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Damage adjustment

R

ronlosey

Freebooter
Storm Modder
I have been running experiments on the cannon damage model, and I think I've come up with something worth testing.

These are the numbers I have been using for base damage on the various shot types:

Balls: hull 4, rig 2, crew 4
grape: hull 1, rig 6, crew 6
chain: hull 1, rig 10, crew 2
bombs hull 5, rig 3, crew 4

This seems to get the basic feel described in written accounts from the period. Cannonballs tearing through a hull should produce a good deal of flying debris that would result in heavy casualties. No shot type should just cause ships to "sink" immediately. With these numbers, it is still possible to sink a ship, but it looks like it should sink - crew is devestated, guns and masts shot off, etc. Ships don't just go down like you drilled a hole in the bottom. The actual time of the conflict isn't much different, but the outcome looks like a different animal entirely. I have not completely tested this, so it may still need adjusting, but so far, the results look promising.

Anyone wanting to help me on this, just punch these in and see what I mean.

I still would like to test a model where maneuver capability was directly relative to sail condition. The latest sailing models seem to have turn rate unaffected by sail condition, and this greatly reduces the effectiveness of chain shot. (If your enemy can still effectively turn to fire, what's the benefit in slowing him down?) I do not know how to code that, so I would need some help. I will test it, if somebody else can write the code.

I also stumbled over something about the disappearing crew bug. Certain ships seem to have numbers, like a max crew number, that just surface during the boarding screen. For example, something called a "heavy frigate" seems to revert to a crew of 91. The game numbers are 84 minimum, and 354 max. However, every time you board, it goes back to 91 max and the others just jump into the ocean or something. Some ships have this bug, and others do not. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I figure that realizing it is attached to particular ship models is a good start.
 
I don't have the original numbers available, as my computer is in the shop and I'm having to use another one. How do those numbers compare to the original?

Keep in mind that grapeshot shouldn't do much to the rigging. Holes in sails are almost just a cosmetic thing. The real damage from chainshot came from the fact that chainshot would take down the standing rigging, making it impossible to maintain very much sail without breaking the masts.

The enemy crew after boarding will always be low. After all, you've killed almost everyone on the ship, at least with the code the way it is now. I've made changes to the boarding code to remedy that somewhat, but you can still end a boarding without much remaining crew on either ship.

Hook
 
Original numbers were ball - 12 hull and 0.75 crew, grape - 3 hull and 3 crew. I didn't change the rigging numbers, as I'm still asking if anybody can write up something where sail damage directly detriments maneuvering.

The crew bug I'm talking about applies even if the ship is white flag, or even if the crew is reduced to zero. It's a max crew bug on some ships, and not others.
 
When I get my computer back and can look at the code, I'll have a look at weirdnesses in crew numbers. The boarding actions depend heavily on crew, and if it's not right, then the boarding will be off as well.

Sail damage doesn't appear to directly affect turn rate (this is from memory). But sailing speed does, and the more damage you have on your sails, the slower you go... and the slower you turn. You will still turn faster with battle sails than either full sail or no sail.

Smaller ships turn pretty quickly. Larger ones do not. I was doing some action in a 74 gun SOL recently, and when I tried to come about through the wind I ended up having to use time compression as it was taking forever. And this with max sailing skills and all the perks.

I'm sure turning rates can be tweaked, but I don't have problems staying out the firing arc of most ships when I'm in a sloop, even if they have perfect sails. Except once when I got my only mast shot away. Then it's only a matter of time, especially if you're up against a somewhat larger ship.

Hook
 
My point was that sail damage SHOULD directly affect turn rate. The ability to use particular sails to turn the ship will be directly reduced if those sails are not working at 100%. This was part of the logic of attacking rigging - you should be able to shoot off a couple of masts and make it nearly impossible for an enemy to maneuver. That translated into any ship being able to come around and rake you end to end, and it forced a surrender in most cases. We don't have that right now - unless your ship is a LOT faster than theirs, they can still keep you in the firing arc even with EVERY mast missing. That can't be right. Worse, for gameplay options, it reduces the effectiveness of attacking the rigging.

Hope you find the crew bug.
 
I presume you are talking about the values in init_Good.c as per the old May thread on Chain Shot that discussed tickering with the values of this and a seemingly innert cannons.c file in the RESOURCE/INI directory.

I'll have to try out those numbers later. I was using a value of 16 for rigging damage by chain (knippels) but it struck me as a little high (hard to tell though if you use Class 1 ships with 60+ 32lb guns what level of damage should be expected)

Does the number of crew remaining on an enemy vessel affect it's turn rate and sailing speed? Since all the ships are meant to have a minimum no. crew value to sail the ship, then if sufficient crew are killed (or maimed if you like) and the crew number is less than the minimum value it should seriously affect turn rate not just cannon loading time or the number of opponents in boarding fights.

