Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod read me…
Quote… 'One of the stupidest things in game design is the lack of uncertainty given to the player'
The overall aim of the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod was to make ships ‘sink’… and not just run out of HP’s i.e. Hit Points.
In attaining our goal, the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod has achieved a level of uncertainty never before seen in a u-boat/submarine simulation.
The Not Your Grand Mother's Ship Sinking Mod does not aim nor intend to make it harder to sink ships than it was historically. It cannot be denied that the Not Your Grand Mother's Ship Sinking Mod does make it more challenging to sink ships than it was in the stock game, but I am sure that even the most ardent Silent Hunter III fan will acknowledge that the sinking of ships in the standard game is at the gamey end of the realism scale.
First, I will shed some light on what I refer to as the standard game. That is Silent Hunter III patched to version 1.4.
Index
The standard game
The Silent Hunter III ships
The standard games implementation of damage
The Critical Chance
The Auto TDC’s ‘Silver Bullet’
An example of some ships original HP’s (all ships not included)
Torpedos
Torpedo impact verses under keel and Critical Chance
Premature detonation – A history and SHII
Running deep – A history and SHII
Angle of impact – A history and SHII
Surface runners
Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod
Design goals
To make ships sink by flooding
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking’s
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking times
To keep the player guessing
To have a non Uber deck gun
How to use the deck gun
To compensate for the torpedo above par attributes
The standard game
Silent Hunter III is the best u-boat/submarine simulation since Aces of the Deep. It was also the first to bring great graphics to the poor cousin of simulations. Some will swear that Silent Hunter III is the best u-boat/submarine simulation ever, I, for the most part whole heartedly agree. I would however add that Aces of the Deep still holds its own for game play and AI. As few would have a machine old enough to play Aces of the Deep on, and lets be honest, after the graphics of Silent Hunter III, who would bother! So no sense in living in the past.
Everywhere through out the Silent Hunter III files are hints of how much more Silent Hunter III might have been. Hints that the Dev Team knew what a u-boat/submarine simulation was about and had all the intentions of delivering. It is also evident that Silent Hunter III’s development was cut short, not because of the hints of what could have been, but by the average AI, incomplete crew management, instant repairs to an almost bullet proof u-boat and the gamey ship damage model, can everyone say BOOM!
I cannot fix the AI, the crew management, the instant repairs or probably the Tiger Tank u-boat, but I can, and have done something about the gamey ship damage model.
Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a ship that sinks by flooding!
While I have not been able to remove the ‘Enemy Ship Sunk’ message, as a result of the Not Your Grand Mother's Ship Sinking Mod, the ‘Enemy Ship Sunk’ message almost only occurring as a ship slips under the water.
As an example, it is 10am and we have torpedoed a merchant ship. As a result, the merchant ship is guaranteed to sink as a result of flooding, however, in this instance, it will be 45 minutes before the flooding reaches a point where it is greater than the remaining buoyancy. With the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod, the ‘Enemy Ship Sunk’ message will not come until 10.45am.
There is an exception to the rule that a ships is not called sunk until it sinks beneath the waves, the exception is when a critical hit is achieved.
The Silent Hunter III ships
As seen in the picture below, the ships are well represented in their over all structure. All merchant shipping follow the same format pictured. Warships are much the same with the corresponding ‘cargo’ space between important compartments being made up of one compartment instead of several.
With the values in the zones.cfg, coupled with each ships own uniqueness and other variables, the damage effects can be quite complex. However, after reading the next section, you will see that the standard game does nothing with the potential.
The standard games implementation of damage
The standard game relied on a ship being destroyed and not sunk. The ships were destroyed either by the damage HP’s exceeding the ships HP’s or by a critical hit. The ships for the most part did not ‘sink’. On occasion the floatation damage did exceed the ships buoyancy. However, for the most part you would exceed maximum HP’s first.
The standard game was configured so that ‘Ship A’ has 300 hit points, which will be exceeded by 3 torpedoes at minimum damage HP value of 120, or 2 torpedoes at maximum damage HP value (more on the torpedoes in the following pages). Or, in the case of the standard games deck gun, at a maximum of 25 HP damage, a 300 HP ship will sink, regardless of where it is hit, with 13 shells.
When a ship runs out of HP’s it destructs with an almighty BOOM!
