I posted my damage control trouble in another thread. I'm having the same thing happen. Manual says (pg 80) that the crew will begin repairs of any damage in their area. The damage control team you put together should increase the speed with which damage is repaired. But those damage indicator bars (in red) never move. :cry:

To get a compartment that has flooding under control - the main pump needs to be functioning correct? I had flooding under control in the forward torp. Looked about knee hight. I decided to go to periscope to continue repairs and I sank like a rock.

WTF?

Entire crew management system seems either broken of nullified, back in SH3 when i right clicked on compartment it would auto assign people there, so far I tried various things in SH4 and no avail. Further, damage control doesnt work at all as far as I can tell. I have to confirm on this. It seems to me damage control screen actually has less information than SH3 had...

Btw, I love when a crewmember is asleep and you move him out of that compartment, any crewmember you replace him with will automatically sleep too...lol I guess its a SLEEP DISEASE.

After a bit of testing (IE crashed dived in shallow waters, sat on the bottom with high compression, diving to crush depth and staying there tell things broke, or just plain ole beaching the boat to incur damage), ive concluded that Damage control DOES work.

But you have to do a couple things first.

1.) Assign a damage control crew
2.) cilck the button to send them to work.

Until those two things are done, nothing will happen.

Three observations:

a.) The red vertical bar next to a component seems to reflect the level of damage. The lower the red bar is, the less damaged the item is. When the verticle red bar is nearly to the bottom, its almost done being repaired.

b.) Repairs seem to take a long time to complete as compared to say, Stock SH3. It seems the devs took a more realsitic approach to repair times

c.) catastrpohic damage seems to be just that, catastrophic. If you get a massive bomb hit from a plane, or stay at crush depth too long, doesn't seem to matter what you do, your sunk. I make this observation based on upping the hitpoints of various compartments and equipment. Even with a tougher sub, doesnt matter.




ON that note, ive created this test modlet if anyone wants to give it a whirl. All it does is.
a.) doubles thie hitpoints on various equipment (IE, 100 hps changed to 200 hitpoints)
b.) increases hitpoints on various comparments. For example i noticed some compartments were listed as having 200 hitpoints where in SH3/GWX they would have 400 htpoints.

So what you have here, is basically in theory, a tougher submarine, and less equipment being destroyed (destroyed means it cannot be repaired):
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/Sub_equipment_test.7z

Well done :up:

So, it dose works after all...

Oh yeah, on another note

If your main pump gets destroyed and you've taken on enough water to alter your boyancy to negative, your hosed. No pump, no water removal.

Im also theorizing that if you have major damage to a bulkhead (im guessing this means you have a big hole with water coming in), combined with a wrecked main pump, kiss it bye bye.

Great, why don't I see the modlet on the mods forum? It's a great idea. I remember increasing hitpoints for RUb in the same way based on gouldjg's research for SHIII, and it did work out quite well overall back in the day.

I also think that the damage and repair system works, works quite well, and actually works better than in SHIII when you get down to it. So far I've been able to manage repairs far more efficiently.

One thing that does tick me off is that repairs are NOT stopped by silent running as in SHIII. They should be.

Thanks Ducimus. I have experience just what you stated to do. I should know. I get blown to bottom every patrol and spend most of my time repairing my sub/uboat;). Yes, repair times are more realistic now.:yep:

And while your doing all that you'll be heading for the bottom and end of
game.:)

I guess i undevalued it. I just sort of threw it together in about 15-20 mins, and ran some damage control tests with it. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it i guess. I'll post it in the mod forums if you think it should be.

edit:
ok i posted it. Happy now? :88) :lol:

Well, at least you'll be busy so maybe it will take your mind off of your imminent demise :)

Thanks, Ducimus!

If DC is working can someone please explain to me what I'm doing wrong? I've got a DC party of nothing but torpedo men working on fixing my damaged aft tubes, over a period of days (using time compression). The damage bar (and it's numerical value) never improves. I am, of course, assuming that an item is repairable if it's red bar isn't maxed out.

