(1.23) 5" BE hits causing lots of flooding [RESOLVED]

[Noname117]

Standard template:

When did you start the game - 1900
What nation were you playing?
- USA
Were there any start options that were not the default?
- size 60 airbases, whatever the largest fleet size is
Describe the issue in detail.
- You're going to hate how I do this.
What were you doing when the bug occurred?
- Testing to find this bug by shooting fast battleships with slow 5" spamming CLs. Year was 1934-1935 depending on the test.
What did you expect to happen and how was the result you saw different than you expected.
- I expected battleships to not suddenly take 1500 or 1800 or 3000 or 3600 additional flooding (not flotation damage) in a single turn
Can you describe how to reproduce the bug?
- Shoot massive battleships with no or little BE armor with a lot of 5" shells until some 5" BE penetrations are scored, preferably at close range, and even then it only happens occasionally.
What version of the game were you playing - v1.23



So I know this glitch has been reported multiple times already, and may be under investigation, but I decided to do some of my own tests to see if I could reproduce it, partly to gain information and partly because I'm not entirely certain everyone here is convinced it's even happening.

So I did what was logical; I made a bunch of fast battleship and battlecruiser designs with different armor schemes across a campaign and a number of slow CLs (and KEs) armed with a lot of 5" guns. When I had enough of both with the CLs to a certain standard of modernity I would engage them in a fleet exercise, where I'd control the battleships and battlecruisers (which got redesignated as battleships) and order them to hold fire and get in close to the CLs, so they could be shot up and the bug would hopefully get confirmed along the way.


So, before I get into the rest of this, there are a few things I should mention first:

The only mod I have installed is the Canada nation mod, which does not modify anything in regards to how ships work and given that I'm not even using it in this save I'm doubtful it would have any affect what-so-ever.

I did need to edit the save file itself a few times. For most of the game I'd just edit the tensions of the AI nations down to 0. I did need to give myself some extra funds prior to the exercise though, as well as change the ship class of several light cruisers because they had been built with 6" guns rather than 5" guns. I just made them the most modern class. For the second battle I had to set the did fleet exercise line to 0, and for the third battle I had to change the construction time on multiple battleships so they would complete instantly and I'd have more ships to test.

I also did this live on Twitch so I could record what happens for further proof. I did grab screenshots and post them to discord to save them where possible, but forgot a couple times and had to use screenshots from the VOD to make up for them. The "before" screenshots of the ships will also be from the VOD, so you can see the state the ship was in immediately prior to one of the glitch events happening. Every time one of my ships got hit I checked their flooding, and although there were a couple of times where the game skipped ahead a few turns due to a mistake, no "events" were missed due to this. There will be a transparent black rectangle in these screenshots. This is part of my OBS overlay so that chat is readable on screen. It has nothing to do with the game. My taskbar will also be visible.

Here are the links to the 3 streams (converted into highlights so they'll stay) Do be aware that I will swear in these VODs:
www.twitch.tv/videos/776187303
www.twitch.tv/videos/776996163
www.twitch.tv/videos/776444782



So I get this all set up, building BBs with many different armor designs, including AoN, Standard BE Sloped Deck, Sloped Deck AoN (note: no benefit coded in), Light BE Sloped Deck, Pre-AoN Tech AoN, Universal Narrow Belt, and Narrow Belt sloped deck AoN (don't ever do this). For the third battle I also tried out a Protected Cruiser AoN scheme and a Protected Cruiser Light BE scheme.

So yes, for the first battle I take out multiple battleships, including my most modern classes plus a spattering of older ones, against the slow cruisers and corvettes to be shot at.

The first 5" BE super-flooding event happened to New Hampshire at 21:49.




And just in case you have any doubts that the second picture doesn't come immediately after the first, you can line up the time of the shell hits and the difference between the number of shell hits she received between the 2 images. You'll find they match.


Ok, so there were a lot of hits and a high speed increases flooding in that report. It's not the cleanest of evidence, given how much happens in that turn. "So how do you know what caused it?" I hear you ask.

Her sister ship, Pennsylvania, suffers a similar hit a bit later.





In this instance, the only damaging hits scored in the time period shown are those 2 5" hull hit BE penetrations. Those 2 5" hits caused 3000 additional flooding on top of the 1 she already had.

