One-hit kills, or why the Death Star is actually not that unrealistic

[Sic Domine]

Ships should not have Org and Strength as they did in HOI 3 , neither should they have 100 or 0 %. They should have 4 Damage indicators, System damage( overall ship-shapedness, how well ship, pumps and crew is working ) , Flood(self explanatory), Engine(self explanatory), Fires(self explanatory)

 

[Marfach]

I figured you ment for all ships that sinke, i didnt see anything about only capital ships.

and yes some of us play on speed 4 when there isnt heavy ground fighting going on. Also, it doesnt mattter what speed you play on as far as losing ships, because you cant manually disengage them.

Ah, well, you could have it for all ships as an option but screens were sunk pretty regularly and nobody really cared.
As for speed 4, I mean, between fall of France and Barbarossa maybe, or during Winter War.
I don't play USA campaigns so maybe its more practical then. I concede the point.

 

[Opanashc]

Humans die after just 1 bullet. If the bullet hits the right place.
Same with ships.
Now, for every "one hit kill", how many misses are there? In Battle of Jutland, both sides fired 8-9 thousand rounds 11" and up, and over 150 torpedoes. How many ships were actually sunk?

 

[Sic Domine]

Humans die after just 1 bullet. If the bullet hits the right place.
Same with ships.
Now, for every "one hit kill", how many misses are there? In Battle of Jutland, both sides fired 8-9 thousand rounds 11" and up, and over 150 torpedoes. How many ships were actually sunk?

I guess 3 in every 100 shells hits, and of that maybe 5 are heavy crits, 15 being normal crits?

 

[TheRomanRuler]

To be fair. The death star was moon sized. A single strike of a tiny explosive by comparison still doesn't make any sense. I hate the fact now it's happened three times. It's very very very lazy story telling. 3 times. 2.5. I guess...it was a whole lot more in New Hope 2.

Besides that. Depends on how common you'd want it to happen. I'd prefer seeing slugg fest 99.9% of the time.

Death Star 2 in ROTJ was not finished and had strong shield to protect it. Rebels had to send a commando sguad to destroy shield. So it makes some sense it was destroyed with 1 hit.
As for first death star, remember that it took person most powerful in the force ever a lucky shot to even hit it. And he only managed to score that hit becouse Darth Vader wanted to take out rebels almost by himself alone. And guns that defended the trench that lead to exhaustion port were shut down. And it had to be close range proton torpedo. And you can just shield it or else it can't let any heat out of Death Star. And Empire usually had huge fleets of Star Destroyers, each of which carried multiple starfighters, and each Star destroyer was in fleet of multiple ships more.
Rebels managed to destroy Death Star becouse Empire overestimated it and rebels were extremly lucky.
And remember that Star Wars is not futuristic unlike many think, it happened a long long time ago, in a galaxy far away. For all we know, in that galaxy it is even less likely to be able to destroy death star.

 

[Axe99]

I like everything you said, except about the message poppups

Hoi already has a lot of popups, I wouldnt like anymore to be shown by default. Maybe be able to look at a screen when the battle is over that shows damage taken, and how a ship was sunk.

Aye, that's a fair point. I wasn't really wedded to pop-ups (although knowing one of your two BBs has sunk may be a good reason to tell the other one to run away, so I could see where it would be useful), more agreeing that it would be valuable for both gameplay and immersion to have some kind of commentary around the critical hit, be it in the battle results screen or somewhere else. Personally, though, I would like to be notified when Hood had exploded so that I could tell Prince of Wales to back off, if it wasn't going to do that anyway - would be a bit sad if UI limitations meant two BBs were lost instead of one.

I guess 3 in every 100 shells hits, and of that maybe 5 are heavy crits, 15 being normal crits?

I'm not expert on the stats, but my understanding based on foggy memory (take with grain of salt) is that at Jutland (about the best case study we have of lots of heavy shells being thrown at each other), for well armoured ships (ie, not discounting the British Battlecruisers getting a pasting, and just looking at the BB on BB action), is that 3-5% of shots fired hit. However, not a single British or German BB had a Hood-like explosion, despite numerous hits, which would suggest the 25% 'heavy crit' is on the higher side for shells in that situation.

It'd definitely be good to have different percentages for torpedoes and shells - if a torpedo hit, it was far more likely to cause serious to catastrophic damage.

