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Losses


Captain Meow

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I wanted to write about it, but then kinda found my answer, but still not sure...

 

This ship has like 15% structural, some 5% float, on diagram it's showing almost all red & completely on fire, but I see the losses' count & it shows some 23-25% at max. How's it possible? 75% of virtual crew is somehow still on board performing their duties?

Also noticed once ship's status becomes "Sinking" it's losses suddenly become 100% even if it was some 15% a second earlier, I mean it's not like that ship suddenly blew up or something. And I don't see any lifeboats floating near.  So when it starts (slooooooooowly) sinking the whole crew disappears in second?   Unless the losses count means to represent vacant units that should be manned as long as the ship is not sinking.  So, if suddenly it's status is "Sinking" then I could guess the virtual crew suddenly abandons their places & "evacuates", thus 100% of vacant units in this case.

Though, once I saw a ship changed it's status to "Sinking" & lifeboats appeared around it - the losses were still at 25%, which would mean 75% of crew got saved in lifeboats. Which again makes me wonder about:
once ship's status becomes "Sinking" it's losses suddenly become 100% even if it was some 15% a second earlier, I mean it's not like that ship suddenly blow up or something.

Edited by Captain Meow
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15 hours ago, Captain Meow said:

This ship has like 15% structural, some 5% float, on diagram it's showing almost all red & completely on fire, but I see the losses' count & it shows some 23-25% at max. How's it possible? 75% of virtual crew is somehow still on board performing their duties?

The rest of your post deals with some valid points. Though I'd argue for a 'simple gameplay' exemption for it all because even if you 'fixed' your issues with the game, it'd add very little gameplay to the game. Realism, yes; gameplay, no.

However, for the part I quoted, it is surprisingly true to real life. Barring catastrophic magazine blow ups, crew are generally not killed during battle. For example, the SMS Lutzow suffered four heavy caliber hits. One even pierced the turret and ignited a propellant charge, destroying the right gun of the superfiring forward turret. The damage was so severe that it did not make it back to port. Casualties: 115 men killed, and 50 wounded, out of approximately 1100 men. Mind you, Lutzow had the second most German casualties in the Battle of Jutland; her sister ship Derfflinger had 157 men killed and 26 wounded. Derfflinger was hit 17 times by heavy calibers and 9 times by secondaries. She, however, made it back to port.

HMS Lion had her Q turret ignite; nonetheless HMS Lion only suffered 99 dead and 51 wounded.

Admittedly, you can also have the Bismarck where only 114 men survive out of 2200 men; but the Bismarck was pounded by the British ships long after it was 'necessary' to achieve such a result.

You also have the Hiryu which had her forward flight deck get literally obliterated in a and was gutted by fire. Out of her complement of 1100 men, approximately 389 (if I'm reading this right) were killed. And aircraft carriers, especially Japanese aircraft carriers are vulnerable in a way no battleship would be. In contrast, you have the Kaga and Soryu which were doomed by secondary explosions and widespread fires earlier in the day (roughly the equivalent of a turret flashfire/minor magazine det).

In summary, it is actually really, really hard to kill people on ships. When at battle conditions, most people are in armored posts and it can be ridiculously hard to kill a ship by killing its crew.

Finally, though I say "only" X amount of people killed, it really is only for the purposes of this post. Even wars fought for the right reasons are tragedies and horrible losses of life.

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On 1/17/2022 at 2:11 AM, AurumCorvus said:

*snip*

SMS Lutzow sank slowly, allowing her crew to reach lifeboats and be retrieved by other ships, torpedo boats retrieved the crew and transferred them.   She took over 6 hours to sink after withdrawing from battle.  Lethality goes up with the quickness of sinking - HMS Hood had 3 survivors after suffering her magazine detonation.

Here's a Wikipedia article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_World_War_II.  Troopships seem to be absolute deathtraps, take a few torps and out of thousands aboard, maybe a couple hundred survive.

Points of note:

Yamato – The largest battleship ever built, Yamato was sunk on 7 April 1945 by torpedo planes from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and others. 280 of Yamato's 2,778 crew were rescued. This was the greatest loss of life in a single warship in World War II.

