Splash damage from exploding ships
 

I learned something new today DO NOT sink a ship when you are like 20 feet away from it. I was using my deck gun and then the ship exploded. Suddenly i heard the OH MEIN GOTT!!! sound and so i was like "crap what happened"? So i pulled up the crew management screen. About half my crew was either dead or injured and every compartment was red. I could not stop the flooding and my boat was lost :rotfl2: So remember don't be a derp like me :salute:

Welcome back!
 

NEUMIE92 after a silent running!:Kaleun_Salute:

Yeah, it pays to stand off a safe distance.

A hard learned lesson indeed!

Now you know why boarding isn't allowed ingame :)

Yup, I believe the damage limit is 200m. Could be wrong though.

Steve

Oh, and so ya know, it's not just shooting it that can make it go boom. Sometimes while they are sinking they go boom all on their own, and that will get you to, like, say, if you were posed next to it for a screen shot or something...:hmmm:

Steve

It is one of those lessons that we all have needed to learn - safe distance is 200 Metres . . .

Depends on the damage zone settings of the victims as well as your boat but 200 metere in the majority of cases.

I remember the first time I shelled a ship at close range and had it explode and kill the entire bridge crew. It was in the gunnery training course. :dead:

Done this more times then I care to admit while trying to blast a ship in the fog.

Hey, ya'll! Watch this! :)

Steve

Kind of curious why you're getting that close in the first place. My experience has been that that the sweet spot is a range to target of roughly 700-1000m for the deck gun. Farther away and it gets increasingly difficult to reliably pump shells into the vitals...any closer and it becomes difficult to get enough shell drop to hit the target BELOW the waterline. At 500m you're essentially firing the shells flat.

A target at 400 m or less is only going to take a waterline hit if you use the downward roll. Doing that though tends to result in the occasional shell getting planted smack into the face of a wave halfway to the target.

Now for the flak gun 300-400 m makes sense. Though the kinds of targets that you'd use the flak gun on its usually less a case of doing waterline damage than it is simply pouring a few clips straight into an engine or fuel tank.

They're all inexperienced amatuers :O:

Been there, done that :doh:

First time was when I scored a torpedo hit and the ship was sinking slowly so I wanted to get close and watch it sink, I crawled up next to it and at one point I saw the message "she's going down!" followed by some explosions and I find myself at the main screen with my entire crew dead.:/\\!!

I think the whole shoot-at-the-waterline thing is overrated anyway. Recently I scored a hit on the port side of a ship and after the obligatory 2-hour follow I came up on the opposite side of the ship. My deck crew are on orders to only fire at short range–they just miss too much at medium or long–and to aim for the waterline. Assuming that the ship had maybe 8 holds, and that the torpedo hit had flooded two, I waited until the deck gun crew had scored no less than four waterline hits before ordering them to hold their fire. I figured with two holds flooded on the port side and 2-4 holds flooding on the starboard side, the ship would slowly but surely sink. I had planned to wait another hour to see how long it would take, but after no more than 15 minutes of tagging along with it I heard:
SHIP SPOTTED and there was a nice destroyer that had come along to hassle me in 46m water. Ugh! Thank God it was early in the war and I managed to sneak away at 1 knot without damage. Since the cargo ship was far ahead now, it took me another 15-20 minutes to catch up to find the ship still burning merrily, going along at 4 knots, and showing no signs of sinking. I gave the deck gun crew the green light and they fired at the waterline until the ship exploded.

It is, because you actually should shoot "below the waterline"... about a meter... for maximum effect. Ideally, you will see a splash when your shell hits the water, then a brief flash of light when the shell hits the hull. If you are close and in calm conditions, you may hear a muffled "thump." If you see any hint of fireworks, it is probably a bad shot.

If you are playing stock, not GWX, you have some leeway. The stock shells are waaay overpowered and the hitpoints are not as realistic.


Holds traverse the ships. If a ship has five holds A B C D E, and you put a fish deep into C, you have flooded C across the beam. Going around the other side and poking more holes into C won't help.

(By the way, one tip for aiming torpedos: if you can hit just under a dual crane on a merchant ship, you will generally crack two holds, since cranes use bulkheads as foundations).

This is really one job on your boat where it pays great dividends to learn to do it yourself. No matter how good your crew is (and much of the crew "skill" goes to reload speed, not accuracy, though there is some), you will always be a better shot.

True, but I no longer have the patience for it.

I now race up to ships (1939, early 1940) and park my u-boat 1000 meters away and let my gun crew do the work at 4-8X time compression.

pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip "She's going down!"

Move on to the next target.

Yeah, when I say an at-the-waterline shot, that's what I mean. I saw the shell hit the water first and then explode against the hull.

I'm playing not stock but GWX.

I disagree because there are many times I show up 2 hours after impact to see the ship listing badly to port, but it hasn't sunk yet. That surely cannot be because of a hold flooded all the way through. The port side must be heavily filling with water whereas the starboard side is holding it up.