Torpedoing moving ships
 

The SM-79 and I think also one of the Ju-88s have a special torpedo sight for hitting moving ships. I recall seeing instructions on how to use these before, but can't find them now. It has something to do with estimating the ship's speed by the angle of the smoke coming out of its stacks, and then referencing a chart with the ship's speed on one axis and the angle on the torpedo sight on the other.

Does anyone have that chart and does anyone know how to approximate ship speed by smoke angle?

Thanks.

WokeUp

Thanks. The Italian one is a bit different, not as automated. With either one, you still need to know how to approximate the speed of the ship, how do you do that?

I watched a video on YouTube the other day that showed a torpedo attack on a German merchant convoy by British Beuforts. This was the real deal, and when they made their runs they didn't release until very close to the targets ships. In IL2 it's far easier then in real life since the ships don't take evasive action when you attack. You need to be a few hundred feet from your target when you drop, but at that distance you should be able to eye ball it. Now......this is very, very, very dangerous for the pilots flying the attack. In the video you could see the German AA gunners scoring good hit on the bombers, claiming to have shot down 5 of 10.

Torpedoes must be used as saturation weapons, as almost all air weapons of WWII. Every time some airforce tried a torpedo attack alone, the results were poor. However the combination of dive bombers and torpedo attacks were a whole other thing.

Firing a torpedo far away from a ship convoy, enable them to maneuver and avoid the attack, but on il2 ships are absolutelly cooperative on their single minded behaviour.

The date when TD could improve ships behaviour while under attack, this will be a whole different game on naval operations.

Still, maybe this code can't be accessed by them.

I agree. Torpedoes were launched en masse as many might be duds, many more might miss, and even more might be lost due to enemy action against the attacking aircraft.

I would also like to see more detailed DM for some ships. For instance, in the Pacific Beaufighters would be used to launch rockets and strafe the AA guns on ships or cause general panic. Then the torpedo planes or bombers would arrive and have an easier time. You can't do this in Il-2 as you can't progressively damage ships (they are fine until they suddenly sink) and you can't damage sub-systems like gun placements.

Not true. Every gun mount has a dedicated "collision box" and damage model. Every gun can be individually destroyed. The "hardness" of the turret also varies, so enclosed turrets are harder to destroy than open mounts. The models have been like this since the early days.

Ashe

The only way I know to hit a turret on a ship, was by the after implementations of Lal's Rhone mods. Original IL2 behaviour was that the ship sinks first from whatever damage, than having a broken turret.

I can only speak from experience of having created one or two ship models and having examined a few of the older models in the game, KGV. Illustrious, Tirpitz, Lexington and others. The behaviour is not dependant on any mods, though modding can affect the degree of visible list etc when the ship is damaged.

All of the turrets and open gun mounts on these ships can be individually destroyed. If destroyed you will see the visual model of the mount change and may see fire and smoke and of course the gun will stop firing.

This may not apply to a few of the earliest ship models produced (ShipGeneric classification) but does apply to all of the larger models which come under the BigshipGeneric classification.

What you will not get is any progressive slowing of the ship speed etc. although you may see some listing when hull sections begin to take damage. The ship will not sink until the hull sections are sufficiently damaged.

The damage model for the hull is pretty basic, comprising just three large sections, so the ability to hit critical locations like boiler rooms or magasines does not exist and armour belts are not simulated in any realistic way. Hull boxes are assumed to have similar armour strength on all faces, but after all, this is an aircraft sim.

Are all the hull boxes in one ship of the same durability? Doesen't seem like they are (Hit a destroyer with 1000 lbs aft or very far forward -gone. Hit in between-alive).
If the damage model of ships can't be improved without major reworking, then at least some randomness should be applied to it. So it will occur then and now that thousand pounds of bombs don't sink a destroyer and 500 pounds sink it sometimes - and maybe even less (100 lbs sunk Kisaragi).

Some chance of a fire breaking out by a bomb hit could also improve the damage model, that fire could spread to the next compartment - or crew effort could contain it. Would only need some number shuffling in the background, no rework of hit boxes or such. Especially aboard carriers fires were a really dangerous thing, and Princeton was lost to a single 500 kg bomb hit and Akagi to a 1000lbs hit (though it is likely that one other near misses made things substantially worse) as the resulting fires spread uncontrollably and in the end touched of the magazines.

How do you estimate a ship's speed?

I can't disagree more with this comment. This is not a flight sim. This is a ground attack flight sim. Hence it's name... Il2 Sturmovick.
It is aboslutely reasonable to ask for better behaviour from your main targets. Dogfighting is just a by product. And the fly simulator term is absolutely diminishing.
And I may also say thanks for your work on several ships, but the implemebtation made in the original code, implied that destructing a turret was much more difficult than sinking the ship itself. After mods, the punishment needed to see this happen was made somewhat more proportional. In the original game that was out of the question. Good that they asked you to make them anyway. Don't know how it is working now with TD job. I will give it a look later.

