[REQ]Realistic Depth Charges

[divittor]

Could somebody set the depths of Depth Charges to there actual capable depths in game.
Ie: Capability to only go to say 50m's 1939 ect.

I do not know the actual capabilities of them as they would have been throughout the war, but being destroyed at a depth of 150m in 1940 seems a bit far fetched?

Thanking someone in Advance.

divittor

[Gerald]

I can not say for sure, but probably there are opportunities for it, but lost the realism of the game if you only allow 50 yards or similar

[TheDarkWraith]

the DepthCharge controller does not have any provisions for specifying maximum depth let alone years. All depth charges will fall at the fall speed specified in the files to the depth set by the AI (+- depth precision specified in the files)

[Vanilla]

The Royal Navy Type D depth charge was designated the Mark VII by 1939. ... New hydrostatic fuzes increased the maximum detonation depth to 900 feet. The Mark VII's 290 pound (130 kg) Amatol charge was estimated capable of splitting a 7/8-inch (22 mm) submarine pressure hull at a distance of 20 feet (6.1 m), and forcing the submarine to surface at twice that distance.Change of explosive to Torpex (or Minol) at the end of 1942 was estimated to increase those distances to 26 feet and 52 feet (7.9 m and 15.8 m).

[divittor]

Ahh ty for the info guys.

So the charges could go down to 300m/900ft in 1939.

I guess I better not let em know I'm there then

[Ducimus]

You can set an arbitrary depth on hedge hogs (at least in SH3), Air dropped bombs and air dropped depth charges as well, but not so on depth charges for reasons TDW already cited.

Being able to set a depth for DC's has been wanted since the earliest days of SH3. I suspect the only way it's possible, is a masterful hack job on controllers via a hex editor. However I also think its entirely possible the game code may not acknowledge a controller altered in this manner. I'm just guessing on all of this, i don't really know.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Vanilla

The Royal Navy Type D depth charge was designated the Mark VII by 1939. ... New hydrostatic fuzes increased the maximum detonation depth to 900 feet. The Mark VII's 290 pound (130 kg) Amatol charge was estimated capable of splitting a 7/8-inch (22 mm) submarine pressure hull at a distance of 20 feet (6.1 m), and forcing the submarine to surface at twice that distance.Change of explosive to Torpex (or Minol) at the end of 1942 was estimated to increase those distances to 26 feet and 52 feet (7.9 m and 15.8 m).

Beat me to it. I like that.

A reference or link for the DC itself would have been nice, though.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WAMBR_ASW.htm

[Vanilla]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Beat me to it. I like that.

A reference or link for the DC itself would have been nice, though.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WAMBR_ASW.htm

Now I am confused.
My quote was from Wiki (sorry not giving it straight away, I just forgot to do it when typing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charges that in turn references this book:
"Campbell, John, Naval Weapons of World War Two, New York, New York: Naval Institute Press, 1985, ISBN 0-87021-459-4, page 89"

Wiki states - 900ft while the link you gave says: "Settings 300 feet (91 m) max, later units 500 feet (182 m)"

What is correct?

[andycaccia]

Personally, I'd rather go with navyweaps infos. Wikipedia is not always accurate. Besides, if such weapons had been so advanced in 1940, then U boat waffe would have probably been destroyed by 1941. Instead they suffered from 1943 onwards..

Even in game there is a tooltip which says that british depth charges could only explode at 300ft at the beginning of the war, and it was with the capture of some U boat that the Brits discovered that the krauts could dive twice that depth..

[Sailor Steve]

It's possible the Wiki author mistook postwar development for wartime DCs. Note the postwar British Mk X** was good for 1500 feet and the US Mk 16 was designed for 2500 feet.

Also remember the line from Das Boot about being certified to 90 meters, and note where the red line is on your depth guage. The fact that u-boats could reach more than 600 feet safely, and sometimes a lot more than that, and that US fleet boats also sometimes went well below 600 feet, it wasn't something that a captain really wanted to risk on a regular basis. Five hundred feet for a depth charge was probably plenty, especially since it could take a submarine quite awhile to get deeper than that.

