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Effects of 100% structural damage


Zuikaku

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Here are some thougts on effects of structural damage. Now, when it reaches 100% the ship sinks no matter what the flooding is. So, in effect this is making it just the another flood damage wich just does not feels right.

There are many historical instances of ships being reduced to burning hulks or heaps of useless battered metal that just kept on floating until some decision or action outside ship was taken (Hornet, Hiryu, Emden, Orel).

Effects of structural damage shoul'd depend on crew experience, morale, captain experience and perks and casualties taken. Effects of 100% shoul'd not be automatic sinking but rather one or more of these:

- ship is reduced to floating wreck and is uncontrolable

- ship is reduced to burning wreck and is uncontrolable

- ship is reduced to floating wreck and is dead in the water

- ship is reduced to burning wreck and is dead in the water

when this condition is reached this have additional effects like:

1. ship is not combat worthy and can not fire it's main guns. Secondary and tertiary guns can be fired rarely, locally (single gun only) and inneficiently (if crew moralle and combat check passes)

2. since all criticall systems are dead or heavilly damaged, floodings can not be reduced or contained. But ship will not sink if remaining bulkheads are holding.

3. fighting fires is inefficient since pumps are not operational.

4. Enemy ships cease firing at ships with 100% structural damage and shift fire to other targets. These burning wrecks can be manually targeted on request or if they fire their guns (see 1)

Situation with these ships can develop as following:

1. Crew abandons ship (if morale check fails) and is rescued by nearby friendly ships. Friendly forces may opt to sink the abandoned ship by gunfire or torpedoes.

2. Crew abandons ship (if morale check fails) and is rescued by nearby enemy ships. Enemy forces may opt to sink the abandoned ship by gunfire or torpedoes or to try to capture it and tow it.

3. Crew scuttles ship (if morale check is successfull) and is rescued by nearby friendly ships.

4. Crew scuttles ship (if morale check is successfull) and is rescued by nearby enemy ships.

5. Crew surrenders the ship (moralle check fails, enemy ships are nearer than friendlies and the battle is going bad)

6. Crew stays on the ships, tries to repair damage (it can repair minimum of criticall systems and reduce system damage by 5% max). Morale and XP check must succeed to do this.

Of course, crew and captain's stats are crucial in weighting these situations.

 

Also I suggest damage accumulation to be much harder as system damage is greater. With this system it is rather easy to damage systems down to 80% Harder to bring them down to 60%. Even harder to lower them to 40%. Increasingly hard to bring them to 20%. And very, very hard to bring them to 0%. Logic is, when only few systes are left operational, it is much harder to hit them and knock out of action. 

 

 

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I like this a lot actually, we could also add percentage rates each major component and maybe bulkhead as well. They only show when you hover over the ship or each part individually maybe ctrl hover over or something.

But yeah some noice ideas. Plus we could do with some more death animations for the different ways the ship/s can get destroyed, knocked out or terminated in.

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I remember talking about something similar to this a loooooooonnnnnng time ago and think these are very good ideas. I think I remember saying that if a ship reaches 100% structural damage and it's crew abandoned ship you can tow that ship to a nearby friendly port to get it scraped earn more cash..... or something similar do that. Like I said it was a long time ago.

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28 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

100% structurally destroyed ships should logically sink.

Who's keeping the pumps working? Who's closing bulkheads to prevent flooding? etc?

Realistically ships damaged to a certain extend are just wrecks that will inevitably sink.

Tell that to the Hornet.

Good crew (if alive) tends to fix things and get them running again. When "structure" reaches 0% and ship automatically sinks even if there is no flooding bellow deck, that is just insane mechanics.

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That's just WoWS / classic arcade games mechanic, nothing insane, but so meh for a game this is advertised to be.


I like these ideas a lot.
100% structural damage is "everything that's worth breaking is broken" to me, not "the ship is suddenly a hole now".

Also, If i'm not mistaken, structural damage in RTW made flooding gradually more dangerous and fighting it gradually harder, so more damaged a ship is, more likely it to start flooding and more unlikely to not sink from it. So they always die to sinking in the end.