In the standard game, flooding of various compartments occurred instantly. Well almost, nominally within a minute. As such, if a ship did not sink within 5 minutes, allowing for partial damage and thus a longer flooding time, the ship was never going to sink. The only exception to this is if a storm front arrives it may be enough to cause the ship to sink.
An example of running out of HP’s before a ship would sink is no more evident than when using the deck gun. If you were to hit at the foremost part of the bow, at its very highest point, in 13 shots a 300 HP ship will explode with an almighty BOOM.
As you can see, a ship in the standard game a ship is always instantly sunk or its not. Where you hit the ship had very little relevance as ships will always run out of HP’s before they could possibly sink.
Critical Chance
A Critical Chance is a setting in the zones.cfg that works like this. If the compartment has a Critical Chance associated with it, when a torpedo successfully damages that compartment, then there is a chance, as specified by the Critical Chance, that the torpedo will, without exceeding the ships HP’s, cause the ship to destruct with an almighty BOOM.
In the standard game only the fuel bunker, engine space, keel and ammo space all had a critical hit chance associated with them. The merchant ships ‘cargo’ and the warships ‘cargo’ spaces do not have a Critical Chance.
The Auto TDC’s ‘Silver Bullet’
The Auto TDC has a ‘Silver Bullet’ attribute. Essentially, the Auto TDC ignores the Critical Chance= specified for a player not using the Auto TDC, If your torpedo hits the location it will always result in a critical hit. This has been confirmed by the Dev Team, I quote “This was the original design, that when using the Auto TDC and the recognition manual for 'designated critical shots', you ALWAYS get the critical effect (amplified torpedo damage).”
An example of some ships original HP’s (all ships not included)
200 HP’s
Coastal & Small Merchant, Landing Ship Tank, Armed Trawler
V&W Destroyer, Type 34 Destroyer, Clemson Destroyer, Soldati Destroyer, Somers Destroyer, Hunt I Destroyer, Hunt II Destroyer, Hunt III Destroyer, C Class Destroyer, J Class Destroyer, River Destroyer Escort, Evarts Destroyer Escort, Buckley Destroyer Escort, JC Butler Destroyer Escort, Black Swan Frigate, Flower Corvette
300 HP's
Small Tanker
Fletcher Destroyer, Tribal Destroyer, V&W Destroyer, Type 34 Destroyer, Clemson Destroyer, Soldati Destroyer, Somers Destroyer
400 HP's
C2 Cargo, C3 Cargo, Liberty Cargo, Victory Cargo, T2 Tanker, T3 Tanker, Troop Transport
Dido Light Cruiser, Fiji Light Cruiser, Casablanca Escort Carrier, Bogue Escort Carrier
500 to 800 HP's
Passenger Liner
Hipper Heavy Cruiser, Dido Light Cruiser, Fiji Light Cruiser, Illustrious Fleet Carrier, Bismarck Battleship, King George V Battleship, Nelson Battleship, Revenge Battleship
Torpedo’s
Torpedo HP damage is a random value between 120 and 180 and has a minimum range of impact of 3 metres and maximum range of impact of 7 metres.
I have always felt that the torpedo to ship damage was always spot on.
Torpedo impact verses under keel and Critical Chance
The mainly upward motion of the explosive force from an under keel explosion that is created by the expanding and contracting gasses is not modelled in Silent Hunter III. As such, a torpedo that explodes under a ship will not cause more damage than one that impacts 2 metres above the keel.
In addition, for a Critical Chance to occur, the torpedo must impact the compartment. A Critical Chance will not occur by non impact torpedo. This includes the keel. In game, when using the Auto TDC to target the keel, the Auto TDC aims at 1-2 metres higher than the bottom of the ship and the torpedo impacts upon the ship and does not detonate under it (unless it is a miss). As such, an under keel explosion in Silent Hunter III will not cause a Critical Chance and break the ships back.
The Silent Hunter III torpedos are substantially more reliable than historical. The German torpedos of WWII suffered from several major design flaws that resulted in many missed opportunities.
The major German torpedo issues were;
• Premature detonation – not well represented
• Running deep – not implemented
• Angle of impact – well represented
Premature detonation
The premature detonation is the most widely known issue and more often than not, the torpedo would explode at reaching the 300 metre safety margin. The issue with the magnetic pistol was so bad, that after initially detuning the detonators sensitivity, making it so that it could only be used on larger ships of 3000 ton or more, it was withdrawn from use in early 1940 and not re-introduced until the beginning of 1943.
