[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

I wonder....bigger to me means proportionally more volume (volume increases by the cube of the dimensions) and more displacement. More displacement means more buoyancy. But this buoyancy is reduced by the load the ship carries. So the hypothesis is this: whether or not the ship has cargo (i.e., westbound vs. eastbound tanker) should make a bigger difference for T3s than small tankers because when a T3 is empty, it has oceans of extra buoyancy compared to a small tanker.

To me it feels like small tankers are unrealistically buoyant - there's something glitchy about their displacement/load. Finally, I still stick to the point that a torpedo would be more likely to compromise more than one compartment when hitting a smaller ship than a larger one, because the bulkheads would be closer together in a smaller ship. Hence catastrophic damage should be more common in hits on small ships.

One other thing to wonder about is this: ships are more likely to sink with damage at the extremeties (bow/stern). When the ship's bow is compromised, it starts to lean that way, like a lever. In a long ship, the lever is longer, and hence the water that is sinking the ship can more easily (with less force required) bring the ship into a fatal listing angle. With a smaller ship, the lever is shorter, and it requires proportionally more force to bring about the fatal list angle. What do you think about that?

It would make sense that a solid hit to the forecastle or engine room should cause the ship to sink on its on with just one hit; especially a hit to the forecastle. Besides the water that would normally flood from the initial hit, you've got the engines still propelling it forward which forces water into the boat at high pressure. It's like a bilge pump working in reverse.

A hit to the engines will cause the same sort of effect, though generall not as fast. Just like the forementioned, it works on the lever principle. The ship will still have momentum and creates a vacuum of sorts sucking water into the ship until it either tips upwards and goes down, or the flooding gets contained; in which you end up with a ship that has no propulsion and becomes a sitting duck that you can come back for later and take out with the deck gun. The (good) homing torpedos can usually do this pretty well provided the ship is travelling fast enough.