Engines stopping on ships

Hi all,
i normally lurk in the SH3 forums, but i'm trying to do a mod for the aircraft carriers in SH3, and can't get round a problem i'm encountering, so i'm hoping one of the SH4 modders may be able to help.
When the boats in SH3 are attacked by torpedo, engines that appear to be well beyond the blast radius of the torpedo, stop, but i can find no logical reason in the settings for the ships, or the torpedoes, that would cause them to do so.

It doesn't seem to matter what kind of ship it is, it happens even with the most heavily armoured ships, the battleships.
I've tried all sorts of zone configurations, doubling the hitpoints for the ships to 2000, raising the hitpoint tolerance of the engine zones, minimising the number of zones in the area etc.

Nothing works to stop the boats coasting to a halt.

Has anyone encountered the "dead in the water" syndrome with the ships in SH4 when the engine bay is hit by torpedoes, and has anyone found the reason for it?

[Starforce2]

If you score a hit on the engines with a torpedo..shouldn't stopping the ship be exactly what would happen? They are steam driven after all you flood them the fires go out and boilers explode...

[ColonelSandersLite]

You also have damaged drive shafts and propellers to deal with as well. Not to mention stopping to reduce heavy flooding.

[Starforce2]

Plus, disabled merchants are a good way to loose DD's if you remember to mark their location. Disable a few, sink some, when the escorts leave, finish off the floaters.

I think you've missed the point.

I'm referring to engines that are OUTSIDE the torpedoes blast radius.

If you hit an engine with a torpdedo then yes you'd expect it to stop, but for big ships with multiple engines ( especially the warships ) it wasn't that easy to stop all the engines, even with torpedoes, and it wasn't uncommon for some of the screws to be turning even as the ship went down.

For instance, the Illustrious class carriers have a beam width of about 32 metres, ( so 16m to the midpoint) and a torpedo has a blast radius of about 9 metres (in SH3).

So firing an impact detonating torpedo at, say the port side engine, i'd expect the port engine to stop, but not the starboard one as well.

Scoring a hit to any of the engines stops all of them within a couple of minutes, and it's not realistic. They become sitting ducks. Not much challenge in that is there?

Occasionally it could be regarded as a bonus due to some internal complication that stopped the other engines.
But not every time fgs
It also happens when the boats draught has hardly dropped in the water at all, so it's not due to flooding of the other engine rooms.

Does the same thing happen in SH4 when the engines areas are hit, and if so, does anyone have any idea why?

[ridgewayranger]

Hi There,
Big ships of WW2 usually had 4 screws, but the engine and boiler rooms were not all abeam of each other, they were also staggered along the fore & aft line so if one was flooded the others would still be turning.
RR

the damage models on many ships are messed up but in most cases its the level of damage that can shut down engines rather than location of said damage.

some ships can have the entire engine room blown open and they cruise off at full speed.

you can also find a ship stop for repairs then after a few minutes start moving again if it isnt damaged any further but it doesnt happen very often.

bottom line is sh4 ship damage models are set up well but werent completely done for all ships and very poorly completed on others so damage results can be wildly different from one ship to the next so you can often see strange things that arent realistic and dont make sense.

Thanks for the input guys

Sounds like the SH4 damage model is more advanced than that in SH3, in terms of the ships being able to stop for repairs and get back underway afterwards. Do they get out of the attack area before they stop for repairs, or do they just stop on the spot, inviting another attack?

Ref my original question on the "dead in the water" syndrome, it was staring me in the face all the time

I'd become so pre-occupied with giving the A/C's realistic capabilities WITHOUT altering the stock zone parameters, i'd stopped looking at them by way of a solution and was trying different zone configurations to protect the engines.

After posting this question i sat back and tried to clear my head of it.

Basically, the engines in SH3 are destroyed so easily because they are too weak, plus the flooding time is too fast.
I'd raised the hitpoints of the engines a bit to see if it made any difference, but only by 25 points, which wasn't enough.
The flooding time was the real key, at 180 seconds it was too fast, which is why the other engines would stop through flooding even though they weren't destroyed by the torpedo blast.
In RL, an engine room destroyed by a torpedo blast would be sealed off asap, so as to maintain the integrity of other parts of the vessel, and other engine rooms. The flooding of subsequent engine rooms would be a gradual affair, probably caused by unnoticed seepage until it was too late to be controlled while maintaining the function of the remaining engine(s), unless of course the effect of the attack was catastrophic, or the sealing bulkheads were compromised.

