Question: Stock SH4 Ship weak spot?

[Mday]

Is it a matter of chance that a torpedo hit at a ship's weak spot can kill the ship in 1 hit? or is it a guarantee that the ship will sank as long as the hit has indeed landed on the weak spot? So for example, if a torpedo hit a battleship under it's b turret but didn't trigger a magazine explosion, does that mean the torpedo didn't hit the right spot? Or is it just by chance the magazine explosion don't get triggered and there is nothing wrong with the captain's aim?

Also would like to know the week spot of Hiryu.
I know that a hit right under its funnel can disable the ship.
I have also notice that sometime a hit under those aircraft can trigger some kind of secondary explosion and sank the ship. However since it doesn't happen everytime and I have never sank a hiryu with just 1 torpedo, I am wondering where is the exact weak spot located. So far the best result I have is one hit at the funnel and another hit at the aircraft for a 2-hit kill.

[propbeanie]

There has been much discussion over the years about this subject... The Cruisers are the worst of the offenders. It was possible, just like it was possible for carriers to sink with just one hit. But the circumstances surrounding the incident usually had an element of human error involved also, such as allowing aviation fuel vapors to build-up below decks, resulting in a massive explosion, or an over-zealous gunnery leader leaving the magazine door open for quicker access to their powder charges, and when the torpedo hit the seam in the armor plating... It definitely happened, but other times, a sub would put a dozen torps into a vessel and it floated away.

As you've found, the B turret or maybe a bit behind it if there is a third turret up front, is the "sweet" spot on a lot of vessels. I haven't found similar for the CV, though it might be right under the bridge. Some mods attempt to eliminate this, others try to accent it.

[Mday]

Sorry if I didn't make my question clear but my question is not related to ships IRL. Rather I just wana know how the stock game treat a torpedo hit at the weak spot.

[propbeanie]

I wasn't answering about real life. I haven't a clue about real life torpedoes, much less ships and their "weak points". All I can say about the game's torpedo then is that it goes "boom" when appropriate (usually - if you have "duds" enabled, it might not)... hit points are subtracted from the vessel based upon where the torpedo "hits", or rather "detonates", and also on how "strong" the torpedo is. I'm not sure, but there may also be an element of chance involved.

[vdr1981]

Sorry if I didn't make my question clear but my question is not related to ships IRL. Rather I just wana know how the stock game treat a torpedo hit at the weak spot.

All SH units have arranged invisible damage zones (boxes) alongside their 3D models and these zones are actually defining damage model when they suffer damage (sinking and structural). Some of them are labeled as fuel or ammo bunkers and these zones usually have ability to amplify torpedoes strength by a certain factor defined in Zones.cfg file (usually x5). If you are lucky enough to hit those zones, the ship will most likely explode from bow to stern or split in half...
https://s6.postimg.org/yl246nnfx/Capture.jpg (https://postimg.org/image/yl246nnfx/)

[Sniper297]

The game treats it like a game, one of the old board games where you roll the dice and how much damage the hit does depends on what numbers the dice come up with. In the Torpedoes_US.zon file for the Mark 14;

Damage min 120
Damage max 180
Radius min 3
Radius max 7

Allegedly that means everything between zero to 3 meters from the center of the explosion gets 180 hit points of damage, then a gradual reduction to 120 hit points at 7 meters, with no damage beyond 7 meters. Some people have a theory that it's a dice roll which randomly applies hit points and damage radius, I have seen some evidence that supports that theory - take a look at the size of the holes in the hull of something like the Yamato after running several test missions hitting the same spot. Still one of those things I can't either prove or disprove, so in conclusion I dunno.

[Hellguard3]

So i have a follow up question to this, say you have two adjacent zones which both amplify damage ie fuel tank aft of a magazine and you hit the midline between the two. Would a resulting non dud explosion be treated equally by both zones? If anything would one shot a boat id think that would be a sure fire way to do so.

[Mday]

um... interesting. Ty for everyone's input so far.
After reading Zone.cfg I have a few more questions

Category=Fuel Bunkers
Multiplier=5.0
Flotability=2.0
Critic Flotation=0.3
Armor Level=-1
HitPoints=150
Destructible=No
Critical=Yes
Critical Chance=0.05
FloodingTime=80.0
CargoType=Fuel

Can someone please explain what these variable means?

Also which files contains information of ship damages zones layout?