The mythical unsinkable torpedo boat...

[theonlymaverick]

Playing the campaign, and while it is mostly enjoyable, I cannot be the only one to have noticed that the AI's torpedo boats seem damn near impossible to sink at times? 

There have been scenarios where my ships have done over 4k damage to this dinky little boat, hit it with 3 torpedoes, and the AI still magically pumps out the majority of the water... You can get them down to 0.1% float-ability, and seconds later the ship be back up to 70%; when in reality this boat should be matchwood...

It really can be infuriating to watch, especially when the AI seems to build these a lot in the early years. Compare that to a battleship with the same level of compartments sinking from one torpedo, it just seems so bizarre...

 

[crp1985]

I see almost the opposite. I just went through the two early campaigns for Germany. 1900-1910 campaigns. Most of the time the enemy torpedo boats I encountered were sunk with only a few low caliber penetrating waterline hits. The AI has a tendency to build their boats with low amount of bulkheads. 

Yes, they do pump out a great deal of water but they are not invincible. 

 

[Panzergraf]

The enemy (Brit) AI was rocking maxi bulkhead torpedoboats that could somehow fit 8 (EIGHT!) 4" guns as well as torpedoes in the last German 1900 campaign I played. Incredibly survivable and would mop the floor with any of my own TB, DD or even CL designs. My improved DD design to counter them never had time to enter service before the war ended. I could deal with them by kiting away with CA's, but it took a lot of time and a serious ammount of firepower to bring them down.
And yes, these too would not sink from single torpedohits.

[Grayknight]

It is unfortunete problem that is known and should be fix. My enemy tb got over 200 hits including multiple 9inch 

and the fact that it can survive torpedo... Yea... 

[Wowzery]

5 hours ago, crp1985 said:

The AI has a tendency to build their boats with low amount of bulkheads. 

We have opposite experiences.  The AI has a tendency for me to have tb with max bulkheads which make them tough to sink.

[Kane]

Its not just torpedo boats, destroyers are the same way, and in many respects worse.  A 24-inch torpedo should pretty much blow a destroyer in half.  Yet I've seen destroyers survive multiple 24 inch torpedoes and multiple 20-inch rounds.  This of course is made all the more infuriating given how hard they are to hit in the first place.

Also a problem when these ships have no armor.  Everything, even low-caliber HE over-pens them doing minimal damage.  In the end you end up with TB's and Destroyers that eat damage like battleships and keep fighting.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Kane

[Bishop120]

Heres an example of an AI CL with 0 anti flooding capability which managed to completely refloat itself from .1%  The only thing this CL has that isnt the bare minimum is it has standard bulkheads.

[theonlymaverick]

On 1/27/2022 at 2:48 PM, crp1985 said:

I see almost the opposite. I just went through the two early campaigns for Germany. 1900-1910 campaigns. Most of the time the enemy torpedo boats I encountered were sunk with only a few low caliber penetrating waterline hits. The AI has a tendency to build their boats with low amount of bulkheads. 

Yes, they do pump out a great deal of water but they are not invincible. 

 

Oh, I am not saying they are invincible, just far too survivable for their class; TBDs typically only weigh 200 tonnes, if you get hit by a torpedo then odds are you aren't surviving that hit. 

 

On 1/27/2022 at 8:32 PM, Wowzery said:

We have opposite experiences.  The AI has a tendency for me to have tb with max bulkheads which make them tough to sink.

Yeah, I haven't seen many with low amounts of bulkheads tbh; the AI typically produces them with maximum bulkheads in the games I have seen.

[theonlymaverick]

On 1/28/2022 at 7:50 PM, Bishop120 said:

Heres an example of an AI CL with 0 anti flooding capability which managed to completely refloat itself from .1%  The only thing this CL has that isnt the bare minimum is it has standard bulkheads.

True, this can happen; however, given how most of your ship is yellow and has only sustained 1.3k damage, it looks like this is mostly fire damage not shell impacts, is that right? 

If you take a few below waterline shell hits you can definitely flood, but then again you can absolutely pump out the flooded compartments because the hull integrity is fine. 

Do you prefer the 6 inch gun on your light cruiser? I like having lots of 4 inch guns for convoy raiding

[Werwaz]

who amongst us still remembers the days when TBs had 12 inch armor belts?

[Kane]

23 hours ago, Werwaz said:

who amongst us still remembers the days when TBs had 12 inch armor belts?

They might as well still have it, considering how often I see 16 and 18" rounds ricochet off 0.5-1" destroyer armor.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Kane

[Steeltrap]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:49 PM, theonlymaverick said:

It really can be infuriating to watch, especially when the AI seems to build these a lot in the early years. Compare that to a battleship with the same level of compartments sinking from one torpedo, it just seems so bizarre...

We've only been mentioning this very absurdity around here for a bit over 2 YEARS now.

It's why I said I couldn't care less about the campaign because if absolutely vital, core battle mechanics remain placeholder or junk then the campaign can't possibly hide such things once its 'newness' wears off.

Put differently, how many will play campaigns over and over if every battle they're confronted with ridiculous damage sponges and all the other things we've banged on about for ages to no effect?

Not many, I'd imagine.

I've not bothered to download it on Steam because I have zero interest in playing it until I see the devs get real about addressing these crucial, core, and currently absurd aspects of the main alleged selling point of this game, namely "realistic" combat depiction.

Everything else is window dressing to me until THAT is sorted.

If this and other persistent, glaring issues aren't addressed then RTW2 is by far the superior, proven product for anyone interested in 'realism'.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Steeltrap

[Bishop120]

On 1/30/2022 at 7:09 AM, theonlymaverick said:

True, this can happen; however, given how most of your ship is yellow and has only sustained 1.3k damage, it looks like this is mostly fire damage not shell impacts, is that right? 

If you take a few below waterline shell hits you can definitely flood, but then again you can absolutely pump out the flooded compartments because the hull integrity is fine. 

Do you prefer the 6 inch gun on your light cruiser? I like having lots of 4 inch guns for convoy raiding

Yes 6 in is my fav for CLs.  I usually try to fit as many 6s on my CLs as possible without sacrificing anything else.. also I personally focus as much on single size weapons.. but in the case of this picture it was AI designed fleets from campaign..  You can see that the AI took 30 hits..  I believe the mission was protecting some transports against 2 enemy CLs.

[TheBestBanana]

without mentioning their crazy pump out rates, torpedoes do a larger % of flooding and hull health for CL and CA then for torpedo boats and DD. although guns do accurately high amounts of damage. this must be a bug.