Initially the magnetic pistol also suffered a sensitivity issue. This caused the torpedo to explode near a ship and not under it. Essentially nullifying the explosion force, at best causing slight damage, at worst, none. This resulted in a lot of incorrect reports of hit ships in the first few months of the war.
The magnetic pistol's main issue was related to the dislocation of the pistol during the running of the torpedo from ‘self-shock’ (their words), as a result of the enormous force required to launch a torpedo. Another cause of ‘self-shock’ was when the torpedo broached the surface if set too shallow for the weather conditions.
It is my understanding that up to its withdrawal, that there was on average a 30 to 40% failure due to premature detonations.
The percentage of premature detonations, along with the withdraw of the magnetic pistol are not represented in Silent Hunter III.
Running deep
The second less known depth keeping issue had the greatest impact. The depth keeping issue could result in a torpedo being up to 2.7 metres (8 feet) deeper than it was set at. The cause of the depth keeping issue was not discovered until January 1942, when U-94 performed a field inspection on a torpedo which was very much against Standard Operational Procedure.
A fix for the non-air tight balance chamber was not available until towards the end of 1942. The issue was most likely to occur after a u-boat had been submerged for extended periods of time, due to the increase of pressure inside the u-boat.
The depth keeping issue also exaggerated the magnetic pistol failures, With the torpedo running deeper than intended the magnetic pistol might fail to trigger, or if it did, was at a depth that greatly lessened the explosive force.
Of course, the depth keeping issue also cause torpedos set for impact depth to run under the intended target.
Deep running torpedos are not modelled in Silent Hunter III.
Angle of impact
The third issue was that though the impact pistol was designed to detonate at an angle of 21º. It was found to often, but not always fail at an angle equal to and less than 50º due to the 180º design that had a high chance of jamming. This issue was not fixed until the end of 1942 after the Germans copied the British design of the torpedos from the captured British submarine, HMS Seal.
This is well represented in Silent Hunter III.
Surface runners
A surface runner is a torpedo that broaches the surface. The main problems apart from someone seeing the torpedo is that a torpedo broaching the surface will often cause the torpedo to veer off course or even detonate.
Surface runners are not modelled in Silent Hunter III, allowing a player to target ships that were not normally able to be attacked in conditions that were normally impossible for a u-boat to carry out an attack.
Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod
For the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod to work, ships had to have enough HP’s to make them sink. I approached TimeTraveller and said this is where, this is what, and can you give me access. Scarcely a day had passed before TimeTraveller had created a rule to use with his tools that allowed me to do this. And with that, began the Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod.
Design goals
To make ships sink by flooding
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking’s
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking times
To keep the player guessing
To have a non Uber deck gun
How to use the deck gun
To compensate for the torpedo above par attributes
To make ships sink by flooding
Once the ships HP’s were adjusted to 2160, the equivalent of 12 maximum HP torpedoes, having ships sink by flooding was no issue.
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking’s
As shown above, the ship spaces are very well represented. Admittedly in the standard game it is not evident.
The zones.cfg has the values used by the game engine to adjust how a ship behaves when damaged. It is only after the zones.cfg compartment sections have modified do you get to see just how good Silent Hunter III represents a damaged ship via these compartments. Suddenly it makes a difference where the torpedo hits the ship.
The zones.cfg has 5 groups of settings for the merchant and warships under New Small Merchant, New Escort, New Merchant, Battleships & Cargoships. Under each of the sets, are the various values for the compartments i.e. bow, cargo, fuel, engine, stern & keel
The zones.cfg allows for a lot of fine tuning of a how or even if a compartment will be damaged, and then how the damaged compartment will affect the ship through how much buoyancy is lost and how quickly it occurs and more.
The ideal situation would be for each ship to have its own set of values. Sadly the zones.cfg is not ideal. One group of settings may be for as many as 10 ships. And as mention under the Silent Hunter III ships, each ship is unique. So what makes one ship sink like a stone may barely have a noticeable affect on another.
As you might imagine, this has been a process of give and take in an effort to attain something that works for all the ships of a group.
I feel that we have done very well considering the constraints imposed upon us by way of the current ship to zones setup.
To create as far as possible, realistic sinking times
What are realistic sinking times anyway? This is a tough question with no definitive answer, it is more of a feeling for what seems right. Ships were often reported to have sank almost instantly to taking hours, in some cases, the hulk was sank week/s later.
