexan]

I have the same thing (holes not showing up) with damage levels on max. I believe the "bug" is there whether you use the mod or not.

Just some more thoughts for WernerSobe (similar to what I posted in the RFB thread), and mostly in reference to the merchant ships (the big warships seem to about right. . .) :

I certainly like the idea of flooding being the primary means of sinking a ship; that is exacrly how it should be. However, I think GWX hit it on the head when they designed it so at least some of the smaller ships could still subcumb to hitpoint damage if hit with enough torpedoes. In the real war, single torpedo hits often crippled a cruiser or light carrier, and a torpedo could blow the bow or stern off of a destroyer or break a small merchant in half. While there are always exceptions, a DD or small merchant would be fortunate to stay afloat after a single torpedo, and two torpedoes generally than not doomed anything smaller than a cruiser or large troopship or tanker. From my limited reading (and based on the more careful research of other's posted in this forum and elsewhere), most smaller and medium sized ships seemed to go down very quickly, often under 10 minutes, and certainly under 20 minutes. Again, there were exceptions, but cargo ships had poor structural integrity and minimal damage control ability. With the mod, I have been seeing ships under 5000 tons hit with 2-3 torpedo consistently take 20-40 minutes to sink (if they sink at all) and have yet to see a ship (sans the ammunition ships that explode) sink in under 10 minutes, which is indicating that ships are staying afloat too long.

And while it is good warship crews are staying with their ship, historically merchant crews would often abandon a heavily damaged or mortally wounded ship quickly rather than try and save the ship up until the last minute. They did not have the necessary training or manpower to fight and repair severe damage and quite frankly, whether for good reasons or not, many civilian crews panicked when faced with submarine attack, nor were their ships built strongly enough to withstand a torpedo attack. Cargo ships were built to maximize hold space, and the compartmentalization necessary to survive a torpedo hit or two costs both space and money any peacetime (and even most wartime) civilian ship operators found extravegand. If nothing else, the shock from an exploding torpedo could shake open enough seams to cause serious or even mortal flooding quite apart from the direct damage from the torpedo impact (more than one light cruiser, light carrier, or destroyer suffered severe flooding, and in a few cases sank outright, solely from the effects of near misses by bombs or torpedoes exploding nearby, without ever taking a direct hit, and those were much more strongly designed than the average merchantman). Even on a major warship with a crew well trained in damage control (something of rarity in the IJN) by the time the decks or superstructure is awash, the crew is going to be abonding ship; certainly the crew of any cargo or tanker vessel is going to be long gone by the time water starts lapping at its bridge.

I guess I would first suggest that the hitpoints be reevaluated down from 20000 point standard (maybe suggesting GWX as a starting point if nothing else comes to mind) so that there is at least the chance sinking ships through a loss of structural integrity with enough hits or of literally blowing apart some of the smaller ships apart from hits to magazines or ammo stores. Secondly I would recommend tweaking the other parameters as necessary so that ships sink a little faster (I would honestly suggest, if possible, halving the times listed in the readme to about 5-10 minutes for the small merchants, 15-20 minutes for the mediums, and something less than the several hours it takes for the big ones), and crews are almost always willing to abandon ship when the decks are awash if not sooner.

Do not misunderstand me. I believe NSM is better than the default "sink or 30 seconds or not at all." But is I understand it your goal is to make tihngs more historical, and these are my humble suggestions towards that end.

[tater]

Redwine, that observation is very interesting regarding the penetration.

tater

[WernerSobe]

I guess I would first suggest that the hitpoints be reevaluated down from 20000 point standard (maybe suggesting GWX as a starting point if nothing else comes to mind) so that there is at least the chance sinking ships through a loss of structural integrity with enough hits or of literally blowing apart some of the smaller ships apart from hits to magazines or ammo stores. Secondly I would recommend tweaking the other parameters as necessary so that ships sink a little faster (I would honestly suggest, if possible, halving the times listed in the readme to about 5-10 minutes for the small merchants, 15-20 minutes for the mediums, and something less than the several hours it takes for the big ones), and crews are almost always willing to abandon ship when the decks are awash if not sooner.

Do not misunderstand me. I believe NSM is better than the default "sink or 30 seconds or not at all." But is I understand it your goal is to make tihngs more historical, and these are my humble suggestions towards that end.

thank you for sharing your point of view.