Should the rigging damage value of bombs (heated shot?) be higher to account for fires caused, or is this left alone and covered by the effects of criticals and fires caused (I can't remember what Merciless Mark decided in the end about criticals in his CanonFX mods).
 
I think some of the problems with chain shot discussed in May had to do with the fact that initial sail damage when a ship was created wasn't being handled properly such that your first shot that hit the sails actually increased the enemy sail points.

For example, if the enemy sails were at 88% and you hit the sails doing 5% damage, first the enemy sails were set to 100% then your 5% was subtracted. I've fixed that one, and since then I've seen more reasonable sail damage every time I've hit them.

Hook
 
If you want to mess with the sails affecting turn rate, look for the line in AIShip.c that says...

float fTRFromSailDamage = 1.0;

This is used without modification by the game now. If you want to change it, add your changes right after the line above. Number should be between 0.0 and 1.0 when you're done.

Hook
 
the only problem with the cannon balls causing debris to fly everywhere causing high casualties is the fact that one broadside attack from a caravel took out over 100 sailors from my pirate corvette which is a great deal for the amount of crew it has so im thinking that the cannon balls crew damage should be reduced a small amount with your calculations
 
Vengeance has discovered why we don't mess with those numbers.

I've noticed that when being fired upon with cannonballs, my crew and hull diminish about the same rate. That's with balls set to 12 hull and 0.75 crew. I use the best spyglass and usually keep track of what's being fired by enemy ships.

Hook
 
<!--quoteo(post=155615:date=Jul 29 2006, 05:18 AM:name=Hook)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hook @ Jul 29 2006, 05:18 AM) [snapback]155615[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
If you want to mess with the sails affecting turn rate, look for the line in AIShip.c that says...

float fTRFromSailDamage = 1.0;

This is used without modification by the game now. If you want to change it, add your changes right after the line above. Number should be between 0.0 and 1.0 when you're done.

Hook
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How is this calibrated? Is zero or one equal to no effect? What does the maximum effect do - will it completely stop a ship from turning if all the sails are down? I'll play with it, but I would love to know what I am seeing first.

----------------------

Also, on hull and crew damage at the same rate, that is seriously not historical. Samuel Leech, in his account of the fight between HMS Macedonian and USS United States (1812), vividly described that MOST of the damage HMS Macedonian took was in the form of crew losses, followed by rigging damage. The basic belief was that the ship would likely never sink from cannonballs, but everyone on board could be killed pretty easily. The account from Trafalgar by Lieutenant Paul Harris Nicholas, Royal Marines, about HMS Belleisle being shot to bits tells much the same story. Holes in boards don't do all that much to the ship, but humans get pulverized immediately. Hull should always be the last thing to go.

As for losses from sailing up beside a caravel, well, use some tactics. Don't sail up alongside a caravel at close range when you know they will give you a full broadside. That's not going to be pretty. Come around and rake them from the end, until you can cripple some of those guns and/or gun crews. That seems pretty obvious to me, but I guess it should be said. Also, defense skill becomes MUCH more valuable like this. If your guys just stand there, they will die like rats. Also, the first hit is the worst. If you have max crew, any hit is bound to hit somebody. That effect tapers off as population drops. This makes for both history and gameplay, if you know it's coming. I like having to add some tactics to the game - gives me something to think about besides just pushing the space bar. However, if you're expecting to trade fire and just see a few changes on the "hull" numbers, like an arcade game, then you're in for a rude awakening.
 
<!--quoteo(post=155640:date=Jul 28 2006, 08:41 PM:name=Ron Losey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Losey @ Jul 28 2006, 08:41 PM) [snapback]155640[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
However, if you're expecting to trade fire and just see a few changes on the "hull" numbers, like an arcade game, then you're in for a rude awakening.
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You're right. With the accent on "rude." Good luck figuring it out. Sorry I can't help more.

Hook
 
<!--quoteo(post=155635:date=Jul 28 2006, 08:48 PM:name=Hook)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hook @ Jul 28 2006, 08:48 PM) [snapback]155635[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Vengeance has discovered why we don't mess with those numbers.

I've noticed that when being fired upon with cannonballs, my crew and hull diminish about the same rate. That's with balls set to 12 hull and 0.75 crew. I use the best spyglass and usually keep track of what's being fired by enemy ships.

