Come UP to crush depth?
 

I found this a little odd; maybe there's a reason behind it, maybe it's just one of those things....

I got two hits on a Shokaku but with a DD literally right on me. My fish probably went out under his depth charges. As expected, I started taking damage - some to the pressure hull. Despite that, Sargo was able to hold depth at 200 feet, at least at first. I have no idea why the game always requires that it take longer to repair the flooding than it takes to completely flood the compartment, but no matter who you put on repair duty, it does. You can never get it repaired before it completely floods.

Anyway, while I was dithering with that, I suddenly noticed the depth gauge dropping rapidly. We were already well below crush depth. At 500 feet (2x Test Depth), I ordered blow ballast and, miraculously, Sargo started coming up - very rapidly. 490, 476, 455, etc.

Now the strange (to me) part. At around 275 feet or so, I suddenly start taking more damage. It wasn't from any depth charges, though. Just spontaneous destruction. Radar destroyed, compressor destroyed, man down, etc. Before I can do anything else, I'm dead. In the "flyaway" cutscene, I caught a glimpse of the boat. It had an up angle of about 50 degrees. Way more, of course, than normal, but then of course the boat was heavily damaged.

Running quite a few mods but they're all either graphics or sound related, except for the Natural Sinking Mechanics mod.

Anybody else run into this that can make it make sense? Why did I have to come up to get crushed? After the initial depth charge damage, there were no more DC hits. Is it mod-related or what? Just curious; I never ran into this before.

If you have a save where you can reproduce the damage, might be interesting to see what happens without the sinking mod. My theory is the timing of the rise above crush depth was coincidental with enough damage lasting long enough you finally had a cascading failure. In other words, you didn't get shallow soon enough, nor shallow enough. The crush depth itself probably added to the damage.

As far as damage repair, I have had the crew fix minor flodding before it got to full when the initial damage was relatively light, I had a dedicated damage crew already in place with top-notch ratings and initiated Battle Stations. Any kind of flooding though indicates a lot of damage to the pressure hull which restricts further successful operations.
-Pv-

Ok, I can see that. Don't have a save - I decided to try an iron man career (save only in port); it worked for three patrols. :) But I see what you mean about having the damage AI "catch up" with player actions, because that first depth charging pretty much knocked out everything.

I'll have to keep practicing with the flood damage control; from your post it sounds like the damage repair team works faster/more efficiently if the boat is at GQ than if you merely activate the damage control team....

Thanks!

"...it sounds like the damage repair team works faster/more efficiently if the boat is at GQ than if you merely activate the damage control team...."

Definately! Take a read from the SH manual. The primary damage control is by the active crew in the compartments. Go to BStations and you multiply the damage control by 3. Activate the DC party and they ADD to the BS capability the feature where the DC crew will focus on your priority list (adding their skills to the active crew shift) with more emphasis on the DC priority list.

This is why some things don't get repaired in the order you have in the priority list because the active compartment crew works on everything in their compartment and some things are easier to repair. The DC crew works on the priority list. Make sure you have high ranking peeps in the worst damage areas.

Be aware if you are being hunted, activating BS and/or DC increases your own detection noise.
-Pv-

sounds like to me that the pressure hull just could not take anymore punishment from the pressure. I'm sure if you let the boat keep going down you would have died anyways. Its just bad luck really. This has happened to me meny times before

Wow, thanks. This makes much more sense now. I figured there was some logic to it, but couldn't dope it out. My manual only says that you can drag damaged items to the priority list - nothing about bonus to compartment crew (though that's a logical leap I might have made....). But that really clears up a lot for me. Like why some things get repaired before higher priority items.

So, then, it is definitely a good idea to put a dedicated DC crew - with high repair skills - on the boat - up to now I've been leaving that empty and dragging crewmen to it when needed (seemed the most realistic).

Thanks again!

Rob