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Post by generalvikus on Jun 4, 2019 0:53:27 GMT -6
This is a complicated subject matter...I have studied and modeled explosives and ballistics for 3 decades now and I still don't remotely know everything :-) As a general rule of thumb, naval shells will do relative damage equal very roughly to their difference in mass to the 0.67 power: i.e. (Shell-A-mass/Shell-B-mass)^0.67 = relative damage of shell-A compared to shell-B. So doubling the weight of the shell gives about 1.6x greater damage, 4x the weight is about 2.5x the damage (assuming they both penetrate). There are other modifiers, but this gives a ballpark idea of the differences. In our 'real-life' history German SAP shells were a bit different in some ways than the so-called 'SAP' shells used by other nations...in effect they were somewhat closer to a 'normal' AP round in performance relative to such rounds used by other nations - but in the RTW game all SAP shells are treated with the same formulas since players are actually 'rolling their own' history. To clarify williammiller: you said 'naval shells will do relative damage equal very roughly to their difference in mass to the 0.67 power' : wouldn't that formula be (Shell A mass - Shell B Mass) ^0.67, rather than (Shell A mass/Shell B mass)^0.67? |
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Post by williammiller on Jun 4, 2019 10:02:39 GMT -6
No, the way I wrote it is correct...it is a comparative ratio, i.e. mass A divided by mass B, the 0.67 power is a scaling factor. So if shell A is 2700 lb mass,and shell B is 1400 lb mass, then shell A does a comparative ratio of damage compared to shell B of ( (2700/1400)^0.67 ) = 1.553 This means that shell A would be expected to do about 1.553 times the damage that shell B would do to a typical naval target, statistically speaking / on the average.
Note that this does not determine the absolute average damage each shell does, only the comparative average damage ratios between different shell masses.
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Post by dorn on Jun 4, 2019 13:53:48 GMT -6
No, the way I wrote it is correct...it is a comparative ratio, i.e. mass A divided by mass B, the 0.67 power is a scaling factor. So if shell A is 2700 lb mass,and shell B is 1400 lb mass, then shell A does a comparative ratio of damage compared to shell B of ( (2700/1400)^0.67 ) = 1.553 This means that shell A would be expected to do about 1.553 times the damage that shell B would do to a typical naval target, statistically speaking / on the average.
Note that this does not determine the absolute average damage each shell does, only the comparative average damage ratios between different shell masses.
I expect that it could be used on AP or GE bombs too, couldnt it? |
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Post by williammiller on Jun 4, 2019 14:16:58 GMT -6
No, the way I wrote it is correct...it is a comparative ratio, i.e. mass A divided by mass B, the 0.67 power is a scaling factor. So if shell A is 2700 lb mass,and shell B is 1400 lb mass, then shell A does a comparative ratio of damage compared to shell B of ( (2700/1400)^0.67 ) = 1.553 This means that shell A would be expected to do about 1.553 times the damage that shell B would do to a typical naval target, statistically speaking / on the average.
Note that this does not determine the absolute average damage each shell does, only the comparative average damage ratios between different shell masses.
I expect that it could be used on AP or GE bombs too, couldnt it? Well...short answer...no.
Bomb damage mechanism is very similar to shell damage mechanism of course, but due to bombs almost always striking a naval target at a high angle the relative effectiveness ratio will be somewhat different - this general formula for relative shell damage assumes the majority of hits are in the horizontal plane with a smaller % of hits in the vertical plane, while for bombs this assumption would be reversed of course.
From my research the scaling ratio for bomb relative mass is slightly higher than for relative shell mass for hits against naval targets, somewhere in the ^ 0.74 scaling range is a good ballpark. So for bombs the formula would go something like ( (Bomb A Mass/ Bomb B mass)^0.74 ). Using the same example above, a 2700 lb bomb compared to a 1400 lb bomb would generate a relative damage ratio of about (2700/1400)^0.74= x 1.626 damage ratio.
Also, remember that this is an average ratio...individual hits can cause a rather wide range of actual damage to a target, so don't expect to see each individual hit to vary exactly by this ratio.
Bear in mind that both of these formulas are gross approximations...if I wanted more precision I would use formulas that are specific to each type of shell or bomb (AP, SAP, HE/GP, etc), and also for if the hit is a vertical or horizontal one, and also take into consideration other factors as well (even relative sizes of the target can change the scaling ratio, as an example). However going deeper than the above approximation is getting too deep into proprietary data that I cannot release, sorry  . |
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Post by dorn on Jun 4, 2019 14:46:47 GMT -6
I expect that it could be used on AP or GE bombs too, couldnt it? Well...short answer...no.
