Frame 1 Rules Clarification.......

[M36]

...where will it go next?

"If you dont know where your going, go back to the beginning" 

Im sure we'll circle back to the original thought anytime now. 

[daddog]

Baumer said,

Let me be absolutely clear on this.

I am the designer of this FSO.

I have reviewed the orders TracerX created, and the attack on the CV was well within the rules of FSO.

The initial attack force as intercepted but did moderate damage. The P-40E's (which were initially assigned to defend a target and did) were a follow on attack that the CiC asked for later in the frame, again this is completely within the rules of FSO.

And M36 just to put your mind at ease, I am flying axis in this FSO so I have no bias.

That should have ended this thread which is titled, Frame 1 Rules Clarification I think some forgot that. 

The rest of it which ROC pointed out is moot to no end

The CV was hammered so much that all it took was some planes to strafe it down.  Some of you seem to want a technicality to explain your lack of defensive capabilities.  Tough, get over it, you lost a CV.  Blaming the attack instead of learning from a lack of defense is unfortunate.  Some, in the past, would have shrugged off the loss with nothing more than this.  "Whoa, didn't see that one coming, let's make sure we don't let those buggers in again, k?"  Now, it's an endless rant on the laws of physics and text book examples of some hull thicknesses!

If some of you want to continue to debate decks, hulls, ballistics, personalities, et cetera, feel free, but please start your own thread. 

Lastly be nice and polite or Skuzzy will get involved.

[ghostdancer]

I decided to do some testing of this issue so I did the following:

1) I loaded up a terrain offline.
2) I moved to a CV
3) I changed the AA lethality to 0.001
4) I spawned in M16
5) I changed the ownership if the CV so that I was non friendly GV sitting on its deck.
6) I used my quad .50s (total 4000 rounds) to first destroy the radar, then a soft gun, then a hard gun, and the rest into the armored turret. All were destroyed except the armored turret.
7) Changed CV nationality back to what my GV was, exited and then respawned. Damage was still there.
8) Changed the nationality of the CV and then fired on a destroyer. Kill the destroyer with little more than 1500 rds of .50 caliber ammunition concentrated on spot. Pumped the rest into the armor turret of the CV I fired on earlier to no avail.
9) Changed the nationality of the CV to match what my GV, exited, respawned, changed CV nationality to an enemy country.
10) Pumped 4000 rounds of into the deck of the cv by the base of the conning tower. The bullets bounced so I had hit sprites on the deck and then on the tower from where they ricocheted off the deck and into the conning tower.
11) I repeated step 10 13 times .. meaning I pumped 52,000 rounds of .50 caliber bullets into the deck with no result.

So first off the deck does seemed to be armored to some extent since rounds were ricocheting off of it. Second 52,000 rounds into the deck and the CV did not sink. Roughly 6500 separate rounds into the armored turret and it did not blow.

To me this says the armor model is more nuanced than I thought and either:

1) Damage from bombs reduce the armor values effectiveness. Possibly as you destroy turrets, gun, and radar the code models greater and greater structural damage. From the logs it looks like all the guns were taken out before the Nightmares started strafing.

or

2) The CV was damaged to the point from bombs that somebody on board sneezing violently several times would kill it. The CV did take a hits from a B17 dropping on it and then multiple P40Es. It took 1257 .50 caliber rounds from the Nightmares.


So to reiterate 52,000 rounds into the flight deck and ricocheting the rounds into the conning tower did not sink a CV that had taken no bomb damage. I sort of gave up that point.

[Strip]

FYI...

One 50 caliber round is worth 1lb of ordnance......

Strip

[ghostdancer]

So basically I put 52,000 lbs of ordinance into the flight deck. A CV takes 8000 lbs of ordinance from bombs to sink. Therefore I say that is a pretty strong argument that a CVs armoring (at least the flight deck and the conning tower .. just did a test and pumped 12,000 rounds directly into the conning tower to no avail in case ricochets don't do anything) basically does shrug off .50s.

I also would hazard that after a certain damage thresh hold is passed that HTC has modeled in structural failure or degradation of the armor do to damage but just doesn't show any visual indication of this to us in the game (would be nice to see a holed deck, twisted metal, chewed up conning tower, etc .. only affect now is the a flame at the conning tower which I found out is actually caused by the killing the radar).

Again 8000 lbs of bombs on the deck of a CV sinks it. 52,000 rounds of .50 fire in my test did nothing. I was able to kill DDs (took around 1500 rounds) and kill the radar, hard and soft guns on the CV with .50 cal fire. The armored turrets, deck, and conning tower ignored my fire.

