RFB How to tell when a ship is mortally hit

[Pigboatcook]

The U.S.S. Neosho (ao-23) fleet oiler took seven Japanese bombs and one suicide plane, stayed afloat, and it took another two torpedoes and 146 five inch shells from an American destroyer to finally sink the drifting wreck.

[CCIP]

The other thing that often sinks ships is storms and weather. I'm not totally an expert on the RFB model, but I think while it does model slow flooding, it limits it to a certain extent - that is, the ship will flood a certain amount after you damage it, and then it'll stop flooding until it takes more damage. However, things like weather (i.e. waves washing over the deck) will often damage it more and force it to take more flooding. So if you're in calm weather, once you no longer see the ship's waterline changing and you don't get the "ship sunk" message, chances are it will not sink. If you are in rough weather, there is a chance it will still sink, but it's fairly small.

[adrians69]

I hit a large merchant in thick fog and crazy rough seas around the Gilbert Islands, so thick I couldn't even see the target (I used the callouts from the sonar guy to determine when to fire). I hit with both torps and the ship sailed on, albeit at a heavily reduced speed. It was another 2 hours before I got a ship sunk message.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I'm not totally an expert on the RFB model, but I think while it does model slow flooding, it limits it to a certain extent - that is, the ship will flood a certain amount after you damage it, and then it'll stop flooding until it takes more damage. ...

There is something about the RFB mod that isn't commonly known. They reworked the merchants and DD's, but the bigger ships were not changed. They just never got to it, so they will often sink faster.

[thegrindre]

My experience over the past weekend was with one of those big ocean liners.
I fired all 6 torpedoes, 2 aft and 4 forward, (Porpoise), and 200 rounds from my aft deck gun and never did sink it. It did look worse then a block of Swiss Cheese, tho. It had a bazillion holes in it.
I left it there and had to head back home for more ammo to complete my mission. I never did get credit for it.

[Longknife]

I wish I had a better understanding of the damage model.

Last night I made a Mush Morton "Up the skirt" shot on Victory freighter. 1 torp hit it in the rudder taking the screw with it & the other missed. The freighter was armed so I submerged & as I started to move around for the coup de grâce she went under.
To my way of understanding a single torp should not have brought her low.

[Hambone307]

I have had some interesting "incidents" as well. Using TMO last night I got lucky and came across two fleet carriers lightly escorted. And by lightly I mean only one cruiser. 15m/s winds and rough seas, I got into position and fired all 6 of my torpedos at the three of them. Just before the fish hit the cruiser, I got a ship sunk icon, but no credit. The other 4 were right on target hitting both carriers. one was a dud, and the other two detonated. I followed the carriers for a while trying to reload since their speed had dropped. As I was preparing another salvo on the two damaged flat tops, they sank.

This just left me scratching my head considering that I usually have to put at least four torps into one carrier to sink it, and had the one sink from one torpedo strike. I guess TMO models rough seas and some of the sinking mechanics...

[Sniper297]

Worst I ever run across was the large tanker;



I fully understand that a tanker has a lot of tanks (hence the name) that can be used for counterflooding and provide more buoyancy than the average merchant ship, but it's a little ridiculous when everything but the tops of the masts is underwater and it's still not "sunk".

Heavy cruisers are the worst though;



I should be able to sail off and chalk this one up as sunk, even if a rescue tug was nearby they would consider this too badly damaged to tow and would scuttle it themselves if it didn't go down. Which by all that's holy it should, this thing is a wreck.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Longknife

I wish I had a better understanding of the damage model.

This is my understanding (admittedly limited):

Every ship/sub/plane has defined damage zones. These zones have different sizes, hit points, armor values, and 'floatability' values. They also have other factors, like 'critical chance' defined. Damage to these zones can result in flooding, fire, explosion, and smoke. Critical hits can occur. These are not guaranteed to destroy, but only to result in enhanced damage.

Weapons have defined damage points and armor penetration values. Damage is variable, so to will be the results of your hits.

The point being, there are a lot of variables to all this, and one cannot expect consistent results.

Watching ships sink in some tests I ran, it was clear that at a certain point in time, the game will 'write off' the ship, and it will start going down. I don't know how the game decides when this will happen. This would be nice to know.