Freighter sinks !!!

[SteamWake]

So what do you say?

Well this one sunk down by the stern and in shallow water. The stern struck the bottom and she just kind of bobbed around for a while. No biggy seen this a hundred times in previous titles.

So I 'flew' the camera over to watch the scene beneath the water. I fully expected her to slip beneath the waves and settle down on the bottom like I have seen so many times before... thats when it happened.

Suddenly the bow dips beneath the waves and she starts to sink... into the bottom.. finally the entire ship slipped through the ocean floor completly and disappeard.

Thats some soft mud there

[Turm]

Same here. Sunk a troop transport with a hit to the stern. I was about to put in a second torpedo (or maybe a third) to finish it off, but to my surprise it suddenly sank, some 20 minutes after I first hit it. The first time I've seen a ship sink to flooding.

It too hit the bottom once, then carried on drifting through the sea bed. Once it disappeared, the sounds all stopped too. Maybe it's designed that way to help performance... ? Either way I don't like it. In shallow waters you no longer have obstacles to avoid. Remembering where you sank the ships on 100% realism is all part of the challenge

[SteamWake]

It kind of reminded me of rpg's where the monsters you killed would slowly sink into the earth.

It's almost as strange as the DD dropping out of the sky I saw the other day.

[Conrad von Kaiser]

I've seen this a few times myself, noticeably when I sank the Ark Royal in Plymouth. Struck ground then her aft end kind of started levitating until she was 90 degrees. Then she started disappearing into the seabed.

I always chalked it up as a way to keep the performance issues to a minimum with all the new eye candy, less things to render. Also get's rid of the sunk ship but too shallow to register as sunk thing that you get in the harbors at times.

[wamphyri]

I've been looking into this and it looks like all ships are set to sink 300m after their dead. Then once they hit 300m they disappear. Seems like the terrain doesn't effect their sinking at all .. >.<

[Turm]

Well, yesterday I sunk a couple of ships that settled on the bottom!!! (Well, a few metres above the bottom, naturally). "Wow", I thought... until I realised that huge plumes of smoke were rising up out of the sea from the sunken ships for a good 30 minutes or more!

So, maybe that's why ships disappear now, to stop the endless smoke rising from the depths? Quite possible. Why the smoke particle emitter can't switch off when the ship goes under the surface, I do not know. The smaller smoke and fire effects do - just not the big ones.

[SabreHawk]

Yep, I blasted one in half in the training mission and watched was the fore half settled onto the bottom and remained, while the aft half sank and hit broken end first, and plunged right into the bottom and vanished.

Speaking of the bottom in SH5, I do like it. So much better than before where it was flat and lifeless. This bottom is not flat, but has a quite uneven surface and seaweeds and various rocks, and a nice sandy texture.

But with that unevenness, in shallow water it has my Navigator forever telling me again that we are in shallow water.
Really? Ya dont say............ok will ya shut up already! I know, and whats more we will be for some time now, I can see the map.

[Arclight]

Normally they come to rest on the bottom, but if something explodes on the ship it gets forced through the bottom. Happens more in the shallows.

At least that's how I understand it.