My case for the Bulge (Torpedos)

[Wakelessrex]

“My case for the bulge”

 

The absence of torpedo bulges has the strong possibility of sinking Ultimate Admirals Dreadnoughts otherwise historically accurate experience. The main purpose of the torpedo bulge throughout both world wars was to mitigate the damage of a torpedo strike. At this they achieved mixed results but, they were a very important feature of many ships overall defense. Most of the time a torpedo bulge was just an added layer of external armour below the waterline of a ship; no bulge was adequate on its own. It was important that all bulges work in conjunction with bulkheads to maintain the best possible defense. I believe in theory it would be a very achievable goal to implement them in before release. If torpedo bulges are not added, we stand to lose, not only an integral part of the damage model but also a great loss in diversity and realism in aesthetics. If it is therefore not a huge drain on resources to do so I advocate heavily for their implementation. I intend to argue this case here and provide what I think may work as a solution to our battle of the Bulge.

          The importance of the aesthetic or the visuals should not be discarded. Who doesn’t love a good bulge? Although it may appear to be on the surface an unimportant feature it does in facet effect many zones of interaction. Perhaps most importantly is the damage model, currently torpedo bulges seem to only apply an abstraction of their intended purpose on a ship without affecting the visual narrative of that abstraction. This has a significant impact on immersion and realism. If ships had bulges in reality, those ships could not be accurately duplicated in game. It was one of the most prevalent features of prewar battleships that were refitted to serve in the second world war. We would lose a significant amount of Iconic battleship hulls or worse in my opinion simplify them to the point of unrecognition.

          As for implementation of the in-game assets I suggest this, a simple few types of generic bulges set up in a similar manner to the hulls, that is to say extendable with displacement. These would then correlate to different bulge types or implemented into game mechanics as the developers see fit. I have included several Pictorial examples of this concept.

          A lack of bulge would be devastating. There can be no accurate hulls for so many class’s including, New York, Pennsylvania, Littorio, Kongo, Fuso, Nagato, Queen Elizabeth, Revenge, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Tennessee, Ise, etc. These vessels not only represent the pinnacle of their nations navies but are also the most recognizable designs that players will expect to see accurately and realistically rendered in the game. These Iconic designs would not be reproduceable, the possibilities of new designs featuring hulls that never saw them would be extinguished. This ship feature, aside from being practical, is also a great way to provide a huge increase in design capabilities for relatively low labor.

          In conclusion I think adding torpedo bulges will add considerably to gameplay, immersion, design potential, variety, realism, and aesthetic. For a small amount of effort, a great contribution can made towards making Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts an even more rewarding experience for fans of naval warfare simulation.

I do some 3d modeling for mods and my own 3d printing, I was able to model quickly a few Generic Bulge types that may offer some idea to the developers I have also included those models.
Here you could either section out parts of the bulge much like how the hulls currently work based on displacement or elongate the bulge horizontally to the displacement size, as the bulge does not need to cover the entire hull this should be achievable.







Here is an in game representation of what it might look like on the BC 3 hull I believe.


Various images of Torpedo bulges in all their glory.













Most older Battleships that saw participated in WW2 saw a few refits and modernizations, almost all had torpedo bulges added at some point. here the new York Class before and after modernization.

Again the New York before her bulge Refit.

 

Link to Models:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l1gl05nantywjbm/Torp Bulges.rar?dl=0

 

References:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-047.php
http://combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htm
http://www.combinedfleet.com/b_underw.htm
http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/34a.htm
extensive use of Wikipedia to find refits and dates. Most pre war BBs that were in service during WW2 had bulges. These will be hulls that start in game without bulges and without the need to make entirely new hulls it would be preferential to make attachable bulges.
 

 

[Wakelessrex]

"Reserved"
For torpedo defence gameplay mechanics

[Niomedes]

Can you contextualise esch of the pictures please, I.e. when and where they were taken, as well as which ships are being shown ? That would make it easier to cross reference this.

