For few months now I have been noticing while playing high tier naval, shells under waterline seem to just dissapear and do no damage. Making some ships feel more durable than they should be, especially considering for example Italian and French sadly battleships having pour accuracy. (Dispersion on Jean bart is so bad that at 15km My shells dispersed everywhere but enemy ship and accidentally hit a missile destroyer 250-300m away from ship I was aiming at killing the destroyer, but that is besides the point)
Do shells once they hit water just dissapear or is there something bugged? I know shells interact with water, like bounce, but about the penetration bellow water line I have no Idea what is happening or how shells interact with water, how water reduces penetration if it reduces it.
I basically just want to know if its bug, or feature, or some oversight.
As far as I know, shells hitting the water and disappearing has been a thing since day one or the japanese would be the undisputed queens of naval since their shells were specifically tailored to the concept of diving.
Why… cant it be modeled in some way to allow that? cause some ships are more durable cause of this, and it would add more realism and interesting gameplay than just shoot until you destroy sections (unless your in french ship which has lowest compartment health out of all toptier ships, needing only one salvo from ship to destroy it), this would give us more options… I guess gaijin devs dont want to deal with math regarding how water effects shells/how much it slows them down, but for some reason they created their own “formula” for tank munitions
I cant provide much data/bug report cause as far as I know and from what I talked with people from INAVY discord (GunshipYTs Discord server) some also noticed it as well that shells once they hit water (unless they bounce) seem to just dissapear not damaging a ship, tho as far as I know nobody sent out bug report, cause they arent sure if its feature/hardware limitation or actually a bug. I sadly cant do much testing currently due to some things, and quite frankly randomness of naval guns with dispersion makes testing difficult, cause its hard to get accurate results.
You could not reproduce this kind of hit in game from any distance. This is Mogami hit into shell room versus Boise from 7km.
Spoiler
In the engagement Boise was hit a number of times, twice by fire from a Japanese heavy cruiser from about 7,500 yards (6,900 m) range. One hit exploded upon impact on her armor causing little damage. The other penetrated under the waterline and exploded in the 6 in (152 mm) magazine located between number I and II turrets causing a powder fire and flooding, putting turrets I, II, and III out of action and causing a number of casualties[11] including 107 killed.
Here is replay with my test with similar ships, all shells that touch water just disappear and not doing any damage on underwater parts of the enemy ship. no underwater hits.zip (4.8 MB)
And here is video of it, all shells that touch water never reach ship.