I own a copy of Campbell, but I can't double check the figures since it's currently living in a storage unit, and digging it out could take hours.

[Farinhir]

Originally Posted by Vanilla

Now I am confused.
My quote was from Wiki (sorry not giving it straight away, I just forgot to do it when typing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_charges that in turn references this book:
"Campbell, John, Naval Weapons of World War Two, New York, New York: Naval Institute Press, 1985, ISBN 0-87021-459-4, page 89"

Wiki states - 900ft while the link you gave says: "Settings 300 feet (91 m) max, later units 500 feet (182 m)"

What is correct?

This looks to me as if the person who edited the wiki had a conversion issue. They read 300' as 300 yards (or meters if that is the case) and gave 900' as a conversion. Even so, 91m > 50m, and 182m should be good enough to reach most u-boats of that day. The type VIIA - Type VIIC had crush depths around 200 meters, and the Type VIIC/41 had a crush depth around 250m. So far I have only played the first few missions, but it seems the boat I am on is the VIIA.


Source for crust depths
http://www.uboataces.com/uboat-type-vii.shtml

[Vanilla]

I found the book mentioned as reference in Wiki DC article. It says nothing about max depth of any DCs at all. Just giving a vague statement that:

The main developments [during the war?] were to increse ... the maximum depth settings ... from 300ft (91m) to twice that figure and eventually to 900ft (274m) or 1000ft (305m)...

That's all.

There is also a well written article on wiki about Battle of the Atlantic stating:

Originally Posted by wiki

There were disadvantages to the early versions of this system. Exercises in anti-submarine warfare had been restricted to one or two destroyers hunting a single submarine whose starting position was known in daylight and calm weather, rather than stormy conditions. German U-boats could dive far deeper than British or American submarines, to well below the deepest setting on the British depth charges (A dive depth of over 700 feet (210 m) against a maximum depth charge setting of 350 feet). More importantly, early ASDIC sets could not look directly down, so the operator lost 'sight' of the U-Boat during the final stages of the attack, a time when the submarine would certainly be manoeuvring rapidly. The explosion of a depth-charge also disturbed the water so that ASDIC contact was very difficult to regain if the first attack had failed.

I think we can confirm with certainty that in the early war the DCs could not go below 91m. Furthermore, consider that in the beginning of the war standart complement of DCs were 15-40 per DD, normal DC attack used just 5 charges and even those 5 were set at different depth since it was impossible to determine the sub's depth (only 1-2 DCs got to max 91m), moreover ASDIC was almost useless if the first DC attack failed... Shoking! I never could imagine that U-boats were that 'invincible' during the early war.
We definitely must mod all this in.

[divittor]

TY all for the info.

My reason for asking was a mention somewhere that when the allies found out the depth a Uboat could go they were amazed.
These dive depths, in the early war, making depth charge attack less effective.
Hence a need in game for realism with respect to depth charge attacks.

The IRAI mod introduction made the AI's behave in a more realistic manner IMHO. But to attack aggressively with weapons that are not realistic makes for a difficult encounter as described in other threads.

Hoping u guys might figure a way without hacking. As mentioned before i have no clue to modding, programming ect. but this game needs depth charges that do what it says on the tin

The depth they explode at can be changed by patching files.
Problem then is you'd need to re-patch the files as time went on.
So a pre-Game launcher would be needed like SH3 Commander does for SH3.

[Farinhir]

Originally Posted by privateer

The depth they explode at can be changed by patching files.
Problem then is you'd need to re-patch the files as time went on.
So a pre-Game launcher would be needed like SH3 Commander does for SH3.

What about AI modding. Rather than changing the weapons to be accurate we could attain the accuracy by setting a maximum depth the AI could use in whatever timeframe. Now the issue I see with this is that I have no idea what is moddable with the AI. I am just saying that it might be another avenue to take.

If, for example, we were able to set the ability of a DD to set the depth down to 91m for early war, and have that change as time passed, it could have a similar effect. Just a thought. As stated before, I have no idea if this is possible.