Mechanical Failure

[keysersoze]

Recently, I've been reading Clay Blair's excellent Hitler's U-boat War and have been struck by the constant mechanical problems and malfunctions plaguing the U-boat fleet. To briefly illustrate the point, Blair writes that during the late fall of 1939, "hard Atlantic patrolling and combat had uncovered some severe design flaws and weaknesses in the existing oceangoing boats....until these (and other) flaws were corrected, the nine surviving boats of the Salzwedel Flotilla, comprising one-third of the Atlantic force, were unsafe for combat" (102).

I personally think the introduction of mechanical failures, due to simple malfunctions or sabotage, would add greatly to the realism of SH5. In my experience with SH3, h.sie's hardcore fix, which introduced mechanical failure when the diesels were run at flank speed for long periods of time, and SH3 Commander's inclusion of random sabotage after rebasing to French ports did exactly this.

Now, I am certainly no modder and have no real experience to justify attempting something like this, but I'm still curious. How would one go about adding malfunctions for SH5? Has it been attempted? I was looking through the Equipment file and noticed the "chancefactor" heading for one of the malfunction columns, but since all these values are set to 1, it can't mean much. Any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks.

[V13dweller]

I do believe that we should have mechanical failure, I once ran my diesels for a whole patrol (this was obviously a short patrol) on Flank speed, and I never got the "Fair chance something will break" when using flank speed.

[Fifi]

Just because Johann is an awesome mechanic! :)

http://www.monstersandcritics.de/downloads/downloads/articles2/99308/article_images/image5_1220037299.jpg

[spydar1959]

So what about,instead of having to go to port,an option on resupply? Throw the engine or mechanical breakdown into patrol. But have a 50/50 chance on a resupply that they have parts. Or meeting with another U-boat. Many U-boats had breakdowns and did not have to return to home port for repairs. Limiting top speed or dive depth for the duration of no parts would be nice.

[keysersoze]

So what about,instead of having to go to port,an option on resupply? Throw the engine or mechanical breakdown into patrol. But have a 50/50 chance on a resupply that they have parts. Or meeting with another U-boat. Many U-boats had breakdowns and did not have to return to home port for repairs. Limiting top speed or dive depth for the duration of no parts would be nice.

This is exactly what I had in mind! I've been going through my U-boat books recently and writing down all the special missions and additional tasks U-boats were assigned, aside from simply patrolling and sinking merchants. One mission that appears again and again is the order to either deliver spare parts to a damaged U-boat, or to meet with another boat (often a milk cow) to receive parts.

If mechanical failure was implemented, would it be possible for BdU to direct a friendly U-boat to our position to deliver components? Seeing as TDW has already put wolfpacks in the game, perhaps we could use the same system to spawn a friendly U-boat that would try to meet us at a pre-determined point. Better yet—but probably harder to code—would be if BdU would also occasionally order us to help a "damaged" U-boat.

[finchOU]

Begging for this since SH3. Not a big fan of the Sabotage aspect (thinking it would be a rare occasion). But the mechanical failure side should have been implemented a long long time ago. I've deployed twice on ships........even having to land on a ship dragging a screw. Stuff is broken ALL THE TIME. Constant upkeep and maintenance was required everyday to make sure things work...and things still break.

I like the idea of tactical decisions being limited because of things breaking... aka I can't make top speed while we need to take a couple of hours to repair one of the engines. At least give me a Daily report of repairs/maintenance from the chief. I do think running the engines hard should impact probability of breakdown (I want Scotty to yell at me when I'm pushing the boat too hard...and want him to be right when it breaks)

[keysersoze]

I reread the the chapter of Steel Boat, Iron Hearts entitled "Sabotage" today to remind myself of the malfunctions U-505 encountered in the summer and fall of 1943. I had forgotten how demoralizing this extended period of mechanical breakdown/sabotage was to the crew.

U-505 put into Lorient on December 12, 1942 after suffering critical damage in a depth charge attack. She was finally ready for patrol on July 1, 1943. Things didn't go according to plan, and she had to abort her next five patrols due to a myriad of problems. Here are the pertinent failures for each attempted departure:

July 1: faulty propellor seal. FuMB Metox short-circuit, GHG hydrophones failure, radio direction finder antenna failure while in stowed position, fuel leak

August 1: pressure hull leak. Here's a revealing quote: "Shipyard engineers sheepishly reported that they had indeed found evidence of sabotage: hollow sweat seams in the newly repaired hull. Instead of solidly welded seams, they found strips of oakum...had been placed between the plate joints. The oakum was then covered with a thin cover of solder to hide the sabotage" (147).

August 14: pressure hull leak, crushed air intake duct

August 21: oil leak: "A closer inspection revealed that someone had drilled a small pencil-sized hole in one of the fuel bunkers" (155).

September 18: starboard diesel exhaust valve loose, direction finder failure, short-wave radio failure, main pump failure

October 10: piston #2 on port diesel frozen in cylinder. Repaired after eight hours and patrol finally continues.

