Correction of torpedo damage power in SH4

[tater]

I looked at uboat.net, they only claim to have information on sinkings of warships definitively. They do not list all damages.

Please note this page is still very incomplete.
It shows ships destroyed (lost) to all causes during the war.

Again, the CL data is very similar, many sink to 1 hit, more sink to 2, none survive 3. Same as mk14.

What did you change on the CV data? None the less, pretty much the same as the mk14.

[Gorshkov]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

Secondly, what is it about small merchants that are so hard to sink with one shot? I can plug any of the small merchants (tankers included) with one shot, any time, any place, over and over again. Why can't you do that?

Probably because we did not create your RFBeta mod...:rotfl:

@tater: You should find on Uboat.net data referring only to warships sank by U-boats! They are complete.

[tater]

Originally Posted by Gorshkov

As we can see battleships sank after three torpedo hits and were badly damaged after one hit. Larger carriers sank after 2.33 hits on average and escort carriers after one or two were sunk or judged as "total loss". Light cruisers could not withstand 1-2 torpedo hits.

Making a claim that ALL BBs should be "badly damaged" with 1 hit is silly. The web site you use explicitly states that the warship data is very incomplete, except for sinkings. The "overhall" times tell us nothing about the real damage. Taiyo was hit by 1 fish, and was drydocked for 2 months. Warships are designed to shrug off hits in limited areas (usually around the mechanical spaces amidships). Armor weighs a lot, so it's always a trade off. If the fish hits the right place, a single hit on any ship can create severe damage. CVs are particularly vulnerable due to aircraft embarked (and fuel, and bombs).

U-boats never sank a "larger carrier." The biggest was practically a CVL.

CLs die to 1-2 hits from US torpedoes as well, no difference at all. No IJN CL took more than 2 hits and lived, though some were overkilled with 3-4. You can only have a sense of where "overkill" is if you have all data on ships attacked but not sunk, though (you need to know the most hits a given type took and lived).

Looking at CVs and CVEs sank by mk14s, the average was 2.5 fish (discounting damages as you do). That includes the 64.8k ton Shinano. Of the 8 sinkings, 3 were considerably larger than the largest sunk by a u-boat. Discounting those that are bigger than 22k tons, the average is 2.4 fish per CV.

So effectively zero difference in results vs warships with German vs American torpedoes.

The rule for results vs warships, IMO, should be massive variability for CVs, 1 hit possible kills, which are usually due to secondary problems (impossible to model in SH with no progressive damage), while shrugging off many hits should also be possible. CAs seem pretty tough, the min to sink one (IJN) was 4 fish, and Kongo sank with 3 at nearly 3X the size. Not sure why CAs should be tougher, but they seem to be. CLs sink pretty much like DDs.

tater

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

Again...we have not touched the warship damage model. Secondly, what is it about small merchants that are so hard to sink with one shot? I can plug any of the small merchants (tankers included) with one shot, any time, any place, over and over again. Why can't you do that?

To answer why I can't sink a small merchant in more than one shot I don't know why. But I can atest to the fact in three out of four compleated patrols that it took me multible shots to hit and sink a target. This might have to deal with the hit points of the ships themselfs or the damage that the torpedos do to a target. But seeing how you might not belive me here is a test. Use a Salmon Class sub, with Mark 14 torpedos in all tubes and reserves and set up some shiping, mainly small merchants and write down the resualts and post them here.

[Rockin Robbins]

Something is missing here! How long did it take the ships to sink. Don't we tend to get bored in about fifteen minutes and plug the already sinking target (woulda sunk in only 5 more hours!) with the coup de grace? Yet the sinking statistics are full of ships that sunk after several hours, which none of us are willing to wait for in the game.

Impatience could be the only difference between Luke's claim that in RFB he can sink any merchant, including an empty tanker with one torpedo and others' claims that it takes four.

[Gorshkov]

@tater: I think you did not get this, buddy. I repeat once again: the basic fact is that German late-war torps had heavier warheads than American. So I can state Japs just built crappy carriers and that is why less powerful US torps sank them equally easy as German ones. I suppose my explanation is more real than your divagations.

@Robbins: Great you have patience to wait several hours until ship sinks. Yet SH4 game designers had opposite intentions and introduced "quick sinking" model. I think majority of players also prefer developers point of view. Even it is too simplistic and ships sink too fast but that way SH4 game works. Yet what is much more important SH4 game engine may be inadequate for "flooding sinking" models and that is why many players report all this idiotic "unsinkable ships" issues in RFBeta. Think about it...

[tater]

BTW, I did a quick scan of the entire war for ~5k ton ships. I didn't check well vs type, so some might have been other than AKs.

That said, I counted 57 attacks on ships from ~4800-5500 tons which hit with 1 fish (rough scan), and 50 sank, 7 damaged.

88% sank with 1 fish. Some of the damages were heavy, but they either sank, or they didn't, though Gorshkov might count them as "sunk" though they never went below the surface of the sea.

The "ship types" sorting on uboat.net is screwy, BTW, count the total ships in that list, and it is grossly lower than the number of ships attacked if you add it up.

Anyway the hog island data was 94% sunk (30 sank, 2 damages). I did not check the number of fish, so that 94% is to ALL numbers of hits. If the hog island data shows 1 hit sinkings at 88% or so, then there is really no difference.

Again, a trivial difference considering the data is not as good damage wise.

I'm not seeing much in the way of real world data to support the german fish being any better than the mk14s when they actually exploded (some damage results for the mk14s were faulty torps blowing up just before striking, or were duds, BTW, so the actual hits are likely more deadly than the stats show).

