I wanna rest my boat on the bottom...
 

without exploding.

There are times that I want to rest the boat on the bottom of the body of water in which it sits. Such as when waiting for sundown to make a stealthy escape from an enemy bay. But more importantly, I would like the boat to to rest on the bottom without inflicting more damage upon itself following a horrendous depth charging, Ala Das Boot in the Straight of Gibraltar.

But for some reason it was programed for the boat to take on huge amounts of damge if it touches the bottom at all. I understand the boat taking impact damage, but I don't get the taking damage when the boat is very slowly lowered to the bottom.

Is there a way of eliminating this oversight? I would like to have a scenerio like that in Das Boot, and what really happened during the war for all sides. There are numberous accounts of boats laying on the bottom while waiting or effecting repairs, but the way the game is set up, you touch bottom, you're screwed.

Another thing I was thinking of is eliminating the "death" screen unless the boat is crushed by exceeding the crush depth. Right now it is done if your hull drops below the percentage limit. How about if the boat is stuck on the bottom, let us determine when we are truly screwed, instead of the game kicking over to "death" screen.

If the boat is on the bottom, and all compartments are completly filled and the crew is drowning, then that would be the point I would say My boat is dead.

But if it is on the bottom and the hull is at 50%, but one compartment floods completly, I would like to TRY to save the boat and crew and crawl back to base.

Granted this is not really realistic, but neither is the constant pinging the escorts do:)

Anyone have ideas for these?

yes i agree, but the destroyers will still see you....

Actually, bottoming a boat was very dangerous, as you concentrated force on a very small part of the hull, which was designed for the even forces of water pressure. This concentration of force could and did sink boats. The reason you hear stories of getting away with it and don't hear stories of problems is that the ones with problems didn't survive to tell stories.

Don't confuse movies with reality. Bottoming a boat was not done unless it was unavoidable. It certainly didn't qualify as a tactic. The game is correctly configured as is.

I don't know, reading some of the patrol reports on wikipedia, I see quite a few mentioning settling a boat on the muddy bottom to wait until nightfall for various reasons.

For example

S-38

I see S-34 also used the tactic so at least 2 s-boats did it in a quick search. I'm pretty sure I remember reading about non s-boats doing it too.

...perhaps these 2 were the excpetion to the rule, don't know. Looking at Tambors and p-class boats, I saw a few reports mentioning being forced to the bottom due to damage and lying there with repairs underway, but no more that specifically said they did it on purpose. I'll quickly look through some of the gato/balao reports.

...looking quickly through the gatos, I saw Dace, Scorpion and Guavina all mention being on the bottom with Guavina being the only that seemed to do it deliberately during "one of the severest depth charging of the war." The others seemed to have been forced into laying on the bottom by depth charges and damge. Seems to me it should be a viable tactic and while you definitely should take some damage(possibly enough to end your career), it shouldn't always be game over

In the book Iron Wolves, the author mentions one instance where he and the crew thought they were doomed because they couldn't get their bottomed out boat out of the mud. I forgot how long it took but it basically involved the crew running fore and aft to rock themselves free.

I've actuallly put subs on the bottom....with no ill effects other than kicking up some mud.
So...it can be done.


Cheers!

Yeah, the mud creates a seal around the hull and trying to move it out creates a suction effect. If you watch any wreck detectives / sea hunters type programs, they sometimes have problems with cables snapping due to the massive increase of weight the suction creates. It also happened in Loch Ness, where the raised the Wellington bomber. They'd calculated the weight of the bomber, (in the air - it weighs less in the water) built a frame to withstand twice that weight as a margin of error and first time they tried to lift, the frame was destroyed due to the suction of the mud.

As far as keels not being able to withstand the weight, I believe the keel carries more weight on the surface than submerged due to the near buoyancy of the sumberged sub. Several WW2 subs are displayed 'mounted' on sand and the subs I have seen in dry dock have all been supported on a very narrow strip of the keel on railway sleepers.

Of course accidental grounding would cause problems, if things like the supersonic emitters weren't secured by being withdrawn through the hull.

I recall seeing in the Fleet Boat operations manual (uss pamponito site), that there was a section concerning bottoming the boat and being sure the ultrasonic bulbs were retracted before doing so.

Well I don't know a lot about how the Jap DD's sonar worked but I guess that if the bottom was ideal conditions, it might be of some advantage as a last resort, to bottom it out (maybe the soft mud would absorb some of the sound???) but I don't think it would be to hard to ping out a big steel tube if the DD had a pretty good idea where it probably is.

If I remember right, Sailor Steve had a good post on this a while back.:hmm: Maybe we can dig it up or he could repost his thoughts.

whether or not this was a viable tactic, I would still like to have my boat rest on the bottom after taking the initial impact damage while my crew perform repairs, instead of taking damage second by second as what currently happens.

What files need modding to achieve this?

I'm sure I've rested my boat on the bottom before with no ill effects. Just stop your engines and set depth, so you don't plough into the sea bed. You shouldn't crushed, unless the sea bed is too deep of course! Do you have any mods currently?

You didn't say what version you are running or what mods. Perhaps your insta death is caused by a mod conflict?

Right. Bottoming the boat with forward motion (any kind of motion) or with a lot of vertical speed will cause a huge a amount of damage.

Try stopping the boat. hover just a couple of feet about the bottom and then settle it down.

I've seen boats on the bottom, but in shallow water and tied up to the pier. Eight or ten boats settled to the bottom to ride out Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which was heading for Key West. A sight to see. A few had to ride out the storm because of experimental equipment on the bottom of the hull, mine included.

read this thread:
MOD - Thomsen's No Instant Death Screen Plus Effects V1.1

it should put you on the right path to get what you want.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128748