I just extended the flooding time of the engine room from 3 minutes to 1 hour and raised the hitpoints for the engine room by another 25 points to 150 to give engine rooms at the edge of the torpedo blast radius a better chance of survival, and the problem went away

If the engine rooms not destroyed by the blast are going to flood, they will still do so, but they'll take much longer and it means she's not going to stop anytime soon for you while you set yourself up to finish her off.
You'll have to chase and stalk her, unless you've done her enough combined damage to sink her.

I also raised the engine room floors up a bit from the bottom of the boat, to delay the onset of flooding further.

Problem solved, thanks again guys

Originally Posted by roadhogg

Thanks for the input guys

Sounds like the SH4 damage model is more advanced than that in SH3, in terms of the ships being able to stop for repairs and get back underway afterwards. Do they get out of the attack area before they stop for repairs, or do they just stop on the spot, inviting another attack?

they just stop but not always and i wouldnt say its very simulated well for making repairs but i guess its about all they could do.

you dont really know whats going on so you just have to assume they slow down flooding and such to explain it.

if you wait too long to send another torpedo it will always take extra torpedos to sink it so thats about the extenet of damage repair.

it just like a ship that normally needs 2 torps to sink but if you send one and wait to see damage then another then another it will take more torpedos to sink when they are spread out over time then if fired in rapid succession.

i assume you know destroyers always stop when listening for you but i'll mention it anyway.

i also assume you know mods play a big part too so the mods you use can cause strange AI situations.

[Munchausen]

If the engine rooms not destroyed by the blast are going to flood, they will still do so, but they'll take much longer and it means she's not going to stop anytime soon for you while you set yourself up to finish her off.
You'll have to chase and stalk her, unless you've done her enough combined damage to sink her.

Odd. I just started playing SH3 with the GWX Gold mod a few weeks ago. Twice, I've been slow on the "ID 90" method of attack and hit the merchant in the stern ... with one or two torpedoes. In both cases, I've had to do exactly what's quoted above. In neither situation did the ship either stop or sink immediately.

Hi ridgewayranger ( sorry a bit late with the hi)
In SH3/GWX the bigger ship models usually have engines side by side or 4 square, and occupy the centre section of the boat. The zone parameters for the engines dictate that they provide a significant amount of positive/negative bouyancy, and essentally hold up the centre section of the boat. Probably somewhat similar to SH4 ship models and zones at a guess.
I thought of "staggering" their positions, but info on their actual configuration has been difficult to find for some boats.
"staggering" can also cause balance issues for the boats in terms of bouyancy and listng, which are not necessarily insurmountable, granted.

Sometimes the models are not historically accurate either though.
The German K-class light cruiser had 2 steam turbines and 2 back up diesels behind them, with 2 props. The SH3 model had 3 props and shafts. ( i did a mod for the German cruisers).
The Illustrious had 3 engines and props, as does the model, but the SH3 Essex class model is essentially a copy of the Illustrious model complete with 3 props.
The real Essex class had 4 engines and props.
I'm stuck with the existing models because i can't re-model the boats prop shafts to make them historically accurate. ( No modelling knowledge).
To Webster:
it doesn't seem to matter in SH3 whether you fire the torpedoes simultaneously or at intervals, the boats don't appear to be able to repair damge when hit.
Sometimes in SH3 the destroyers will stop for a while, which is good because it allows you to creep away on silent and change course, making it more difficult for them to pinpoint you when they get going again. But thanks
I try to keep my GWX3 game as simple as possible, to avoid mod conflicts.
To Munchausen:
If you hit the back of the boat it's a fair bet you missed the engines, and if the damage your fish did to the stern wasn't sufficient to sink it , it would indeed carry on and not stop.
The issue i posted about was concerning damage specifically to the engines, and why all the engines stopped when one engine was hit.
As it's turned out, even healthy engine zones are not watertight, so a hole in the bottom of the boat was flooding them, quickly.
I have however found a way to fix it by simply extending the flooding time of those zones considerably

To Starforce, Hi

I take your point ref: flooding the boilers, but i think i at least partly covered it when i said about the unservicable/ destroyed engine room(s) being sealed off for the sake of the remaining ones.
Under a disabled merchant can be a good place to hide while you do damage repairs, reload torps or just wait the DD's out.
Only downside is if they call in an airstrike. They'll bomb their own boat to get at you, and if you're under it at the time, it can be a bit hairy
To ColonelSandersLite:

in SH3 drive/propshafts are not represented in the ship model as destructable areas, just the engines and propellers.
It's probably possible to correct that situation by creating "drive shaft" zones.
My main reservation with it is that they'd all have to pass close by the rear ammo bunker, or a single torpedo hit could destroy all the drive shafts, disabling the boat.
Not that it may not have happened in RL, it just seems like an easy way to stop the boat.
Stick a fish under the back end and destroy all the shafts.
I'm trying to achieve the opposite, and make the boats more challenging targets