Couple days ago, I was camping and bored, came along a small tanker. I fired one torp at its fuel tank, it exploded, but its engine remain unaffected and it still running 7 knots for over a hour until it finally sank, probably with help of high waves. How can it still run without fuel? Anyway, I thought one torp would kill small tanker instantly, next time I would just aim for bow and drown it. I have noticed only few kinds of ship typically break in half while most doesn't.

That's an idea.....but remember, they DO SINK, and not everyone (myself included) always experience the same timescales.

I've tested the sinking rates more than most and can say with utter confidence.....sinking times vary regardless of size, class or hull shape. http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

but let me ask this dumb question:

how comes that a small freighter hit at a (obvisiually) vulnerable spot ... set to fire instantly .... does not sink? ... I mean the ship was blown to pieces and burning... but carried on like nothing happened? :hmm:

Well just a question

you could make modification in zone.cfg for all ships under 2-3,000t to break and sink instantly if you like. Also when a torp punctured fuel tank making a hole in hull, bringing water into tank while fuel is being burn up or spill out, don't ships usually have to cut the engine to prevent seawater from getting into and ruining the engine?

I GOT ONE. Ok, so I'm sonar/hydrophone hunting in the unrelenting rain, fog, wind, and murky blackness of grid BE52. I pick up a fast moving merchant and peg her every 3.15 mins with the sonar. She's alone, so it's all good. I get her course nice and clean. I line up within 1.5 kms - i can't see any lights from here, so I figure she's blacked out = badguy. I set a fast steam torp at 3m and off she goes. Now, I follow my fish with the external cam because really, this is the one reason to have it. It turns out to be a small tanker :nope:. Luckily, the shot connects at the tail end of the tanker, just aft of the smoke stack (must have been 14kts rather than 13). I let her go, and she doesn't sink (surprise!) but she does stop. The back end takes on a wicked list. Time compression - hard - nothing, just bobbing away in 5m waves. So I creep up to her, plotting her with sonar checks and line my stern tube up. I put the stern steamer right into her midsection. There's a massive fire that is quickly doused in waves. And then, after about 15 mins, she sunk. Damn was she tough though...the Little Bismarck. But then again we got her in the end. I guess they just take two...

There are two ways to sink a ship in GWX:

1) Flooding (the more holes beneath the waterline the better)

2) Destroying all damage points (multiple gunfire or eels)

Your just being unlucky....try patrolling another suspected route instaed of the cork passage. http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/scream.gif

I don't think this has anything to do with luck. I'm going to put a mission together using the editor to further test what's going on.

As JCB noted that smaller ships tend to be stronger so they can be robust enough to handle bad weather. So you end up with a small(er) ship that should be fragile but is built like a King Tiger tank. IF we really wanted to start getting technical we could start using Physics calculations to reverse engineer why that particular ship is so annoyingly hard to sink. I think we'd find that the ship is dissproportionately more armored than it should be. :know:

A more accurate metaphor about the small vs large ships: You've got a baseball bat and 2 boards to break, a 2 foot one and an 8 foot one. One good hit to the 8 foot one will shatter it in 1 hit as the board's resistance is spread across 8 feet instead of 2 feet making it naturally weaker (assuming both boards are the same width). Now hit the 2 foot board you'll most likely end up chipping away at it unless you score a perfect hit in the middle as its compact nature makes it (relatively) stronger for what we're looking at. :damn:

When liberty ships were first used they would sink with 1 torpedo hit just about anywhere. The length of the hull + cheap materials + cold atlantic water temp severly compromised the hulls integrity. It wasn't uncommon for them to sink in transit as the force of the cargo eventually became larger than what the hull could withstand, and with the help of a critical design flaw. It was easily solved by welding a large buckle of steel across the length of the hull to reinforce it.

For the relatively small tonnage that you get from sinking those small tankers I usually avoid em unless its calm enough to use the deck gun. If I'm in a harbor and one is parked where a 90 shot is possible a shot at 6m will usually annihilate it. There's better fish in the sea to catch than those nasty little things.

Strangely, liberty ships are among the hardest to sink. It takes me 2 torps basically always, where as many larger ships (medium cargo, largo cargo, large merchant, medium tanker, large tanker, all cruisers, etc) often only require 1.

Edit: Cool fact though! I would like the GWX team to implement this if it is so!

It kind of seems like they already have in a way. At least now we may have some kind of explanation. Now it's a matter to go back early in the war and see if there's a difference in the small ships than later in the war. :hmm:

Generally when I play I've got the TV on and there was a documentary on the history of Victory ships that caught my attention. I'll find the historical info about the problem with the keels cracking in half, in reality Victory ships were a joke. They were mass produced, used poor grade steel, and poorly engineered. The whole idea was to produce so many that enough of its cargo would reach the allies across the pond. Their life expectancy was only like 2.5 trips before they would detereate so much that they were no longer sea worthy.

Forget Small Tankers, what about Passenger/Cargos? :shifty: These generally need two or more torps to send 'em down.

Doesn't help that, with 100% realism and OLC's GUI, I'll only get hits with about 50% of the shots I make.

I haven't noticed smaller ships taking more than one torp. I usually put two into the bigger ships to speed their sinking, as I love to hunt in the North Sea (still in the early years) and don't like waiting for help to show up. My understanding of the Liberty ships was that they were easy to sink and had weak hull generally. It was the Victory ships that were much improved in terms of toughness (and speed). I'd be greatly disappointed if, when I get to it, the GWX team hasn't taken that into account (if it's possible).

And I haven't said it publically yet, so after that comment, I'll say thanks to the GWX team for a great mod!

funny thing... I tried again on a small freighter... a "Trampdampfer" in German
Shot it on the bow mast and it caught some fire... the screener I have..

and it sunk after 15min....

Is there a difference between torps?

I read some many people just swear about T1-steamers... I usually use electric as the ships really see the T1s... and I guess there is no difference in the payload... but tell me if so.

I've used T1s on steamers with no problems. I prefer them because of their higher speeds, which are more forgiving towards quick calculations. I set my torps to run on fast, impact, 2 M.