[Ninja]

Torpedo bulges are already in, they just aren't visually showny yet. I assume at some point they will be added as an aesthetic later one.

Not a bad write up about bulges though and might of been a good one for the Shipyard discussion board.

 

In general and to be clear, I agree the visuals will be nice eventually but my understanding from what I can see is that the mechanics for this from a simulation perspective are already in.

Probably explains why torpedos at the moment are so underwhelming, probably needs tweaking...

[VarangianGarde]

This is a great write-up. Honestly wasn't something I'd thought about until you mentioned it, but yeah. Having the bulge added as a visual element would be a nice touch.

[Wakelessrex]

3 hours ago, Ninja said:

Torpedo bulges are already in, they just aren't visually showny yet. I assume at some point they will be added as an aesthetic later one.

Not a bad write up about bulges though and might of been a good one for the Shipyard discussion board.

 

In general and to be clear, I agree the visuals will be nice eventually but my understanding from what I can see is that the mechanics for this from a simulation perspective are already in.

Probably explains why torpedos at the moment are so underwhelming, probably needs tweaking...

The Yamato hull currently has a bulge, its the only hull type however. I already asked about bulges in the shipyard, Nick said its unlikely but perhaps after release. I dont think thats a likely addition post release. I advocate for their inclusion now.

 

Especially as attachable as that will cut the requisite hull number down drastically. 

[Pedroig]

Two ways of looking at this:

1.  Since 80%+ of the bulge is below the waterline, expending assets (and processing power) on something that is unseen and can be simulated with simple math, seems not very efficient use of developer assets.

2.  That 20% above the waterline sure does make a distinctive difference in the lines of the hull.

I'd agree with having the torpedo protection scheme result in an above waterline add-on, which scales with the hull of the ship.  Have one "look" per level of protection, and get rid of current hull designs which have already incorporated them into the look.  The math is the math however, and it is easier to model waterline models than full hull models, so what is unseen, should not be modeled or seen graphically.

[Wakelessrex]

13 hours ago, Niomedes said:

Can you contextualise esch of the pictures please, I.e. when and where they were taken, as well as which ships are being shown ? That would make it easier to cross reference this.

Sure, I can do that when I get a second.

 

1 hour ago, Pedroig said:

Two ways of looking at this:

1.  Since 80%+ of the bulge is below the waterline, expending assets (and processing power) on something that is unseen and can be simulated with simple math, seems not very efficient use of developer assets.

2.  That 20% above the waterline sure does make a distinctive difference in the lines of the hull.

I'd agree with having the torpedo protection scheme result in an above waterline add-on, which scales with the hull of the ship.  Have one "look" per level of protection, and get rid of current hull designs which have already incorporated them into the look.  The math is the math however, and it is easier to model waterline models than full hull models, so what is unseen, should not be modeled or seen graphically.

Bulges could and should be very low poly geometric shapes, youre talking about models that should be a far lower drain on a system than single turrets would even be. The ones I created in very short time are fairly low poly and you could go even lower than that.

We already have full models also, below the waterline that is. Just no bulges with the exception of the Yamato (which had minimal external bulge anyway)

But really where there is room for saving imo is the majority of old designs that are refitted for post ww1 era. Unless you just ignore bulges, which I would say is bad. Youre going to have multiple hulls for the same ship. Which seems inefficient and also because there is a choice of bulges in the editor a break in immersion.

I do hope they make it in in one way or another. If they are ignored so many mid to late designs will be basically unreproduceable. 

[Christian]

i just want them because they look good 

i like thicc bulges and i cannot lie

 

[Guest]

It would be a good idea and something I didn’t consider in my review of the game so far. But they would be a substantial amount of work as almost every ship would need their own set of bulges.

