Torpedo Depth in Relation to Draft

[desirableroasted]

Originally Posted by Mouftic

Magnetic either miss under, detonate early or hit and take hours to sink.

With an impact setting you know whats happening within 10 minutes after the hit most of the time.

A huge and inaccurate generalization, though perhaps that has been your experience to date.

Yes, in many situations (pitching seas, rough seas at distance, sharp AOBs), impacts are a better bet. They give you almost certain, though not always fatal, damage.

Drawbacks: you need to be at a sharp AOB angle, which severely limits your tactical options. You often have to hit the merchant again, which often sucks new players into choosing the "salvo" option from the start, which is a waste of torpedoes.

A magnetic, put under a hull at a long angle, at the proper depth, is glorious to behold. You can crack large merchants in half with one, send Hood or Nelson to the bottom with two -- in under a minute. They open up 360 degrees of tactical space, letting you fire now, rather than waiting for 90AOB while escorts swirl about.

Those advantages outweigh the reliability problems.

Remember: You have five tools in the box in the early war: deck gun, T1 impact, T1 magnetic/impact, TII impact, TII magnetic/impact. Each one of them is "best" in certain situations. To write any of them off means you come home short on tonnage.