Hook
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actually im happy with the editing of the cannon goods because like what Ron Losey said, it does make the sea battles more realistic, all i have to do is lower the cannon ball crew damage to .75 and all is good

soooo... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/razz.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":razz" border="0" alt="razz.gif" />
 
I didn't say the numbers were a final scientific solution. I actually debated crew damage from ball shot for some time. If you think it's high, you might try something in between - I said 4, but you might try 3, or 2.5. The original 0.75 was WAY too low, but 4 might be a little steep. I was getting pretty believeable results with 4, but it might have been the way the duels were staged.

I'll play with the sail damage and maneuver, and see what I can learn. Once again, it may be a while.

Any ideas on that crew boarding bug?
 
If you manage to get some good final values, please say so and we'll test them in the Pre Build 13 modpack. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Thanks a lot to Ron Losey for looking into this! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/w00t.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":woot" border="0" alt="w00t.gif" />
 
OK, I give up. I can't read this stuff. I'm trying to figure out how much sail damage changes turn rate, and particularly, how to reduce turn rate directly proportional to sail damage (presumably clear to zero if all masts were down) in addition to other changes from crew, skill, or whatever. I was going to test this and see how it changes gameplay - hopefully it would make chain shot a more viable tactic, and therefore get more options into the sea battle. (Historically, destroying your enemy's sails let you come around and rake them, because their turn rate was reduced to pretty much zero.) Tragically, I can't read C and I need someone to translate this into human, so I will even know what to change. The complexities of the "real_sailing" mod seem to have reduced the effect of sail damage, but I'm not sure exactly how to change it.

The AIship.c file contains the following lines:
------------------------------------

float fTRFromSailDamage = 1.0;

// Turn rate depend from sail State
float fTRFromSailState = 1.0;
switch (MakeInt(fSailState * 2.0))
{
case 0:
if(USE_REAL_SAILING) fTRFromSailState = 0.001; // NK 05-04-10
else fTRFromSailState = 0.3;
break;
case 1: fTRFromSailState = 1.0; break;
case 2: fTRFromSailState = 0.6; break;
}

float fTRResult; if(USE_REAL_SAILING) fTRResult = Bring2Range(0.10, 0.85, 0.00001, 1.0, fTRFromWeight * fTRFromSpeed * fTRFromSkill * fTRFromPeople * fTRFromSailDamage * fTRFromSailState); // KNB reduced min turn speed from 20% to 10%
else fTRResult = Bring2Range(0.2, 0.85, 0.00001, 1.0, fTRFromWeight * fTRFromSpeed * fTRFromSkill * fTRFromPeople * fTRFromSailDamage * fTRFromSailState);

------------------------------

Now can someone tell me what to change, to test my little experiment?
 
In reality, bombs didnt actually do much against crew. At least from what ive heard.

On the issue of rigging, i have found this very annoying in Build 13 and realistic cannons - the elevation does not really allow your shots to get to the rigging of tall vessels like frigates, or its very difficult to do so - especially with carronades.

Since attacking rigging is so ineffectual, ive just taken to not using it.
 
<!--quoteo(post=158541:date=Aug 18 2006, 05:48 PM:name=irR4tiOn4L)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(irR4tiOn4L @ Aug 18 2006, 05:48 PM) [snapback]158541[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
In reality, bombs didnt actually do much against crew. At least from what ive heard.
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Fire, in whatever form, has always been extremely detrimental to humans. The "bombs" in the currnet model are being used to simulate the heated shot used by forts - and those things tended to result in fragments of red-hot cast-iron being scattered about the area. Because they were heated to the point of becoming soft, they deformed and splintered when they hit something. Not only did they cause wounds from fragmentation on impact, but they burned the inside of the wound, greatly increasing the risk of infection. (Burns infect like crazy - it's what makes burn survival as low as it is, even in modern hospitals.) That plus the increased fragmentation effect from both the ball splintering and increased hull damage as a result, and you had a pretty big problem for the crew.

For a similar effect, see the experiments with filling hollow-point pistol rounds with a drop of liquid mercury. The effects on gel-block tests were frightening. (Don't do this yourself - the mercury was heavy enough to create risk of splitting pistol barrels.) Red-hot iron doesn't have quite the splatter pattern of mercury, but it gives a good idea of what they were thinking.

If we want to convert to the other model of "bomb" at the time, those were wood kegs filled with gunpowder and/or whatever would burn (usually tar or naptha). (Even as late as the Americal Civil War, a lot of mortars were wood-case rounds.) They did not produce fragments like modern HE shells, but they did cause a lot of casualties due to burns. Their problem was that firing a wood keg was not easy - it was too light to fly straight. Not a big problem with low-velocity mortars, but hard to use in a ship duel.

