Re: Destroyers

[Kaiser Kirk]

A couple of quotes from Friedman's U.S. Destroyers seem appropriate
"It appears that the flivver* operators, for all their aggressiveness,did not expect their boats to survive the first attack on the enemy line. Best to get off all their torpedoes before they sank or were dead in the water"

*flivver being a term for an 1909 700-742ton US DD

"At the same time, sentiment grew within C&R for a reexamination of the rationale for the 1,500-ton type.
In particular, it seemed that a great deal was being spend on rather large yet flimsy ships.
According to a C&R memo of 18 February 1935, summarizing studies of armored destroyers in 1934/35
"it is evident that for two such ships as we now have to engage each other would mean only mutual
suicide. It appears debatable, to say the least, whether or not the great loss of destroyers which would result
from an attack on capital ships is not itself sufficient reason for endeavoring to give them more of a chance
to carry out a successful torpedo attack." Tests on two ex-destroyers, the Marcus and Sloat,
showed that very considerable damage was to be expected from the fragments of bombs as small as
100 pounds exploding as much as 40 feet away; and the .50 caliber bullets of strafing aircraft would
quite suffice to disable destroyers whose only protection was the quarter-inch shields of some of their guns. "

[Desertfox]

Leyte Gulf proved them wrong...

[Jefgte]

IJN Haguro too in Malacca strait.

[The Rock Doctor]

There's the problem that in real life, ships aren't sunk by X kg of shellfire.  Some survive more, some flounder from less.  This was always a frustration for me with the old Harpoon game.

[TacCovert4]

True.  For example, look at the Battle off Samar.  Johnston and SBR took utterly insane levels of damage before going down.  But within the confines of this game, I'm perfectly fine with DDs being a bit more 'fragile' even in their larger variations, than they might have shown to be from time to time in real life.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Leyte Gulf proved them wrong...

From what I understand, at Leyte gulf the IJN continued firing AP shells for quite some time.
They even thought the carriers armored.
Worse since the IJN valued the potential of a 'short' that dived,
those shells had long fuse times to allow passage underwater.

Which meant they had a heck of a lot of 'pass throughs'
as even if the shell armed, the fuse delay activated after exiting the DDs.

I think late in the fight they did use HE, but overall  the situation at Leyte is a little deceptive.

[Kaiser Kirk]

There's the problem that in real life, ships aren't sunk by X kg of shellfire.  Some survive more, some flounder from less.  This was always a frustration for me with the old Harpoon game.

I thought the quotes in Friedman's book interesting as they
reflect the historical expectations, not the results of the game,
but the game does seem to mimic those expectations.

Gamewise,  there are the 'Dud' and 'Passthrough' categories that can turn a hit
into something that does not matter.
Likewise some crits multiply damage, and others do not.

So a single 12" hit could have a wide range of results.

In some fights I try to track penetrating hull vs. top side hits.
Both lead to vessel degradation, but - if I have time- I will try to
consider the flotation separate from the simple top damage.

However, I don't tend to do that for Destroyers.
There's just no armor to stop the splinters,
and most of them have been fragile enough that
they are taking well over the sinking point.

That last should probably be mentioned -
'sinking' could also be - battered to a wreck/ combat ineffective / abandoned/  etc.