I had something like this happen in vanilla 1.2. I had several patrols without a single dud, then one patrol where the entire load of 24 torps were all duds (to be more precise, they all exploded between 300 and 500 yards out of the tube). As far as the deck gun goes, Beery has done right by lowering its destructive power. It was way to easy to sink stuff with it in vanilla. On the other hand, I think we could get tonnage credit for making a ship a blazing inferno (but this shouldnt be easy), even if the ship doesnt actually sink. Historically, I think sometimes Captains claimed tonnage for this sort of thing. However, the game doesn't work that way, the target actually has to slip beneath the waves. Smaller merchants should be gun-sinkable, but this should take a number of hits near the waterline. To be that precise should require a very calm sea, and being at close range. Larger merchants? Well, maybe they should be sinkable if they were carrying ammo and we got a lucky hit.

Ok good to know. Thanks JC! Although it does seem like that much HE and AP rounds in even a 5K ton ship should go down... That is a lot of a large shells (expecially with HE) hitting the decks. :)

So... I might want to conduct a live torpedo test just after leaving the harbor, just to see which way the fish decides to go. Somehow I doubt this could be considered a historical method, but I'd give me an excuse to execute a test dive, too.

Has anyone mentioned this tendency in the Big List O' Bugs?

"...each patrol should average out at about 25%-30% accurate."

:o Wow, is this accurate data that only 25 to 30% of torps (real world) were effective?? I could not imagine having to be a Capitan of a sub during war knowing those odds.... :o

Beery, is this something you can look into? I checked the game, and it's currently using 39 feet as radar depth. Unfortunately with this depth one can still go up to the bridge, even though the lookout crew stays below deck.

WOW! Excellent idea luckyone! I am going to start doing that. If my test shot misfires its back to port to give all hell to the top brass!!

I think we may have stumbled onto something here. It seems that your torpedo success rate gets "set" at the beginning of the patrol and does not change. So if you are unlucky enough to get a "bad torp" die roll then you are screwed for the whole patrol.

That also exlpains why the "hardcore" mod makes it worse. The chance of a bad die roll is amplified by the modded .sim file.

It should die roll on every shot but I guess not... :nope: :nope:

Can I use the "supergun mod" in RFB1.27 without screwing anything up? I cant hit the barn with torpedos....:oops:

Look back at the figures I've posted in this thread - some captains put 200 rounds into ships with no effect. My deck gun is based purely on historical reports. If a real deck gun sank a freighter of a certain size so can RFB's deck gun.

As I've said before, if anyone can show me an example of a deck gun sinking a ship of a certain size I'll incorporate the figures into RFB. But I don't see a reason to doubt the figures I've seen so far - and they all point to a deck gun that wasn't much good at sinking ships. Ships are built tough - they are compartmentalized to reduce the chances of sinking, they're built to withstand storms at sea which put enormous pressures on their hulls, and during wartime their crews are trained to counterflood and minimize damage from leaks. I've seen pictures of ships that were literally torn in half and the half that was still afloat was dragged back to port.

The other thing is, a gun is a very poor tool for sinking a ship - that's one of the reasons why torpedoes were invented, because due to the stopping power of water it's extremely difficult to get a shell to blow a hole in a ship beneath the waterline - within a few feet in water the shell's power has dissipated to a great extent because with high speed impacts water acts like a solid - see the Mythbusters show on bullets in water to see how this works (full metal jacket bullets for the high-powered rifles came apart upon hitting the water. Even the dreaded .50 caliber rifle was only able to penetrate about 3 ft of water).

Basically, with a gun, you have to hit the ship precisely on the waterline in order to have any chance of sinking her. A few inches too high and your shell will just tear apart her insides (most of which is just cargo and empty space) and let no water in; a couple of feet too low and due to the angle the shell hits the hull it is passing through eight feet or more of water before it gets to the hull, so it will bounce harmlessly off the hull beneath the waterline doing no damage whatsoever. But even if the shot is perfect and a hole is punched into the hull just beneath the waterline the ship can probably be counterflooded in order to bring the hole out of the water. No wonder it took real subs so many shells to get a result.

I'll put it in the readme as a reminder - this is something that RFB should feature realistically.

I have only seen one instance, in many patrol reports, of a 5K ship being sunk by the gun alone. Now, remembering that postwar analysis showed that most skippers overestimated the size of their kills, I think that proves Beery's point.

After reading all of this I can see the logic and it makes sense. Sinking a vessel of that size should be extremely difficult with a deck gun.

What about damage to the engine and other parts of the ship? Seems if you put enough AP shells through the engine compartments or control tower you could really mess up systems.

Thanks for all the help!! Not asking in offense, but instead trying to learn all this new ground. :)

Try playing with the gameplay option NO WEAPONS OFFICER ASSISTANCE unchecked.

If it's already unchecked, read the manual and through the various tutorials to understand the relevance of angle on bow (AOB), speed, range, torp exploder type and speed, etc.

Practice makes perfect. :yep:

@Quagmire - thanks for the tip about reverting to stock torpedo file :up:

Last time out I fired off all 20 torps and got no hits. It bummed me out more than I thought at the time, and reading about all these modded torps (and arguably stock torps) veering off course wasn't improving my outlook, so I had taken a few days off to wait for RFB 1.28 and/or the patch before heading back out on patrol, but then I saw your post. I decided to swap in the stock torpedo file as you suggested (didn't have to uninstall RFB - just created a new mod with just the stock torpedo file in it and installed it over top of RFB with JSGME).

Spotted a lone Japanese medium freighter soon after loading my saved game (mid patrol - saved game from a bit before I shot off all 20 torps last time - just wanted to see what would happen mid patrol). Despite a perfect PK setup in pretty calm seas (maybe 4m/s) at 1,000 yards, I missed with 2 of the first 3 torps I fired - not sure what happened to them, but given the time (late 1941) and Mk 14s, I figured a 33% success rate was pretty reasonable. The one that hit, just abaft the bridge, brought her to a standstill and she flooded somewhat but did not seem to be sinking further, so I decided to turn around and finish her off with one from my stern tubes. From 800 yards, my 4th torp ran hot, straight and normal and struck her amidships, and she went down a couple of minutes later.

So, overall a 50% failure rate, but also a feeling that at least they'll work some of the time. A much more satisfying start to this patrol. Of course, this could all just be random chance and have nothing to do with the modded torpedo file in RFB, but an interesting data point nonetheless.

I am mid-patrol with 1.27 and I've taken 18 shots at 6 different targets:

8 hits - hooray!
1 dud - clang!
2 premature detonations - how embarassing...
1 gyro error - ship that away!
2 deep runners - magnetic detonation my [bleep]!
4 misses - whoopsie...

I also had the strangest disengagement I've ever seen. I caught a huge european liner and three destroyers in the East China Sea between Amami Shoto and Yokoate Jima. Drilled the liner with 3 of 4 shots (she blew up good) and then the fun started. I got caught on the surface while on patrol in the East China Sea and suffered moderate damage. I figured the pressure hull was weakened, so I didn't dive below 80 feet. So the three destroyers are circling above me while I juke and jive and go from flank to 1/3rd and back, trying to lose these destroyers when I hear a splash and an immediate explosion. One of the destroyers apparently dropped a depth charge set for 10', because he blew up his stern. Minor fires, speed dropped to 2 knots and the stern was awash. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, I put as much distance between him and me as I could and watched in amazement as the other two destroyers did exactly the same thing. I figured I was dead meat and the IJN took themselves out.

It's SH3 deja vu all over again.