Fear not Snowman....I went through the same argument with SH3;). I was not a big fan of the meter there either. Each likes his own way to deal with the damage issue. Do I think the damage system is dead on? No way, but one has to use his imagination because real word and variables are just to numerous for a virtual world of submarines. Yes, damage needs a tweek. Maybe not a meter but perhaps a compartment or machinery shows repaired but still has a some red color in the column indicating it is not 100%. I can see your side of the argument for sure:yep:. Maybe a modder can make a change or two?

Mare Island? I never worked there. I have it as a sig in the spirit of SH4, US Submarines and Mare Island as a refit/building yard for the submarines. Kind of fitting for a damage thread:D

Is there an "Abandon Ship" option? There should be, it was always an option in real life (and is still practiced by sumbariners).

No abandon ship:down:. But they did give us a little scenerio of the demise of the sub. It is better than the black screen that SH3 used.

I think after reading most of this thread that the concept of damage control vs repairs has to be understood.

Submarine Damage control is not intended to repair anything, its intended to stabilize whatever the casualty is. If its flooding, stop it by whatever means. Water in the boat, pump it out, or lighten the sub by whatever means. These stabilizing actions MUST occur in a few minutes. Taking 20 minutes to stick a Damage control wooden plug in a fractured pipe is beyond retarted. If I was there I'd throw the moron out of the way and jam it in is seconds! Remember this is damage control, its intended to STABILIZE, not REPAIR. So when you see the wooden shoring in place those were put there to hold a plug of some sort in place. Coming shallow is also a form of damage control as you reduce the water pressure to only 12psi! Now tell me that a 2" hole couldnt have a plug installed with only 12psi back pressure against it!

Submarine "At-Sea" repairs were not always perfect, however crews took EXCEPTIONAL pride and efforts in making repairs that were usualy capable of rivaling the tender repairs. I can tell you that any hull repair below the waterline is not going to be fixed next to a tender, but in a drydock. before the floating drydocks showed up in the pacific they had to head for Pearl or California. So repairs were conducted once you were safely away from the action and could take hours to repair.

The problem here is the mixture of the two and a misunderstanding of how a submarine works. UBI did not take the time or efforts to budget a technical consultant on the team. I would have done it for free, anything to help the realism and the feel for the sim.

Frank
:cool:

@Torpex,

I like the post. It is damage control...not repair...stablize the sub for survival. Not good as new when crew show it repaired. Some just are requesting a % meter like SH3 had. IMHO, no meter is needed. If the damage is bad and hours to repair....time to go home. If you had considerable flooding, do not attempt to dive. You are patched up to make it home, not continue patrol.

I think you missed Torpex's point (he can jump in if I'm wrong.) Lots of examples of "hours to repair damage" where the patrol continued, with diving possible. That metric alone should not make you turn around and go to Pearl for drydocking. Flooding does not have to involve pressure hull cracks or tears--shorn off seawater fittings provide a very tasty flooding experience but can be fixed to 90% pressure resistance standards with gaggings and blank flanges contained in DC kits. Any recent graduate of USN sub school has been through the DC "wet trainer" and has hands on experience with pipe-and-fitting DC. WWII had similar.

Crews could not fix major pressure hull breeches, no. But the game isn't always modeling that, or if it is we aren't being told info about major hull damage that the CO would have in seconds.

The main point is, damage that results in flooding was not always a patrol-ender and if it was the CO would know why and what his risks were if he went to PD. (The drain pump can keep up with moderate flooding at PD as long as the battery lasts.) What the game has been showing is damage sufficient to flood major compartments in seconds, yet the CO has no info that this is possible. This simply COULD NOT HAPPEN.

@Snow,

There is simply to much gray area for patrol ending damage or not enough damage to not end the patrol. I do not see how a better system could be made to handle all the if, ands and but's.

If nothing better presents itself I'd argue that SH3's system was far superior as a collation of reported damage. Major components OOC and 78% hull integrity? My call to continue. I'd make a different call at 40%. Every player could adjust his behavior to his own personal risk tolerance. But at least there were analogs for the reports the CO would get from his officers and men.

And for the "purist" (really not historic, but whatever) SH3commander allowed the hull damage meter to be turned off.

True on all accounts but I always argue against the meter. I did in SH3 and do in SH4. I do not think a % is the way to show how good the sub is. It affects your decision to much to continue on or go home. It is a definitive answer to damage extent where you never really have a definitive answer on a repair, whether it will hold or not. It is a best guess or professional guess, nothing as concrete at a number shown.

I didnt like the hull% meter myself until I looked at it differently and accepted it as the best answer for a comprimise between computer programming knowledge of submarining and my desire for a better damage control system aboard a subsim. I simply decided that that % indication was the % of hull integrity systems remaining that had not been damaged. Anything below 50% was risky and worth a lil extra caution. 10% was all I needed to get home in a warship.

Snowman was right on the money with what I meant about the difference between damage control and repairs. The DC MUST happen fast, as a simple 1" hole at 400 ft could easily overcome a subs ability to come shallow and survive. The repairs are basically what take place after the DC. The sim incorrectly models the 2 together and gives no indication of whats taking place. The current DC model in SH4 takes way to long and does not give good representation for whats happened, whats getting fixed, how long its going to take, and wether its repairable or only stabilized. Included in my own 20 years aboard the boats, I've read literally a ton of books, reports, repair documents from WWII, and I can tell you that those boats took a beating and kept on ticking. The crews themselves did alot of repairs at sea to keep the boat fighting! Lets not forget these were warships and their crews wanted to fight! There were not that many subs that came off patrol due to battle damage, and it wasnt because they didnt fight, get DC'd or shot at!
So if I had a choice between what we have here and SH3 style, I'll take the SH3 version with a few simple tweaks.

My real life experience has taught me that Damage control is over 30% of a sub sim. If you give it any less you water down the quality of the sim. :(

Frank
:cool:

Also true, but there would be professional assesments made to the CO about possible diving limits after hull damage. You're right that the number is a "hard" number, but SH3 didn't give you info on what actions were then possible. Perhaps some players did spreadsheets on depth restrictions with X hull damage, but I never did. The number I took to be a relative assessment of risk--40% was significantly worse than 80%, but I still didn't know how deep I could get away with at 40%. I just knew it wasn't much.

The other thing the SH3 model did for me was increase CO immersion factors. Damage was a function of era, torpedos remaining, and geographic location. I had a semi-inflexible rule that I headed in at less than 70% hull remaining. But I'd also head in if I lost both my scopes, regardless. Or, if I was in the North Sea I might go 10% more damaged than I would near the Azores. I might go that 10% if I had 80% of my weapons left versus three fish remaining when I got hammered. And if I was in 1944 I'd head in at almost any damage level since an encounter while damaged was much more likely to lead to sinking.

Right now in SH4 (1.2 promises to adjust the damage model so we'll see) I don't get to play CO in that way. Everything is guesswork; my experience as the senior officer aboard isn't useful because I have no data to work from.

This might be a way, have a hull percentage shown but have it set up that it is either 10% higher or lower then what is shown. Make this random. You will have number and it will be some what accurate but not dead on. :hmm: Wonder if that can be worked in...

I'd go for that.

Let's see what happens in the 1.2 patch where the sub damage model has been adjusted. Debate it more then.
-Pv-

Me too! Lets resume the discussion after 1.2! :up:

Frank
:cool: