Battle of Dogger Bank

[tramker]

OK, and what about the gunnery damage ? It seems to me that ships (especially BBs) can take too many high caliber hits. I would think about 15-20 high caliber hits should significantly wreck any ship, but thinks like Seydlitz can happily take 30 or 40 hits.
This is coupled with the damage control, I played with it, but couldn't find good solution.

I think gunnery should cause significant 'infastructure' damage (knock out guns, turrets, steering, fires, propulsion, comunication etc), but not that much of flooding. Currently if I increase gunnery damage, it mainly causes more flooding and more fires.

In short I want more damage but less flooding at the same time, what do you think ?

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by tramker

OK, and what about the gunnery damage ? It seems to me that ships (especially BBs) can take too many high caliber hits. I would think about 15-20 high caliber hits should significantly wreck any ship, but thinks like Seydlitz can happily take 30 or 40 hits.

At Jutland, only 1 capital ship (Lutzow) was sunk by accumulated shell damage, and she took 24 heavy hits. She would likely have survived them had they been less concentrated forward, because she was ultimately scuttled due to her screws being out of the water and no way to tow her home.

Other ships with double-digit heavy hits at Jutland were Seydlitz (22 and a torp), Derfflinger (21), Warspite (at least 15), Lion (13), and Konig (10). Of these, only Seydlitz was in real danger, and that again because much of her damage was forward. The others lost a turret or 2, but little if any speed, and never were in any danger of sinking.

Capital ships, even relatively fragile Brit BCs, were tough things.

In short I want more damage but less flooding at the same time, what do you think ?

I think I've got some explaining to do. This will be fairly long, so bear with me...

In our games, every shell fired is tracked with its realistic ballistic trajectory and where it hits the ship model is where its damage begins to apply. The shells you see in the game are the real things for hitting, hit location, and damage.

When a shell hits, it can burst or break up on impact, or it can penetrate. If it penetrates, its path into the ship is determined, as well as the point where it explodes, if it does. Some shells are duds and AP shells that never hit anything solid can go clear through a ship without exploding. Along the way, shells can hit other armor and be deflected, such as first penetrating the upper belt and then bouncing off the armored deck.

When a shell explodes, it can damage stuff (systems, weapons), start fires, and kill crew within its burst radius. If it doesn't explode, it can still knock stuff over in its direct path. Shells that miss just short can even hit the ship underwater, below the belt. The damage done to stuff in the shell's way depends on the armor of the stuff at risk.

And now a very important point. Ships only sink when water comes in faster than it can be pumped out, just like in real life. Thus, if the shell doesn't make a hole at or below the waterline, it contributes nothing towards sinking the ship, even if it does damage to systems and weapons. However, holes oringinally above the waterline can contribute to sinking later if the ship settles enough from other flooding.

The result of all this is that there are a lot of "meaningless" hits in our games, just as in real life. A 15" shell through the funnel isn't likely to do anything to the ship. Hits that get stopped by armor also don't do much, because the whole purpose of armor was to prevent damage in those areas. IOW, our ships don't have "hit points" that are reduced by every hit. You actually have to do the types of damage at the location you hit. The bottom line, therefore, is that if you're unlucky on hit location, duds, or the effectiveness of fragile AP shells (which varies substantially per hit), a given ship can take a LOT of hits with little or no real decrease in its fighting power. OTOH, if you're lucky on all of this, you can maim ships with just a few hits.

We think our ballistics, penetration, hit location, and damage systems are the most realistic ever put into a naval sim, on a par with anything in the most detailed tank sim. As such, it produces highly variable results in individual trials, but over the long run produces very believable results on average. The only thing is, the graphics for hits always look the same, whether the shell does massive damage or just goes through a funnel. But this is realistic--you might know you hit, but you'd really have no idea of how hard unless the ship blew up, drastically lost speed, or whatever.

[tramker]

Originally Posted by Bullethead

I think I've got some explaining to do. This will be fairly long, so bear with me...

Thanks for the explanation, this should be put into the manual How does the gunnery damage slider fits in ? It changes blast radius of shells or something like that ?

Anyway, I've liked the gunnery and penetration model from the beggining and that was the main reason I bought the game. But I'm a little underwhelmed by flooding and damage control model, so maybe you should continue you explanation there.

I particullary don't like the idea of ships with more then 100% damage control, which cannot take in any water unless I manage to reduce their crew number by means of starting heavy fire. It seems to me these should be two unrelated things. How did the pumping work in the RL anyway ?