[tater]

Originally Posted by Gorshkov

@tater: I think you did not get this, buddy. I repeat once again: the basic fact is that German late-war torps had heavier warheads than American. So I can state Japs just built crappy carriers and that is why less powerful US torps sank them equally easy as German ones. I suppose my explanation is more real than your divagations.

The CVEs sunk by u-boats were merchant ships with decks on top. IJN CVs were no more crappy than Bouge or Casablanca class CVEs. The japanese actually built excellent warships. In the case of carriers, their weak point was not the ship, it was damage control. I think many of the limited hit sinkings of japanese CVs (bomb or torpedo, actually) would NOT have sunk had they been crewed by the USN. Our damage control was quite good on CVs.

The stats simply do not back up your case for them being anything other than marginally more effective.

Bismark was crippled by a single air-dropped fish. Again, variability is the rule. Sometimes 1 does critical damage, sometimes they absorb many and don't do more than settle.

[tater]

BTW, poor damage control cannot be modeled in game. The only way to do that is a weaker DM for the target. If you up torp strength to get a 1-hit CV sinking, you will likely sink ALL with 1 hit.

Damage control would be a useful value for target ships to have, even if abstracted as the ability to "heal" flooding or something. COurse we need progressive fire, too.

[keltos01]

Originally Posted by tater

Bismark was crippled by a single air-dropped fish. Again, variability is the rule. Sometimes 1 does critical damage, sometimes they absorb many and don't do more than settle.

they hit the rudder.... it then went around in circles...

k

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by tater

The CVEs sunk by u-boats were merchant ships with decks on top. IJN CVs were no more crappy than Bouge or Casablanca class CVEs. The japanese actually built excellent warships. In the case of carriers, their weak point was not the ship, it was damage control. I think many of the limited hit sinkings of japanese CVs (bomb or torpedo, actually) would NOT have sunk had they been crewed by the USN. Our damage control was quite good on CVs.

The stats simply do not back up your case for them being anything other than marginally more effective.

Bismark was crippled by a single air-dropped fish. Again, variability is the rule. Sometimes 1 does critical damage, sometimes they absorb many and don't do more than settle.

Shokaku was not a crappy carrier. 3 possibly 4 torps from Cavalla ended her day.

Shinano not a crappy carrier, 4 torps between the anti torp bulges. Sunk by Archerfish.

As far as I can tell, American torps were about the same in blast damage.

[tater]

Originally Posted by keltos01

they hit the rudder.... it then went around in circles...

k

Yes, I'm aware of what the stringbag hit.

None the less, it was effectively a "mission kill" on Bismark. It was an example that hits on ships can have a lot of variability. Where you hit matters

tater

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by tater

Yes, I'm aware of what the stringbag hit.

None the less, it was effectively a "mission kill" on Bismark. It was an example that hits on ships can have a lot of variability. Where you hit matters

tater

Yes, the USS Arizona could attest to where you hit really can mess up your day.

[tater]

Actually, the hog island stats he posted earlier are telling. I checked (as I posted above), and 88% of the ~5k ships hit with 1 fish by US subs sank with just the 1 hit. When I picked ships in the US stats, I took them from 4800 to 5500 tons, too, so bigger ships, and STILL more effective.

I just broke the 32 hog island attacks on uboat.net into individual attacks by reading the accounts.

LOL.

50% of the Hog Islanders sank after 1 hit. 73% after 2 hits (I counted coup de grâce here in the 2 fish hits, including the couple that were finished off with 30 and 60 DG rounds respectively treated as a single added torp (the only alternative to the DG)). 83% of them hit with 3 sank (one not sinking out of 6 attacked).

Based on that, the mk14 was better at sinking 5k ships than the german fish up to 1943, anyway.

It's interesting to read those accounts, many attacks involved a coup de grâce shot at that point, some times 2 extra fish.

[theluckyone17]

I gotta agree with RR's view. And I like RFB's current DM. Maybe that puts me in the minority, but I love my realism. Having to wait to see if the target's gonna sink fits in with my personal view of realism, from what I've heard and read.

I hit a Jap large convoy the other night in my Salmon class. Weather was crap, visibility was listed as good (though the visibility sure didn't seem that way), 11 m/s winds. It was around midnight, so the escorts and my watchmen couldn't see much. All I could really see was outlines against the sky, so I wasn't much more use.

I sent the front four tubes off at a large modern composite freighter, and the rear off at a medium modern composite. The waves didn't help with my data collection, and it showed. The early war torpedoes hurt, too. Three fish hit... two in the large, one in the medium. My memory's foggy, but about half of the other fish were either duds/prematures, and the other half just plain missed.

It took the large freighter a couple hours to sink. It gradually took on water, slowed down to a stop, listed, and sank. I figured the medium freighter would survive. While I watched the large freighter via the virtual camera, I took my sub around in an attempt to make another run. My first concern was to hit that wounded medium, but I couldn't find it in the crappy weather. It didn't make it any easier to determine the convoy's zig zagging course, either (they weren't too far from harbor, too).

On my last attempt to get in a good firing position, the crew finally called out the demise of the medium. ~4,000 tons, with one torpedo. I figure it was helped along by the heavy waves, but it still counts as a one hit one sunk in my book. I had no clue... I hadn't been able to see the ship from my sub for a long time. I tried finding the ship via the virtual cam after I got the sinking message, without luck. I figure it took about four hours for it to sink.

That same patrol, I came across another medium modern composite, which took two or three fish to sink. Flat water, no winds, no waves. I tossed more torpedos trying to hit it after it started zig zagging than I did actually sinking it, so I won't be complaining.

So I'm happy with the merchant DM. Get the warships down, and I'll be very happy with RFB.