Let me clarify something. Flooding is the primary mean of sinking but its not the only one. Fuel and Ammo can explode and cause overhelming flooding or even break the ship in two parts and sink it in a matter of seconds. Some ships will take hours but thats not the rule and you can always speed it up by giving it more.

"Sinking for hours" is something you will rarely see. In example when you hit something big with only one torpedoe. You can wait for hours and it might sink. Or you can just give it another torpedoe and kill it instantly. You can speed up the process at any time.

Ive recomended using 3-4 torpedoes for a big ship. That doesnt mean it is the minimum. They can also be sank by only one if you hit them right. Ive said it can take hours to sink them, yes but thats not the rule. Even big ships can be taken down in few minutes it depends how you hit them. Small ships in example will in 90% of cases sink from one torpedoe. And they will never take more then two. So i dont think it is necessary to return their hitpoints.

Ships that are killed by hitpoints sink in a very unrealistic way. Like a stone. Because when they lose all their hitpoints all their compartments are instantly destroyed.

[nimitstexan]

I guess I would first suggest that the hitpoints be reevaluated down from 20000 point standard (maybe suggesting GWX as a starting point if nothing else comes to mind) so that there is at least the chance sinking ships through a loss of structural integrity with enough hits or of literally blowing apart some of the smaller ships apart from hits to magazines or ammo stores. Secondly I would recommend tweaking the other parameters as necessary so that ships sink a little faster (I would honestly suggest, if possible, halving the times listed in the readme to about 5-10 minutes for the small merchants, 15-20 minutes for the mediums, and something less than the several hours it takes for the big ones), and crews are almost always willing to abandon ship when the decks are awash if not sooner.

Do not misunderstand me. I believe NSM is better than the default "sink or 30 seconds or not at all." But is I understand it your goal is to make tihngs more historical, and these are my humble suggestions towards that end.

thank you for sharing your point of view.

Let me clarify something. Flooding is the primary mean of sinking but its not the only one. Fuel and Ammo can explode and cause overhelming flooding or even break the ship in two parts and sink it in a matter of seconds. Some ships will take hours but thats not the rule and you can always speed it up by giving it more.

"Sinking for hours" is something you will rarely see. In example when you hit something big with only one torpedoe. You can wait for hours and it might sink. Or you can just give it another torpedoe and kill it instantly. You can speed up the process at any time.

Ive recomended using 3-4 torpedoes for a big ship. That doesnt mean it is the minimum. They can also be sank by only one if you hit them right. Ive said it can take hours to sink them, yes but thats not the rule. Even big ships can be taken down in few minutes it depends how you hit them. Small ships in example will in 90% of cases sink from one torpedoe. And they will never take more then two. So i dont think it is necessary to return their hitpoints.

Ships that are killed by hitpoints sink in a very unrealistic way. Like a stone. Because when they lose all their hitpoints all their compartments are instantly destroyed.

I guess what I am saying is (a) in my experiance so far medium sized (3000-5000 ton range) merchants are always taking 2-3 torpedos, and even then not always sinking [if that is abnormal, then I guess it will even out], (b) the hit point/structural failure type sinking, while it should not be the prevelent method, should be possible (even without an ammo/fuel explosion), and (c) I have yet to see any ship break in half or sink on a more or less even keel. From first hand accounts of guys like Beach and O'Kane ships, especially some of the smaller or older ones, would take a torpedo or two and break in half, capsize, or otherwise sink in a couple of minutes or less. Or in other words, in the case of the some ships, particularly merchant ships, the hit points should be set up in such a way to simulate the chance that a single torpedo could either flood compartments it did not hit directly through shock damage opening up seams or (on small and some medium-sized ships) break a ship in half.

Either way, its your mod; those are just my thoughts.

[WernerSobe]

well i will consider releasing a "light version" together with next release. So you can chose between more and less realistic.

[Anvart]

I tested Natural Sinking Mechanics 2.6 test mission.
I have seen too static ship sinking, not adjusting critical flooding and unsinkable medium transport ...
Good and right job, but not finished ...