Well, in fairness, there are 200+ aircraft in this IL-2 Sturmovik sim, and they're not all Sturmoviks. ;)

On the flip side, though, a huge chunk of this sim was focused on the Pacific Theater, and that part of the war made air warfare and ship warfare inseparable from each other. I've wanted more detailed ships, ship damage and AI for a long time so we could properly do PTO campaigns with battle groups that show battle damage during missions and throughout campaigns and react like real surface combatants. :)

We would like to see more complex ship AI and make anti shipping missions a better experience. How far this can go and if there are technical limitations, I don't know. Let see...

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/9021/velocitnavi.jpg

Done by 22GCT_Perru for a SEOW campaign.

Very useful

:cool:

Also the problem is, from the first time they introduced the bomb arming delay to stop dog fight server pilots dropping their bombs at spawn points, this one change made the whole ground attack experience different from what it was for years, then progressed a much more refined arming system that had been missing from the game, it was very strange to many of us that this was done as it was fixing a small problem in some DF servers but affecting the whole game in all areas for those that never fly in DF servers :)
So
Making the targets more difficult to kill has been a progressive introduction, especially in HSFX expert mode, that leaves the ground pounders/mud movers/bomber jocks/, whatever you want to call us, perplexed at how to kill stuff that used to be "killable" but now requires more bombs or different attack policy.
Bridges (white supports) seem to be impossible/improbable to destroy with anything less than a 500kg bomb, rail bridges the same, used to drop with a cluster of 50kg bombs, vehicles tanks and AAA all becoming tougher to kill. Some of this approach has been introduced in other parts of the game.
Now
I really don't mind this approach to the bombers equipment and the way we do our business but I don't see the point of making everything so difficult for us when the fighters suffer no realism in their armament.
You have
no overheat
no freezing
no G lock of ammo
and other anomalies......
Again
Making one area of the game interesting for killing targets, there is still a huge part that's simply unrealistic
to the point of funny when so much works been done to make bomber pilots job an inconsistent mess,
not all TD's fault as HSFX also messes with new destruction parameters.

Lets make the playing field fair and sort the fighters ammo out please,
especially when you have flown 50 mins to a shipping torpedo target to have the Torp fail for no reason then fly 50 mins back to base :)

Small moan over

If there are ANY issues with art content creation to make new naval ops features happen - you guys need new models, need old models changed, or whatever - please feel free to contact me, and I will make it happen.

I'm busy building art for something super-secret at Microsoft right now but I'll have lots of time on my hands here in the next couple months, and I would give one or more extra internal organs to make the Pacific Theater naval combat part of the game what I always hoped it would be when we originally built it 9 years ago. :grin:

Nice offer :)

That's it! Thank you!

It's sincere. I don't have quite as much time as I did years back when I was barely 20 and not married, but fortunately 3D tools have advanced so much since then that it's MUCH faster to work on IL2 models (at least for me).

I would give a great, great many things to finally see the features we wanted for Pacific Fighters included in IL-2 - deck crews, landing signal officers, more capital surface combatants, ship AI and detailed damage, all kinds of stuff that we just couldn't make happen in 2004.

Well, I can say that on 4.11 stock, big ships turrets can be damaged. I used Hvars. Destroyers don't enjoy this effect.

Are you offering to build new ships? :D

Because I really think that we're in some desperate need of some new targets. I've been using the same two transport vessels as targets for years! :)

I know the N-G licensing issues affects a number of ships but I'm sure there are other options out there.

N-G may have an arguably valid claim to aircraft, but the US naval vessels of WWII were designed by the US Bureau of Ships - a government department. Their design and construction was conducted by federal employees using taxpayer funding and conducted at federal facilities. N-G believes they have ownership of those things because they purchased Newport News in the last few years... that couldn't be further from the truth.

I was mainly thinking of deck crew / Landing Signal Officer models and animations, but ships aren't completely out of the question. There's a horrible shortage of capital surface combatants on all sides for the Pacific theater, but just as much missing gameplay of their interaction with the air war. Air Boss direction and contact with planes over the radio, good dynamic Ship AI, lots of small things that would add immensely.

The whole thing with N-G is laughable if it wasn't so incredibly insane.

LSO interaction would be great for sure. I remember Aces of the Pacific had the little animated guy in the corner of the screen giving you the information on how well you were landing it.

@Plane-Eater

A long time ago I made a suggestion for crew abandoning ship using the columns abandoning vehicles when attacked scenario, is this possible to have ships crew abandoning shipping, not sure if its your department but just a thought :)

Need Japanese cruisers badly.