[Strip]

Thats funny I just sank mine in less than 6,000 rounds.....directly to conning tower.

What hardness level?

[ghostdancer]

Default hardness level. Only things I touched were the AA lethality.

Although I fired on the conning tower at a angle and not straight on.  So possibly the angle of the bullet striking also has some factor in the damage model of a ship.

Did you fire at an angle or straight on?

[Strip]

Straight on....

If it ricochets it does no damage at the impact point, if it hits something else after a ricochet the damage is reduced.

Strip

[ghostdancer]

Okay just tried moving up parallel to the conning tower and then fired at it point blank and my with fire not angled in anyway. Doing this I was able to sink the CV with just a little over 6000 rounds.

Just checked a few things and I was able to sink a DD with direct non angled fire with 1500 rounds. When I had a angle on it .. about 20 degrees took me like 2500 rounds. On the CA direct non angled fire took 4200.

Checked the ship hardness and a DD is 1500+ lbs per that setting. So looks like a DD takes 1500+ lbs to kill, a CA takes 4000+ and a CV takes 6000. I assumed it was 2000 and 8000 but haven't tested what the default is for a while.

So ricochets basically have no affect.

Also if the angle of your shots have effect their results. 52,000 rounds pointing my gun down into the flight deck nada. 12,000 rounds fire at mabye a 45 degree angle on the conning tower nada. 6000 rounds fire into the conning tower (basically at the base of the smoke stack) point blank and no angle of deflection and the CV goes down.

So I don't know how many of those hits actually did damage since by their very nature planes come in at an angle. Logs show about that the CV about 5900 lbs from the combined B17 and P40E bomb attacks. Meaning about 100 of the bullet strikes out of the 1257 did any damage to a the ship. Or 8% of the rounds they fired had any effect. At that rate to kill a fresh CV they would have needed  76,000 rounds.

So you can look at this way the ship was 98% destroyed via bombs. So a ship in real life that took that much bomb damage would basically be a floating hulk with the flight deck destroyed and gaping holes in the side armor, conning tower damage and holes in it, ablaze, and surviving crew (and they most likely took a lot of casualties) would be fighting flooding and fire. Most likely it would be abandoned and then sunk by its own side because it was non salvageable. Strafing a ship at this point could definitely contribute to its demise whether from setting something off and causing additional explosions or stopping the surviving crews damage repairs. Remember at this time both on the US side and the Japanese side you had dedicated fire control teams and other personnel did not fire fighting training. So realistically after taking 98% bomb damage the ship was lost .. HTC just doesn't have animation showing a ship as a burning listing hulk and HTC also does degrade the ships ability to have aircraft spawn (with full fuel and bombs) or land and rearm on a ship this heavily damaged.

[Strip]

More than 100 probably hit the carrier causing damage, this is due to the range and velocity drop.

To be truthful thats splitting hairs but shows how well somethings are modeled....you did have me curious when you posted your test tho.

 

[ghostdancer]

The B17 and P40E bomb hits occurred before the strafing. Not after so from what I can reconstruct from the logs you have 5900 lbs of damage done. But for arguments sake lets say 5700 lbs of damage. Now instead of 100 .50 rounds doing damage you have 300.

Now the damage done to the ship by bombs was 95% and 5% by guns (instead of 98% and 2%).

The strafing damage rate jumps from 8% of the rounds fire to 24%. So to kill a fresh CV it would take 25000 rounds with only 24% hitting and the others bouncing off do the angle they were fired at.

The thing that I find interesting here is that this reinforces that CiCs should always have their ships maneuvering erratically when under attack. Not only does it help to throw off the enemy's bomb drop but it also is changing the angle at which any bullet hits the ship which impacts if the bullet will do damage or simply ricochet off.

[Delirium]

To be blunt, this is one of the reasons I don't attend FSO. People take it WAY too seriously... lighten up, the pixel death of a carrier in AH on one Friday night isn't the end of the world.

[Greziz]

I never thought for a second that the strafe run was all or nothing tactic we had to go by that way again and figured it was so close to dead we could plink it down as we left we weren't going to come back if it didn't sink and I very well almost lost my left wing and rightwing and left elevator to carrier ack I was crying from dmg but no broke parts except for a gun all my plane was bruised and battered though.

[Dadsguns]

To be blunt, this is one of the reasons I don't attend FSO. People take it WAY too seriously... lighten up, the pixel death of a carrier in AH on one Friday night isn't the end of the world.