[WernerSobe]

I tested Natural Sinking Mechanics 2.6 test mission.
I have seen too static ship sinking, not adjusting critical flooding and unsinkable medium transport ...
Good and right job, but not finished ...


yes its not finished i use that thread for feedback and apply the changes.

unsinkable? all ships should sink give it more time or more torpedoes ^^

regarding critical floatatation. I couldnt find out what its good for. During my testings ive set it to 500.0 and ships didnt flood at all. Ranges between -10 and 10 did not changed anything so i decided to set it to zero. There seem to be no effect between 0 and 0.3 (default)

[Anvart]

I tested Natural Sinking Mechanics 2.6 test mission.
I have seen too static ship sinking, not adjusting critical flooding and unsinkable medium transport ...
Good and right job, but not finished ...


yes its not finished i use that thread for feedback and apply the changes.

unsinkable? all ships should sink give it more time or more torpedoes ^^

regarding critical floatatation. I couldnt find out what its good for. During my testings ive set it to 500.0 and ships didnt flood at all. Ranges between -10 and 10 did not changed anything so i decided to set it to zero. There seem to be no effect between 0 and 0.3 (default)
Medium transport (at first) bearing ~ 0° two hits in center, after two hours not sink, addition two hits in center after 1 hour no any changes...

[PepsiCan]

Anvart: does that mean you delivered 4 torpedoes at roughly the same spot? If so, then all you did was make the hole that was already there a little bigger, but you didn't cause additional cargo spaces to flood. So, buoyancy remains intact.

[nimitstexan]

Anvart: does that mean you delivered 4 torpedoes at roughly the same spot? If so, then all you did was make the hole that was already there a little bigger, but you didn't cause additional cargo spaces to flood. So, buoyancy remains intact.

The problem is, in real life repeated hit near the same spot would start to cause damage to the structure of the ship, shaking things loose that were already wakened and generally making take on water faster. And if a torpedo actually managed to go through a hole previously and explode inside a ship, it would be devestating. While it might be preferable in the inital slavo to spread the torpedos out, multiple torpedos hitting near each other are going to effect a ship beyond the one or two compartments they hit, and in the case of smaller ships, could cause it to sink outright. NSM does unfortunately eliminate (or at least severely reduce) that possibility.

[phloon]

Anvart: does that mean you delivered 4 torpedoes at roughly the same spot? If so, then all you did was make the hole that was already there a little bigger, but you didn't cause additional cargo spaces to flood. So, buoyancy remains intact.

That's the problem with this sort of damage model, though I certainly prefer it over the stock one. It was the same with the NYGM mod for sh3. The best way to sink a ship quickly is to spread your hits across from sten to stern. I've seen some large ships go down from a single torpedo to the bow, but it takes a while. Once the deck is awash it's usually just a matter of time.

Another quirk of this damage model stems from the abandon ship behavior. You can easily kill a ship with just a few gun hits along the waterline. Once you breach enough compartments the crew will abandon ship-- even if it still takes an hour for it to finally sink. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to get around this if the "smart" abandon ship behavior is kept. Maybe the trigger could be changed to the level of flooding instead of the number of holed compartments.

[WernerSobe]

Another quirk of this damage model stems from the abandon ship behavior. You can easily kill a ship with just a few gun hits along the waterline. Once you breach enough compartments the crew will abandon ship-- even if it still takes an hour for it to finally sink. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to get around this if the "smart" abandon ship behavior is kept. Maybe the trigger could be changed to the level of flooding instead of the number of holed compartments.

Yes ive noticed that too. Unfortunaly there is not much i can do. The trigger is hardcoded. I compensate it with realistic reload times. 4 sec for a deckgun is way to fast. Historicaly deckguns would fire in 10-30 seconds a round.

Using 20 sec reload time it takes about 20 minutes until the ship is abandoned i think thats ok.

[Anvart]

Unsinkable transport ...
Last picture was without changes more than one hour (summary 3 hours, with acceleration)...

http://www4.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/fceacc1e72ddf1645465b33ac83eafd36g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=fp9uwqxbev0&thumb=4)

http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/14983a12dc18ea006a17c722ce12171f6g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=19qtyqftoxd&thumb=4)

[Bill Nichols]

She looks salvagable to me.

:-j

[caspofungin]

She looks salvagable to me.

:-j

couple of hours with a bucket, right as rain

[WernerSobe]

i agree it needs more tweaking. As i said its not finished yet.

It exposed to be a question of individual taste how much the ship can take and how fast they should sink. So ive decided to release two versions of this mod in the feature. The classic one working towards realism. And the light version with faster sinking time and maybe returned hitpoints.

[chopped50ford]

WernerSobe,

I havent seen any issues as of yet, except the stock "holes" the torpedos should make after hitting.

I have had a few ships "bob" around, but eventually taken them out w/ Deck Gun or final torpedo shot on opposite side...