Bomb damage mechanism is very similar to shell damage mechanism of course, but due to bombs almost always striking a naval target at a high angle the relative effectiveness ratio will be somewhat different - this general formula for relative shell damage assumes the majority of hits are in the horizontal plane with a smaller % of hits in the vertical plane, while for bombs this assumption would be reversed of course.
From my research the scaling ratio for bomb relative mass is slightly higher than for relative shell mass for hits against naval targets, somewhere in the ^ 0.74 scaling range is a good ballpark. So for bombs the formula would go something like ( (Bomb A Mass/ Bomb B mass)^0.74 ). Using the same example above, a 2700 lb bomb compared to a 1400 lb bomb would generate a relative damage ratio of about (2700/1400)^0.74= x 1.626 damage ratio.
Also, remember that this is an average ratio...individual hits can cause a rather wide range of actual damage to a target, so don't expect to see each individual hit to vary exactly by this ratio.
Bear in mind that both of these formulas are gross approximations...if I wanted more precision I would use formulas that are specific to each type of shell or bomb (AP, SAP, HE/GP, etc), and also for if the hit is a vertical or horizontal one, and also take into consideration other factors as well (even relative sizes of the target can change the scaling ratio, as an example). However going deeper than the above approximation is getting too deep into proprietary data that I cannot release, sorry . Thanks William, even this approximation is very helpful. As you can read about sometimes shell or bomb damage, look at photos but having some general ideal how powerful are different shells / bombs relating to their weight is quite interesting. |
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Post by christian on Jun 5, 2019 3:20:35 GMT -6
I expect that it could be used on AP or GE bombs too, couldnt it? Well...short answer...no.
Bomb damage mechanism is very similar to shell damage mechanism of course, but due to bombs almost always striking a naval target at a high angle the relative effectiveness ratio will be somewhat different - this general formula for relative shell damage assumes the majority of hits are in the horizontal plane with a smaller % of hits in the vertical plane, while for bombs this assumption would be reversed of course.
From my research the scaling ratio for bomb relative mass is slightly higher than for relative shell mass for hits against naval targets, somewhere in the ^ 0.74 scaling range is a good ballpark. So for bombs the formula would go something like ( (Bomb A Mass/ Bomb B mass)^0.74 ). Using the same example above, a 2700 lb bomb compared to a 1400 lb bomb would generate a relative damage ratio of about (2700/1400)^0.74= x 1.626 damage ratio.
Also, remember that this is an average ratio...individual hits can cause a rather wide range of actual damage to a target, so don't expect to see each individual hit to vary exactly by this ratio.
Bear in mind that both of these formulas are gross approximations...if I wanted more precision I would use formulas that are specific to each type of shell or bomb (AP, SAP, HE/GP, etc), and also for if the hit is a vertical or horizontal one, and also take into consideration other factors as well (even relative sizes of the target can change the scaling ratio, as an example). However going deeper than the above approximation is getting too deep into proprietary data that I cannot release, sorry . i assume you cant tell us a bit of how damage is calculated or how the damage model in game works ? and how explosive filler interacts with it (how much does he shells penetrate how much do sap shells penetrate and what are each of their explosive fillers) |
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Post by williammiller on Jun 5, 2019 9:11:27 GMT -6
I don't believe I can get much into the internals at this time, my apologies.
It takes a huge amount of time, research, statistical analysis, number crunching, testing, and frankly expertise to create the formulas/data/systems used in our games, and there are other companies (i.e. competitors) that would love to be able to utilize all that in their own products.
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Post by christian on Jun 5, 2019 9:18:28 GMT -6
I don't believe I can get much into the internals at this time, my apologies. It takes a huge amount of time, research, statistical analysis, number crunching, testing, and frankly expertise to create the formulas/data/systems used in our games, and there are other companies (i.e. competitors) that would love to be able to utilize all that in their own products. perfectly understandable |
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Post by akosjaccik on Jun 5, 2019 9:54:54 GMT -6
While that's certainly understandable, it presents an interesting situation where sometimes the player does not have the necessary, dare I say even minimal information to make a decision. A good example is SAP shells, and a huge reason I am wary of those is the lack of any particular information, almost not even anecdotal ones. As such, I'd never ask for exact mathematical formulas for penetration mechanics, or an in-depth tour in the ship designer etc., it's somewhat weird that the game does not present at least ballpark numbers for AP bombs, or you can research SAP, but have no idea what a 6" SAP does @8k yards for example.
The reason I am not too agitated by this is that testing such stuff with Fleet Excercises is a fairly fun thing to do in peacetime.
