RFB How to tell when a ship is mortally hit
 

Good day Captains,

I am pretty sure I am wasting ordinance trying to "kill" a vessel quickly to make sure it doesn't get away. In RFB the vessels seem to sink very slowly unless significant damage is heaped upon them.

Last night I was in my beloved S-Boat & made a snap shot at a Medium composite that was traveling close to flank speed. 2 of my 3 torps connected but 1 was a dud. My AOB wasn't great (52deg) & he was moving fast. I had no chance for another shot so I surfaced & engaged with the deck gun. I had put about 5 rounds into him when the deck watch spotted an aircraft so I crash dived.
The freighter never slowed & had no appreciable list when I lost sight. Surfacing some 30min later the ship was long gone & my 11kt max speed precluded a chase so I gave up on him. 6hrs later (game time) I get a notice that the ship sank.

My question is if there is a way to tell if a vessel when hit will surely go down? Right now my "cease fire" signal is if I kill the engine (no more prop wash). Are there any other tells when I can let gravity run its course?

Just as in real world, there isn't really a way (and there are numerous real incidents of ships that were left for dead but managed to survive and make it to port). The only real way to make sure is to get it down to a state where it is listed as sunk.

One tip, though: regardless of how damaged a ship is, if you leave the area before it sinks it will not be counted. So the ship you hit must not have been far.

Thanks for the reply!

I didn't measure how far the ship was away when the sunken ship marker that RFB does appeared but I would guess it was at least 100mi away.

That's why I expend so much ordinance to get them under, I don't want one to get away & not get credit.

Answer in this game is when the credit for sinking the ship shows up in your tonnage list, not before. I've had cruisers listing 25 degrees with the entire bow/stern or even the whole main deck underwater, fires everywhere, creaking groaning screeching collapsing bulkhead noises, sit there for 48 hours and nothing changes. One of the glaring faults of this game is that in real life and sub simulators from other companies (Microprose Silent Service for example) you got partial credit for damaging targets you were unable to sink.

In this game nada, fire 12 fish into YAMATO and leave her DIW and half sunk, zero credit at all, you might as well have saved the torpedoes for another target. In real life you'd get a medal since even if she was towed back to port she would be out of the war for as long as it took to repair the damage, sometimes a year or more.

That's why I won't use mods with realistic sinking physics, the way the game is programmed there's no point in attacking anything unless it goes down.

The U.S.S. Neosho (ao-23) fleet oiler took seven Japanese bombs and one suicide plane, stayed afloat, and it took another two torpedoes and 146 five inch shells from an American destroyer to finally sink the drifting wreck.

The other thing that often sinks ships is storms and weather. I'm not totally an expert on the RFB model, but I think while it does model slow flooding, it limits it to a certain extent - that is, the ship will flood a certain amount after you damage it, and then it'll stop flooding until it takes more damage. However, things like weather (i.e. waves washing over the deck) will often damage it more and force it to take more flooding. So if you're in calm weather, once you no longer see the ship's waterline changing and you don't get the "ship sunk" message, chances are it will not sink. If you are in rough weather, there is a chance it will still sink, but it's fairly small.

I hit a large merchant in thick fog and crazy rough seas around the Gilbert Islands, so thick I couldn't even see the target (I used the callouts from the sonar guy to determine when to fire). I hit with both torps and the ship sailed on, albeit at a heavily reduced speed. It was another 2 hours before I got a ship sunk message.

I had something interesting happen along those lines a few days ago. I fired a spread at a minelayer, 2 hit & it went up like the 4th of July. One torp missed & made a lucky hit on one of the escorting DD's breaking its back (2 instant kills). The rest of the escorts drove me down for 9hrs of merciless depth charging.

When I surfaced I was astounded to see the DD that I broke its back sitting there floating. Both halves a few feet apart.

i had that also in rfb just a floating i finaly just unistall it

My experience over the past weekend was with one of those big ocean liners.
I fired all 6 torpedoes, 2 aft and 4 forward, (Porpoise), and 200 rounds from my aft deck gun and never did sink it. It did look worse then a block of Swiss Cheese, tho. It had a bazillion holes in it. :D
I left it there and had to head back home for more ammo to complete my mission. I never did get credit for it.

:)

I wish I had a better understanding of the damage model.

Last night I made a Mush Morton "Up the skirt" shot on Victory freighter. 1 torp hit it in the rudder taking the screw with it & the other missed. The freighter was armed so I submerged & as I started to move around for the coup de grâce she went under.
To my way of understanding a single torp should not have brought her low.

I have had some interesting "incidents" as well. Using TMO last night I got lucky and came across two fleet carriers lightly escorted. And by lightly I mean only one cruiser. 15m/s winds and rough seas, I got into position and fired all 6 of my torpedos at the three of them. Just before the fish hit the cruiser, I got a ship sunk icon, but no credit. The other 4 were right on target hitting both carriers. one was a dud, and the other two detonated. I followed the carriers for a while trying to reload since their speed had dropped. As I was preparing another salvo on the two damaged flat tops, they sank.

This just left me scratching my head considering that I usually have to put at least four torps into one carrier to sink it, and had the one sink from one torpedo strike. I guess TMO models rough seas and some of the sinking mechanics... :-?

Worst I ever run across was the large tanker;

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...71&oe=55DDEDDB

I fully understand that a tanker has a lot of tanks (hence the name) that can be used for counterflooding and provide more buoyancy than the average merchant ship, but it's a little ridiculous when everything but the tops of the masts is underwater and it's still not "sunk".

Heavy cruisers are the worst though;

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...07809468_o.jpg

I should be able to sail off and chalk this one up as sunk, even if a rescue tug was nearby they would consider this too badly damaged to tow and would scuttle it themselves if it didn't go down. Which by all that's holy it should, this thing is a wreck.

If i understand correctly, no mods and even the stock game have a very good sinking mechanics. I'm playing with RFB and the boat seems to be a bit tougher to sink.