Most of the above could be ascribed to simple mechanical failure, rather than sabotage, although the oakum seams and fuel tank hole are harder to explain. U-505 might be an exceptional case, but their extended experience with mechanical and electrical problems at least illustrates that this stuff happened all the time, as finchOU pointed out. Sabotage might be a little extreme, so perhaps it could be optional/moddable.

[gap]

This is exactly what I had in mind! I've been going through my U-boat books recently and writing down all the special missions and additional tasks U-boats were assigned, aside from simply patrolling and sinking merchants. One mission that appears again and again is the order to either deliver spare parts to a damaged U-boat, or to meet with another boat (often a milk cow) to receive parts.

Begging for this since SH3. Not a big fan of the Sabotage aspect (thinking it would be a rare occasion). But the mechanical failure side should have been implemented a long long time ago. I've deployed twice on ships........even having to land on a ship dragging a screw. Stuff is broken ALL THE TIME. Constant upkeep and maintenance was required everyday to make sure things work...and things still break.

I agree. Delivering spare parts was a comon U-boat assignment, and indeed anyy sort of mechanical/electrical failure was a quite common evenience. :yep:

If mechanical failure was implemented, would it be possible for BdU to direct a friendly U-boat to our position to deliver components? Seeing as TDW has already put wolfpacks in the game, perhaps we could use the same system to spawn a friendly U-boat that would try to meet us at a pre-determined point. Better yet—but probably harder to code—would be if BdU would also occasionally order us to help a "damaged" U-boat.

Spare parts delivery missions are already possible in game. I think Trevally made a good use of this feature, at least in the Monsun Gruppe campaign. :up:

In my opinion, having a wider variety of these side missions in campaign, and being randomly assigned to one of them once in a while (but not too often), would be a nice diversion, and would increase the immersion.

On the other hand, the closer we can get to being delivered spare parts ourselves, is when we are asking for refittings at sea. Trevally is for sure by far more informed than me on this subject, but there is a chance that we don't need for any patch in order to call in for "technical assistance" by nearby units.

Nonetheless, as far as I can remember, damages are not repaired during refittings at sea or from friendly ports. Only by docking at our base we can get our sub fully overhauled. So, a "random failure/spare parts delivery patch" should:


trigger various malfunctions, randomly and/or based on bad use of our equipment and damage we had previously incurred.

set a random chance that the normal repair routines for a damaged system are stopped and, in this evenience, prompting us with a message like "Captain, the X system can't be repaired: we need for spare parts".

reenabe the usual repair routines after a normal refitting.

[spydar1959]

For the historical aspect look at www.uboatarchive.net. They have a few KTB (Kriegstagebucher). Look at the one for the U-156 (Laconia incedent). About half way down the page you will read that the U-156 met up with U-125. The commander of the U-125 came across in a dingy and transferred 5 bridging sets (metal straps for connecting batteries) to the U-156. And that is out of their logbooks. So between fuel transfers and parts, the U-156 was going nowhere fast. So the option on time can be somewhat mapped out from them. And if wolfpacks are already in-game as a variable, couldn't you just drop all the u-boats but one? You would already have some parameters for the meeting set up by the game. Pardon the explainations, just doing it in case any new guys are following along.

[THE_MASK]

What if there was something invisible that you could place on the water in locations with the terrain editor . When your sub hit them you would sustain slight damage or lets call it malfunctions .

[keysersoze]

What if there was something invisible that you could place on the water in locations with the terrain editor . When your sub hit them you would sustain slight damage or lets call it malfunctions .

That's a good idea, but would there be a way to direct the damage to a specific subsystem? Most malfunctions would occur only in a specific component, such as a diesel breaking down. If a sub "hit" an invisible object, that would just damage the hull. I could be wrong though.

Is there a way to code a timer that could record the amount of time a particular subsystem has been used? For example, a timer could start when the diesels fire up and, once x hours is reached, a malfunction script could add a random chance of mechanical failure for each hour the diesels are operated thereafter. It would be even more interesting if other variables could be added, such as time spent at flank speed increasing the chance of failure, or having the amount of time until the malfunction script is called raised or lowered. This last variable could be used to simulate poor shipyard work or sabotage (if that is included) by adding the malfunction chance almost immediately instead of waiting x hours.

Of course, I don't really know what I'm talking about, so this suggestion might be totally unrealistic.

[spydar1959]

I don't remember off the top off my head, but does the game have mine fields? If it does, couldn't you use the same mapping for mines as triggers for malfunctions? Then you could set your malfuction to relate to depht. Surface=diesels and deck, Underwater=E-motors and valves. Use the trigger without the explosion. And have your countdown timer tied to crew abilities. Offset time to rank. That way you would have two ways to get whacked with problems. It would be interesting and aggravating to have a motor give out right when you had a convoy in sight.

[V13dweller]

The Dithmarschen Supply Ships were designed to carry 100 tons of Spare parts, so the Dithmarchens should be able to give you these parts.

[Troutish]

I cant remember which sub sim it was, but i can recall having to "manage" mechanical failures (those caused by wear and tear as well as those caused by taking damage from the enemy).

It is actually a big part of a sub sim that is missing in SH5. How often in this sim do you have to make tough choices about what to fix, or how to maneuver or fight your boat?

I think the problem is that uboats simply are not modeled as the complex machines that they really were.