Encountering ships with pre-existing damage.

[grislyatoms]

Considering what Webster said - spawned too close the dock and kaboom?

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by grislyatoms

Considering what Webster said - spawned too close the dock and kaboom?

I would think that to be the case.
I noticed the game creates / spawns world and objects in general, that are within sight of the player. Once the player is far enough, the world is "despawned", to save resources.
I would think that on approaching a port, when the radar first detects ships near or at the docks, they are really not there, until the player gets close enough. If the ships are wrongly positioned in relation to the docks, when they spawn they get instantly damaged.
One such case is the ships docked at Rabaul, particularly the one farther to the right (of the player, when one is facing the docks).

Back to damaged ships in high sea.
Just yesterday my radar spotted a convoy. In convoy there were 4 battle ships (unknown type) and 2 merchants on the right hand lane. Escorting were 5 DD's
Not heavy sea / swells.
Zooming in the map I see the typical three lane formation, 700 yards away from each other.
After a few minutes, they close the lanes in a tight formation, probably 400 yards or so. Almost immediately one of the battle ships from the left hand lane swerves to the right and gets very near one of the merchants. The merchants start sailing erratically and falling behind. After a while all ships within convoy went crazy.
Finally, upon nearing my position, the battle ships fall back into orderly formation. The merchants try, but are running slowly.

Finally within visual range, I see 2 Medium sized tankers decks awash, in what seems like the typical evasive manoeuvres. In the middle there were 2 Hyriu carriers.
Only the tankers were damaged.
Again, no heavy seas, no air attacks, no shallows. They just rammed each other for no apparent reason.

[in_vino_vomitus]

Originally Posted by grislyatoms

Approaching ports (Iwo, Chichi?, and Haha? Jima for example) at night I have seen ships at dock. Drop periscope to plan attack, raise periscope again and...

fires on the beach, ships sunk at their moorings. Space of a few minutes.
Always puzzled over that.

This is one of the reasons behind the creation of Combined Ops during WWII - I can't remember the actual name of the operation, but it's the one they made the film "Cockleshell Heroes" from [I'm going to look it up as soon as I finish typing, but for some reason I can't bring myself to do it in the middle of a post - strange...]

Anyway, the marines sent people upriver in kayaks to attack ships in harbour, and SOE had a team on the ground who were going to attack them by sneaking aboard and planting explosives. After the marines attacked - with limited results, security was ramped up to a level that made the SOE plan unworkable. Combined Ops came about because of the obvious need to coordinate the allocation of targets. neither group was aware the other had been tasked, and ironically, if the marines had asked SOE to help them exfiltrate their people, then SOE might have told them there was no need to even send them........

Anyway, it looks like your targets got hit by a spec. ops team....

I have no idea how what you saw really came about, but that's what it looks like

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by BrucePartington

Only the tankers were damaged.
Again, no heavy seas, no air attacks, no shallows. They just rammed each other for no apparent reason.

It sounds like either they were trying to evade you and bumped into each other, or in making a course change, they messed up. Different types of ships have different turning characteristics. I've read here that, historically, the intervals between ships were greater, than in game. The ships' AI obviously leaves something to be desired.

Originally Posted by TorpX

I hadn't thought of it before, but it's possible they could also be damaged when their convoy takes a zig and they bump into each other. I don't know how likely that is, but it is possible.

yep, the AI is really spastic acting when its an all out alert to all merchant ships and some ships will zig-zag while others go into long s-turns and some just circle back doing a 360 on their own course so whenever there is a scramble of convoy ships they always seam to have a collision.

warships seam to have less problems scrambling as a group and its only the DD and light cruisers that run into or get run over other ships


also as was pointed out by someone the game does record "some" damage to ships from heavy storms if the water gets high enough over the decks. in most cases this is a side affect of using a mod like Op Monsun that adds a lot of ships to the game without properly correcting draft heights and such for them.

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by TorpX

It sounds like either they were trying to evade you and bumped into each other, or in making a course change, they messed up. Different types of ships have different turning characteristics. I've read here that, historically, the intervals between ships were greater, than in game. The ships' AI obviously leaves something to be desired.

What you say is valid.
However it was neither in this instance.
I was too far away. No visual contact. Following by radar. It was night time and the convoy was more than 15 land miles away.
And only the outer ships "misbehaved", after the convoy tightened formation (which I had never seen before). The two Hyriu carriers in the center lane / track did no move initially, neither did the DD escorts.
Mainly, the convoy's course remained unaltered until I wreaked havoc among them

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by Webster

yep, the AI is really spastic acting when its an all out alert to all merchant ships and some ships will zig-zag while others go into long s-turns and some just circle back doing a 360 on their own course so whenever there is a scramble of convoy ships they always seam to have a collision.

warships seam to have less problems scrambling as a group and its only the DD and light cruisers that run into or get run over other ships

(snip).

Question: could this be intended to simulate panic?
Merchants Captains less disciplined than IJN capital ships Captains?

[Popeye the Salior]

I think your right

[merc4ulfate]

I have only seen this happen in port on bad installation of mods or orders of the mods causing issues.

[TorpX]

There is something else I thought of. This happened to me a long time ago with an earlier version of RFB. I made an attack on a convoy of mixed ships and escorts; later I saw a small minesweeper that looked like it was burning. This was strange to me as I had not targeted any such ship, but thought maybe it was hit by a stray torpedo. After observing it over time, it became apparent that it was not really damaged, but that the smoke was just excessive. Instead of coming out the stack, it seemed to be coming out the middle of the ship. In other words, it was just a graphical imperfection.

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by TorpX

There is something else I thought of. This happened to me a long time ago with an earlier version of RFB. I made an attack on a convoy of mixed ships and escorts; later I saw a small minesweeper that looked like it was burning. This was strange to me as I had not targeted any such ship, but thought maybe it was hit by a stray torpedo. After observing it over time, it became apparent that it was not really damaged, but that the smoke was just excessive. Instead of coming out the stack, it seemed to be coming out the middle of the ship. In other words, it was just a graphical imperfection.

Very true.
I have a little screenie collection of such imperfections, including some very strange dark patches hovering above water where nothing happened, like they were sci-fi portals of some kind.
I need to take a look at the instructions on how to share images here.
Yes, I realize I should know how to do that by now. Sometimes I get lazy.