Why did I see four hits and the merchant was fine?

[james_nix]

I finally settled down to start a campaign. Started out in PI with Salmon in 1941.

Go into a harbor, merchant ships just sitting in their moorings.
Bam, bam, two merchants down (using 4 torpedoes to be safe).

At this point I see the escorts docked, they never come out. I see flares but nothing happens. RFB & RSRD. Anyway.

Next merchant docked, 4 torpedoes, they hit, nothing happens.
Next, 3 duds and a hit, nothing happens.

What happened to the torps? I understand the duds and the faulty torpedoes so early in he war, but what are the mechanics involved with hits and salt spray and nothing happening?

Was it premature and I just saw salt spray?

As a footnote, I steamed out of the harbor and not even a warship came. So I have a couple of battle flags from docked ships.

The convoys though... I'm still learning how to evade the escorts.:hmm2:

[Sailor Steve]

Ships that sink in very shallow water sometimes don't register as being sunk. People playing harbor raids have sometimes reported ships blowing to pieces and still not being counted.

[Pigboatcook]

Try contact settings on the fish instead of proximity. Also are you sure they aren't hitting the docks (you mentioned just seeing spashes)? Also dead-on nose shots can also not register damage sometimes.

[TorpX]

Go into a harbor, merchant ships just sitting in their moorings.
Bam, bam, two merchants down (using 4 torpedoes to be safe).



Harbor raiding isn't realistic. Since few experienced players do it, not many modders bother with improving these aspects. 'Docked' ships cannot move, for instance. Even it you are lighting up the whole base.

[Webster]

I think what you saw was the torpedoes hitting the dock in front of the ship, this happens often because its not easy to see the dock sitting just a foot or two out of the water in front of the ship.

could this be your problem? can you zoom in or use the exterior cam to go look and see? often ships will be in slips or behind docks that you cant see until you get close so for this reason you should never take a long range shot in a port or its almost a certainty there will be something unseen to stop your torpedoes between you and the ship

even harbor raiding ships not sinking as explained above will still settle to the bottom and be noticeable that they went down even if they don't register or go under.

[Sniper297]

My favorite harbor raiding is Kobe in Osaka Bay;

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=201622

Note the third picture, radar shows a sunken ship symbol and I haven't been in there yet. Usually there's a heavy cruiser anchored in extremely shallow water next to a seawall, sometimes it wrecks itself by hitting bottom. When it doesn't, it's really not worth shooting at, the torpedoes generally hit the bottom and explode before reaching the hull, or pass underneath and hit the concrete. When you do hit the ship itself the cruddy game programming takes over, for a ship to be destroyed it has to lose all its "hit points", which requires either sinking or total overkill. And it won't sink in shallow water.

The Japanese had a similar problem at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, the water was so shallow they needed special modifications to the arial torpedoes so they didn't hit bottom, they needed overkill since the ships wouldn't sink all the way in the shallow water, in fact they were actually hoping to find the battleships in the alternate anchorage at Lahaina harbor which would have been deep enough to sink them beyond salvage. In fact half the battleships bombed at Pearl on December 7th were resurrected later.

As for harbor raiding being unrealistic, that's an opinion that many here have, others disagree. I was just reading THUNDER BELOW! by Gene Fluckey, I agree with his opinion. :arrgh!: