Ok lets think about this for a moment. Onboard a ship are MANY highly combustable substances. From fuel to paint (ever seen paint burn, nasty stuff). Hell even the old fashion ROPES burnt real good!(hemp). You add in the volitile nature of war cargo carried by merchants and it all adds up to a very dangours mix. It dont even have to be munitions, all the packing and materials used back then were not very fire resistant.
Now take into account that these ships are MERCHANT ships not WARSHIPS. This means that when they were built the CHEAPEST means possible were used (after all its all about money right) in their construction. This also means NO armouring (of course). So what you end up with is the THINEST steel/iron (lot of iron was still used) ship's hull and bracing that money can buy, that just passes survey (commissioning of a ship). now what happens when you heat up any metal ? It gets plyable/soft, it looses its structual strength.
So what do you think happens when you have a raging fire onboard a ship - it looses its structual strength and is prone to critical hull integrity loss. Why, because the fire has weakend the Bulkhead an tween decks to such a degree that the shear weight of the ship its self causes it to collapes in on its self.
Even today an onboard ship fire is a MAJOR concern and is never taken lightly. Its 1 of a seamans worst nightmares.
Hence why "Set the ship alight" was part of SOP's for DG action. Basicaly its an attempt to get the fire to such a state that the ship is doomed by its own nature.
Therefore "setting the ship alight" should have a detrimental effect to the ship's integrity.
As to the rounds used by U-Boats, I dont think any1 realises just how big a blast area they have. For a 105mm round we are talking around the 50m mark (88m about 36-38m). Thats sharpnel, hot gases that will sear flesh of bone, start fires and a shock wave bad enough to make you deaf for quite some time. And thats just a standed HE round. AP rounds are basicaly a delayed reaction fused round. So instead of deternation on contact they are delayed UPTO 0.5sec. Now 0.5 sec's may not seam like much but you have to remember how far that round can travel INSIDE the target for those 0.5 sec's. Yes it has to punch threw the hull and the inner hull/Cargo hold bulkheads, but this is excatly what they will do. Remember we are talking CHEAPLY built ships here - not a battle wagon. Yes it should take a few good hits to get the results your after but not 200+ something, thats just total ¢rap. If its taking more that 10-20 rounds (thats good solid hits to suitable parts of a ship, not total of rounds fired, you should miss more than you hit) to get a ship well an trully ablaze and SUNK than its not correct. Sinking times may still take a while but not to the extent of days required to sink a ship. Also the size of a ship to a certain degree dont count, because the bigger the ship the more volitile material carried onboard.
So I have in the LRG mod made all HE rounds have a bigger blast area with a smaller punch and AP rounds have a Bigger punch but a smaller blast area (to sorta simulate internal explosion as opposed to a big surface explosion with HE). The problem we face is that ALL rounds detornate on contact (no penertraion of the ships hull model). The funny thing is I have noticed that after doing so and watching Battle wagons duking it out, that from a good AP hit that looks like it didnt even do much of anything, the ships will slow down like thay have internal problems. The HE rounds quite successfully blow all the packing off ships and do indeed start fires. If an AP round hits a critical area (magazine) the battlewagon is doomed (Big BOOM). I then applied the same reasoning to the subs DG's and I'm very happy with how it works. I dont think some of the realisim crowd will be overly happy but then again many of the so called realisim tweaks are not altogether realistic anyhow.
I do apologise for the rant but I think the above needed to be said.
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