Ever destroy a ship with all hands?
 

I don't wanna sound morbid, but I have never seen in my patrol logs with SH3 Commander that the whole crew was lost. One survivor is my "best".

My Grand-Uncle drowned when his ship caught on fire. All crew left the burning ship alive in too seperate life boats and the rescue didnt go as planned and they lost one life boat when it banged on the rescue ship.
It was really bad wheather and very cold water. Unfortunatly for him he was onboard that life boat. Sucky way to go.

You can check it out if you want. HMCS Otter. Lucien Laurin. RIP.

But on the other hand HMCS Regina which was escorting a convoy prior to D-Day was sunk with all hands.
(edit)--- wrong ship, Regina did not loose all of her crew. HMCS Racoon and HMCS Shawinigan lost all hands. Thats only on Canadian side. I did not reasearch the other nations.

All that to say that it did happen quite often that all hands were lost. May there is a way to change the settings?

Or maybe I don't sink my ships fast enough, althought I did get the occasional ships broken in half.

Yes, it does happen. Sometimes when it shouldn't too. Ie, that passenger/cargo takes 3 days to sink, yet SHC still lists all hands as lost. But when you hit the Hood right in her magazine and she goes down in 15 seconds, Almost everybody makes it off. SHC just randomizes that number i think.

I've used Commander's Writable Log function to change it to suit the circumstances. If I sink a ship in calm water and it takes twenty minutes to sink, I roll a die. On a 1-5 that number of crew were killed in the actual explosion. If it's a 6 then all survived.

It is totally, absurdly random.

1) Merchant explodes like New Year's Eve with just an impact badly aimed. Cargo: lumber. 75 of 77 crew survive.

2) Passenger/cargo. Takes 3 days to go down after two torpedoes and finishing deck guns. Cargo: mail. 3 survivors.

Yeah. 'nother rum, Bertha.

I agree with 1) but not so sure of 2). Shouldn't the location of the sinking be taken into account? If you sunk the passenger/cargo in the mid-Atlantic many miles from the nearest land, then the chances of survival would be reduced. Also the lifeboats may have been damaged forcing survivors into the sea also reducing survivability. There are many factors such as the state of emergency provisions in the lifeboats or lack of water that can influence the number that actually survive a sinking, even if they actually got off the ship in one piece.

Nemo

Old game engine I'm afraid....randomisation can be good in one instance then not so good in another.

Can't say for certain, but I did hit a lone Hunt I a few months back. She was making a good 20+ knots and just happened to pass right in front of me. One magnetic under her keel and she went up like a roman candle. They never knew what hit them. Couldn't imagine anyone surviving that.

Actually felt bad about it for awhile afterwards.:nope:

I'm guessing the developers didn't see this as an integral part of the simulation so they essentially took a pass. Nice as it would have been, if they devoted the necessary time to every last detail we'd probably still be waiting for the release... :03:

Is the "crew lost" thing even part of the game itself? I thought that was something that only got added by Commander when you update your personnel file and logs there after the patrol is over. And Commander has no way of knowing the exact circumstances of a ship's destruction, only that you sank it. It works with as much information as the game gives it... and I doubt the developers could have foreseen a stand-alone program that would incorporate real ship names and data and add them to the logbook after the fact.

And I was just wondering myself why JScones couldn't have added that extra detail rather than randomize it. You're absolutely right. What Commander does has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself in that regard - it generates all the details after the patrol is finished. The only way to fix it is what I described, which is to change the log to suit the circumstances yourself.

Thanks for the reminder, Frau. :sunny:

Yeah, that perfectly right.

Definitely true. If you were sunk in the Western Approaches you were very likely to get picked up due to frequent Allied patrols. On the other hand, getting sunk outside of the major shipping lanes was often a death sentence. Regardless of how much time you had to abandon ship.

The average medium-sized merchant or tanker had a crew of between 35 and 60. The average fatality rate for ships lost on the North Atlantic was about 9 men killed per ship lost. As a rough estimate, most sinkings fell into predictable categories:

No casualties (Slow sinking, buoyant cargo, nearby rescue vessels, etc)
1-5 casualties (Usually a few men in the engine room or near the impact point killed)
50%-75% casualties (Fast sinking, bad weather, hazardous cargo, many days adrift, etc)
100% casualties (Ammo, fuel, iron ore, & other very dangerous cargoes, midocean sinkings, etc)

While researching this feature with JSCones I asked if it would be possible to factor in these casualty trends but unfortunately it was not. I understand; all in all, SH3Commander has many amazing (and much more important) features.

If there is enough interest and I get permission, I could fiddle with the program and try to replace numerical casualties with percentages...

I don't thik that would be a need, but I think what would be doable would be to compare the sinking location, your casualty groups, weather (via date, ie winter, summer, etc) and cargo.

A frieghter with lumber sinking in AM5x in June would have a much higher survival rate than a warship getting sunk in AL7x in winter.

Yeah, and normally frigates would have a high death rate because of the size of the ship containaing so much explosives, and even worst if the ship sank and the depth charges were not set to safe mode.

But definately some area were worst than other. Would'nt have not liked being sunk in the North Atlantic during winter time. But I guess in the middle pacific would be better if some ships were around.

I had a small taste of isolation when we were where performing a boarding in the Pacific and the Zodiac's engine broke. The ships kept going in front of us until we lost visual contact and we were in rough seas. It's kind of a sucky feeling to say the least. Could not imagine doing it in a wooden boat in the middle of winter in the North Atlantic.

I did get a destroyer with all hands in New York. However, it was rather calm weather. The destroyer sank after 20 minutes, with a shot that clipped off the bow.