Realistic Ship Sinking Times

[silent_otto]

I have all those kinds of different sinking ways since I installed IUB... I had always played with realistic sinkings on so I didnt know u could see other kinds of sinking... thought it would be some mod... maybe it is?

btw when is that update coming.... pls

[Beery]

Originally Posted by wetwarev7

And all this time I thought that more realism = more fun. I'm gonna have to turn boat sinking times off.

More realism does mean more fun. Unfortunately it seems the developers didn't understand the concept of realistic sinkings.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by Beery

More realism does mean more fun. Unfortunately it seems the developers didn't understand the concept of realistic sinkings.

OK, now I'm confused - I've been using realistic sinking times "on" forever (at least since it has been an option - I can't remember if it was always an option or was added by a patch way back somewhere). It's been so long since I have found anything far enough away from probable air- or sea-borne help for me to be comfortable waiting around that I've gotten in the habit of just going ahead and administering a coup-de-grace, so all my sinkings have been rather quick as a result. Are we now concluding that turning this setting to "off" is actually resulting in more lengthy, variable and realistic sinking times than having it turned "on"?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by panthercules

Are we now concluding that turning this setting to "off" is actually resulting in more lengthy, variable and realistic sinking times than having it turned "on"?

Here's what I think is going on:

Realistic sinkings off = short time to sink, more interesting sinking motion.

Realistic sinkings on = short time to sink, less interesting sinking motion.

It now seems the developers didn't even try to adjust the time it takes for ships to sink. If what people are saying here is true, this setting is all about the motion of the ship as it sinks. With Realistic sinking times set to 'on' I've certainly never noticed anything like the interesting sorts of pictures of sinking ships that others have posted. The ships I've sunk all go down fairly uneventfully and boringly.

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by Beery

Here's what I think is going on:

Realistic sinkings off = short time to sink, more interesting sinking motion.

Realistic sinkings on = short time to sink, less interesting sinking motion.

It now seems the developers didn't even try to adjust the time it takes for ships to sink. If what people are saying here is true, this setting is all about the motion of the ship as it sinks. With Realistic sinking times set to 'on' I've certainly never noticed anything like the interesting sorts of pictures of sinking ships that others have posted. The ships I've sunk all go down fairly uneventfully and boringly.

Well, as I said I don't really wait around for very long any more, but since I have been playing with this setting "on" for lo these many months I have seen ships break in half and go down rapidly, go down almost immediately without breaking in half, go down relatively slowly by the bow and by the stern (depending on where I hit them), and have seen them capsize (though generally only when I've hit them repeatedly on one side at the waterline with the deck gun) - I'm not sure how much more variety I would expect to see than what I'm seeing, as it seems like there have been a pretty wide variety of sinking behaviors, at least for me.

[BaronVonSchnitzel]

I don't play with very high realism settings, but I do select realistic sinking times. Yes, it can be frustrating waiting to see if the ship will go down or waiting for the weather to clear so you can finish it off with a deck gun.

[Nedlam]

Has anyone ever watched what happens to the ships AFTER they slip under the surface?

I was reeeealy bored one day and did this. The cargo ship went under and I watched it as it rolled over and heard the bulkheads collapse, the boiler (I'm assuming) explode and the ship break in half until both parts came to a rest on the sea floor.

My jaw dropped as I watched and I was grinning ear to ear. Man, the developers really went out of their way to model all of that that.

Beery, it was the only time I wished I did not have your murky water installed!

[Keelbuster]

For those of us who have always played with realistic sink times ON, what is an 'interesting' sinking?

Here's what I see in order of likelihood:

1) break in half (fuel bunker), sink instantly (of course)
- my favourite is when it has sunk to one end, and then you break it in half, and the sunk end sinks first, and the buoyant end bounces up, released from the downward drag! so dramatic!

2) explode starting at one end (i.e. ammo bunker) and sink by that end

3) to bow or stern - usually slow, following a keel shot to that end (i find that if you select keel in the rec manual, it aims for keel near stern).

4) Capsize - this usually follows a 1-sided shallow torpedoing, followed by deck gun work on the same side. When I say 'capsize', it doesn't remain upside down, but rather passes through that position on its way down.

5) Sink straight down with no bias to either end or either side. This is very rare for me - sometimes with a centered keel shot...

What else have you guys seen?

kb

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

For those of us who have always played with realistic sink times ON, what is an 'interesting' sinking?

Hi!

Here's mine: I torpedo a destroyer, which executes a vertical dive upon sinking and ends up with its bow planted in the bottom of the (shallow) sea and the stern way up in the air. Other destroyers come to investigate and they end up the same way, creating a little garden in the sea.

Pablo

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

For those of us who have always played with realistic sink times ON, what is an 'interesting' sinking?

Here's what I see in order of likelihood:

1) break in half (fuel bunker), sink instantly (of course)
- my favourite is when it has sunk to one end, and then you break it in half, and the sunk end sinks first, and the buoyant end bounces up, released from the downward drag! so dramatic!

2) explode starting at one end (i.e. ammo bunker) and sink by that end

3) to bow or stern - usually slow, following a keel shot to that end (i find that if you select keel in the rec manual, it aims for keel near stern).

4) Capsize - this usually follows a 1-sided shallow torpedoing, followed by deck gun work on the same side. When I say 'capsize', it doesn't remain upside down, but rather passes through that position on its way down.

5) Sink straight down with no bias to either end or either side. This is very rare for me - sometimes with a centered keel shot...

What else have you guys seen?

kb

-Roll completely over, floating for some minutes before sinking by the bow or stern. This has only happened with my heavily-modded zones.cfg.

-Split in half, with the bow sinking in maybe 20 minutes and the stern floating for several hours. Again, I modded the flooding rates for the bow and stern objects to get this effect for my personal install.

It would be nice if we could mod in some new cargoes for the ships in order to affect sinking rates. I've read accounts of vessels carrying iron ore sinking in less than a minute, regardless of tonnage. At the other end of the spectrum are ships loaded with lumber or cork, which would float for days or possibly even weeks after being hit and abandoned. It would also be fascinating if we could have mixed cargoes, so that damage depended on which cargo hold you struck. Hit a hold filled with oil drums and spark a fire. Hit a hold of general cargo and cause average flooding. Strike an explosives-filled hold and have the hull fracture along any nearby hull frames, instead of the default midships break we always get. Internal fires could blow out portholes, and loose vehicles belowdecks could cause bulkheads to collapse. Oil tankers should take longer to sink, even if completely destroyed, because their cargo gives them substantial buoyancy. I don't know much about the mechanics of explosions, but I think that refined fuels would usually ignite and gut the ship, instead of causing massive hull damage like TNT or ordnance.

Hulls could warp and twist, instead of being patched with a few canned damage decals. These are all things to think about for any future subsims. Given that flight and racing sims today have excellent damage/system failure modeling despite having to deal with complex high-speed physics engines, a subsim where the players' unit rarely tops 20 kts should be able to devote a lot of time to improving DM. Plus, plenty of older games like Nascar Racing 2 featured impressive visual indications of damage; a modern game should be able to manage this. Again, just suggestions; no criticism of the devs' efforts is intended.

[ICBM]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

Hey interesting, that looks exactly like many of the sinkings ingame. (mine anyways)