Poking holes below the waterline

[kenijaru]

Originally Posted by JCB

Since HE rounds are supposed to detonate upon impact, wouldn´t the shells explode upon impact with the water (on its way to hit below the waterline) detonating harmlessly meters away from the hull....
Maybe the AP rounds, being made for penetration rather than fragmentation, will serve my needs better?

what you say makes sense, makes a lot of sense

but if you hill the side of a merchant with AP, the shell will probably slip through the ship like a hot knife through warm butter and explode harmlessly in the air or water. (thats the same problem argentine pilots had in the malvinas/falklands, the bomb fuse was delayed to protect the airplane from the blast but that made the bombs go through the british destroyers, with some "lucky" exeptions.)*

HE shells arent ment to throw sharpnel, but to open big holes on whatever they touch, the actual sharpnel they throw is a secondary effect (or an evolutionary leftover, like our coxis or apendix) :hmm: anyhow, you dont need sharpnel as you are not trying to kill the crew.

just shoot with HE and then use external camera to make sure you are leaving holes on the bugger.


*please, lets not start a discusion about that, specialy not here, it was just an example that poped into my head.

[Hanomag]

Oh and BTW...

Welcome aboard Kaluen JCB!!

[Pisces]

Since each ship has it's weakzones, a torpedo hit or (a couple of) well aimed shell hits there might have the same effect of early sinking. And by well aimed I mean those zone's in the recognition manual that show up in stock SH3 (under certain conditions). This won't be as easy in GWX/other mods as they removed those zones showing up in the recognition book, and also changed the damage model altogether. And maybe the ships have different weakspot locations in them. But it's worth a try finding them in stock SH3 and shelling them instead of torpedoing.

[Uncle Goose]

Well, since a ship's hull is quite thick those AP might come in handy. However, in the real deal they carried HE and incendiary munition (Kretschmer made a note on the use of incendiary ammunition to set a ship ablaze so the U-boats carried not only HE ammunitions)

[DirtyACE]

When firing torpedos, one aims for the weak points in the ship such as the engine/boiler room, fuel tanks, the propellers, or ammunition bunkers. Would aiming for those same places apply to the deck gun?

[JCB]

Thanks for welcome! Nice forum indeed! :-)

So from what I´ve learnt so far, naval gunnery in stock SH3 works like this (please correct me if I´m wrong):
- Ships don´t sink because of flooding primarily, but because I score a certain amount of hitpoints that is higher than the shiptype in question can withstand. If I hit the bow, well above the waterline, hitting no critical parts, the ship will sink regardless if only I hit it with enough shells.
- There are weak points that I can hit repeatedly for inflicting more damage, sinking the ships faster.

If I combine these two I figure it is best to hit the hull right under, or slightly forward of the funnel, repeatedly, until the ship is destroyed. You know - I´m slightly disapointed, but hey, it´s still a great game!

As to the HE vs AP sidenote: I figure the deck gun in SH3 is much simpler to aim than in real life. Perhaps the subs didn´t bring AP since it wasn´t probable that the gun crew would be able to hit consistently below the waterline anyway. Since the AP round would be much less damaging than HE rounds, unless it actually makes holes under the waterline, it may seam rational to bring only rounds that will do the greatest amount of damage to the biggest target (the parts of the ship that is above the waterline) But what do I know...

[kenijaru]

i'm prety sure it DOES

shoot just below the waterline of a target, then press "." or "," and watch for yourself if you indeed scored any hits.

[Sailor Steve]

Or if you're playing with external views of, you'll still get a telltale: sometimes you'll see a splash very close to the target, and then a hit. Sometimes the hit will even be obviously submerged. A beautiful thing.

[bertle]

Originally Posted by kenijaru

what you say makes sense, makes a lot of sense

but if you hill the side of a merchant with AP, the shell will probably slip through the ship like a hot knife through warm butter and explode harmlessly in the air or water. (thats the same problem argentine pilots had in the malvinas/falklands, the bomb fuse was delayed to protect the airplane from the blast but that made the bombs go through the british destroyers, with some "lucky" exeptions.)*

HE shells arent ment to throw sharpnel, but to open big holes on whatever they touch, the actual sharpnel they throw is a secondary effect (or an evolutionary leftover, like our coxis or apendix) :hmm: anyhow, you dont need sharpnel as you are not trying to kill the crew.

just shoot with HE and then use external camera to make sure you are leaving holes on the bugger.


*please, lets not start a discusion about that, specialy not here, it was just an example that poped into my head.

At least you sunk HMS invincible

[Fusek]

In the stock game, I always put a few AP in the areas there the fuel is supposed to be, and after that a few HE shells, resulting in a big fire or explosions.

Or am I imagining things?

[JCB]

Originally Posted by Fusek

In the stock game, I always put a few AP in the areas there the fuel is supposed to be, and after that a few HE shells, resulting in a big fire or explosions.

Or am I imagining things?

From what I´ve heard about the game engine so far - the latter...