[waldopbarnstormer]

I recently installed this mod over TM1.6.5 and ROW making sure to use the correct classic file from ROW, and everything seems great except for the deck gun and some of the physics used. As an example I have used the gunnery tutorial.

The goal of the tutorial is to sink the merchant ship with the deck gun. At the current time I have so far expended at least 110 shells 50 HE, 60 AP into the hull at close range (< 500 m) along its length (although I did focus on the bows) and I have had the resulting effect of seeing the merchant with its decks completely awash, however it still refuses to sink? According to rules physics, the ship should have sank, there is no reason why it should still be afloat and yet it is. I was begining to wonder if this ship has a cargo of cork ( I have read of a heavily damaged merchant ship that remained afloat after a torpedo attack because it did have a cargo of cork, which kept it buoyant).

Having a knowledge of physics the shear weight of water entering the ship would have dragged it down and once it reaches the deck the water would rush in through open hatches and holes, thereby flooding the unbreached sections. Have you modelled this effect in your mod?

As the deck gun causes many little holes rather than one big hole it could be considered to be more effective in causing flooding as each shell which penetrates the hull would flood that section, a torpedo unless it causes catastrophic structural failure, may only flood one section. So 10 shells can breach 10 compartments without the need to use a valuable torpedo, even though 1 torpedo may have more destructive power than 10 shells.

There is also the matter of increased structural loading on the hull as the weight of water increases from flooded compartments. As seen in the sinking of the titanic, as the forward compartments flooded, they dragged the bow under, however the unflooded rear compartments remained buoyant on the surface. This put a tremendous amount of bending force through the pivot point, and so just as if you would bend a rule, it can take only so much before structural failure occurs and the ship splits in two. I guess implementing this action is not possible within the current game engine.

Finally I would like to consider secondary explosions. You have tried to replace the hit point system with a system based around flooding and buoyancy, but does this account for secondary explosions causing structural failure after the fact. Secondary explosions are often more fatal because they not only breach bulkheads and create more flooding, they also compromise structural integrity of the hull. I believe that the hitpoint system can be modified to represent "hull integrity" rather than the ships life force.

Example if using your work on flooding and stability, the hitpoint system was reworked so that a ships hitpoints would only decrease due to actual hull damage, say for example everytime it was hit by a shell or a secondary explosion or decreased slowly over time due to increased bending forces on the hull, I think this would allow for an accurate and realistic sinking model that not only took into account the effects of flooding on causing a ship to sink, but also on the effects of hull damage.