Why do torpedoes have an AP value, but DCs don't?

A mark14 that uses the mag pistol shouldn't ever penetrate a hull before detonating.

tater

AP massively changes the way DCs behave!

I took a slightly more powerful DC (OK, damage of 390-400 ;) ). Min radius 6, max 16.

Gave it an AP of 25. A close hit (almost touching) was brutal. Not an instant sinking, but certainly RTB immediately assuming you survive at all type of damage. More distant hits seemingly did nothing, and middle distance hits gave the AA and deck gun damage so commonly seen in stock SH4 DC attacks from distance DCs.

I think some sort of AP value has a lot of promise. 25 might be too high, not sure yet. Next I will try a straight TM DC with a small AP added and see what happens.

Note that bombs have AP values, and the AP gets used even if the "hit" is a near miss. Torpedoes get AP, and mag pistols shouldn't impact at all.

In a thread a long time ago about trying to make AA dangerous to subs, ducimus said the stock DC damage was good because a direct hit should take out the sub. I agree, but in my testing, direct hits with DCs modified as per TM, a direct hit does no such thing. I think with an AP value added it just might...

tater

your on to something....to bad I am still at work!

Wilcke

Now that I have some ideas as to where the ballpark values should be, I need to test rigorously.

Watch an attack, and screenshot the DC explosion in such a way that I can roughtly determine distance. After taking damage, save, then open with the damage analyzer and see what it looks like. Do the same for similar hits with various DC mods in place.

BTW, the hedgehog DCs have an AP value in stock

tater..I'm simply loving the detailed insights into your way of thinking on this...

I want MORE! :yep:

BTW..this will be great when you get it worked out.

heheh.

I "blog" this stuff here for two reasons:

One, in the hopes someone who knows better will drop in and just tell me where I'm wrong, and what I should do. The SH3 guys, for example, know a scary amount about this stuff. They've likely tried much or all of this, and can tell me why it seems like a good idea, but breaks X, Y, and Z.

Two, and this is critical, if I think of some of this, I need to write it down immediately or I'll likely forget the whole idea before I finish my next cup of coffee :D

tater

This sounds very interesting Tater. My experiance with DCs in the game is that they either do nothing, maybe cause light damage to the DG or they sink me right off. There doesnt seem to be any middle ground where they cause realistic levels of damage and force you to RTB. Sounds like you might be on to something with adding an AP value to DCs.

I had an idea, but it's kinda whacky
 

Do you think you could save a game just before a DC explodes near your sub? If the changes could be made (and be in effect) to the DC while you are out of port, then you should be guaranteed of being the same distance from the sub when it explodes. I'm guessing that the game sets the detonation depth when the DC is launched rather than trying to randomize it as it is descending. Just a thought (most of them are wacky, but occasionally constructive:rotfl: )

I see something similar. I never get killed by the 1st DC. Never. I have many go off all around, with mostly minor damage, a lot of shaking then I get total HP failure and go down.

In RL, it was expected that a single CLOSE hit would be a kill. That just doesn't happen in RFB/TM. One hit might kill you, but it's the first DC in the 10th DC attack you'd had this patrol ;)

The downside to fixing this will be "magic bullets." Sometimes the first DC might shack you. The plus side would ideally be realism. Do everything to fight the attack.

The AP=25 DCs are pretty nasty within their explosion radius realm, and seem very well behaved.

I tested a modded TM DC with only 2 changes. I added AP of 25, and I dropped the depth error to a much smaller number for testing (I want to get hit, remember).

Just adding the 25 for AP certainly helps., but they are still not remotely as destructive as stock DCs. Note that I am only talking about hits well within the 4.5m 100% damage zone.

Another test I did had the minEF set to 250, and maxEF set to 400. AP=40, minradius was 4.5, max was 16. Those seemed pretty decent. Get shacked, and you take serious damage. Not instantly fatal, but bad enough you will be hard pressed to get away alive.

tater

PS--interesting idea on the test, DT.

Excellent thread. You have the skill of a tester, very nice indeed. I enjoy the observations and your DC mod is actually the first realism oriented one I've ever used. Keep up the good work, Tater, as always! :up:

If you want me to add your mod to the list, let me know. I wanted to ask as you said it was more of testing release then a final or beta.

Thanks for this mod tater. I like everything that contributes to a more realistic Silent Hunter game.
Excellent work ! :up:

I did more testing last night.

First, I do look at distant hits a little. Stock DCs invariably result in deck gun damage from pretty far away. Seems like a good indicator that some slight damage is occurring. The DCs with max radius dropped from the stock 40 down to 10 (RFB), 15 (TM), or even 20-25 seriously reduce damage from distant hits as expected. In that sense, RFB and TM DCs do exactly what was intended. Where they don't work as well is up close.

I've been looking at explosions close enough that the explosion visual effect hits the hull.

The stock DCs do more damage partially because they affect multiple compartments when they hit, but also because they seem to blanket compartments they do hit with damage. Such a blast usually does heavy bulkhead damage where it hits (usually a "1"), and almost as heavy in each adjacent compartment. Around 75% of the systems inside the compartment get some level of damage most of the time. Sometimes all of them. Adjacent compartments get a smaller amount of daamge. More often than not, such a hit with a stock DC is a mission kill of my boat.

In a TM DC blast that touches, I get the bulkhead damage at >50%, and usually a couple of internal systems hit badly, some times as many as 30-50% systems damaged, but that was rare in testing.

The difference is odd since both hits are within the minradius, which is identical in stock and TM DCs. The damage values are the same, too. Odd.

With an AP value of 25 added to a TM DC, I got 100% bulkhead damage most of the time, and 2-3 badly damaged systems in the compartment.

If I take the TM DC, and up the damage about 2X (300-400) along with the AP of 25, the results start looking like stock DCs up close, but they still tend to only affect 1 compartment instead of the usual 3 for amidships hits with a stock DC.

In both the AP added examples, there is sometimes long range (10-15m) deck gun damage seen.

I think the goal will be to make an AP added DC that easily at least soft kills (meaning the boat is crippled to the point that lying on the bottom or blowing tanks are about the only short term options) the sub at close range (explosion visual hits hull). Then I'll drop the MinEF to the point that it's possible to get a dud that won't cripple you at that level from time to time. Ideally, at 7-10m you'd take some moderate damage, too.

tater

I could be wrong, I'm not much on physics or naval warfare, but is it possible that if your too close, there is not enough of a shockwave effect to damage the boat much? I thought real DC's were designed to kill with the shockwave, not the explosion. That might explain one thing. You are lowering the radius, but in effect your actually lowering the shockwave force. Make any sense, or am I just rambling?

My understanding is this:

The weapon has a range of damage it can do, randomly picked between minEF, and maxEF (for a stock DC, 170 and 230).

The weapon has 2 ranges, MinRadius, and MaxRadius. from distance = 0 to MinRadius the blast does 100% of the damage randomly selected (a number between 170 and 230 for stock DCs). From MinRadius to MaxRadius, the blast decreases to 0 at MaxRadius.

So a DC explodes and does 200 damage out to 4.5m (stock), and from 4.5 to 40m (stock) it reduces to 0. For example at 39m it barely does anything, while at 20m it likely does around 100 damage in this example.

In RL, closer was considered better. In the case of hedgehogs, they were contact devices, so they could have smaller warheads and still be effective. The bottom line is that inside some radius (not sure what), even a 100kg Type 95 should be nearly 100% fatal to the sub.

The shockwave (concussion) is important in the case of DCs since water transmits them so well. Water is only very slightly compressible (max density at 4 degrees C). Being too close isn't really an issue, the goal is to impart energy to the target.