Both Pennsylvania and New Hampshire have a sloped deck AoN armor scheme. I had thought one of them was a normal AoN ship, but I was mistaken. I got no additional proof of anything weird this battle, and after the other ships had been shot up a lot to no major effect I sank most of the CLs and left at night with these 2 events recorded.

I would then do a second test consisting mostly of flat deck AoN ships (Both pre-AON tech and post-AON tech), with the Pennsylvanias included. Pennsylvania again suffered an event, but nobody else did, despite ships getting shot hundreds of times to very little flooding. The most I saw from conventional means was 400-ish flooding on Washington, which took over 600 5" hits and being on fire while still moving at the maximum speed she could make to get her there. I ended this battle before it was complete given that I thought I had enough information to draw a conclusion on. The null results from other ships which took far more shots than either New Hampshire or Pennsylvania did here while moving at full speed and getting nowhere near the same level of flooding do show that these events are definitely bugs.



Pennsylvania's design (with possibly a bit of extra weight remaining due to technological increases since the design was laid down)




So here I thought that armor scheme was the contributing factor, and that it couldn't happen to AoN ships. Except people reported it happening to AoN ships. So I decided to set up a third battle to test 90K ton AoN ships as well as some variations on the Pennsylvania testing if an inclined belt or complete lack of belt extended armor rather than a small but penetrable amount had anything to do with the results shown, as well as a couple ships testing if Protected Cruiser armor would see any change. Honestly though, I'm going to create a second post below this one, or edit this post, to show the evidence obtained from that battle. Spoiler alert, none of the armor schemes resist the 5" BE glitch.



I should probably post the saves here too. It turns out they are too large to upload as attachments, so I've just uploaded them to my dropbox and will post links to them here. Do note that I'm packaging multiple saves into the same folder here. I forgot to save on the turn of New Hampshire's event, but the saves from Pennsylvania's events should be present, as well as end of battle and post battle saves where applicable.

Saves from the first battle
Saves from the second battle

(If dropbox is too sketchy just tell me specifically what parts of the save you need which would be small enough to fit as attachments here).

Ok, so yeah, time to make that second post describing just some of the 5" BE hit events which happened in the 3rd battle.

[Noname117]

3rd Battle Evidence

Stream link: www.twitch.tv/videos/776444782

Dropbox link for saves: www.dropbox.com/s/m1fqm03c67evjt8/3rd%20Battle.zip?dl=0 (Do note that there is an individual save every time a 5" BE super flooding event was recorded.)

The 3rd battle was created for 5 purposes; to observe whether the glitch happens on 90K ton AoN ships, on older and smaller sloped deck AoN designs, on ships with thin but existent (1") of belt armor, on ships with a protected cruiser armor scheme, and to find out if an inclined belt had anything to do with it.

This battle would show 20 events on still-alive ships, all of which have a save in the dropbox associated with them, all of which were recorded on stream, and most of which saw screenshots of the flooding and logs taken. Additional events did take place on sinking ships, but I didn't bother recording them.


The first event happened to Ticonderoga.







She's one of the 75K tonners though, so isn't AoN. She would have another event later on.

Maryland is quickly hit by an event. Actually 2.




In this case you just have to use the log on the side to see the hits scored. Once again though, she isn't an AoN ship. Can said events happen to AoN ships?

Yes, they occur 6 times during the battle.

First is Randolph. Actually, the second one is Randolph too, occurring a mere minute after the first event. So let's just do 5 images in a row to show these 2 events happening.







In 2 minutes, with only 43 5" hits to account for it, this 90,000 ton ship had suddenly gained 5360 flooding. Maybe not the most remarkable thing if the context of the 69 previous hits she received to virtually nothing as well as the hundreds of hits other ships absorbed to virtually nothing is removed, but when that context is taken into account it does still show that something is clearly going on here.

Who's next from the AoN ships? Bon Homme Richard!




She nearly took 200 5" hits before this level of flooding was suddenly sprung upon her. But at 22:10, she too took one of these hits.

Next is Valley Forge. She was of the other class of 90K ton AoN ship I built, with one of the two having an inclined belt and one lacking it. Her class had been doing better than the Iowas so far, soaking up a lot of hits to no events while the Iowas suffered 3 in a shorter period of time, but her luck wouldn't last.




