Agreed. I'm all for a more complex damage model for ships. Part of the problem is that if you allow damage to slow a ship down, flight ops become impossible. This is not necessarily terrible, as it's possible to temporarily disable flight ops at airfields. Any single torpedo hit or bomb hit to the engine spaces would reduce the ship's speed by one-third for 15 minutes. However, you'd have to allow the ship to repair damage to itself over time in the same manner as airfield objects do. You'd still have to allow for accumulated damage that results in the ship sinking.
Example: A CVBG is steaming along, fresh from port and with no damage. An enemy strike force approaches, composed of torpedo planes and dive bombers. The torp planes strike first, getting one hit on the CV and reducing the its speed by 1/3. The dive bombers roll in and get three hits: one in the elevator, one on the forward 5-inch turret, and one in the island. The elevator hit disables all a/c spawning for two hours (the default down-time for airfield hangers), but still allows for landings. The gun hit likewise disables that turret for the same amount of time. The hit to the island disables radar. It also prevents a new course from being plotted during that time (TG follows last plotted course). Let's say the accumulated damage is worth 6,500 lbs. After 15 minutes, full speed is restored; after 2 hours the other damage is repaired. However, at two hours and 10 minutes, another strike lands a 2,000 lb bomb, which hits directly over the engine spaces. Normally, this would cause speed to be reduced back to two-thirds. Unfortunately, the additional 2k of damage is added to the 6.5k already inflicted, sinking the CV.
Problem: What do you do if other ships in the fleet take engine or hull damage? The code currently requires all ships in a TG to stay together. So does the entire fleet slow down because one of the destroyer escorts took the damage? What if it's the CA that's hit? These questions would have to be considered. The short term solution would be to implement selective damage to ships' systems, but to forget about damage affecting speed. Simply continue to allow full speed regardless of how much damage has been done. Even this would be worlds better than the current modeling. Oh, and I want to see fire and smoke when I damage a ship, and a big black hole where that turret that I just capped used to be:D.
