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Originally Posted by tramker
OK, and what about the gunnery damage ? It seems to me that ships (especially BBs) can take too many high caliber hits. I would think about 15-20 high caliber hits should significantly wreck any ship, but thinks like Seydlitz can happily take 30 or 40 hits.
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At Jutland, only 1 capital ship (
Lutzow) was sunk by accumulated shell damage, and she took 24 heavy hits. She would likely have survived them had they been less concentrated forward, because she was ultimately scuttled due to her screws being out of the water and no way to tow her home.
Other ships with double-digit heavy hits at Jutland were
Seydlitz (22 and a torp),
Derfflinger (21),
Warspite (at least 15),
Lion (13), and
Konig (10). Of these, only
Seydlitz was in real danger, and that again because much of her damage was forward. The others lost a turret or 2, but little if any speed, and never were in any danger of sinking.
Capital ships, even relatively fragile Brit BCs, were tough things.
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In short I want more damage but less flooding at the same time, what do you think ?
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I think I've got some explaining to do. This will be fairly long, so bear with me...
In our games, every shell fired is tracked with its realistic ballistic trajectory and where it hits the ship model is where its damage begins to apply. The shells you see in the game are the real things for hitting, hit location, and damage.
When a shell hits, it can burst or break up on impact, or it can penetrate. If it penetrates, its path into the ship is determined, as well as the point where it explodes, if it does. Some shells are duds and AP shells that never hit anything solid can go clear through a ship without exploding. Along the way, shells can hit other armor and be deflected, such as first penetrating the upper belt and then bouncing off the armored deck.
When a shell explodes, it can damage stuff (systems, weapons), start fires, and kill crew within its burst radius. If it doesn't explode, it can still knock stuff over in its direct path. Shells that miss just short can even hit the ship underwater, below the belt. The damage done to stuff in the shell's way depends on the armor of the stuff at risk.
And now a very important point. Ships only sink when water comes in faster than it can be pumped out, just like in real life. Thus, if the shell doesn't make a hole at or below the waterline, it contributes nothing towards sinking the ship, even if it does damage to systems and weapons. However, holes oringinally above the waterline can contribute to sinking later if the ship settles enough from other flooding.
The result of all this is that there are a lot of "meaningless" hits in our games, just as in real life. A 15" shell through the funnel isn't likely to do anything to the ship. Hits that get stopped by armor also don't do much, because the whole purpose of armor was to prevent damage in those areas. IOW, our ships don't have "hit points" that are reduced by every hit. You actually have to do the types of damage at the location you hit. The bottom line, therefore, is that if you're unlucky on hit location, duds, or the effectiveness of fragile AP shells (which varies substantially per hit), a given ship can take a LOT of hits with little or no real decrease in its fighting power. OTOH, if you're lucky on all of this, you can maim ships with just a few hits.
We think our ballistics, penetration, hit location, and damage systems are the most realistic ever put into a naval sim, on a par with anything in the most detailed tank sim. As such, it produces highly variable results in individual trials, but over the long run produces very believable results on average. The only thing is, the graphics for hits always look the same, whether the shell does massive damage or just goes through a funnel. But this is realistic--you might know you hit, but you'd really have no idea of how hard unless the ship blew up, drastically lost speed, or whatever.