Are proper trainbusting effects possible?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dimlee

It would be intreresting to have such effect, indeed. But how often it could be triggered? Direct boiler damage is rare accident in real life. And there are not many ships in (stock) game which can be classified as steamships.

For ships, the burst boiler effect should be much rarer, and should only appear as a "critical hit" when a bomb, rocket or 20 mm+ cannon shell hits the engine room.

Gun camera and skip bombing films will occasionally show this effect (a huge, sudden cloud of white steam), but not with the same regularity as with destroyed locomotives.

Keep in mind that almost all large ships of the WW2 era were "steamships" in that they didn't use internal combustion engines for motive power. They burned bunker fuel which was used to to fire steam boilers, which in turn provided power to steam turbines. That meant that they still had boilers which could be burst as a result of damage.

[RPS69]

I would actually love transports to be selectable to have explosive cargo.

Oilers to come on fire.

Warships in particular, some weak spot that if hited will blow out the whole ship, like the Hood.

The other things that I would expect from ships should not be posted here.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RPS69

I would actually love transports to be selectable to have explosive cargo.

This would be really easy to do, even for a mod. All you need to do is set the "fatal damage" effects for a particular unit to some size of bomb blast and rename the unit to create a new unit.

Say 500 lb. bomb for a truck, 1,000 lb. for a train car, or 10,000 lb. for a merchant ship.

For explosive blasts or large smoky fires within a building, it would be simpler to just create an arbitrary unit - like a simple box - with minimal "hit points", no "panzer rating" (i.e., armor) and a similar fatal damage effect as described above. Mission builders could place the box within the building using the FMB, to create the effects of an ammo explosion or fuel fire.

Originally Posted by RPS69

Oilers to come on fire.

IL2 lacks the damage effects to properly simulate the really massive black smoke and huge fires that accompany an oil tank or oil tanker fire. They would need to be created, and they'd likely have a really devastating effect on frame rates.

Originally Posted by RPS69

Warships in particular, some weak spot that if hited will blow out the whole ship, like the Hood.

The circumstances that caused the HMS Hood to blow up were extremely unusual. Suffice it to say that the Bismarck's crew got about as lucky a hit as its possible to get - a very heavy shell that hit exactly the right spot, at exactly right angle, with sufficient force to penetrate right into the Hood's main magazine and then explode.

What would be slightly more realistic is giving aircraft carriers the possibility of being much more vulnerable to damage than they currently are, representing the possibility that they're refueling or "bombing up" aircraft below decks, (e.g., IJN Akagi, USS Franklin), with far more impressive flame effects.

[dimlee]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

For ships, the burst boiler effect should be much rarer, and should only appear as a "critical hit" when a bomb, rocket or 20 mm+ cannon shell hits the engine room.

Gun camera and skip bombing films will occasionally show this effect (a huge, sudden cloud of white steam), but not with the same regularity as with destroyed locomotives.

Keep in mind that almost all large ships of the WW2 era were "steamships" in that they didn't use internal combustion engines for motive power. They burned bunker fuel which was used to to fire steam boilers, which in turn provided power to steam turbines. That meant that they still had boilers which could be burst as a result of damage.

Agree on critical hit by a bomb. Not sure about a rocket, even AP. 20mm shells - certainly not, unless ship's hull and deck is pure wood or this is very small vessel as tug boat, for example.
It would be interesting to speculate how often this effect should be triggered, taking into account size of a bolier. Probably just few percent of all hits in some "box" representing the engine room.

Regarding WW2 ships - true, steam turbines for most, diesel engines for some, reciprocal steam engines for very few. Almost all were equipped with boilers, just of different types and applications.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dimlee

Agree on critical hit by a bomb. Not sure about a rocket, even AP.

A big rocket basically has the same punch as a small bomb or an artillery shell - certainly enough power to potentially cause a boiler explosion.

Originally Posted by dimlee

20mm shells - certainly not, unless ship's hull and deck is pure wood or this is very small vessel as tug boat, for example.

That's what I was thinking of. If you look at gun camera films, you can sometimes see 20mm and .50 caliber AP rounds damaging small ships like frigates, destroyer escorts, tugs, and coastal freighters. They didn't call destroyers "tin cans" for nothing!

Originally Posted by dimlee

It would be interesting to speculate how often this effect should be triggered, taking into account size of a bolier. Probably just few percent of all hits in some "box" representing the engine room.

I'd say "rarely" - perhaps no more than 10% of the time. That is, assuming that IL2 ever revises the ship damage model to actually take hit locations into account. It could also be triggered as a fatal damage effect when a ship sinks.