The current fleet damage system is built on three main pillars: crew (located in modules and crew compartments(aka crew boxes), hull sections (our favorite “traffic light” system, which is currently being actively manipulated—sometimes rapidly destroying sections with HE, other times making them impossible to destroy within a reasonable time), and buoyancy (which is entirely unclear to the average player—players don’t know where and how to shoot to sink a ship based on buoyancy).
Continuing the topic of reworking the damage mechanics and ship destruction based on crew loss (Переработка механики БЗЖ и уничтожения кораблей по экипажу - Передано разработчикам - War Thunder — официальный форум), which we discussed, where we explored how survivability based on crew should behave. We need to work on the very possibility of knocking out this crew, especially for large fleet ships.
Currently, there are several issues:
Crew is distributed across modules, meaning some modules are currently inaccessible for fire — for example, boiler rooms, pumps, and other compartments located below the waterline. This creates a problem of sinking ships when all modules above the waterline are destroyed, but the enemy does not repair them, leaving the ship effectively immortal until the magazines explode or it sinks due to hull compartment damage.
Inside the hull, armor decks and bulkheads are modeled, but in current reality, they absorb shell explosions regardless of explosive charge or shell caliber. Structural elements also ricochet off large-caliber shells hitting thin bulkheads and decks, sending shells further away from modules.
I propose several rational suggestions aimed at changing this situation:
When modules are damaged or destroyed, they subtract crew contained within them from the ship’s total crew. When repairing a module, crew should be taken from these “crew boxes,” reducing their count accordingly.
This will increase survivability when crew boxes are already empty (currently, hits to boxes with many destroyed modules and a lot of repaired ones, cause a sharp decrease in crew, because crew migrates into repaired modules, but crew boxes stay full). It will also reduce survivability when boxes are hidden deep inside the hull—finding the last crew becomes impossible as they gradually leak out during repairs elsewhere.Bulkheads and decks should not absorb explosions and shrapnel inside them so much, as they currently do—that’s why shell hits sometimes cause no damage (Community Bug Reporting System). For example: a large-caliber shell explodes over magazines or machinery spaces. In reality, such an explosion would rupture bulkheads and send decks into the bilge, causing serious damage.
We already have shrapnel-fuzed penetrations for shells, but they seem ineffective now. I suggest that such shell detonations should damage neighboring compartments with shrapnel and blast waves—simulating internal damage more accurately (e.g., a deck with 30mm armor hit by a shell with 70mm HE penetration should damage adjacent compartments containing modules).
This will make damage more dependent on explosive charge quantity: AP shells will be able to target well-protected modules where possible (but won’t always penetrate decks or bulkheads), while SAP shells will cause significant module damage if they manage to breach armor belts or hit vulnerable areas.Another issue worth addressing is the differing behavior of shells in armor analysis versus replay recordings after battles. It’s noticeable that in armor analysis, shells behave very differently—they don’t ricochet or account for decks and bulkheads; instead, you see scenarios that wouldn’t occur in real game combat. For example: a shell explodes over magazines damaging them in analysis but in reality, bulkheads and decks would absorb shrapnel and blast effects.
We need to fix armor analysis so it reflects ingame behavior better—allowing players in hangar mode to reproduce situations they encounter during battles. Also, speeding up projectile flight animations during analysis would be beneficial since large ships mean waiting around 20 seconds for shells to fly is not ideal.Summary:
These changes aim to increase the value of individual hits, improve players’ understanding of vehicle models and countermeasures against them, and encourage using various types of shells (not just maximizing penetration and shell speed). This should positively impact gameplay by making damage from large-caliber shells containing significant explosives more realistic.
3 Likes
Very cool, thx for translating and helping in trying to improve the situation. Sounds good on a first read but needs a bit of more time to think through :-) I’ll definitely give a vote when my brain is able again to function in the current heatwave