If i recall correctly they nerfed her first with the ammo elevator or barbette fires that if set very deep dont leave her enough time to extinguish before it reaches the magazine? Which also nerfs quite a lot of other ships as well, but is still a much better way of somehow making it so scharnhorst isnt the unkillable demon anymore (at least for the other bbs at its BR) that just cant be killed and wins matches simply by sailing straight into your team even without sinking a whole lot of enemies solely by keeping half the team busy dealing with it while the rest of his team has free reign. That was pretty bad gameplay wise even for naval RB standards.
But yeah, the compartments came around the same time and if that was intended to do something about the scharnhorst situation, doesnt do a whole lot about it since theres tons of ships with way more fragile hulls, or however the compartments are linked to the hulls. If its true what @Kweedko said and some have the compartments all the way to the upper deck and for some its only the much stronger, lower deck armor then thats quite some bs i might say.
Overall just a terrible mechanic that is nowhere further specified, nothing is explained in detail for each ship, its just a stupid wows like healthbar but not one per ship but 8 to 12. Like, you cant even check how many compartments each ship has in the hangar. Feels like they just slapped this in to make matches shorter, granting everyone more kills (which doesnt work bc, again, some ships take almost no compartment damage) and then were very happy that they never had to deal with their own dogwater mechanic ever again. Just a band-aid fix to the problem of insane engagement distances but on vehicles that go 50 to 60 kph, but ofc still have to fight on the classic pointless 3 cap gamemode that we’ll all love till we die. And, of matches that have to end in under 15 minutes, which barely is enough time to even make it to the caps once per match in a battleship.
I play this over wows because of more realistic gameplay and a more true to irl approach, not to watch some parts of the ship turn yellow, then red and at one point black and then thats it, no matter what side of the ship is getting shot at, without any consistency or feedback while its happening, while certain other ships sometimes feel like their compartments dont take any damage at all while being pounded by battleships for 15 minutes straight.
With 0 feedback whats actually happening to the health of certain compartments, which parts are damaged, impossible to repair any of that (while ofc a turret or exploded barbette is back in action 20 sec later, srsly?), whole magazines exploding in giant fireballs but not doing any damage to the compartments around them, but then 8 dumb rockets of a spitfire completely take one section of certain battleships out no problem. Magazines with 100s and 1000s of kg of tnt equivalent stored all the way in the ships belly exploding do nothing to the structural integrity but 8 rockets that barely pen the wooden deck “rip” the ship apart. Like, wtf? What was so bad about the old flooding mechanic that even had automatic counterflooding modelled that they had to replace it with this crap?
Like, whats the point of a min crew cutoff atm? when was the last time you won a duel or a fight because of knowing where a certain enemy ship holds lots of crew (which-in case it wasnt changed is still modelled very bad, like, 600 crew in amagis engine room? u sure bout that gaijin?) But its still a way better and realistic mechanic to have an enemy ship on such low crew that it cant operate anymore even if they still float somehow.