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5 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

Tell that to the Hornet.

Good crew (if alive) tends to fix things and get them running again. When "structure" reaches 0% and ship automatically sinks even if there is no flooding bellow deck, that is just insane mechanics.


The hornet did not have its entire belt, deck, and keel shredded into a holed mess. That's what 0% structure ingame is.

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0% in the game rarely got all the belt, deck, turrets and machinery smashed either. Hornet become out of control, burning wreck abandoned when IJN closed in. And that is exactly my point. It did not just sink when it become burning mess. 0% systems =sinking is just silly arcade healthbar nonsense 

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I quite like these ideas, and it goes really in depth. I think that this would be a great addition to the campaign, but I don't know how it would look/work in custom battles (something else I would consider adding on to these ideas would be the ability for other ships to tow heavily damaged ships back to port or out of action similar to what they did to try and save Yorktown after the Battle of Midway).

But the thing about it is, how in-depth would it go? Because as far as important structural members in a ship goes...it's mainly: the keel, the beams/reinforcements that support the decks, funnels, barbettes, hull sides, etc, any masts the ship has, bulkheads and then obviously the superstructure.

Systems would fall more under the anti-flooding and fire prevention/fire suppression systems, electricity/generators and boilers. And all these would go hand-in-hand with how many crewmen are still alive, as well as their skill and morale.

To look at a good example of structural damage, systems/repairs and damage control (that I assume is close to what you might be envisioning) I would recommend reading about the efforts to save the USS Yorktown at Midway since she didn't sink in the battle itself, rather, she sank two days later after a Japanese Submarine finally caused so much damage that the ship was literally not able to be saved. Before the submarine got her, Yorktown was still mostly able to be saved as she still had boiler pressure and power to keep her systems going and ignite other boilers to cruise at her own speed.

TL;DR: These are some great ideas, but this might require another status section called "systems" in addition to "structural" and "flooding" damage. Would definitely make the game feel less like an arcade game where 0% something = death, and would add a layer of depth to the campaign and battles as a whole.

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5 hours ago, Zuikaku said:

0% in the game rarely got all the belt, deck, turrets and machinery smashed either. Hornet become out of control, burning wreck abandoned when IJN closed in. And that is exactly my point. It did not just sink when it become burning mess. 0% systems =sinking is just silly arcade healthbar nonsense 

A burning mess is not a structural mess. Ingame several ships only reach 0% when EVERY compartment is gone.

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Maybe it's worth rethinking structural damage. Something that is structurally damaged is really vague: is it literally missing, or just bent out of shape? Is it fixable? HMS Queen Mary lost maybe 30% structural integrity when she was blown in half. I would bet Yorktown lost less than 10% in hull mass to damage.

(I Put a TL;DR in the back of this post, sorry for Wall of Text)

I've thought about it and one way to get a better (hopefully) arrangement of stats is to introduce fightability and remove structural integrity as a battle stat. Instead, add catastrophic structural failures (for example, from magazine explosions), and make structural integrity something that affects repair cost and speed in the dockyard: a ship may thus be able to limp back to harbour, but still have to be scrapped because it costs more to rebuild than create a wholly new ship.

Fightability as a stat could work the following way: Fightability means the ability of the ships crew to make their vessel perform its task. Each Compartment has its own base value, and certain compartments improve the Fightability of others. For example if a barbette is destroyed, the turrets fightability goes with it because ammo cannot be supplied anymore, or drastically reduces it at least. Shooting out engines will reduce the value for the entire ship as power is lost, lights go out and turret traverse drives and loading equipment seizes.

The stat also decreases every time a compartment is hit. Bulkheads get smashed, passageways blocked by smoke, fire or debris, lines of communication are severed, ventilation, water or electricity lines get blown to bits. For example, if the compartment below a turret barbette is destroyed, communication to that turret can be severed, and all stats for that turret revert to it. It also may not respond to targeting information anymore, because either nobody can get into the turret, or it may respond very slowly and have difficulty finding the target because somebody has to physically climb down from the conning tower to the turret to instruct its crew.