To all: We have to remember, a ship wont go down until its Negatively bouyant. If there is "air" still in the compartments, and the overall bouyancy stays positive, well, the ship will continue to float.

Just my 2.5 cents.:yep:

[switch.dota]

There's soemthing about an Ise sticking all 4 propellers out of the water while doing upwards of 15knots that kinda bothers me... didn't know japs had rows on them battleships... also the odd large tanker that floats decks awash with 3 torpedo holes in its side is quite disturbing too.

[Typhaon]

Unsinkable transport ...
Last picture was without changes more than one hour (summary 3 hours, with acceleration)...

http://www4.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/fceacc1e72ddf1645465b33ac83eafd36g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=fp9uwqxbev0&thumb=4)

http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/14983a12dc18ea006a17c722ce12171f6g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=19qtyqftoxd&thumb=4)


I experienced the same situation in the testmission... I could even sink the medium merchant behindt this ship by shooting a torp over its deck... it only sank when I blew a big whole into the bridge with another torp...

[rascal101]

I had a similar problem, put about 7 fish into one merchant, it eventually went to decks awash but still wouldnt sink after 7 fish, I think this mod is definately on the right track but needs some work, 7 torps and she's still afloat is a bit much. Looking forward to any further adjustments

R

Unsinkable transport ...
Last picture was without changes more than one hour (summary 3 hours, with acceleration)...

http://www4.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/fceacc1e72ddf1645465b33ac83eafd36g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=fp9uwqxbev0&thumb=4)

http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/14983a12dc18ea006a17c722ce12171f6g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=19qtyqftoxd&thumb=4)

I experienced the same situation in the testmission... I could even sink the medium merchant behindt this ship by shooting a torp over its deck... it only sank when I blew a big whole into the bridge with another torp...

[Bill Nichols]

Concur. Last night I raided Wake harbor in my S-boat. I left four ships ablaze and/or decks awash, but only one actually 'sank'. :damn:

:arrgh!:

[CaptainHaplo]

Just put a couple of holes the deckhouse so the AIR can get out (although a deckhouse shouldnt be watertight) and the bugger will sink. I would suggest that the flotability of certain compartments could be further tweaked to get this taken care of...Take the floatability of the deckhouse away for instance - set it at 0 - and see what you get...

A thought anyways.

[tater]

Shallow water is a poor place to test, they might not sink all the way.

BTW, Wake is pretty FUBAR in game without a reef. The only way in should be a narrow channel on the south side. I mean NARROW, think a ship width or 2.

[Bill Nichols]

Not testing, trying to find some @$#%@#$ targets. I spent the better part of 1942 chasing around the Pacific in my little S-boat, finding nary a thing.

:arrgh!:

I agree with the above suggestion... a deckhouse shouldn't contribute to floatation, too many places for air to escape and water to get in.

[FooFighters]

Hi WernerSobe,

I really love this mod.. but I hope you can maybe also release a light version.
I love the way these boats sink now.. but I don't have the patience to wait 3 hours till it sinks.. Maybe there a middleway between stock and your mod ?

I think I am not alone in this..

Thanks

FooFighters

[chopped50ford]

Unfortunately, Im with FooFighter on this one. I love the mod in regards to the sinking physics, but it does take too long.

example: I was up on a lonely Medium split cargo, I put over 50 AP and 50 HE rounds into the hull, below the waterline and a few into deck to break it up. Then, since it was still charging 7 knots and getting away, I put 3 torps into her side and still nothing...I proceeded to put 25 more AP and 25 more HE rounds and still no sinking...but it did finally stop running. It was a bit overkill and frustrating. Definitely unrealistic. Hit Points are a bit high....

[Typhaon]

Hitpoints are unrealistic... there was no point when a ship in WWII blew up after enough damage like it does in vanilla SHIV.

The new system of this mod is far better but needs some adjustments... I think the flooding time is a bit slow, but the hitpoints are just fine... you could set a ship with HE shells ablaze or make the cargo blow up, but you could not make the whole ship explode by shooting at deck and below waterline with enough shells.

[supposedtobeworking]

I have been using this mod a short while and have had no problem sinking ships....2 torps max...maybe im lucky. I even sunk one on the surface with the deck gun..used most of the rounds..but she sunk.

[tater]

Good idea, cpt haplo.

[adseal]

I have been using this mod a short while and have had no problem sinking ships....2 torps max...maybe im lucky. I even sunk one on the surface with the deck gun..used most of the rounds..but she sunk.

