Ships Turning Rates

[walsh2509]

Are they to high ?

I was sitting 800mts off a line of merchants there were 4 lines in total, I set up a shot for the leading ship in the 2nd line in, I fired the torp and seconds later I fired another at the leading ship in the line closest to me. As the torp hit the 1st ship my 2nd torp was half way to the merchant in line 1, but as the bang of the hit went up all the merchants were turning the second the 1st torp hit all the ships were turning and the ship closest to my boat had moved at least 5 degrees and still moving so much so my torp missed.


How long after ships in a convoy hear a torp hit would they take to move 5+ degrees.

[Sailor Steve]

I hate to be ambiguous, but the answer is "it depends". I've read reports of merchants seeing torpedoes coming and dodging up to three. That said, if one ship gets hit the ones near him will know it instantly. The helmsman might take action without waiting for orders, or he might wait until his captain tells him which way to go. The captain might even wait for orders from the Convoy Commander, but they usually had standing orders for those situations. Ships further away might not even know anything happened for a minute or more.

The behavior in the game, like all ships' behavior, should be randomized. Some should take instant action, and some should say "Huh?" and keep on like nothing happened.

[Fincuan]

Ship turning, acceleration and decceleration rates have been way too high at least since SH3, and the crew has always reacted with lightning fast speed.

In SH3 nothing was done about it iirc, in SH4 it was fixed with a mod for most ships, but judging by your description the problem is back again. Nothing you can really do about it until it's fixed except for trying to anticipate their movements and/or trying to make all your torps hit as simultaneously as possible.

[Sailor Steve]

Ship turning, acceleration and decceleration rates have been way too high at least since SH3, and the crew has always reacted with lightning fast speed.
:rotfl2::yep:

I just got a new video card, and I've been testing SH3 mods I've never been able to use before. I had forgotten the Torpedo Training, with the ship that just sits there until he sees the torpedo wake, then evades it by accelerating from a standing start. Six knots in six seconds!:damn:

I too had hoped it would be fixed by SH5. Well, maybe it can be modded.

[Fincuan]

then evades it by accelerating from a standing start. Six knots in six seconds!.

The DDs are even funnier, especially if they're stationary when they spot the torp.

"Torpd spotted! Warp speed two ahead aye aye sir!" and ZOOOMMMM they almost fly out of the way. :D

[IanC]

I remember one poster aptly calling it the 'Wile E. Coyote' physics :lol:

[Steeltrap]

The fact is convoys did NOT alter course just because they were attacked. Alterations of course were usually done for strategic reasons in line with intelligence warnings about likely concentrations of u-boats.

Furthermore, merchant vessels almost never saw torpedos (most were fired at night at the start of the war, and later they were electric and left no wake to be spotted).

Altering the course of an entire convoy was not a 5 minute exercise. The merchant ships did not zig-zag; getting them to maintain station on a fixed course was frequently challenging enough. Escorts often did zig-zag while patrolling their stations.

The 'mass evasion and zig-zag' programmed in SH 3, 4 and 5 are pure 'Hollywood' crap. They do not belong in a simulator.

Having said that, ships sailing individually often zig-zagged, but they would alter course between legs that ran for minutes at a time, not the constant slalom shown in the games.

This whole aspect of these games is complete and utter rubbish. I've posted about it before to no avail. I don't expect anything to change. It's hard to believe the devs of any of these weren't aware of the realities (not like they're a secret.....). I can only conclude they did it because they thought is was 'cool' or that 'people will expect to see it'.

As for turn/acceleration rates, they, too, are utter bunkum. Lazy programming because the devs felt the ignorant masses wouldn't accept accurate modelling, or the AI couldn't handle it? Don't know. Maybe both, maybe some other reason(s).

[karamazovnew]

There are several factors that decide how fast a ship can turn...

Wind: every ship has a "sail" surface, in effect the area of all structures above the water. The movement of the ship creates what's call an "apparent wind" which will tone down the lateral vector component of the actual wind.
A ship will always turn slowly into the wind. If a strong wind comes from the stern, a massive ship will need a lot of speed to be able to do that. Otherwise it will just drift with her rudder into the wind. All ships, depending on the wind will sail with a few degrees deviation from their actual course over ground. This deviation can be as high as 30 degrees, after which the ship becomes uncontrollable and must seek shelter.

