Tides of War

Hi all,

Although new to ERT, I'm already having good success with DC's against Subs. However, I wondered how the Charges detonate. I frequently set them to a pressure depth of 190, but I'm getting kills on Subs when they are at 90.

So this got me thinking that the Depth Charges are both pressure and contact detonation based. Is this correct?

If not why am I getting kills on Subs at a depth of 90 when my charges are set at 190? (not that I'm complaining like lol).

Hi all,
Although new to ERT, I'm already having good success with DC's against Subs. However, I wondered how the Charges detonate. I frequently set them to a pressure depth of 190, but I'm getting kills on Subs when they are at 90.

So this got me thinking that the Depth Charges are both pressure and contact detonation based. Is this correct?

If not why am I getting kills on Subs at a depth of 90 when my charges are set at 190? (not that I'm complaining like lol).

No, DCs usually are pressure based. Hedgehogs have contact detonators.

During the war a German submarine surfaced after being chased by an Allied destroyer. When the crew got up to the conning tower they saw that a DC was lying near their deck gun, and according to the ship's log the DC was 'buzzing'

The sub got to flank speed and one crewmember tossed the DC over board. As you can easily calculate the deep setting (typical DC sinking speed was 4m per second) they found that the DC was set to 120 meters - during their evasive maneuvers they didn't go below 100 meters (don't ask me for the reason) and the DC contained a pressure detonator.

Maybe later modells had both detonators, but for most of the war DCs used simple pressure detonators.

Thanks for the History lesson, but that's not the reply I was after as I wanted an answer to my question with regards to the game.

Yes I already know real life DC's in WW2 were of the pressure type, however my question was about the 'game' Enigma: Rising Tide (maybe I wasn't explicit enough?), hence the reason I asked.

So just to make my question a little clearer, so it's not interrpreted as a 'history knowledge question'...

Are the Depth Charges in the game Enigma: Rising Tide both pressure and contact detonation based?

If not why am I getting kills on Subs at a depth of 90 when my charges are set at 190?

Could be that the sub drove over the DC when it went off, and the froce of the explosion blowing upwards broke his back. Remember the big plumes of water when the DCs go off? That force can destroy your own ship on the surface if you're over it, so I'd think the same applies to a sub that is over it (he's even closer to the explosion!)

If you go to spectator when getting DC is i do when a DC hits you it explods and damages you so they are contact as well i would like to see the depth only becase it is otherwise very hard to survive a an attack that goes deeper then you but still hit you

The previous programmers didn't want to do hull collisions for depth charges so we had to either let them pass through a submarine or explode on contact. We chose contact. This will change once we finish isolating the engine code from the game code and clean up our modules like physics, collisions, etc.

jammy-e Posted on Aug 23 2004, 11:14 AM
  If you go to spectator when getting DC is i do when a DC hits you it explods and damages you so they are contact as well i would like to see the depth only becase it is otherwise very hard to survive a an attack that goes deeper then you but still hit you

The only problem I see with that is if you do have a depth charge sitting on the conning tower that you forget about (or don't know about) and you dive, do you go boom? or does the game forget about them?

As an aside, does anyone know what the "kill zone" for a depth charge is? I know that in reality that a depth charge could severly damage or kill a sub if it went off within 30 feet of the sub (10m or so) not much for a margin of error for the Tin Cans dropping them, just wondering if it's somewhat similar for DC's in Engima.

So for example if I set charges for 150m, and the sub is sitting at 170m does he hurt, or does he just have to change his pants?

You watch Das Boot the DC get pritty dam close in that and the sub dosen't sink

jammy-e Posted on Aug 23 2004, 11:14 AM
? If you go to spectator when getting DC is i do when a DC hits you it explods and damages you so they are contact as well i would like to see the depth only becase it is otherwise very hard to survive a an attack that goes deeper then you but still hit you

The only problem I see with that is if you do have a depth charge sitting on the conning tower that you forget about (or don't know about) and you dive, do you go boom? or does the game forget about them?

As an aside, does anyone know what the "kill zone" for a depth charge is? I know that in reality that a depth charge could severly damage or kill a sub if it went off within 30 feet of the sub (10m or so) not much for a margin of error for the Tin Cans dropping them, just wondering if it's somewhat similar for DC's in Engima.

So for example if I set charges for 150m, and the sub is sitting at 170m does he hurt, or does he just have to change his pants?

It's a physics thing. The shallower they are, the larger the diameter of the blast. The deeper they are, the more pressure against them, and the blast has a smaller radius. The energy expended in the blast is the same, but the smaller radius (since the energy is compressed) means that it's more of a "no damage or severe damage" thing when you're deep. The shock wave on a shallower charge goes out farther, but of course dissapates with distance.

Example (numbers are made up just to demonstrate):

Say a DC set to 100m has a blast radius of 20m.

and a DC set to 200m has a blast radius of 10m.

A sub 15m away from the DC at 100m will get damaged, but a sub 15m away from the DC at 200m is ok. Now, if the sub is 8m away, it takes big damage at the 100m depth, but takes a LOT of damage at 200m. Not only is the hull more stressed at that level (and so more susceptible to failure,) the pressure wave transfered into the water is also concentrated from the depth, focusing the blast into a smaller, more potent package.

Thanks East, for confirming what I thought was happening