[Christian]

1 hour ago, Absolute0CA said:

It would be a good idea and something I didn’t consider in my review of the game so far. But they would be a substantial amount of work as almost every ship would need their own set of bulges.

yeah it would probably take quite a bit of time

currently they are working hard on getting the game ready
visible bulges is something i hope to see somewhere in the future

[Nick Thomadis]

On 10/17/2019 at 8:03 AM, Wakelessrex said:

In conclusion I think adding torpedo bulges will add considerably to gameplay, immersion, design potential, variety, realism, and aesthetic. For a small amount of effort, a great contribution can made towards making Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts an even more rewarding experience for fans of naval warfare simulation.

Thank you for all the data. We cannot promise but cannot deny that ourselves would also like to add this. But what we can offer always depends on other development priorities. 

[Accipiter]

i want to point out something important to the dev team here: please do not confuse torpedo defence system and torpedo bulge, they are not the same thing:

the current "torpedo protection" options we have in game reference to the internal empty buffer compartiments and holding bulkheads within the hull. this is just the internal "torpedo defence system" mot reasonably modern dreadnought had that from the get go.

then the big external "torpedo bulge" that is talked about in this topic is something even more: it's basically a bolt-on extra hull section that is added during modernisation, that stacks OVER the already existing internal "torpedo defence system. (see picture at the end with Nagato class's armor if you have trouble visualizing what i mean)
because of this, adding a torpedo bulge, in addition to improving torpedo protection (obviously), have 2 additional effects that the internal torpedo defence system doesnt have:

-it give the hull extra displacement limit: simply by putting more compartiments under water, you get more floatability. in their modernized 1930/WW2 configurations many of those old dreadnoughts safely achieved displacements that were now far in excess of their original hull limits. they achieved this thanks to the extra floatation added from the bulges. Fuso class for exemple went from 29000 tonnes to 35000 tonnes just thanks to them!

-it deteriorates top speed and fuel efficiency: by altering the shape of the hull, increasing water drag and reducing streamlining. note however, that in practice this effect was often more than compensated by engine and machinery upgrades also received during the modernisation, so the old modernised dreadnoughts generally ended up faster after the modernisation. but still, talking about the bulges alone, yes, they do deteriorate speed.

 

seeing from this, i think there is a decent case in my opinion that bulges should be represented by their individual option in the game:

-they give even more torpedo damage and flooding reduction (probably need to rebalance the effects of the internal torpedo protection, so that having both internal protection + bulge doesnt make you too resistant to torpedoes)

-they actually give you bonus hull displacement limit

-they reduce speed and increase a bit fuel consumption

-they add A LOT of build time and build cost.

if you plan to have rebuilding/modernisation of old ships during the campaign, could be perfect to have them as a modernisation option rather than something you build on the ships initially (?)

now of course haing them be visually represented on the models whould be a nice touch and i whould love that as well. but i think at the very least in terms of stats and ship design they shouldnt be lumped together with the internal torpedo defence system as they are not the same.

 

 

picture for illustration: here is Nagato class's armor (modified from wikipedia),

in green: the torpedo defence system, this is build-in to the ship as designed, and was always there. the current "torpedo protection system" options we have in game are only this.

in purple: the torpedo bulge you can clearly see that this is essentially an extra section of hull added later. this also alters hull shape and increase the max possible displacement. this is currently not modelled at all in the game, and really should be.

Edited October 20, 2019 by Accipiter

[Wakelessrex]

On 10/19/2019 at 7:59 PM, Accipiter said:

i want to point out something important to the dev team here: please do not confuse torpedo defence system and torpedo bulge, they are not the same thing:

the current "torpedo protection" options we have in game reference to the internal empty buffer compartiments and holding bulkheads within the hull. this is just the internal "torpedo defence system" mot reasonably modern dreadnought had that from the get go.

then the big external "torpedo bulge" that is talked about in this topic is something even more: it's basically a bolt-on extra hull section that is added during modernisation, that stacks OVER the already existing internal "torpedo defence system. (see picture at the end with Nagato class's armor if you have trouble visualizing what i mean)
because of this, adding a torpedo bulge, in addition to improving torpedo protection (obviously), have 2 additional effects that the internal torpedo defence system doesnt have:

-it give the hull extra displacement limit: simply by putting more compartiments under water, you get more floatability. in their modernized 1930/WW2 configurations many of those old dreadnoughts safely achieved displacements that were now far in excess of their original hull limits. they achieved this thanks to the extra floatation added from the bulges. Fuso class for exemple went from 29000 tonnes to 35000 tonnes just thanks to them!