My few words...

I use TMaru1.4 and NSM2.6 together. I'm on the patrol (campaign mode) and I sunk 2 ships (it is really hard to find any with TM1.4 especially when You have boat damaged in 60% by planes at the bigining of patrol :/ ). First one get 3 torpedoes: result - big explosion after second impact. Second one blow in flames after first torpedo hit (at 2 torpedoes fire and hit target). So... maybe I was lucky too or maybe japanese ships in year '42 was full of ammunition...

I checked previously training mission joined to NSM2.6 and of course ships sunk veeeery slowly even when i hit them with 4 torpedos. But during my first patrol as I mentioned above i get two hits that broke ships in two pieces in flames. So... maybe WernerSobe found a good solution with his data... but! we must consider what is exactly near to realistic sinking? I saw many II world war movies that shows the ships blowups in flames after single torpedo hits but also saw and read, that some ships sunk after many hours after hits with 3-4 torpedos!

So, for my opinion this mod is (after my short playing) close to reality much more than stock settings, but... I thinkit is good to gather data frommany users. And then we will find whatshould be improved. I am very curious haw it is with warships during campaing mode (anybody sunk any cruiser or carrier during campaign patrol ? ...)


Once again thank You WernerSobe for really good work.


regards
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[nimitstexan]

Hitpoints are unrealistic... there was no point when a ship in WWII blew up after enough damage like it does in vanilla SHIV.

The new system of this mod is far better but needs some adjustments... I think the flooding time is a bit slow, but the hitpoints are just fine... you could set a ship with HE shells ablaze or make the cargo blow up, but you could not make the whole ship explode by shooting at deck and below waterline with enough shells.

Ships, particularly small ships and most cargo vessels, would start to break up if you hit them with enough ordanance. Hit a 1500 ton merchant ship with 3 torpedos, and you are blowing apart her keel, among other things; she should go down in a minute or two. It is a situation where the whole of the "parts" (damage) is greater thant he sum of the "parts." Hit points do simulate that.

[adseal]

Hitpoints are unrealistic... there was no point when a ship in WWII blew up after enough damage like it does in vanilla SHIV.

The new system of this mod is far better but needs some adjustments... I think the flooding time is a bit slow, but the hitpoints are just fine... you could set a ship with HE shells ablaze or make the cargo blow up, but you could not make the whole ship explode by shooting at deck and below waterline with enough shells.
Ships, particularly small ships and most cargo vessels, would start to break up if you hit them with enough ordanance. Hit a 1500 ton merchant ship with 3 torpedos, and you are blowing apart her keel, among other things; she should go down in a minute or two. It is a situation where the whole of the "parts" (damage) is greater thant he sum of the "parts." Hit points do simulate that.


I see that it is a long investigation process...
I wonder why we do not try to connect it with damages model used in SH3? Wasit more different or ships in Atlantic sunk in other way than in Pacific? Maybe we should use also expirience from SH3 in consideration? What You think? ... (just free tinking maybe could start something good...)

regards
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[Typhaon]

Hitpoints are unrealistic... there was no point when a ship in WWII blew up after enough damage like it does in vanilla SHIV.

The new system of this mod is far better but needs some adjustments... I think the flooding time is a bit slow, but the hitpoints are just fine... you could set a ship with HE shells ablaze or make the cargo blow up, but you could not make the whole ship explode by shooting at deck and below waterline with enough shells.
Ships, particularly small ships and most cargo vessels, would start to break up if you hit them with enough ordanance. Hit a 1500 ton merchant ship with 3 torpedos, and you are blowing apart her keel, among other things; she should go down in a minute or two. It is a situation where the whole of the "parts" (damage) is greater thant he sum of the "parts." Hit points do simulate that.

Yeah of course, but SHIV does not seem to simulate structural strengh well enough.
The problem with hitpoints is, that it does not matter where you hit the ship... it will explode when all HP are gone... and it will blast the whole deck... no matter if you only hit the rudder with 5 torps... thats the problem.. of course two torps which hit at exactly the same place would break almost any vessel in two parts, but SHIV does not simulate this... and still... even a small vessel hit by 3 torps would not nesseccarily break... it would have 3 gaping holes and go down real quick. Thats what I meant be readjusting the flooding times to improve the sinking times... for the htipoints... if the hitpoints were divided into zones on the ship and not one sum of hps for the whole ship you could simulate structural damage better... you could simulate fatal damage like breaking the keel or other important parts... but still this would not blast the whole ship... a ship can only explode as a whole, when something explosive is hit... like ammo or fuel... and this is in the game already... and in this mod.

