Surface ship "crash depth" (WIP)

[Sniper297]

To start gotta clear up a common misunderstanding about "crash depth";



In the CFG file for the sub "crash depth" is the depth that the crew will level off at when you hit C to order a crash dive. In the ZON file it's "The maximum depth this ship survives", I think they really meant CRUSH depth but somebody translated it wrong.

While poking around in surface ship ZON files I found they actually have a "crash" (crush) depth too;



So lemmee see if I got this straight, a submarine designed to go underwater can survive down to 150 meters and start taking damage lower than that, but a light cruiser can dive to 300 meters with no problems? That would explain this;



Dead in the water and sunk up to the smokestacks yet still firing at every US ship passing by. Tankers are even sillier;



This one has been hanging at that depth with two holes in him for over an hour, doesn't count as destroyed yet.

After some experimenting with a KONGO, I found the "crash depth" is not keel depth but depth below normal surface draft for surface ships. With a 990 foot deep crash depth before it starts taking hit points I can't figure out why they bothered, but I set originally for 30, no effect, then 10, then 5 4 3 2 etc. 2 or 3 is too shallow, normal wave action will sink a light cruiser in about half an hour or so, so I set the minimum at 4 for cruisers, 5 for CVs and BBs and 6 for Yamato. So far that works okay, no more half sunk battleships steaming off into the rising sun with 4 holes in the bottom and down by the bow with the number 1 turret completely submerged. Main thing it needs now is tweaking and testing, so a BB with so much flotation gone it's settled 20 feet deeper doesn't run off like there's nothing wrong, but we don't want one taking damage from settling 5-10 feet either.

[Den0]

Does not compute. Bad design? Missed coding? Why?

[TorpX]

I've noticed this in the files as well. Never played around with it.

You're idea sounds promising. One thing that might be a problem; ships taking damage in rough seas. The bigger ones, I mean; small coasters shouldn't be out in a storm anyway. They may have set the values very large, so they didn't have to worry about ships going down by themselves.

[Admiral Halsey]

Well this does explain all those time's i've hit a ship with my last torp only to see it go steaming over the horizon with the bow completely submerged.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Admiral Halsey

Well this does explain all those time's i've hit a ship with my last torp only to see it go steaming over the horizon with the bow completely submerged.

Yeah, no kidding.

I'm wondering what governs how much speed they lose when they suffer damage/flooding, or for that matter, how fast they can repair the damage.

Which of course brings us right back to the question why have it at all?

I don't know. Good question.

[Sniper297]

This is a common scenario with full realism, fire 4 fish at a carrier and three are duds. One hit does some damage;



Not really serious, but it should be easy to catch. Dodge depth charges, creep outside the five mile circle, surface to chase after the CV, do an end around and work in for another attack 6 to 8 hours later;



And somehow the damage control crew managed to do the equivalent of a complete 1 year yard overhaul in 8 hours. Not much can be done about that, once you let them pirates out of sight they're stacking the deck, marking the cards, slipping aces up their sleeves and loading the dice. No way to fix that, which is why realistic sinking times mods don't work very well.

[Sniper297]

Which of course brings us right back to the question why have it at all? Bad weather I'm working on, made a test mission with max wind speed therefore all the waves I'm gonna get. 1 fish each into a KONGO, HIRYU, and SHOKAKU, three fish in a YAMATO, all sank within 20 minutes plus a KUMA light cruiser I never fired a shot at. Numbers obviously have to be adjusted higher, what I'm aiming for is a battered wreck so low in the water that it LOOKS like it SHOULD sink with no further action, not one that settles a few feet with a 5 degree list sinking 15 minutes later. I would have done this with the flooding times in the zones.cfg file instead, but that thing is such a cluttered mishmash of who knows what does what and which values do nothing because they're leftovers from SH3, I'm afraid I'll make the player sub sink in 3 seconds after the lines from the pier are cast off. We've already had enough of that nonsense. Not looking for perfect kills every time either, there's always a random element of how much damage the initial torpedo explosion does. I removed Webster's enhanced torpedo mod and restored the original default fish, if the #8 I'm looking at is the Mark 14 that has min EF = 180 and max EF = 350, with a damage radius from 3.5 to 8 meters. Smack a Kongo with three of them and it could remove anywhere from 540 to 1050 of the 800 hit points, if it's high then down she goes, if it's 540 that leaves 260 to go. If it settles down from flooding to the critical depth it takes 0.5 hit points per second, so 30 per minute, and should lose the 260 remaining hit points in about 8 1/2 minutes. Once I get the depth tweaked I'll probably lower that to something like 0.2 so it loses 12 hit points per minute or something.
The general idea is you'll still wail and lament watching a BB or CV steaming away after shrugging off hits from your last torpedoes occasionally, but not every single time. Balance of gameplay. And of course it SHOULD be visually obvious that the ones that get away aren't that badly damaged, if it looks badly damaged then by all that's holy it should sink before getting far enough away that it's "removed from the game board" still unsunk.

[chrysanthos]

Sniper297 i am glad you make tweaking in the crash depth zone too! i almost try and nothing so far....