-it deteriorates top speed and fuel efficiency: by altering the shape of the hull, increasing water drag and reducing streamlining. note however, that in practice this effect was often more than compensated by engine and machinery upgrades also received during the modernisation, so the old modernised dreadnoughts generally ended up faster after the modernisation. but still, talking about the bulges alone, yes, they do deteriorate speed.

 

seeing from this, i think there is a decent case in my opinion that bulges should be represented by their individual option in the game:

-they give even more torpedo damage and flooding reduction (probably need to rebalance the effects of the internal torpedo protection, so that having both internal protection + bulge doesnt make you too resistant to torpedoes)

-they actually give you bonus hull displacement limit

-they reduce speed and increase a bit fuel consumption

-they add A LOT of build time and build cost.

if you plan to have rebuilding/modernisation of old ships during the campaign, could be perfect to have them as a modernisation option rather than something you build on the ships initially (?)

now of course haing them be visually represented on the models whould be a nice touch and i whould love that as well. but i think at the very least in terms of stats and ship design they shouldnt be lumped together with the internal torpedo defence system as they are not the same.

 

 

picture for illustration: here is Nagato class's armor (modified from wikipedia),

in green: the torpedo defence system, this is build-in to the ship as designed, and was always there. the current "torpedo protection system" options we have in game are only this.

in purple: the torpedo bulge you can clearly see that this is essentially an extra section of hull added later. this also alters hull shape and increase the max possible displacement. this is currently not modelled at all in the game, and really should be.

Good points, I meant to come back to this topic with more information and my own attempt at stating out torpedos defences. However I never really got the time and had other projects.

Torpedo defences did come in many different forms in fact one of the first was "torpedo nets"  I was going to recommend that these actually be at least a module you can buy for ships. They are primarily a feature of dreadnought ships and of that era so they have more reason to be in the game than perhaps any other. For those who dont know the "ribbing" along the hulls of most dreadnoughts is actually the upturned and stowed arms that the nets hang off of.

Aside from this many of the modern (ww2) torpedo defence systems while still technically "bulges" perhaps fit more into internal design. The American fast battleship hulls for instance were sleek and designed such that there was no bulge but rather an internal system for countering torpedo damage.

Anyway I really sincerely hope we get both bulges and of course my favorite ship hull the Kongo with her sexy pagoda tower

[IronKaputt]

I wonder if it would be better to have torpedo protection organised the same way as armor, allowing player to choose system (say italian/american) and exact thickness of bulge/belt, measured with TNT equivalent blast it supposed to withstand, insted of abstract -n% damage reduction?

Also hoping for a quadruple bottom (Projekt 24) tech option.

[Tycondero]

Good post by OP. I think it would be great to have torpedo defense bulges in the game. 

Also along with this it would also be great if the developers would take more realistic torpedo impact calculations into account. We need dud torpedoes and impact angles for torpedoes. Now every torpedo is always a hit.

[Cptbarney]

yes pls so we can have the thicc herself.

Miss california! 'w'

[Wakelessrex]

On 4/14/2020 at 3:32 AM, Cptbarney said:

yes pls so we can have the thicc herself.

Miss california! 'w'

Hell yea!

[Wakelessrex]

based on latest patches I believe that bulges may be incorporated into new hulls, at best. Which is a start, such as the new yamato hull that seemingly has some bulge. I hope more of this is added.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Bring the bulge.

[Wakelessrex]

On 6/26/2021 at 10:02 PM, ThatZenoGuy said:

Bring the bulge.

Hell yea!