[tater]

Even with the hitpoints done away with (set high), the ships still have critical damage that will break their backs, etc. The more torps you hit with, the more chances for one to do a critical hit.

If this wasn;t true you'd never see NSM ships breaking in two, and you do see this.

I tend to be in the "no hitpoints" camp from that point of view. Or at least I think that hitpoints are way down the list of importance. In the case of warships, for sure though, infinite hitpoints. They have huge crews to do damage control, and you can still hit a magazine or something and blow it to pieces. Flooding or critcals should be the only way to ever sink a warship, IMO.

tater

[Frederf]

if the hitpoints were divided into zones on the ship and not one sum of hps for the whole ship you could simulate structural damage better... you could simulate fatal damage like breaking the keel or other important parts... but still this would not blast the whole ship... a ship can only explode as a whole, when something explosive is hit... like ammo or fuel... and this is in the game already... and in this mod.

Good point. Isn't this already the case?

[WernerSobe]

its hard to tweak it out so everybody likes it. I realy have no idea which direction i should go next.

The majority seems to want them to sink faster. However ive been reading alot about sub warfare and from what i know i can tell that historicaly sinking times were very different. Some small ships could take hours to sink from many torpedoe hits, another realy big vessels sank from one hit in a matter of seconds.

This behavier is very hard to simulate in sh4. Ill need to get deeper into damage system to explain this.

1. there are overall hull hitpoints defined for every single vessel. Losing overall hull hitpoints means a total destruction of the ship. All compartments start flooding imidiataly, i think thats is to ensure that the wreck realy doesnt stay afloat.

2. Flooding compartments. Compartments are defined in zones.cfg. Not for every single ship, they are grouped to classes. There are sections for Merchants, Escorts, Battleship etc... So it is not possible to tweak compartments for every single ship. I can only tweak compartments for entire class, that what makes it so hard to balance.

3. Compartment hitpoints. Each compartment has its own hitpoints and armor level. This system still appears in this mod. In stock sh4 these hitpoints are less important, in most cases overall hitpoints are consumed before enough compartments are destroyed. In this mod the hull hitpoints has been set to a very high value so compartment hitpoints became much more important. The compartments can be just damaged and only flood to half. Or they can be destroyed and damage compartments nearby so they start flooding too.
Again the compartments hitpoints cannot be defined for every single ship but only for entire class.

[leovampire]

One that is ultra realistic for the die hard sim guys and one that falls inbetween what the stock game provides and what you did originaly. That is the easiest way to satisfy almost everyone.

[Seaman_Hornsby]

I've been testing this mod a bit now and think it works pretty well. I like the variety of sinking behaviors caused by flooding from hits in different parts of a ship.

My only gripe is that ships seem to linger at the surface too long after their decks are awash or actually below the surface. If it is possible to reduce this behavior (CaptainHaplo's floatability suggestion?) I think you'd have a real winner on your hands. :up:

[chopped50ford]

IM for realistic.

If I dont have to wait hours for a "sink" message, that would be great.

I know in real life, ships didnt just fall to the bottom like a rock even though a torpedo just struck its keel.

Even split-up ships bobbed because of trapped air.

I personally would like to see more visual "eye-candy" explosions, holes, etc.

Heh, I sank a Minelayer yesterday with my deck gun, 3 visible holes in the hull below the waterline in different places...10 min later...abondon ship.

I love it. :)

[phloon]

3. Compartment hitpoints. Each compartment has its own hitpoints and armor level. This system still appears in this mod. In stock sh4 these hitpoints are less important, in most cases overall hitpoints are consumed before enough compartments are destroyed. In this mod the hull hitpoints has been set to a very high value so compartment hitpoints became much more important. The compartments can be just damaged and only flood to half. Or they can be destroyed and damage compartments nearby so they start flooding too.
Again the compartments hitpoints cannot be defined for every single ship but only for entire class.

I think some tweaks in the compartment hitpoints section will complete this mod. The current rate of sinking (v1.3, no mods besides NSM) feels right-- you get a variety of sinkings depending on hit location, criticals, etc. Adjusting the compartment hitpoints will make multiple hits to the same location more effective than they seem to be now.

[switch.dota]

I might be missing somethign obvious, but is this compatible with Trigger Maru 1.4? They both affect some Zones file...