That begs the question, though, how should torpedo range errors be distributed? Certainly not uniformly!

Your still thinking too complex.

The way the game engine handles target range, blast radius, and armor damage kage's suggestion actually works quite nicely. Increasing or decreasing the probability of a kill can be achieved by bringing a platforms armor value closer and closer to the weapon damage rating. The probability that the blast radius of the torp will surpass the armor rating of the platform decreases as the platforms armor rating nears the weapons damage rating.

Its not a perfect RL solution, but its a nice upgrade in unpredictability.

If I were going to randomize damage, I would do it as follows:

1) Reduce damage of each and every weapon in the game by, say, 15%, or 25%, or somthing similar. Call that number X. (the actual number, mind you, not the %)
2) each time a weapon explodes, add to the damage a random number ranging from 0 to 2X.

That seems that it wouldn't require too much editing. Each weapon would need an additional constant assosaited with it (the number 2X, for that particular weapon) and a RAND function. To save time, you might call the RAND function on launch, or even on weapon load. Whenever the CPU load is lowest.

I think that any hit on a submarine that breaches the pressure hull will basically right it off. For a single hulled sub, I think a 100 pound warhead found in a light weight torp will be more than enought to rupture the 3 to 4" thick preassure hull found a single hull sub especailly when it is at depth.

If the pressure hull ruptures, uncontrollable flooding and result and the sub will drop to the bottom as submarines when submerged have ZERO reserve boyancy. Any flooding will cuase it to sink. I suspect that the MBT on a typically sub isn't that big and will definately not compensate for a hull breach and flooding of a compartment.

i think you had better take alook at the royal navy heavy weight torpedo spearfish with its shaped warhead and up to 70kts speed more than a match for any of todays boats dare i say even the double hull monsters:D

Typhoon and Oscar class submarines are designed to take a direct hit and manage to come to the surface with two compartments fully flooded.

Note when kursk sank she had her first three compartments flooded but still her rear broke surface and nose climbed up however it took the flooding of 7 compartments to pin her down to the ocean floor, and it was multiple torpedos that did that.

nope her aft end didnt reach the surface at all where did you get that from?

Well i have been in reasearch for now five years on kursk, i have a scaled down report thats 700 pages long, i also have other documents relating the kursk is 505 feet long the sea she sank in was a little over 300 feet deep if she sank at a 28 degree or more angle down then her back end would have come up to the surface.

Also note the vessels that she was simulating attack wouldnt have seen her back end they were to far away and more concerntrating on a torpedo coming than a missile so all eyes were on sonar systems.

considering that the fleet spent time looking for her when she sank i doubt that her aft end came out of the water and the blast whole being so big in thebow the whole boat apart from the aft end flooded very quickly preventing the angle needed to broach the surface also the depth of water here works in my favor the rush of water and weight gained she would have hit the bottom before the ass end came out yet again preventing the aft end coming out

Yes its very true however thats a theory, theres others, like one which says she completely surfaced then sank, i doubt either seeing as she would have briefly been picked up on radar.

However the offical report only notes three possible happenings to kursk.

X, being a database variable, would (presuming it's available to doctrines) make 2X an easy value to calculate.

However, we cannot adjust how much damage a weapon does on the fly in that fashion. The only workable solution is to rely on proximity detonation.

Your suggestion may be workable as a "lethality distribution", however; up the damage value by 2.5 times its current value, and have it detonate up to Y meters away, where Y would give about 0.8X of damage or something.

As such, it may even be a way to uniformly calculate what distance it should detonate at.


As for "whenever cpu load is lowest" I'd say screw that - the ideal impact will be negligible to begin with, not that we really know when it's at its least. Selecting the distance randomly at firing time is by far the most convenient from a scripting perspective, though.