Wilhelm Gustloff – The German militarized KdF flagship sank after being hit by three torpedoes fired by the Soviet submarine S-13 on 30 January 1945 in the Baltic. 5,348 are known dead but it has been estimated that up to 9,343 were killed, making it possibly the worst single-ship loss of life in history. Most of those killed were German civilians, military personnel, and Nazi officials being evacuated from East Prussia. 1239 survivors were rescued.
Scharnhorst – Lost in the Battle of North Cape on 26 December 1943, being outgunned by HMS Duke of York, and later finished off by British destroyers; 1,932 killed, 36 survived.
HMS Glorious – The aircraft carrier, with escorting destroyers HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta were sunk by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway, 8 June 1940. 1,515 men died; 46 survived.
Chiyoda – sunk with her entire crew of around 1,470 in 1944, possibly the largest vessel to be lost with all hands in World War II.

There are well over 100 ships in this list, all with terrible casualties.  The worst are the ships that never surrendered, and died firing their guns to the end.  Bismarck, as you said, and Scharnhorst.  Yamato.  On the other hand, where the ship sank slowly, you see a far less devastating casualty rate.

As I said above, survivors could well be incorporated into the game as part of the political side of things.  Win the battle?  Rescue your own survivors to replenish the pool of available personnel.  Rescue the enemy as POW's, perhaps to be exchanged for your own people held by the enemy.  Have it affect morale on the home front, to have a large group of your people being held as POWs is disheartening.  Look at the US and the Vietnam POW sentiment - never forgotten, even though by this time most or all would be dead of age or torture or just poor health in prison, and people are still MAD about them being abandoned.

Those are just off the top of my head, obvious seeming stuff given game mechanics already in place.  I'm sure there's more.

Edited by UnleashtheKraken
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8 hours ago, UnleashtheKraken said:
 

There are well over 100 ships in this list, all with terrible casualties.  The worst are the ships that never surrendered, and died firing their guns to the end.  Bismarck, as you said, and Scharnhorst.  Yamato.  On the other hand, where the ship sank slowly, you see a far less devastating casualty rate.

Awesome job with the list, and good point on the troopships (though it seems prison troopships are slightly worse, maybe because they aren't protected/evacuated as extensively)

The Scharnhorst is one of the odd ones and has a very unique condition to its high casualty rate (which does demonstrate our proposition that casualty rate is linked to the ability to evacuate). The water was freezing; jumping into the water was a death sentence for most people.

The Yamato is interesting as well. Well, first, it does have a magazine explosion about 20 mins after it starts evacuation. In evacuating a 71k ton BB, that's practically no time at all. But, one of the facts that I find interesting is that a pure airstrike manages to mostly clear the entire area of forces. Obviously, airplanes can't rescue survivors. On the Japanese side, out of the nine supporting ships (1 CL/8 DDs), only three destroyers are in any shape to try rescue efforts. So, you have an interesting cocktail of worsening factors that makes for an extremely high casualty rate.

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The true issue, though there is one with how slow losses build up given the apparent damage levels to given ships, is instead how effective many still remain as fighting platforms. If a ship has 10% structural integrity and even 25% of it's crew dead, it's not going to be firing very much. Most of the crew will be dealing with fires, flooding, trying to rescue trapped friends, ejecting fire hazards from the ship, etc.

Yes, there are exceptions, but even then their accuracy will decrease. I believe both Hood and Bismark fired a final shot from one of their main battery turrets as they slipped beneath the waves. They are obviously exceptions - but again, they didn't hit anything either.

The bottom line is that ships right now are firing all guns accurately right up to the ship sinking. That's a bit nuts, and the game seems to have no concept of disabled vessels, combat-ineffective vessels, etc.

Edited by Littorio
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On 1/18/2022 at 12:05 PM, Littorio said:

The true issue, though there is one with how slow losses build up given the apparent damage levels to given ships, is instead how effective many still remain as fighting platforms. If a ship has 10% structural integrity and even 25% of it's crew dead, it's not going to be firing very much. Most of the crew will be dealing with fires, flooding, trying to rescue trapped friends, ejecting fire hazards from the ship, etc.

Yes, there are exceptions, but even then their accuracy will decrease. I believe both Hood and Bismark fired a final shot from one of their main battery turrets as they slipped beneath the waves. They are obviously exceptions - but again, they didn't hit anything either.

The bottom line is that ships right now are firing all guns accurately right up to the ship sinking. That's a bit nuts, and the game seems to have no concept of disabled vessels, combat-ineffective vessels, etc.

Yes, it bothers me hugely that personnel casualties seem to matter so little.  Rate of fire and accuracy should both decrease, maneuvering and spotting should suffer (especially spotting torpedoes, and I still see enemy ships doing right angle turns with all three engines out to avoid torps).  The rate of turn at slow speeds is downright insulting bad.  This is not how things work and it's something I'd deeply like to see addressed.  A ship dead in the water should not be turning 2-3 degrees per second.

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