She also only shows 6 additional hits, and given that she had received 252 before... why am I still trying to prove the glitch exists to people, it's pretty certain at this point. Let's just get to Kearsage's 2 events.

Kearsage's first event:




Kearsage's second event:





So yeah, there's clear demonstration this is happening to absolutely massive AoN battleships as well.


A couple more events from the battle I do want to make note of for various reasons:












And one last event is Maine's first event, which happened with the first 4 shots she was struck by. And just to provide additional proof that the damage shown in the image was not a result of extended high speed increases flooding from after receiving her 4 hits, I will provide the top of her log from the end of the battle to show that she was immediately hit by more shells the next minute, and thus the only way she could've reached 1500 flooding was from those 4 shell hits rather than any additional flooding after the fact. (Man the "hiding something" suspicion in regards to deadmetal did something to me in regards to reporting bugs here).






So yeah, there were more events in this battle, but this covers the important ones for both now and a later post speculating a bit about which ships are applicable to taking these glitched hits. What should be noted is the null results however; the older ships tested, most of which were sloped deck AoN, did not suffer a single 5" BE super-flooding event. Every single one of such events was scored on one of the new 75K ton or 90K ton designs I had built specifically for this test, while the older and smaller battleships just didn't have it happened no matter how hard I tried. One of them, Arizona, a 59500 ton ship, took over 500 hits and didn't suffer more than a couple hundred flooding at once, and would actually survive the battle in the post-battle results screen. In fact, only one of these older dreadnoughts even sank from the many, many 5" hits which were scored on them, and even that seems to be inconsistent since I loaded up the save just prior to the end of battle a second time (for a later post) and that time the ship didn't sink. The next post will be of some of the designs involved in the testing. I'll follow that up with some speculation and then data on the quality of 5" guns which would've caused the BE hits.

[Noname117]

Ship designs:



Ship designs which did take a 5" BE super-flooding event:






















And now onto a small set of ship designs which did not have any 5" BE super-flooding events. I'll start with the 2 classes of large AoN ships I built immediately prior to the Pennsylvanias which saw the first 2 battles but not the third. I am legitimately surprised that no event happened to these ships, although I'm not sure if it's just too low of a sample size, luck, or some other factor.




Two other ship designs which should be noted are the Connecticut, of which Washington was a part of, and the Nevada, of which Arizona was a part of. These 2 ships had 600+ and 500+ hits scored respectively on them without showing any sort of super flooding event. Washington was probably going to sink from the flooding she had, but it was only 400 or so, and had gradually built up over the last 125-ish hits scored on her. The first 500 showed little effect. Arizona didn't suffer more than a couple hundred flooding. I do recall that both Connecticut and Nevada, their sister ships, saw a large number of shots (200-300+ ish) hit them as well.



It should be noted that designs similar to these and designs smaller than these also saw no 5" BE super flooding events despite literally thousands of 5" rounds hitting them cumulatively.

So what can we make from all this? Well, I'm just going to post this now so it's saved and then do my speculation.

[cv10]

Skawbie did some experimenting with RTW 1 with a similar issue and suggests that this is linked to using TPS 4:

nws-online.proboards.com/thread/972/dexters-modded-gameplays?page=18

[Noname117]

Findings

So what do I say first. Well, firstly this is definitely a bug which exists within the game, and these sudden increases correlate strongly with 5" hull BE* hits being present, making them the likely cause. It also doesn't occur on every 5" hull BE* hit, probably only a fourth of them at most produce the event on the relevant ship classes and a tenth do at the least.

Secondly, it was only ships of the Pennsylvania class and later which actually showed 5" BE super-flooding events happen. Older ships showed no such events despite getting shot up as much as if not more than them and having identical albiet thinner or sometimes even worse armor schemes. If you want to double check this you can watch the streams; trying to provide example pictures may be difficult due to the volume needed to get a clear picture. So either I have some absurdly weird luck, or there is a definite correlation here. I can think of 3 possibilities, although 2 of them do come into some conflict with other reports of the bug happening. So I'll list them below:


1: It only happens to large ships. It could be explained as a fluke that the North Carolinas and maybe Vermonts didn't experience the event like other ships had. The largest ship which didn't suffer one of these events other than the 2 classes I listed was 63,000 tons, and the next largest would've been the Nevadas at 59,500 tons. It is very possible that battleships below 60,000 tons are safe from such an event, no matter their armor scheme, and that somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 is where they can start to suffer from the event. I have seen reports of the event happening to ships smaller than 60,000 tons though, so I'm not sure how safe this conclusion is, and the size correlation is still a little bit muddied by the North Carolinas and Vermonts not ever suffering one.

