Critical Hit: How'd my Bridge get destroyed from this range?

[dizzy]

The enemy 16" shell hit between 17k and 18k yards. Pen on 18" Conning Tower armor is 10k yards. So that shell wasn't even close to being able to penetrate. 

The SAI manual says this about Critical Hits: 

[/b] Include rudder damage, catastrophic machinery damage, magazine hits, fire control, conning tower and bridge hits, electric system damage and bad waterline hits. Might also cause any mines carried to explode, with catastrophic effects. [/ul]
But it says nothing in the way of how a critical hit will ignore armor. Also, in the pic below you can see how the hit itself has no asterisk, so it did not penetrate, therefore, the part of the SAI manual that precedes the above that details Hits and Damage should take precedence:

[/b]Hits will be shown in the event log. Hits on your own ships will be detailed as to location and the part of armor hit. An asterisk * after the hit denotes that the hit penetrated armour. Hits that do not penetrate armour will cause no or very slight damage.
[/ul]
I don't know how to read this any other way than something went wrong in the program/NWAI or the manual is wrong. So how are critical hits really supposed to work?
Edit: Yes, I know this is a **** poor Yamato recreation. I jumped the gun and laid the keel 5 years before Yamato was historically built and that's what I ended up with. :-(


NoBridgeArmor1.png (70.44 KB)

[dorn]

Opened bridge is unarmoured. So destroying it is more matter of probability of hit, not penetration. I think RTW treats it like this.


Eg. Royal Navy has found that her commanding officers prefer unarmoured bridge over conning tower as it gives better awareness during battle.
This was reason behind later 30s refits and KGV class battleships have only lightly armoured conning towers.

[dizzy]

Feb 20, 2020 5:47:03 GMT -6 dorn said:

Opened bridge is unarmoured. So destroying it is more matter of probability of hit, not penetration. I think RTW treats it like this.


Eg. Royal Navy has found that her commanding officers prefer unarmoured bridge over conning tower as it gives better awareness during battle.
This was reason behind later 30s refits and KGV class battleships have only lightly armoured conning towers.

Not the way the Iowa BB was built! Why the hell are we armoring the conning tower then? What the hell is it protecting? The snack machines?

[13th Fleet]

Note the non-penetrating conning tower hit two entries above the highlighted bridge hit. The conning tower is so that when the ship is getting absolutely plastered, you'll be able to keep steering it. I'm not entirely sure how it works out in-game though.

[tuna]

Feb 20, 2020 5:53:18 GMT -6 dizzy said:

Feb 20, 2020 5:47:03 GMT -6 dorn said:

Opened bridge is unarmoured. So destroying it is more matter of probability of hit, not penetration. I think RTW treats it like this.


Eg. Royal Navy has found that her commanding officers prefer unarmoured bridge over conning tower as it gives better awareness during battle.
This was reason behind later 30s refits and KGV class battleships have only lightly armoured conning towers.

Not the way the Iowa BB was built! Why the hell are we armoring the conning tower then? What the hell is it protecting? The snack machines?

That's a damned good question that a lot of people have wondered IRL.


Going inside the conning tower gives you protection, but it also makes you kind of blind, and forces you to trust others reports on what is actually going on. This, and traditional feelings about martial honor (is it right for the captain to huddle up behind armor while much of his command crew is outside spotting in a hail of fire?) led to most captains leading their ships from the unarmored open bridge instead of the conning tower. The British went all the way and after combat reports from WW1 clearly showed that almost no captain ever went in the conning tower in battle, stopped building heavily armored conning towers. I think American captains in WW2 were much more willing to command their ships from under armor, but that might partially be because the advent of radar meant that they could actually have an idea what is going on in the battle while there.

[director]

From combat reports we know that the shock of the impact and explosion could make the armored conning tower ring like a bell, stunning or killing those inside anyway.

I usually limit my armored conning tower to a little better than splinter protection - 6" or so for capital ships.

I have no evidence one way or another but I suspect American commanders didn't use the armored conn either - to small and confined, with no way to see.

[dizzy]

Feb 20, 2020 8:09:32 GMT -6 director said:

I have no evidence one way or another but I suspect American commanders didn't use the armored conn either - to small and confined, with no way to see.

The following was written by Tyler Rogoway, titled: Iowa Class Battleships Had Vault-Like Conning Towers Buried Inside Their Main Bridges

The key takeaway here from this article is this sentence: 'Armored conning towers and bridges had been around for many decades before the Iowa’s were built, even falling out of favor before WWII before returning in multiple forms and configurations.' In RTW, you either have conning tower armor or you don't. It's up to you. I had 18" and a 16" shell obliterated my Bridge at 17.8k yards away, which is BS. Even had that round hit the Iowa with less protection, it still shouldn't have penetrated. 