Your right.  

The issue raised was:  Is it practical?  Gamey?  In the spirit of FSO to re create an exchange to the best ability?  Authentic?  MA'ish?

I understand the intent of considering damage from a Bombs and how close it was to being pixel dead, had it been downed by another bomb or two we would not be having this discussion.

However, a P40B armament consists of 4/30cal and 2/50 cal, a P40E consists of 6/50cal guns.  Even if we are talking about just the P40E's damage capability in the game, the damage that killed the CV was from (11 P40's)66/50cal guns firing from their max distance till they had to pull up directly into the side of the CV.

I don't think the CV was as damaged as some have pointed out since I saw no bomb hits from the 17's, I could be wrong and that can be debated to the infinity.  

Rather, this is much more to do about the ACT instead of the science behind it. IMO

[ghostdancer]

I don't think the CV was as damaged as some have pointed out, I could be wrong and that can be debated to the infinity. 

Dadguns I am a CM and I have access to the raw CM logs.

It was damaged per those logs to that extent. It was hit by one B17 unloading its bomb load on it and it was hit by bombs from 7 P40Es. The raw logs have several filter options such as objects damaged, objects destroyed, etc.

Others have already addressed the act. You have a smoking burning hulk of a ship. The players know it is a smoking burning hulk because they know a B17 unloaded on it. They know they have struck it with 7 bombs (although the squad in question thought they hit with more than that out of the 10 dropped). They have received multiple kill credits for destroying the soft guns, hard guns, and armored batteries on the CV. The rate of fire coming off the CV is visibly weak to non-existent. So they all this information to go on that the ship basically is a burning gutted hulk.

In real life face with an enemy ship that damaged the pilots basically would have had two choice to make:

1) The ship is basically dead. It hasn't sunk yet but for all purposes it is no longer operational and if it can be salvaged is out of the war for months and months. Worst it might be captured by the enemy. Many ships in this state, including CVs were sunk by their own forces. So don't strafe it trying to kill the crew doing damage control or whatever and don't gamble that a higher enemy fighter force will show up an bounce you while you are low and have expended a lot of your ammo.

Quote From Wikipedia article on the Battle of the Coral Sea

On the morning of the 8th, a Lexington plane located the Shōkaku group; a strike was immediately launched from the American carriers, and the Japanese carrier was heavily damaged. However, Japanese planes penetrated the American defenses at 1100, and 20 minutes later Lexington was struck by a torpedo to port. Seconds later, a second torpedo hit her portside directly abeam the bridge. At the same time, she took three bomb hits from enemy dive bombers, producing a 7 degree list to port and several raging fires. By 1300, skilled damage control had brought the fires under control and restored her to an even keel; making 25 kn (28.8 mph, 46.3 km/h), she was ready to recover her air group. Lexington was suddenly shaken by a tremendous explosion, caused by the ignition of gasoline vapors below, and again fire raged out of control. At 1558, Captain Frederick Carl Sherman, fearing for the safety of men working below, halted salvage operations, and ordered all hands to the flight deck. At 1701, he ordered "abandon ship" and the orderly disembarkation began. Men going over the side into the warm water were almost immediately picked up by nearby cruisers and destroyers. Admiral Aubrey Wray Fitch and his staff transferred to Minneapolis; Captain Sherman and his executive officer, Commander Morton T. Seligman ensured all their men were safe, then were the last to leave.

Lexington blazed on, flames shooting hundreds of feet into the air. To prevent enemy capture, the destroyer Phelps closed to 1500 yd (1371.6 m) and fired two torpedoes into her hull; with one last heavy explosion, Lexington sank


or

2) Strafe a ship in that condition and hope that you will kill the crew doing damage control, that you get lucky and set off surviving bombs, pockets of gasoline vapor that is not already burning, etc.

The second is an act of desperation and real gamble. If higher alt planes showed up you are caught low on the deck and are in serious trouble. However, the CV is a big prize. Suicidal? Definitely running the risk of that. But remember in the battle of Midway that the Devastators of VT-8 decided to attack the enemy carriers without fighter cover. Suicidal but they did it anyway and were all shot down.

So pilot do make judgement calls out of desperation and do or have valued killing a target over the risk of themselves being killed. The Lexington took 3 bombs from dive bombers and 2 torp hits. The CV in question in frame 1 got hit by a B17 unloading on it and then took another 7 bombs from dive bombers. I would say that it was much, much worse shape than Lexington.