strange, eh? sub vs ships: ramming
 

last patrol i was on, i took on a pretty huge convoy and after the smoke had cleared and the convoy had moved on, i realized there was still a small merchant sitting there powerless. As i set my sights on him, i realized i no longer had any torpedoes. i also had no deck gun.

so i rammed him.

to my surprise, my XXI at full speed did no visible damage to him, despite having charged him at ahead full.

i once accidentally rammed a ship in my earlier days while submerged, and it resulted in a sunk british destroyer.

so my question is: why does this merchant live while the destroyer lies at the bottom?

Destroyers are pretty darn fragile. I've had them sink themselves by ramming me!

Steve

The game is kind of messed up that way.

That said, ramming is something no real-life sub commander would ever attempt. You risk losing your torpedo tubes at the very least.

Wasn't it also a bug that you could ram ships from underneath them and they would sink? I seem to remember something like that, but I think it was in pre 1.4 releases..

Just recently a destroyer rammed me and I think my conning tower ripped out his belly.

I'm on 1.4.

Steve

Now that takes me back to my wild and reckless days. :DL

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/9247/funzp7.jpg

^^ :haha:

true, a real sub commander would never do that but hey, in the world of hypothetical and fictional subsims *looks around at SHIII purists and 100% realism-ers*
eh i'll stick to letting that boat go.

great pic btw :haha:

Because there are vital damage zones from the damage model situated along the keel area.

The chances are you've ruptured a fuel or ammo bunker resulting in catastrophic damage.

Where was that film from sh3 with the uboat porpoising and leaping out of the water like a fish? Flying over some ships as I recall.

Similar situation, maybe technically the following would be considered ramming - but may have worked in real life (although it would have been very hazardous).

Used my last torp on a merchant. It started to sink, became partially submerged, but refused to go down. After waiting a few hours (on TC), it hadn't changed.

No more torps, no more deck/aa ammo.

Soooo, not willing to lose the kill I nosed my surfaced VII onto the deck area that was partially submerged, which turned out to add enough weight to the merchant to cause it to continue to sink. I simply ordered reverse once it started to take on water, and watched it go down.

Unorthodox - yes, but did it work - yes!

If the vessel hadn't already been sinking I doubt this would have happened....normally the two vessels simply merge with one another (in graphical terms).

If I remember right, in the original vanilla version you could sink a ship by pocking it with your periscope :har:

Sure could, see #9