Quote:
Originally Posted by TorpX
I understand that there was an effort to make them historically accurate, but afaik, there are no tests that state at A angle you get X% duds, and at B angle you get Y% duds, etc., etc.
- TorpX
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Someone changed the files after I turned it over. just from the numbers I can tell that wasn't my work. Like you, I tested it to make sure the numbers went in the right direction.
As for dud rate, here you go, from several sources.
1. Tests were carried out by COMSUBPAC's gunnery and torpedo officer, Art Taylor. Taylor, "Swede" Momsen, and others fired warshots into the cliffs of Kahoolawe, beginning 31 August. Additional trials, supervised by Taylor, dropped dummy warheads filled with sand from a cherry picker raised to a height of 90 feet (27 m), producing a 70% failure rate. A quick fix was to encourage "glancing" shots (which cut the number of duds in half),until a permanent solution could be found.
2. The torpedo controversy came to a head in July 1943 when the USS Tinosa received intelligence that a large Japanese tanker would pass
through her patrol area the next morning. They fired four torpedoes from 1,000 yards. The sound man could hear them hit, but no explosion resulted.
The skipper was about to cry and the XO and I said ‘Captain, this ship was tracking right on course with the speed and course we got it exactly right.’ He said ‘We will fire two more torpedoes at its stern and I will angle my periscope.’ We fired at it at 4,000 yards which is two miles with one miss and one that hit its stern and blew its stern up and it could not move again. Well, he sat there. We fired, over the next three to four hours, 12 more—one at a time. We fired one side; we would go round to the other side. Consternation and frustration was extreme. None of the 12 torpedoes exploded. The Americans were finally
chased away by Japanese ships sent to help the beleaguered tanker.
The Tinosa's Captain, Dan Daspit, saved his last torpedo as conclusive evidence that something was very wrong.
Early reports of torpedo action included some dud hits, heard as a dull clang. In a few instances, Mark 14s would strike a Japanese ship and lodge in its hull without exploding. The contact pistol appeared to be malfunctioning, though the conclusion was anything but clear until running depth and magnetic exploder problems were solved. Daspit's experience was exactly the sort of live-fire trial BuOrd had been prevented from doing in peacetime. It was now clear to all at Pearl Harbor the contact pistol was also defective. Ironically, a direct hit on the target at a 90 degree angle, as recommended in training, would result in a failure to detonate; the exploder only functioned when the torpedo impacted the target at an oblique angle.
3. Lockwood's men replaced the TNT in several warheads with cinder concrete and attached the normal contact mechanism. Test torpedoes were then dropped 90 feet along a wire suspended from a crane into an empty drydock where they landed squarely on steel plates. A direct, 90-degree hit produced a dud seven out of 10 times -- a 70 percent failure rate almost two years into the war. By adjusting the target plates to a 45-degree angle, the failure rate was cut in half. At a still greater angle, the exploders worked without fail. Lockwood immediately directed his boats at sea to launch their torpedoes from large, obtuse angles. They were ordered to improvise, to use anything but the textbook 90-degree track.
So yes there are actual numbers. 70% for a perfect shot and 35% at about 45 degrees. so you can take it from there but my understanding was that it was not a perfectly linear drop off and there was only a small change in the dud rate between 90 and 70 degrees.
BTW, there were some VERY pissed off people when it came to the dud rate when I released earlier versions of RFB. Maybe that's why it was changed for RFB 2 ??
As for the boats, wish I could compare the sub files I had compared to what was in the final release of RFB 2, but I no longer have them. There were complaints that I made the boats accelerate too slow, so maybe that was changed.
Also, when you talk about turning speed and radius of the boats, are you testing them both on the surface and underwater?
I did find a limiting factor when playing with the capital ships. If I got the acceleration, deceleration and coasting too realistic, the AI had collisions all the time. Because of this I wanted to go through and make an initial adjustment on all of them for consistency and then go back and make further adjustments. I think I only made it through about half the Japanese cruisers and battleships. The plan was not to include the changes until all the BB's and cruisers were completed. So the changes probably aren't in RFB
Never got a chance to do much with the destroyers. This was a frustrating issue as they act like a speedboat at times