In Silent Hunter III the instant sinking’s are represented by the Critical Chance occurrence. The taking hours sinking’s are achieved through the complex mechanics behind the scenes using the numbers from the zones.cfg.
Again, this has been a process of give and take in an effort to attain something that works for all the ships of a group.
How long will a ship take to sink? Ships may sink quickly in as little as 5 minutes to as long as an hour or more. The ‘duh’ statement of the moment is ‘the more damage you do the quicker it will sink’. I say this as you may be able to sink a ship with 1 torpedo and 10 shells and it will sink in say 45 minutes. Use 20 shells and it may sink in 30 minutes.
To keep the player guessing
I quote a good friend of mine “One of the stupidest things in game design is the lack of uncertainty given to the player”
The ‘lack of uncertainty’ was something that the standard Silent Hunter III has in abundance. From exactly how many torpedos and/or shells, to how fast a ship was destroyed to the exact moment that is was, even though the ship looked seaworthy. I will add that I feel that this was not the intention of the Dev Team, but came about due to time constraints.
The Not Your Grand Mothers Ship Damage Mod has achieved a level of uncertainty never before seen in a u-boat/submarine simulation. While I have not been able to remove the ‘Enemy Ship Sunk’ message, I have been able to make it so that it will only occur as the ship sinks below the water and not before. The exception as noted previously is the Critical Chance occurrences.
While there will be a general rule of thumb (no, not Tom) to how many torpedos are required to sink a certain class of ship, this will be only a general rule. Many factors come into play to determine if and how much a compartments are damaged. The variables come from, but not exclusive to, how much HP damage the torpedo has (120 to 180 HP’s) to the blast area (3 to 7 metres) to the armour level of that compartment.
If you hit the centre of a compartment it will, in nearly all cases, be damaged. Hit the bulkhead between compartments and the two compartments may be partially or fully damaged, or maybe only one will be damaged, again, partially or fully.
As can be seen, while I have specified how much damage will occur before flooding happens and how quickly the flooding is to occur, the results of your torpedo hit are very random. One day luck will appear to be on your side and on another it will be against you.
To have a non Uber deck gun
To have the ships HP’s high enough to ensure that it does not run out of HP’s before sinking from flooding was not enough to quell the Uber deck gun as the damage model is slightly more complicated that simply the ships maximum HP’s. To bring the deck gun back to a realistic level required the HP value of the shells to be reduced by just over ½.
How to use the deck gun
The changes made to ensure that a ships sinks have greatly changed how the deck gun can be used effectively.
As ships now ‘sink’, you will need to use the deck gun along and below the water line to make or assist a ship to sink. Hitting the foremost part of the bow, at its very highest point will never result in a ship sinking. As a matter of fact, while hitting the super structure etc may assist in the overall damage of the ship, that is assist in it sinking, it will add little and certainly never cause the ship to sink. Hitting far above the water line on the side of the ships hull will also never result in a ship sinking.
As such, you now have to use the deck gun in a realistic manner.
The deck gun alone can sink all ships. It will however be very expensive to rely upon the deck gun alone. As was the case during WWII, the deck gun for the most part should be used to finish off a torpedoed ship.
To compensate for the torpedo above par attributes
As discussed earlier under the Standard Game – Torpedos, the game does not reflect well the historical performance or availability of the magnetic pistol, the depth keeping issues and the minimum depth that a torpedo could be realistically used at.
Nor does the game take into consideration the degaussing carried out by the allies in response to the magnetic mines. For those who do not know, degaussing is the neutralising of the magnetic field of a ship. With no change in the magnetic field, when a magnetic pistol torpedo goes under a ship the magnetic pistol will not fire. Essentially making the magnetic pistol redundant. While a ship would slowly build up a magnetic field again, it would have been at a far lower level than if it had never been done.
I would have preferred to be able to raise the premature detonation rate to 80% compensate for the many issues associated with this pistol, but I cannot. As such, I have implemented through various means the net effect of the above.
I will reiterate, for a Critical Chance to occur, the torpedo must impact the compartment. This is a SHIII game engine design.
An impact hit on the keel has a 50% chance of being critical. A non critical impact hit upon the keel, or a magnetic explosion under the keel, will damage the ship in a normal way. That is, the various compartments within range of the explosion will flood as per normal.

Cheers,
Teddy Bär
One of the stupidest things in game design is the lack of uncertainty given to the player
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