Unsinkable Merchant- Problem??

[Fish40]

Hi guys. Ran into a wierd encounter yesterday. A ship that would not go down. First the setup: SH4 1.5, latest RFB, RSRDv4.21 (I know not the latest, but still mid patrol), Real Environment, and assorted other compatable mods.

It's late April, '44. After attacking and destroying 3 ships in a 5 ship convoy in the Sulu Sea, I started my return to Brisbane due to fuel concerns. I decided to patrol the sea routes leading into and out of Java on my way back. Upon arriving at an area East of Java, I made contact with what turned out to be a Medium Old Split Freighter makeing 11 knots, heading 150 degrees. I set myself up for a perfect textbook attack, and fired two Mk14's at 1200yds. Both fish hit near amid ship(all manual targeting here by the way).

After the torpedoes impacted, the ship steamed on a short distance before comeing to a dead stop. Here's where things get interesting. For approx. 1 hour realtime, the ship just sat with a slight list. OK I thought, it's possible the damage was contained to one area since the torpedoes impacted in close proximity to each other. By this time I was in perfect position for a stern shot, on the opposite side of the ship.

To make a long story short, seven, yes I did say SEVEN torpedoes and FOUR realtime hours later, and the ship just sat with the same list refuseing to go down. This is the first time I have experienced this with my current list of mods. And as I stated at the start, I managed to destroy the majority of a small convoy with no problems whatsoever. This has me stumped. Any ideas fellas?

[Wilcke]

The only way to really know is to load her up into a mission and shoot her. Your using RFB 2.0?

[Ping Panther]

It must of had a cargo of wine corks and ping pong balls. :haha:

[FIREWALL]

Known and has already been posted. Solution... ?

Swear loud and go find another target. :DL

[Bubblehead1980]

Well not every ship splits in two and goes down in 30 seconds...

I've found how easy a ship sinks depends on the cargo it's carrying and point of impact, torpedo depth etc


Quick FYI...

Ships have internal and external cargo loads assigned.Internal cargo is always fuel, freight or ammo, most of the time on regular merchants it's set to freight.External cargo options are trucks, tranks, planes, ammo crates/containers, freight crates/containers, oil or a trap container.

So a ship loaded with ammo crates or fuel or oil is going to blow up and sink easier than say one loaded with freight only or trucks and freight.Tankers always have an internal load only, fuel, freight or ammo, depends.Most tankers departing the Dutch East Indies have their loads set to fuel, since they would be carrying fuel/oil towards home islands.

Also, the skill level of merchants range from poor to elite, the higher the setting, the better the ship contains and repairs damage.Even if it has no chance of getting underway again, flooding can be container.Seven torpedos is a bit much but read about a few really stubborn ships in various books.

As explained though, it's why one ship will sink with ease and another of same class will fight to the end, just depends on variables.

I have found the best way to sink ships is to set torpedos at various depths.Say you have a large merchant worth 3 torpedos....fire one to the middle, one toward the forward mast, one toward the aft mast.Set the middle torpedo very shallow, it'll hit at the waterline, prob hit under the funnel, blow the engines and cause heavy damage.I split ships in two pretty often with the middle shot.Set the second fish to 10 feet, third to 15-20 feet, depending of course on draft of target, set state.This works, even on largest merchants.

Also, you could have just used your deck gun to finish her off, stationary target is easy to hit, better than wasting that many fish.Aim for waterline with deck gun, works well.

[Fish40]

The only way to really know is to load her up into a mission and shoot her. Your using RFB 2.0?



I don't think 2.0 is out yet is it?:hmmm:

[Fish40]

[Quote] Also, you could have just used your deck gun to finish her off, stationary target is easy to hit, better than wasting that many fish.Aim for waterline with deck gun, works well.


Not when you have machine guns and a deck cannon fireing back at you:o Too risky IMO. This baby was well armed! I understand everything you mentioned in your above reply. But seven torpedoes is excessive for any merchant. I'll chalk it up to one of those "fog of war" things.

[Voyd]

To make a long story short, seven, yes I did say SEVEN torpedoes and FOUR realtime hours later, and the ship just sat with the same list refuseing to go down. This is the first time I have experienced this with my current list of mods. And as I stated at the start, I managed to destroy the majority of a small convoy with no problems whatsoever. This has me stumped. Any ideas fellas?

I'm running RFB as well as a handful of other minor mods. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions, but only after loading a saved game, and then only a handful of times after countless missions...just grin and bare it...the gods of war have made their will be known ;).