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Post by dorn on Jun 5, 2019 10:28:08 GMT -6
While that's certainly understandable, it presents an interesting situation where sometimes the player does not have the necessary, dare I say even minimal information to make a decision. A good example is SAP shells, and a huge reason I am wary of those is the lack of any particular information, almost not even anecdotal ones. As such, I'd never ask for exact mathematical formulas for penetration mechanics, or an in-depth tour in the ship designer etc., it's somewhat weird that the game does not present at least ballpark numbers for AP bombs, or you can research SAP, but have no idea what a 6" SAP does @8k yards for example. The reason I am not too agitated by this is that testing such stuff with Fleet Excercises is a fairly fun thing to do in peacetime. If I remember well it was stated that SAP is about 60-70 % of AP. So I sometimes later replaced HE for SAP for main guns of capital ships and use them in short range (night engagement) if I cannot evade them.
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Post by scheerpower on Jun 22, 2019 8:49:02 GMT -6
I don't believe I can get much into the internals at this time, my apologies. It takes a huge amount of time, research, statistical analysis, number crunching, testing, and frankly expertise to create the formulas/data/systems used in our games, and there are other companies (i.e. competitors) that would love to be able to utilize all that in their own products. While I appreciate that you guys do a ton of research into source materials and think carefully about how to make the systems in-game work in a realistic way...90% of that is wasted on the player if we don't have any idea how it's calculated. We might as well be playing a game that splits hits into a few categories (near miss, light hit, and heavy hit, for instance) and just assigns them to one of those at random. I know that's not what you guys are doing, and I trust you to model things with the highest practical degree of fidelity, but as a player I need to be able to understand the mechanics of the game if I'm going to play it intelligently. It's not enough to just say, "Things will be realistic, now design your ships" because RtW2 is not a perfect simulation, and often players will wonder about something that could work well in real life but may rub against the edges of the game's parameters. If you tell the players, "Here's how bomb hits work, maybe I'm not going to paste our exact formula in here but it's a 10% chance of this, and a 30% chance of that..." none of your competitors is going to have proprietary information that'll be of any practical value to them. The value is in making formulas that work coherently in the context of your particular game engine and tying that to a detailed battle simulator, ship designer and world politics system...not the formulas themselves. It's not like other naval game designers don't go read history books and come up with decent approximations for their own hit systems. Hell, you can do it in an afternoon, depending on how much you care about realism and balance. I have to say that I'm disappointed in the "proprietary information" mindset...I think designers of historical games tend to overestimate the importance of their particular formulas and underestimate the importance of the rest of the game. Let me give you an example of another approach: the Dominions series, by Illwinter. Currently on their fifth game in the series, the designers have created a huge mythical universe, starting with rules based on DnD but moving into something much more realistic and intricate, with detailed formulas for everything from magical fatigue to the parry chance of weapons with different lengths, to the petrifying aura of a Gorgon. This is a multiplayer game, so players are constantly trying to use the exact rules for hundreds of different mechanics to get an edge. Over the course of the 18 years the series has been around, players have figured out basically every mechanic in the game. The devs provide details when they can, but the community is a good size and plenty of players have gone out on their own to run the numbers on nearly every system in-game, not just the actual mechanics but their implications for players. There are a couple of mechanics that we still don't fully know, but well over 95% of the mechanics are well-understood. And the result is...it's my favorite series of all time. When I understand the laws of the in-game universe and can use them to my advantage, it makes playing so much more satisfying than when I can only guess and design something that seems like it should work. I feel like I know the world, I understand it, and therefore I can take meaningful actions within it. I treasure the nearly 400-page manual for its detailed descriptions, and the online forums for their own analyses of strategy. And nobody, not one developer, has aped the Dominions series because all of their formulas are out for anyone to see. Because the reality is, nobody loves your game more than you do. Everyone has their own spin they want to put on things, nobody wants to make a copycat of a niche product and maybe get sued. I love RtW, but I can't help but think it's shooting yourselves in the foot to keep knowledge of the game mechanics on lockdown. The kind of person who plays RtW cares so, so much about detail that they would hugely benefit from a deeper understanding of the game world. That's why I ended up on this page instead of the endless forum posts talking about good ship design - I need to know how different guns work if I'm deciding which ones to give my ships! I now have a much better idea, so thanks for that. And I'd still love to hear more precise formulas for the difference between, say, SAP, AP, and HE, because I might want to change my ammo usage! Now that I know the rough difference in bomb strength, I might want to change my bombers' loadouts! What's the difference between medium and long range to raiding effectiveness? How does that interact with raider speed, or size? I have questions about this stuff constantly, and when I don't know, I'll mostly ignore those parts of the game and stick with the bits I do understand. I just hope we can learn more over time. |
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