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by tramker

How does the gunnery damage slider fits in ? It changes blast radius of shells or something like that ?

That, and it increases penetration, and makes the explosions more macho.

Anyway, I've liked the gunnery and penetration model from the beggining and that was the main reason I bought the game. But I'm a little underwhelmed by flooding and damage control model, so maybe you should continue you explanation there.

I dunno, it seems OK to me. Do you have Campbell's book? It's pretty much required reading on this subject.

As best we can tell, Campbell did the best analysis of damage. Thus, we ran thousands of tests (literally) to determine the long-term averages and get them about where he says they were. You have to do a LOT of tests because the whole system has so many variables in it that you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from just a few runs.

I particullary don't like the idea of ships with more then 100% damage control, which cannot take in any water unless I manage to reduce their crew number by means of starting heavy fire. It seems to me these should be two unrelated things.

Not true. Any hit that does flooding damage has 2 components, permanent and temporary. Permanent is basically compartments open to the sea in a big way, which there's no way to pump out. The temporary is in neighboring compartments that can be sealed off and pumped out, or at least corrected (up to a point) by counterflooding.

Damage control rating is dependent on crew size vs. displacement and internal volume. Thus, some ships have more "spare" people (and therefor DC equipment) than others, and can have DC ratings over 100. But this doesn't make them immune to damage.

How did the pumping work in the RL anyway ?

Very differently than many folks have been led to believe from older naval games like GNB.

The bulk of a ship's internal volume was divided into a relative few, relatively large watertight compartments. Most of these ran clear across the ship from side to side. These large watertight compartments were usually (i.e., except for engineering spaces) subdivided into many small rooms, but these weren't "watertight". Sure, they might consist of bulkheads solidly welded to decks, but the bulkheads weren't strong enough to withstand the pressure if 1 side of them was totally flooded. IOW, the could localize an overflowing toilet, but that was about it. This sort of compartmentization, a few large spaces, was about all that anything of CL size and below had, apart from some fuel tanks and scattered void spaces. Thus, they had little or no ability to counterflood.

Larger ships usually had wing compartments outboard of torpedo bulkheads, and double bottoms, for most of their lengths. All these spaces were subdivided into many small watertight compartments. The idea was that most damage would be isoloated in these essentially sacrificial spaces, and similar expendable spaces on the other side of the ship could be counterflooded to maintain trim. But only up to a point, beyond which the ship couldn't take any more water inside.

Where a ship took a hit, it was basically impossible to eliminate the flooding. That area was open to the sea with no way to patch it, so no matter how much you pumped there, the same amount would come back in. Thus, the objective was to wall such areas off by true watertight bulkheads, shored up by big timbers, and run the pumps on the "dry" side of these bulkheads. Bulkheads always leak, either from flying fragments, twisted hatch seals, or pipe/wiring pass-throughs.

[GerritJ9]

Am I correct when I assume that by "Campbell" you mean N.J.M. Campbell's "Jutland: An analysis of the fighting"? Campbell also wrote (among others) "Warship Special 1: Battlecruisers" (ISBN 0 85177 130 0) covering the British and German battlecruisers of the Great War. Apart from the Jutland damage, it also covers the damage suffered at Dogger Bank by the various vessels (info not found in "Jutland"), for instance, though without the detailed sketches found in "Jutland". Unfortunately this most useful work is long out of print, so I'm glad I have a copy.

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

Am I correct when I assume that by "Campbell" you mean N.J.M. Campbell's "Jutland: An analysis of the fighting"?

Yup, that's him. Quite a guy for the nuts-and-bolts stuff in many eras.

[yankee-V]

Tramker,

Thanks for the scenario. Very well done. I was under the impression that Dogger Bank was really lopsided in favor of the Brits.

Just ran it with AI control of both sides. Very disappointing from a Royal Navy pov. Basically the AI threw the smaller ships against the HSF capital ships while the British BCs stayed out of the fray for the greater part. I stopped the game after roughly half of the British force was sunk, to about 5 German destroyers.

Great stuff!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Bullethead

Yup, that's him. Quite a guy for the nuts-and-bolts stuff in many eras.

He also wrote the compendium Naval Weapons of World War Two, from which www.navweaps.com takes a lot of their information. Conway Press's Warship series included a long series of articles by him, 'British Naval Guns'. I only wish he'd done other navies' guns, and that he had lived long enough to complete the companion piece he was rumored to be writing: Naval Weapons of World War One.