Kind Regards,

Voyd

[Sudo]

Yep, I can confirm that this is happening to me right now but appears to only happen after I sink one or both Takao Heavy Cruisers I encounter on my 2nd patrol. :damn:

Is there anyway to reset things? Maybe if I cut my patrol short and return to port, since I have already tallied over 30000 tons with the two Takao Heavies? :06:

BTW, first post and I would love to thank all mod makers, this forum, and Rockin' Robbins for great tutorial clips. :yeah:

I run RFB 1.52, RSRDC for RFB, and Ultimate Sound Pack (tailored to my liking)

Sudo

[Voyd]

Welcome aboard, Sudo!! :salute:

[Sudo]

Thanks Voyd. I generally don't post a lot on forums but the professionalism that is displayed
in these forums is a testement to how great this site is. :up:

Thanks again! :salute:
Sudo

[Sudo]

Just to do a little more testing I left the ship that I couldn't sink, traveled way up from Surabaya to northern Formosa Strait. Several days passed and I eventually found a target. Nailed the Merchant target with 4 forward fish and no sinky. :hmmm:

Unloaded all 150 HE rounds into him, more than half hit, and other than that baby looking like a piece of swiss cheese nothing else is happened. :-?

Lined up aft torpedo on opposite side of first hits (port) and got 3 hits 1 dud. Still nothing..... :o

Hmmmmm....very weird. May need to restart my patrol and do some further testing. :yep:


Thanks.
Sudo

[Gato76]

I also found the unsinkable merchants,twice with a tanker and once with a oceanliner, once i put 10 torps on one tanker, then i wait around 48 hours game time and it was still afloat.Impressive technology Japan used back in those days.

[Hydra]

Came across a tanker and put 19 torps into it, fired dozens of rounds from deck gun, and rammed it at high speed three times. No damage to my sub and the tanker looked like Swiss cheese. But the tanker would not sink! It was really spooky!:o:o:o:o

[Lil' Subsim]

Came across a tanker and put 19 torps into it, fired dozens of rounds from deck gun, and rammed it at high speed three times. No damage to my sub and the tanker looked like Swiss cheese. But the tanker would not sink! It was really spooky!:o:o:o:o

what version of Sh4 your using? the old versions have problems with the unsinkable tanker, but that's been fix by 1.4 I think.

[vanjast]

It must of had a cargo of wine corks and ping pong balls. :haha:
Wait until you come across one that had a cargo full of yo-yos, en route to Oz. These ships sink about 64 times before finally dissapearing. :D

[Hydra]

I'm running version 1.5.

[Sudo]

Restarted my 2nd patrol from port, run into a convoy 3rd day, sunk 1 Kuma Light Cruiser and headed east after taking a few ash cans. 3 days later found a merchant split freighter, put 4 torps into him and he will not sink. So it looks as though I can sink one ship and then no more. Every ship after that just floats on the water with holes all in it. :hmmm:

Darn, I can't see playing without RFB+RSRDC, and I hate to start a new game and have this happen again. :-?


Thanks.
Sudo

[roadhogg]

Hi guys,
someone told me that SH4 ships have the ability to repair themselves quickly, so if you leave a delay between torpedo strikes, it takes more fish to sink them because they repair the damage from previous hits.
I should make clear i play SH3 and don't have SH4, but maybe someone could slow down the ships ability to repair themselves a bit.
Alternatively, it could be something to do with the float zones in the hull, or spheres for these ships, which are viewable with skywasjer's S3D viewer.
Sphere's register collisions from attacking objects ( torpedoes, bombs, shells).
So no spheres equals no collisions, and therefore no damage.


If the ships show damage holes, they must be sphered, but it may still be worth checking that they are of type -1, collision = true, and armour level = -1 ( if they work the same way as in SH3). Flotation zones should cover the full length of the hull, nose to tail, because where there is no zone within a sphere towards the front or back of the ship, the sphere has nothing to transfer it's hitpoints to, so the ship will show damage to the hull, but the lack of a flotation zone means the zone that should be there (but isn't) will not affect the ship.

The above are just thoughts for you, in case it helps.

Good luck.

[Fish40]

I reloaded the save, and torpedoed the ship on several occasions, in different areas. Always stops dead, starts to list, and stays put!:damn: Further torpedoe strikes are fruitless! She just will not go down!!

[Sudo]

I reloaded the save, and torpedoed the ship on several occasions, in different areas. Always stops dead, starts to list, and stays put!:damn: Further torpedoe strikes are fruitless! She just will not go down!!

Yep, I tried everything I could and couldn't get ships to sink properly again after sinking certain warships. I've moved over to TMO1.9 for the time being but I'm hoping that I won't have this issue with RFB 2.0. RFB really is my favorite mod.... :yeah:

Thanks.
Sudo