Aiming below waterline...viable tactic?
 

I noticed that when I use the deck gun and aim lower than the waterline of the enemy ship, I still see the flash and hear the explosion of the resulting hit even though the projectile has to travel the last few yards under water.

So, should I always make sure I hit them right on the waterline or can I go for the "below waterline" approach as well? The shells seem to puncture the hull just as fine, just want to know which approach is the more...ammo efficient method.

Yes as long as your round makes contact with the vessal below the water line it will flood. The lower you go the more it should flood!:up:

Its a tactic I use...the only one!

Thanks. I was assuming that becasue of the fact that the round gets in contact with the water it will slow down considerably, resulting in a much weaker penetration.

I'll keep hitting the red paint. :)

If you are shooting HE, then penetration is not an issue, as these shells explode on contact. With AP, you should theoretically notice less penetration.

For HE, I would think that water is actually a more powerfull medium to transport the explosive force.

True that. I'm using TMO and for some reason my early deck guns only have HE ammo. I would assume that water pressure can be more devastating that air pressure.

This a concept in which depth charges come into play... :know:

Water can transfer energy more efficiently than air... :arrgh!:

Thanks for the confirmation guys. I'm not entirely sure if this is really simulated in the game, but still nice to pretend that it is. :)

I always assumed it was a richochet and hit near the surface, i.e., on or just under the waterline. No idea what the game is really doing, other than there is certain damage.

I'm sure there must be a line you can't cross as to how much below you can still hit the boat. I find my best success comes from firing a wee bit below the waterline. If I don't see a flash, I assume I'm too low. Ideally, I like to see a splash, followed by a flash. That confirms to me that I'm indeed hitting the boat, at or just below the waterline.

Rounds pass a certain distance through the water in game.

How in the world do you guys actually manage to shoot "just below the waterline," or shoot anywhere with any vertical precision? People talk about it, so it must be possible, but I can't manage to figure it out.

My question put another way: When looking through the deck gun sight, how do I know whether my shot will go high, low, or whatever? The target seems to be vertically locked in the view.

Follow-up: up to what range can we consider the gun to be shooting at a flat trajectory?

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to aim higher/lower-right/left..if you add the shift key in addition to the arrows, it accellerates the movement.

Yes, but as I said, to what degree? That's why I like to see "splash-flash" to confirm a hit, ecspecially from long ranges, otherwise you may be wasting shells.

My method is that if the merchant is armed, I use torps to aviod any kind of damage to my boat (even AA guns can damage the hull), but if it's unarmed, I surface and shell the living hell out of them. And since they have no means to defend themselves, I can go as close to them as I please and at point-blank range I don't need to zoom and my shells pretty much land where I aim.

If you zoom in while manning the deck gun you'll notice an elevation scale on the left that shows range to the target. Have your deck officer call out range to the target and then subtract 200 yards or so and set your elevation accortingly. The sight picture does not move when you adjust the elevation, but you should notice the shells splashing just inside the target and see the impact flash. Just make sure the gun barrel is steady and level when you shoot.

BTW, I have no idea if the shells actually travel underwater, it might be as simple as the max ramage radius.

The damage radii of the varius shells are fairly large. Meters in some cases. So 5m short, and you might still do damage, even without moving through water.

In the stock game sinking is done by exceeding the ship's hit points. Any damage done anywhere will contribute to the sinking. There are mods that ditch this and model the ship sinking on flooding instead.

If you are playing with RFB's new damage model for merchants you have to shoot at or below the waterline. Any shot too high to allow water to enter the hull will not contribute to the ship sinking. You can use all your ammo on a ship and not sink it unless you hit below the waterline to increase the flooding.

Actually it does travel under water. Even though I see the splash&flash, a new hole is still puctured as if I hit it normally.

Not to mention that if this was the case, you would see explosions even though you miss completely, but in actuality, you only see them if you hit the target.Yeah, I heard that. I have no idea what's the TMO damage model, but it's still seems pretty dependent on accurate shooting. I remember wasting a whole lot of ammo trying to find a tanker's hold. Then I gave up and started shelling the waterline, which resulted a relaively fast demise of the merchant.




Another deck-gun question: I always notice that pretty much one shell is enough to destoy the builer room (ono shot bellow the chimney and a huge explosion follows). But that usually isn't enough to kill their engines. After this where should I aim to completely disable the craft? Propellers doesn't seem to do the trick.

I almost never use the deck gun the gunners on the Japanese ships are too accurate and fill my subs with holes before I can damage them. The new submarine damage model of RFB cures the "Invulnerable Submarine" of the stock game. Battling it out on the surface is no longer a good option for me.

Ships have lousy brakes, it takes a while to stop. Depending on the type of ship, there might be more than one boiler in operation. The Fletcher Class DD I was on had four.
When I set up a torpedo solution I always aim behind the funnel at the engine room, trying to flood both the engine and boiler rooms with a hit. This almost always results in the ship slowing and stopping and eventually sinking. It might work with a deck gun.

I'm not familiar with the structure of ships, so I don't know what's the exact position of the engine and such. I always attacked the section bellow the funnel becasue that's where I suspected the boiler room to be (most of the time I was right :) ). That always seem to seriously affect the speed, but never completely stopping them. I'll try to aim a bit behind there the next time I'm in a deck-gun situation. :)

Not that it's a big issue to shoot moving targets. They usually never make me go above standard speed and if they are unarmed I can go as close as I please (but not close enought to be taken out by the resulting explosion if I happen to get a munitions transport :P). Just trying to get the feel for effective shooting. :)

It always helps to not sit at all stop when deck gunning a ship. Some throttle on the engines tends to help the sub glide along with less deck rolling.

Plus, another tip is to consider sighting your target more towards the fore & aft of the sub: why?
1) This further reduces the relative deck rolling effects.
2) This also reduces the potential target profile your sub may present to the enemy ship you are encountering with deck guns, rather than coming up exposing your full broadsides.

Deck rolling always throws off the gun sighting. This deck sway is even more noticeable on the U-boats with their shorter beam proportions. U.S. fleet subs were more stable than the German boats.

Last point: Never sit still in a sub is also a good rule. Some movement allows for more immediate dive plane momentum for emergency dives, maneuvering, etc.

My 2 cents.