2: It only happens to ships with a certain technology, of a certain technological advancement, or built past a certain year. The correlation here is stronger, given that there's a clear cut line in time between ship classes that suffered an event and ones which did not. It could be a technology was researched in this time, presumably related to armor, which triggered the ability for 5" shells to do this. It could also be year related, or maybe even related to something stranger. I didn't give all of my battleships proper refits with new fire control or all the AAA or better secondaries due to it's expensiveness and just gave most of them enough of a refit to not sink from an aging structure.

3: It only happens with ships of specific tonnages. It could be that specific numbers like 75000 and 90000 tons can suffer from the glitch, but maybe 89900 tons doesn't or something. This could explain some of the weirdness seen, especially since the ships which didn't suffer events usually had weirder tonnages than those that did.


Honestly, based purely on these results I'm leaning 1, but 2 is more consistent with what other people are reporting.



Armor scheme doesn't seem to matter too much. Flat deck AoN did seem more resistant to these events than sloped deck AoN (still fake AoN) did, but not enough to prohibit these sorts of hits from affecting it. It's possible smaller ships are just more resilient to them but not immune too.




And one more thing of note: Every event which happened to a 75000 ton ship produced about 1500 or 3000 additional flooding, and every event which happened to a 90000 ton ship produced either 1800 or 3600 flooding. When the noise was high, such as instances where the ship was struck by many shells in the same turn, or a "high speed increases flooding" or "limits flooding" event occurred, the increase in flooding was off more, usually in whatever direction those additional hits or flooding events would imply. When the noise was low, in instances where those 2 events did not trigger and the shell count striking the ship was lower, increases of those exact values were seen.

Call it a hunch with strong evidence, but I think the amount of flooding caused by one of these hits is exactly 1500 for a 75000 ton ship and 1800 for a 90000 ton ship, with the 3000 and 3600 flooding events being from 2 hits producing the same effect on the same turn. 1500 is 1/50th of 75000, and 1800 is 1/50th of 90000, which could mean that the shells are doing 1/50 of the ship tonnage in flooding for some reason?

[Noname117]

Oct 21, 2020 6:57:50 GMT -6 cv10 said:

Skawbie did some experimenting with RTW 1 with a similar issue and suggests that this is linked to using TPS 4:

nws-online.proboards.com/thread/972/dexters-modded-gameplays?page=18

I hadn't even considered that. That makes complete sense. The later ships had TPS4 while the ships which never had the glitch only had TPS3 or earlier. It also coincides with other player's reports showing different results regarding tonnage compared to mine.

[williammiller]

I have added this to our internal threads/reports, will especially have the TPS4 possibility checked out.

Thanks.

[Fredrik W]

Thanks for all the good input on this!

The problem has been found, and we are currently testing an update that will fix this.

[Noname117]

Hooray! (Time to change the title I guess)


EDIT: Also, just to check, some people were having the same bug with 4" shells. I presume the fix covers them too, correct?

[williammiller]

I *believe* the change will resolve the issue for any/all smaller shell hits, not just 5".

[captaintrek]

Thankyou so much for this, Noname. You are awesome.

I think it's fair to say at this point that quite a few people owe deadmetal a sincere apology. Particularly dohboy with those horribly mean-spirited coronavirus and "arrogant tinkerer" comments he made. ****, Skawbie's post even positively IDs the issue with excessive turret jamming he was reporting as well! How's that humble pie taste, gents? :V

[dohboy]

I do apologize for the "arrogant tinkerer" characterization. Not because it was inaccurate, but because it was unhelpful. I responded to his confrontational attitude in kind which did nothing to help resolve the problem.

In hindsight it was a difference in ship design that explains me not having the issue, not his tinkering. I generally reserve TPS4 for fleet carriers, which I am very careful to keep out of gun range.