On another note, is there a better game reference than the printed manual? It really doesn't explain the mechanics (no pun intended) about how DC works.

Here's the thing I think some people are missing. They way the manual is worded, and from what I've seen in my own experience, you don't need to have dedicated damage control people. If there is damage in the forward torpedo room, for instance, the people in that room will automatically start repairs. Having dedicated damage control personnel is supposed to help speed up repairs which are already taking place.

That being said, if you find that damage never repairs it may be due to the component in question being destroyed completely.

Also, there seems to be some weird bug or misunderstood feature which causes damaged equipment to break again after being repaired. This is most commonly seen with the crew death problem and may or may not be related (though I'd love to get to the bottom of that issue).

Hmmm.. Good point.

BTW, has anyone experiened this? When being depth charged at 200 feet, I saw the game had a few crewmen assigned to the deckgun and AA guns. I assumed that meant they were in the sub, but assigned to the guns if we surfaced. After a few close ash cans, they died! A glitch? Note to self: when under DC attack, move the gunners to the damage control slots….

one thing i suspect is that enviormental factors now effect the health of the crew.

For example, laying on the bottom with high TC on (usually a good way to get some damage), i noticed the engines took damage, and a bit later, some crewman in the engine rooms lost a few points of health. When conditions in the compartment improved, so did their health.

Another note going through some of the associated files, there's some exposurefactor variable of some sort.

Got bombed ten minutes ago, and lost my observation periscope (completely red bar), and damaged conning tower, radar, AA, etc. So I start fixing after shooting down the bugger. Everything gets fixed except the deck gun, which still works, by the way. Suddenly my attack periscope is destroyed too, with nothing in the vicinity. Then my radar goes red again, and suddenly people start dying like flies.

This bug is a killer.

To my way of thinking, a piece of equipment is not destroyed unless it's red bar is maxed out. Therefore it stands to reason that if the "damage bar" is not full, then some progress should be seen regarding it's repair over the passage of time. I agree with phloon that the manual's wording regarding DC flat out states that your people will begin repairs with or without the DC party. This is sounding more and more like a bug to me. :hmm:

P.S. I'm still loving the sim. It will take some time for Ubi to get all this stuff sorted out.

Yeah my crew just spent hours fixing the sub so that all the red markers where gone, good I thought, at last I can dive, dropped slowly to periscope depth but it just kept going, no matter how many times I did an emergency blow, dropped all the way to 1182 feet before crushing? lol.....


Simon

When you take serious damage there is a factor that's not shown- Structural Damage.

In SH3 there was a percentage display of the hull that resulted from taking too much damage. Even though the crew was able to repair internal damage, they could not repair external damage. If you take a hit or hits that cause you to lose bulkheads and flooding, you also have external structural damage.

The way this was modeled in SH3, if you got bulkhead damage, although you could stop the leak and shore up the crack with a timber, the hull remained weakened. Once surfaced you cannot submerge again. You must make a run for it to the nearest port for repair.

"Here's the thing I think some people are missing. They way the manual is worded, and from what I've seen in my own experience, you don't need to have dedicated damage control people."

I think this is a misinterpretation of a fine point. Although the crew on station WILL begin MINOR repairs to save their skin, they are GREATLY assisted by the dedicated repair crew. The more skill they have, the faster the repair. I keep them assigned in all high risk situations and when I'm dedicated to combat, I issue the Battle Stations command which places ALL the crew on station for arming, repairs, and sensing. I'm careful not to keep them that way unnecessarily.

It would not be realistic if you could repair and recover from ALL damage. After all, over 40 of our WWII boats were lost in the Pacific despite being manned by the best crews the Navy could produce. Getting sunk once in a while will teach you good attack and evasion technique and how to measure your risk against gain. There are LOTS of targets. "Know when to hold them, know when to show them, know when to walk away, know when to run."
-Pv-