If a Compartment is not hit for a certain time, and not busy otherwise (for example, the guns seize firing) the crew will try to clean up their workspace and increase fightability stat again. This is inversely proportional to damage, so the worse the damage is, the less the crew can do to recover performance.

Lowered Fightability affects stats either globally or locally. In case of a barbette hit, loading speed may be reduced or single guns in a turret may seize firing altogether. In case of an engine hit, some equipment may momentarily or permanently seize functioning as power is lost. Hits should decrease fightability in hit compartments for a short time depending on how bad the hit was, for example a ricochet off a turret may lower the stat by 50% for a minute as gun crew reels from the impact but recover completely afterwards. A penetrating hit to the conning tower will instead reduce its performance to 0% until the survivors have gathered their wits, assessed the damage, and taken up control of their vessel again. So, basically timed buffs/debuffs.

Fires should affect compartments next to and above them, because of smoke. This means that fires do more than just damage things (is this the case right now? It seems to be.), but also affect a ships performance in general.

Fightability of 0% basically means an irrecoverably damaged compartment: even if the structural integrity is intact, equipment is so badly damaged that it doesn't matter anymore. This also means that if flooding hits occur in this compartment, damage control is greatly hampered.

 

TL;DR:

  • Ditch Structural Damage stat from Battles and make it affect Repair only
  • Add catastrophic structural failures (On Magazine explosions, torpedo hits, etc. Bows falling off, Ships splitting in two.)
  • Replace Structural Damage with Fightability. Fightability represents how well a compartment can be used by the crew to perform their Duty
  • Damage decreases Fightability of a Compartment: Things get broken, surviving in the space may become difficult or impossible.
  • Fightability reduction affects performance of Compartment: for example, individual guns on turrets stopping to work, or whole parts of the battery seizing up, etc.
  • Fightability automatically recovers to a degree when crew is allowed to repair. The worse the damage, the less recovery.
  • Damage should affect Fightability logically (for example Compartments above burning compartments should lose fightability because of smoke, etc.)
  • Morale of Crew could greatly affect Fightability, as this is both a HARD stat, as in what is and isn't too damaged to repair, as well as a SOFT stat based on the compartments occupants PERCEPTION of how bad the situation is. The better trained and the higher the morale of the crew, the more likely they are to overestimate Fightability, as opposed to underestimate it.
  • Damage control, Communication and Control are affected by Fightability: Communications going through a 0% Fight compartment seize, things attached are on their own (For example Gun Turrets). Damage control beyond such compartments can slow down drastically because of difficulty getting through smashed compartments.

 

I am not sure if this an actually good Idea, but on first and second thought it seemed to offer some advantages. Would this be more logical/consistent?

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I personally think that both your ideas and the ideas in the original post are both great. Both sets of ideas really go deep into this issue and are well though out. And just how I think...I feel like this would add a great amount of depth to the game overall as a whole as it would really open up the door to new decisions like "should I scuttle this ship, try to repair it, tow it back to port, or scrap/salvage it?"

But I will say one thing though about the point you brought up in your TL;DR. Right now, the only way ships can sink is bow first, stern first, or straight down. There is no capsizing (despite some ships having severe listing) and there is no ships breaking in two. So I feel like until capsizing and breaking apart become a thing...there can really only be a somewhat limited "structural damage" rework/new system.

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Don't mix simple visuals with under-the-hood mechanics, you can easily add more sinking animations at any point with any system and they don't prevent or limit anything but your desire for the spectacle. They won't change the gameplay.

Edited by Cpt.Hissy
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8 hours ago, Cpt.Hissy said:

Don't mix simple visuals with under-the-hood mechanics, you can easily add more sinking animations at any point with any system and they don't prevent or limit anything but your desire for the spectacle. They won't change the gameplay.

