The "Myth" about torpedo depth settings.
 

Hello, Im the author of Natural Sinking Mechanics.

Ive figured that many skippers (especialy those who came from sh3) always try to set up their torpedoes as deep as possible. While the reasons are obvious, youre trying to maximaze the damage by hiting the keel.

However ive found something interestning when i was working on the last version of the mod and looking into compartment layout of every ship, and learning about how the damage system works.

Now at first take a look at these picture, i took it while i was modeling the zones.

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/182...osanallpq2.jpg

it shows the compartment layout of kinposan maru. Red colored parts are the keel, engine rooms and fuel bunkers. Clear are the main comparments. Blue are ballasts and green superstructures.

Now what happens when a torpedo strikes a ship (somewhere). Basicly it generates a bubble, lets call it damagerange. Every compartment that is inside that bubble will take damage. The special about the keel is that it has a small chance to break the ship in halfs. Now the damage range is set so high that the torpedo will always damage every compartment in a fair distance around the impact. Meaning you are always damaging the keel and the main compartments above every time you hit a ship, the depth doesnt matter. I agree that its not quite accurate but thats how the game is designed. So basicly you can forget about torpedo depths.

Anyway to change this? I know you have delved into it quite a bit.

actualy yes.

You could make the torpedo damage range very small. But then you would lose the ability of damaging more then one compartment at once.

Man, thats like being told my credit is no good at the lunch bar. Does this mean (looking at the model) that the 'Armoured Belt' is also a myth?

EDIT: Would modding the torps to have a larger damage value but smaller bubble achive this effect? Or are the bubble and damage inter-related?

Well, maybe that's true in the game, which is too bad, because in real life having the torpedo go off under the keel was a huge benefit.

Indeed but Im afraid the magnetic influence fuse is broken (as in does not work) making a beneath the keel shot impossible.

So were stuck with trying to poke holes in the ships side.

So when the hole appears under a vessel, its from the rise then fall of the ship making contact with the torp, rather than a magnetic fuse :doh: ??

Ideally hitting on the belt of a capital ship should have less effect. Such ships hit by US subs were very likely hit deep since that was their doctrine, shoot as deep as possible (even contact).

So that's more stuff Ubi either left out, or didn't do at all? I really wonder how much of this game is incomplete.

After seeing how this panned out, I'm not touching SH5 until it's been out for a long time.

Yep there is no Armor belt. Battleships are set about the same way. It doesnt matter wether you hit a BB at 3 feet or at 20. It will in both cases damage the keel zone and the main zones around the impact.

Torpedo damage works like this. Lets say you hit a ship with a torpedo that hits for 300 damage and has a damage radius of 5 meters... now what happens?

1. The overall hull hitpoints will be reduced by 300. If there is no more hitpoints left ship is being destroyed. If its not destroyed by HP...
2. The torpedo generates a bubble of 5 meters radius. Every zone that is touched by that bubble will be damaged by 300 hitpoints
3. Every affected zone will start flooding depending on the amount of damage and the parameters set in zones.cfg. Flooding means that zone slowly adding weight to the vessel and changing its center of mass. So a zone with 400 hitpoints damaged with 300 hitpoints will flood up to 3/4. When a zone has no more hitpoints it cannot flood any more.

Now the problem with the damage system is that the zones are in most cases completely destroyed by torpedo hits. If you increase the damage it will just make instant blowing up by total hull hitpoints more likely but it wont actualy change the zones flooding because they are already at max dmg.

Anyway. It is possible to balance everything out and make it all work with smaller damage radius. But thats a monster task, that i think cannot be accomplished by a single person in a matter of lifetime of that game, i know what im talking about :-)

Seems like with a smaller radius the balance would have to come with fewer compartments on smaller ships and merchants such that sinking would occur with fewer damaged. The highly compartmentalized nature of warships would then make more sense...

Assuming I understand correctly. The balance problem would be that not enough damage would happen (flooding) for each hit.

On warships, this would make some sense, but on merchants, no. You'd see maybe more realistic warship sinkings, but merchants would be too hard to sink.

Is that correct?

tater

An idea that the NYGM team had, who i beleive ran accross the same problem, was simple.

Shorten the length of the keel zone so its a small area, not running the whole length of the ship. And then move the keel zone to different locations on each ship type to keep the player guessing on where the "sweet spot" is.

Now there is a great idea. Can it work here?:hmm:

Perhaps an armor belt can be modeled by "indenting" the zones around the armor belt level toward the inside of the ship. That way any explosion that occurs at the armor belt would have a lesser impact on the zones of the ship because the closest vulnerable part of the ship is spaced away from it.

Think of an hourglass inside a metal cylinder. You hit the middle of the metal cylinder and the "glass" is safely away from the point of contact.

I hear ya mate, I guess that rules that out ^^

I like the sweet spot idea Ducimus, at least this will allow for some player skill to accomplish a sinking.

That and also the idea of an 'Hourglass ship' sound feasible, yet both sound time consuming. I'm picking EVERY ship in SH4 would have to have keel mods or other compartmental modification.

Be good to hear an answer on Tater's question, then at least if the bubble effect was made into a mod, those who prefer hunting taskforces would have something worth trying.