[dorn]

dizzy

As mentioned early I think game recognize conning tower and unarmoured bridge so destroyed bridge is the one outside the conning tower.

RTW does not mention details about conning tower, it is simply command center of any ship. But on other hand consider unarmoured bridge as another important place used.

[garrisonchisholm]

As above. Your open bridge was destroyed, your armored conning tower survived. It did exactly what it should have, and if you lost control of the ship it should only have been for a minute or two.

[rimbecano]

One thing to keep in mind, dizzy, is that even very thick CT armor generally had viewing slits to see out of, and there was somewhat of a tradeoff: if the slits were too big, you risked admitting splinters and having the command staff killed despite the armor. If they were too small, you risked having the command staff decide that they couldn't command from inside the CT and that they would use the unarmored bridge instead. There are also a number of incidents in which shells that were rejected by the armor caused damage inside it: A non-penetrating hit could cause the back face of the armor to break up and eject fragments at high speed, and one of Seydlitz's turret fires was caused by a shell that was rejected, but opened up enough of a hole in the barbette that flash or hot gasses were able to get into the working chamber and light the powder there. Another interesting case (though the space in which the damage occurred was not armored) is that of Exeter at the Battle of the River Platte: she was hit on B turret, and shrapnel from the hit came in through the bridge windows, and, as I've heard it told, ricocheted off the ceiling of the bridge, killing most of the command staff. In that case, the crew seems to have been protected from the original trajectory of the splinters, only to have them fail to penetrate the bridge roof and bounce onto a trajectory where they could hit the crew.

[Fredrik W]

There are two kinds of hit, Conning tower hits, which CT armor protects from, and bridge hits, which CT armor does not protect against. Penetrating CT hits are somewhat more serious, but otherwise both have similar effects.

[dizzy]

Feb 20, 2020 15:04:56 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

There are two kinds of hit, Conning tower hits, which CT armor protects from, and bridge hits, which CT armor does not protect against. Penetrating CT hits are somewhat more serious, but otherwise both have similar effects.

Thanks for the reply. What does Conning tower armor protect you from? In the Iowa BB, as I posted here and many ships before and after her, Conning tower armor included an armored bridge. It'd be nice if we were able to click a checkmark box to include an armored bridge within the conning tower, like on Iowa, and be charged the extra weight for the added protection. 

Btw, what does the conning tower armor protect? Do you get loss of control and gunnery when it's damaged or destroyed?

And here's a suggestion... it happens rarely, but I had a ship lose a bridge and was headed straight for land. I understand no collisions due to AI pathfinding issues, but in a situation like a catastrophic hit to the bridge with loss of control and collision damage if you hit shore you get collision damage would be a nice touch. I remember being in battle and I tried to maneuver my BB  and she wouldnt turn. Checking the log I discovered my ship had had it's bridge hit and I was heading straight for shore. The very next thing that popped into my mind was the realism that yeah, she's gonna have a collision with sand or rocks, I wonder which. Neither would be pretty at the speed I was going. Wishful thinking.

[noshurviverse]

Dizzy, do you have any source that shows the Iowa's having an armored bridge? From the pictures I've seen the bridge appears rather open, with large glass windows. This image, while I'm uncertain as to it's accuracy, also does not show armor on the bridge.

cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/586217571053731850/667823742495490048/Armor_Profile_-_Iowa.jpg

[dorn]

There are a lot of things which was make simply in RTW as the added value to have some very detail is dubious.
I consider that RTW deal with conning tower and unarmoured bridge quite nicely.

If you think about details that what about turrets. RTW consider all turrets same style, top sloped. By this principles players usually build ship in American style, turrets are armoured better than belt and deck.
Now you can look at KGV class turrets. They are completely different, you have not such slope on top, they have small profile to target so chance that turret face is directly hit (without hitting barrel) is much lower than ordinery turrets of capital ships used by other nations. So they have less armour on faces as logical. But this is something you can not simulate in RTW.

Really you cannot have all engeneering possibilities and tactical principles in game.

This game is simplification and let you have big decisions not small ones.

[Fredrik W]

Feb 20, 2020 15:04:56 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

There are two kinds of hit, Conning tower hits, which CT armor protects from, and bridge hits, which CT armor does not protect against. Penetrating CT hits are somewhat more serious, but otherwise both have similar effects.

Thus, to make this clear, by having a heavily armored CT, you basically halve the chance of bad things happening to the ships command functions.