The iron-case bombs used in the original game did not appear until the 1810's or so, and they were primarily intended to be air-burst fragmentation devices. They were murder against infantry on open ground, but likely wouldn't do much to a ship, unless you were lucky enough to punch one through a hull and let it rattle around inside for a bit before it exploded. Now, if you did manage to pull that one off, God help them. The British used a number of these in the War of 1812, prompting Frances Scott Key to describe "the bombs bursting in air" over Fort McHenry - which, it seemed, were only effective at illuminating the flag of the defending force, and failed miserably at either damaging the fort or weakening its defenders. Still, these weapons are seriously outside of our time frame.

Modern HE is of course intended to kill by fragmentation, not heat or concussion. However, that thinking did not really appear in volume until the 1850's, and it did not become the major theory of weapon design until WWI (with the first major use of high explosives, so that the fragments were actually effective).

That's what I've heard about the bombs of the time, plus a few things I've learned about emergency medicine over the years.
 
<!--quoteo(post=158542:date=Aug 18 2006, 06:26 PM:name=Ron Losey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Losey @ Aug 18 2006, 06:26 PM) [snapback]158542[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
<!--quoteo(post=158541:date=Aug 18 2006, 05:48 PM:name=irR4tiOn4L)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(irR4tiOn4L @ Aug 18 2006, 05:48 PM) [snapback]158541[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
In reality, bombs didnt actually do much against crew. At least from what ive heard.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Fire, in whatever form, has always been extremely detrimental to humans. The "bombs" in the currnet model are being used to simulate the heated shot used by forts - and those things tended to result in fragments of red-hot cast-iron being scattered about the area. Because they were heated to the point of becoming soft, they deformed and splintered when they hit something. Not only did they cause wounds from fragmentation on impact, but they burned the inside of the wound, greatly increasing the risk of infection. (Burns infect like crazy - it's what makes burn survival as low as it is, even in modern hospitals.) That plus the increased fragmentation effect from both the ball splintering and increased hull damage as a result, and you had a pretty big problem for the crew.

For a similar effect, see the experiments with filling hollow-point pistol rounds with a drop of liquid mercury. The effects on gel-block tests were frightening. (Don't do this yourself - the mercury was heavy enough to create risk of splitting pistol barrels.) Red-hot iron doesn't have quite the splatter pattern of mercury, but it gives a good idea of what they were thinking.

If we want to convert to the other model of "bomb" at the time, those were wood kegs filled with gunpowder and/or whatever would burn (usually tar or naptha). (Even as late as the Americal Civil War, a lot of mortars were wood-case rounds.) They did not produce fragments like modern HE shells, but they did cause a lot of casualties due to burns. Their problem was that firing a wood keg was not easy - it was too light to fly straight. Not a big problem with low-velocity mortars, but hard to use in a ship duel.

The iron-case bombs used in the original game did not appear until the 1810's or so, and they were primarily intended to be air-burst fragmentation devices. They were murder against infantry on open ground, but likely wouldn't do much to a ship, unless you were lucky enough to punch one through a hull and let it rattle around inside for a bit before it exploded. Now, if you did manage to pull that one off, God help them. The British used a number of these in the War of 1812, prompting Frances Scott Key to describe "the bombs bursting in air" over Fort McHenry - which, it seemed, were only effective at illuminating the flag of the defending force, and failed miserably at either damaging the fort or weakening its defenders. Still, these weapons are seriously outside of our time frame.

Modern HE is of course intended to kill by fragmentation, not heat or concussion. However, that thinking did not really appear in volume until the 1850's, and it did not become the major theory of weapon design until WWI (with the first major use of high explosives, so that the fragments were actually effective).

That's what I've heard about the bombs of the time, plus a few things I've learned about emergency medicine over the years.
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Yeah i was only refferring to the wooden cased bombs, which would primarily cause fire and damage to the ship and rigging - but since they were wooden and didnt break through the hull very well (and cause massive splinters), they were less effective against crew then cannonballs.

But its all good if the bombs ingame are for heated shot - i didnt know this was the case.
 
That was the discussion with the "realistic cannons" mod. I think it is in the "readme" file, but I'm not sure.

The wood-case bombs, which we are not using, DID cause some pretty severe crew casualties. However, it was from fire (and all that goes with that - smoke, infection in burns, etc), rather than fragmentation. Again, fragmentation was really not effective until high explosives appeared just before WWI. Iron-case fragmentation bombs of the 1800's were just not very effective.

--------------

I still need help to decypher that code on the sails and maneuvering.
 
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