 

[Opanashc]

Wiki claims 8131 large shells were fired, with 245 hits scored. That's 3% hit ratio. 25 ships were sunk, some by smaller calibers, others by torpedoes. Something like 5 large ships were destroyed by artillery - that's 49 hits per kill, and 1626 shots per kill.

 

[Sic Domine]

I'm not expert on the stats, but my understanding based on foggy memory (take with grain of salt) is that at Jutland (about the best case study we have of lots of heavy shells being thrown at each other), for well armoured ships (ie, not discounting the British Battlecruisers getting a pasting, and just looking at the BB on BB action), is that 3-5% of shots fired hit. However, not a single British or German BB had a Hood-like explosion, despite numerous hits, which would suggest the 25% 'heavy crit' is on the higher side for shells in that situation.

It'd definitely be good to have different percentages for torpedoes and shells - if a torpedo hit, it was far more likely to cause serious to catastrophic damage.

You're right in the hit percentages and the torpedo thing, but I said 5 percent of the hits are heavy crits. heavy crits being hits to vital areas such as command bunker or ammo storage. 15 percent of the hits are normal crits like bulkhead, direct engine, hit that misses but explodes under the keel etc.

 

[Incompetent]

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're on the Stellaris forum or the HOI4 one

My impression was that the Death Star was more analogous to the Manhattan Project - it's no use for actually taking and holding territory, only obliterating the enemy and/or scaring them into surrender. The most unrealistic thing about it was that the Empire found the need to invest so many resources in a moon-sized starbase, instead of finding a more efficient weapon to render a planet uninhabitable. This applies even more so to Starkiller Base, which is even bigger, and is supposedly created by an insurgent New Order that you'd think would have a much smaller industrial base than the original Empire.

 

[Axe99]

You're right in the hit percentages and the torpedo thing, but I said 5 percent of the hits are heavy crits. heavy crits being hits to vital areas such as command bunker or ammo storage. 15 percent of the hits are normal crits like bulkhead, direct engine, hit that misses but explodes under the keel etc.

Aye, sorry, I misunderstood - I thought you were saying 5 of every 20 where heavy, just a brain explosion on my part. Five per cent and fifteen per cent sounds a lot more reasonable, particularly if you're modifying up/down by the quality of the ship it's hitting (so you'd be looking at larger numbers for British battlecruisers, and lower numbers for a Bismarck, say).

 

[FOARP]

Humans die after just 1 bullet. If the bullet hits the right place.
Same with ships.
Now, for every "one hit kill", how many misses are there? In Battle of Jutland, both sides fired 8-9 thousand rounds 11" and up, and over 150 torpedoes. How many ships were actually sunk?

Errmmm . . . three battlecruisers basically blew after their magazines were hit at Jutland. These three ships were destroyed as a result of no more than ~42 heavy gun hits distributed amoungst six battlecruisers and a battleship.

 

[Denkt]

There is a chance for a critical hit to happen (torpedoes have been mentioned to have very good chance for one to happen). The reliability of your ship play a major role on this chance so while you may be encouraged to design ships with low reliability it may not be the wisest thing to do.

 

[Opanashc]

Errmmm . . . three battlecruisers basically blew after their magazines were hit at Jutland. These three ships were destroyed as a result of no more than ~42 heavy gun hits distributed amoungst six battlecruisers and a battleship.

You arguing or agreeing with me?

 

[Axe99]

Errmmm . . . three battlecruisers basically blew after their magazines were hit at Jutland. These three ships were destroyed as a result of no more than ~42 heavy gun hits distributed amoungst six battlecruisers and a battleship.

That's still 42 heavy hits for three kills (rather than 1 hit, 1 kill), and they were against British Battlecruisers, whose design had a number of questionable features, and who had poor ammunition handling practices IIRC as well, so I'm not sure they're the best 'general' example of lethality, but more of a 'if you design thin-skinned ships and don't manage your ammo well, this is how bad it can get'. Hood was also influenced by pre-Jutland BC design, although her design was significantly amended (but not completely changed) after the battle.

 

[FOARP]

That's still 42 heavy hits for three kills (rather than 1 hit, 1 kill)

42 hits shared between seven BCs/BBs - an average of 6 per ship, with shells that are generally considered on the 'light' side of 'heavy' (i.e., 11" and 12" ). You are of course correct that a large part of this was faulty design.

All the same Jutland could have been a completely different story if only British fuses had worked properly, and might well have been a disaster for the Germans anyway had they stayed to fight it out.

PS - the what-ifs around Jutland and the WW1 naval war in general are yet another reason why we need a WW1 DLC.