more realistic ship destruction

Now with more and more dedicated anti-ship weapons getting introduced to DCS, i'd wish for a slightly more realistic destruction of ships.

My main point of criticism is that ships will always sink when "killed" and will sink too quickly in general.

Of course there could be million ways of improving ship damage simulation, but as a very low effort improvment, i suggest different types of "destruction" animations, depending on how much "overkill" was done, meaning how much additional damage was done after hitpoint reduction to zero:

low overkill: ship burns, but stays afloat - maybe lying lower in the water

medium overkill: ship burns and sinks very slowly, maybe rolling on its side with bigger vessels taking hours until fully submerged

high overkill: (~double or more the damage needed to kill): ship sinks quickly, as it is now

additionaly it would be nice to have some burning debris, oil spills, maybe life rafts around a "killed" ship to visualize fatal damage and to make a more immersive scene even after the ship has submerged.

obviously there could be many more improvments concerning ship subsystem getting destroyed seperately, or simple buoyancy simulation with different weapons and hit regions having different effects. these might be out of scope for dcs though!

thanks for reading!

I would settle for better damage model, not just a bar...

Maybe 4 or 5 compartments or sections, hull aft, hull fwrd. structure, sensors, weapons...

Usualy an Ati Ship missile will hit the superstructure, destroy systems but not actually sink the ship.-

Now, bombs woudl tear the hull apart and the ship would sink relatively quickly.

+1

+9000

Anything in this department would be very welcome.

• Modelling of damage of exterior components for instance RADAR antennae and weapons (at the moment when the health gets low enough the ship stops moving and stops firing).
  
• More realistic sinking - something along the lines of SH3/SH4/Cold waters with ships listing/sinking dependent on damage location and severity. (At the moment it's purely HP based with ships being essentially fully operational until a certain point where essentially everything stops, when ships reach 0 there's an explosion they sink fairly quickly in the same scripted (unnatural) way and then there's a poof of the water effect and that's it.
  

Something akin to how SH4 handles ships would be a godsend

+1

+1

It's immersion breaking that they're either 'dead/dying' or 'alive'.

A simple halfway house using the existing trigger / scripting systems (if they had access to the systems) might be implemented natively in the ME something like :

At mission start each vessel was assigned a random value between some type specific bounds for each of:

Offensive action against vessels and ground targets

Radar use and defence using radar

Optical detection & use of IR / unguided defence

being on fire

Being irreparably damaged.

Sometimes one would happen before the other, other times the other way around.

If it is also that vessels' 'damage' reduces at (not suggesting these are real numbers, just an approach) 0.5% / minute when less than irreparably damaged, and increases at 1% / minute if irreparably damaged, and being on fire increases damage at 0.025% / minute.

A ship that was > 75% damaged would inevitably die, but it might take a long time (& so they're still alive to targeting pods and appear on the ME till then)

Any ship less than 75% damaged would eventually self repair - how long that took depending on the level of damage and whether or not it was on fire. systems would come on line in the reverse order they went off, but that order would be random (within type bounds) for each vessel and mission.

So - If the mission threshold for a vessel's radar use were 25%, movement 20%, and all self defence 25% - and the vessel were 26% damaged, the ship would be dead in the water & defenceless, but if the ship were not hit again, after (26 - 25)/0.5 = 2 minutes IR/optical self defence would start again, @ 12 minutes the radar & defences would come up, and at 22 minutes the vessel would start making headway again. After 52 minutes the vessel would be fully repaired. Another time the vessel might never stop, but catch fire and have the radar out till after the fire goes out - all random per mission.

Using the example number above, a 0.5% recovery rate means a vessel with the maximum survivable damage wold take at least 75 / 0.5 = 150 minutes to repair fully (more if it were on fire)

...

+1 Different approach but I like the sound of it

Now with more and more dedicated anti-ship weapons getting introduced to DCS, i'd wish for a slightly more realistic destruction of ships.

 

My main point of criticism is that ships will always sink when "killed" and will sink too quickly in general.

Of course there could be million ways of improving ship damage simulation, but as a very low effort improvment, i suggest different types of "destruction" animations, depending on how much "overkill" was done, meaning how much additional damage was done after hitpoint reduction to zero:

 

low overkill: ship burns, but stays afloat - maybe lying lower in the water

medium overkill: ship burns and sinks very slowly, maybe rolling on its side with bigger vessels taking hours until fully submerged

high overkill: (~double or more the damage needed to kill): ship sinks quickly, as it is now

 

additionaly it would be nice to have some burning debris, oil spills, maybe life rafts around a "killed" ship to visualize fatal damage and to make a more immersive scene even after the ship has submerged.

 

obviously there could be many more improvments concerning ship subsystem getting destroyed seperately, or simple buoyancy simulation with different weapons and hit regions having different effects. these might be out of scope for dcs though!

thanks for reading!

1+

I absolutely agree that the ships in DCS are in need of some work, even way beyond the damage modelling. Especially true since - a while ago, in the building of the F/A-18C hype - 'more focus on naval based operations' had been declared.

Things like damage modelling, exterior models, lighting, wake effect and exhaust smoke are a topic for almost all vessels.

I absolutely agree that the ships in DCS are in need of some work, even way beyond the damage modelling. Especially true since - a while ago, in the building of the F/A-18C hype - 'more focus on naval based operations' had been declared.

 

Things like damage modelling, exterior models, lighting, wake effect and exhaust smoke are a topic for almost all vessels.

Certainly are :(

+1

More than a cosmetic update, ships can continue to engage threats as if nothing happened even they are hit multiple times with missiles or bombs. But, it is obvious that at least some missile launchers, radars, personnel etc must have been destroyed at that moment.

Planes can be incapatitated by getting hit so we can suffer from fuel leak, sensor malfunctions, system errors. So ships should suffer too

More than a cosmetic update, ships can continue to engage threats as if nothing happened even they are hit multiple times with missiles or bombs. But, it is obvious that at least some missile launchers, radars, personnel etc must have been destroyed at that moment.

Planes can be incapatitated by getting hit so we can suffer from fuel leak, sensor malfunctions, system errors. So ships should suffer too

Yes, the pairs of AK630s mounted amidships on the Slava class cruiser in DCS have taken 3-5 Harpoons pretty much directly (missile impacted about 1m away) and they still remained operational, in reality electronics/hydraulics would be destroyed, you may even see secondary fires/explosions from hydraulic fluid igniting and even ammunition cooking off/detonating