Waves: since waves are created by wind, waves will amplify the wind effect. Waves coming from the stern will turn the bow into the wind, while waves coming from the bow will have the opposite effect. The ship will always tend to become parallel with the waves which is a BIG nono. One more thing to note is that having waves hitting you from the stern will most likely destroy your engines.

Length: Longer ships (high length/width ratio) will turn slower and roll much more in a turn.

Draft: The bigger the draft is, the more inertia the ship has, making it harder to turn but also tones down the wind effect, making it more stable overall.

Now, consider inertia... Lets say we have an ocean going ship with standard engine and rudder that can turn as fast as 70-80 degrees per minute in calm seas and zero wind. To bring it into perspective, it can turn about as fast as a uboat can turn underwater at 3 knots. The rudder will have maximum effect only if:
1. the ship is already going very fast
2. the props are turning very fast.

Even so, it will take a long time to reach that turning rate and at first, the ship will actually turn the other way, because of the rolling effect. For quite some time after initiating the turn, the ship will maintain it's path above ground, even tho the ship is actually turning. One might compare a ship to a car driving on ice. You always drift...

And then, there's the engines...
Each engine has a a certain time required to start, rev up to max and back again and a specific procedure to reverse prop rotation.
It's my opinion that a cargo ship spotting a 30 knot torpedo at 1 km away will have absolutely no chance of turning in time to avoid the torpedo. Zigzagging ships will loose a LOT of speed and be very easy to hit. Furthermore, zigzaging in moderate waves can have very ugly effects.

One can use the mission editor to see how many of these things have been implemented into SH5. But overall, the ship handling is quite arcadey. What bothers me the most is ships stopping on a dime. That's just STUPID.

[Sailor Steve]

Altering the course of an entire convoy was not a 5 minute exercise. The merchant ships did not zig-zag; getting them to maintain station on a fixed course was frequently challenging enough. Escorts often did zig-zag while patrolling their stations.
I agree with most of your points, but in fact convoys did zig-zag. But zig-zagging was an applied maneuver, planned well in advance, and not 'constant-helming', which is what they do in the game. You're right, they didn't do that.These zig-zag charts are Japanese, but the principle is the same.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/JapaneseZigs.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a325/SailorSteve/JapaneseZigs2.jpg

The 'mass evasion and zig-zag' programmed in SH 3, 4 and 5 are pure 'Hollywood' crap. They do not belong in a simulator.
I agree completely.

Having said that, ships sailing individually often zig-zagged, but they would alter course between legs that ran for minutes at a time, not the constant slalom shown in the games.
And convoys did too, as shown in the charts, but the legs were hours at a time, not minutes.

As for turn/acceleration rates, they, too, are utter bunkum. Lazy programming because the devs felt the ignorant masses wouldn't accept accurate modelling, or the AI couldn't handle it? Don't know. Maybe both, maybe some other reason(s).
I will cut them some slack there, because they probably not only didn't have accurate information, but probably didn't even know where to begin looking. I hope SH5 lets us mod that.

[walsh2509]

Well I did another one , like the last time I fired a torp at the first ship in the 2nd line. As it was on the way there I clicked on the 1st ship in the line cloest to my boat, but this time I didn't fire a torp. What I did was zoom the map in until the box turn into the icon of the outline of the ship. With that I drew a line from its stern right up and through the bow, with the tartget on there was also a line with ------(1)------(2)------(3)---- I drew the line right through that as well.

As soon as the the torp hit the leading ship 2nd line , the leading ship in the line closest to my boat started to turn , I was keeping an eye on it and it didn't seem to move forward but turn on the Dot in the middle of the icon. I counted out 15 seconds and I drew a 2nd line from stern of this ship out through the bow. Then I drew a line from the 1st line ---------------------- to the 2nd line and the gap was 50mts again it had hardly move forward but looked to have turned on this Dot (axis)