The hardest thing to do about different sinking animations is the visuals. Especially for ships splitting and such. All they have to do is split up the models in different sections but they have to make the interiors look mangled.

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4 hours ago, CapnAvont1015 said:

The hardest thing to do about different sinking animations is the visuals. Especially for ships splitting and such. All they have to do is split up the models in different sections but they have to make the interiors look mangled.

Oh man, ship interiors...
You had to remind me how Silent Hunter 4 had primitive although decent enough looking 'internals' for their ships, so when you torpedoed them they had gaping holes showing internal mechanisms and bulkheads...

Then Uboat, a game from 2020 comes out and it lacks internals/holes at all...Sigh...

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  • 2 weeks later...

The fact that nothing happens and there is little degradation to systems as the structure is reduced is incredibly short-sighted. I had a BB with 98% structural damage still lobbing 16inch shells with extreme accuracy. Sorry, with that amount of damage, most of the crew would be dead/injured and those guns.. they'd be silent. Just watch any naval gun battle and see what happens as structures are slowly destroyed over time. The turret may not have been hit, but those guns sure wouldn't be functioning with any accuracy or speed. 

Also, they have scuttle mechanics and crew abandoning mechanics in Age of Sail. They could easily port them over to UA:D. 

Edited by HailCOBRALA
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/21/2021 at 7:23 PM, Zuikaku said:

Here are some thougts on effects of structural damage. Now, when it reaches 100% the ship sinks no matter what the flooding is. So, in effect this is making it just the another flood damage wich just does not feels right.

There are many historical instances of ships being reduced to burning hulks or heaps of useless battered metal that just kept on floating until some decision or action outside ship was taken (Hornet, Hiryu, Emden, Orel).

Effects of structural damage shoul'd depend on crew experience, morale, captain experience and perks and casualties taken. Effects of 100% shoul'd not be automatic sinking but rather one or more of these:

- ship is reduced to floating wreck and is uncontrolable

- ship is reduced to burning wreck and is uncontrolable

- ship is reduced to floating wreck and is dead in the water

- ship is reduced to burning wreck and is dead in the water

when this condition is reached this have additional effects like:

1. ship is not combat worthy and can not fire it's main guns. Secondary and tertiary guns can be fired rarely, locally (single gun only) and inneficiently (if crew moralle and combat check passes)

2. since all criticall systems are dead or heavilly damaged, floodings can not be reduced or contained. But ship will not sink if remaining bulkheads are holding.

3. fighting fires is inefficient since pumps are not operational.

4. Enemy ships cease firing at ships with 100% structural damage and shift fire to other targets. These burning wrecks can be manually targeted on request or if they fire their guns (see 1)

Situation with these ships can develop as following:

1. Crew abandons ship (if morale check fails) and is rescued by nearby friendly ships. Friendly forces may opt to sink the abandoned ship by gunfire or torpedoes.

2. Crew abandons ship (if morale check fails) and is rescued by nearby enemy ships. Enemy forces may opt to sink the abandoned ship by gunfire or torpedoes or to try to capture it and tow it.

3. Crew scuttles ship (if morale check is successfull) and is rescued by nearby friendly ships.

4. Crew scuttles ship (if morale check is successfull) and is rescued by nearby enemy ships.

5. Crew surrenders the ship (moralle check fails, enemy ships are nearer than friendlies and the battle is going bad)

6. Crew stays on the ships, tries to repair damage (it can repair minimum of criticall systems and reduce system damage by 5% max). Morale and XP check must succeed to do this.

Of course, crew and captain's stats are crucial in weighting these situations.

 

Also I suggest damage accumulation to be much harder as system damage is greater. With this system it is rather easy to damage systems down to 80% Harder to bring them down to 60%. Even harder to lower them to 40%. Increasingly hard to bring them to 20%. And very, very hard to bring them to 0%. Logic is, when only few systes are left operational, it is much harder to hit them and knock out of action. 

 

 

SO GOOD İDEA  such things add more variety and playability to the game, turning the opposing ship into a colander gives a different pleasure :D 

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