Whilst a long list of ships lost due to explosions appears damninf it should be looked at in context.
There were 1,554 ships recognised as sunk by combat action in WW2 alone. Only a tiny percentage positively determined to be due to ammunition detonation from enemy munitions. Some of these were the result of other factors such as fire damage rather than the initial direct action. I also caution about counting merchant/supply vessels in the list as these would be basically unarmoured holds and not combat vessels magazines. But the fact that just a few well known examples were caught on camera has led to a public assumption that it’s a very common way to meet the end.
It should also be noted that the single biggest magazine death rate in WT is probably the US Porter class who seemingly get popped just as often as they are ground down by attrition. In reality only USS Porter herself succumbed, to what is beloved to be a Torpedo hit bug without subsequent mag explosion. Meanwhile USS Selfridge survived two Long Lance hits that literally blew off her entire bow forward of the bridge, yet by luck and well organised damage control, again no magazine exploded. She remained afloat and eventually returned the fleet after reconstruction. (I think she would make a nice event reward in her final 5 gun configuration).
What I’m saying is magazine, gunbay, lockers etc (terms vary by date, position, use and Navy) should remain capable of exploding if damaged,. But the current WT rate is far too generous (deliberately so to speed up gameplay?) as it seems to indicate that all you have to do is pierce any surrounding bulkhead to do the trick. It’s easily overlooked that despite being packed with explosives a magazine has a lot of non-explosive items too, but maybe that would require too much modelling.
I’m not sure it’s common as such but neither is death by being hit in the cupola in a tank.The Physics of a direct hit on a magazine should still remain and a one shot big explosion is fun in a game and it is a game not a simulator.
It’s just terminology in many respects and it supports your game stance so I don’t know why you are objecting. Face it people love that random big bang in any aspect of this game.
Edit
If what is listed is true then the game needs to reflect all this if it is to be a realistic reflection of naval warfare. If the Hood went up almost immediately due to a chain reaction leading down to the magazine and an instantaneous explosion then that is a magazine kill as far as the game might be concerned.
I was thinking of getting into navy but not sure .I asked a navy player if a one shot kill was possible in the game and he said yes, Rare but possible and I liked that answer.
Losing your ship in such a way is frustrating for you but great for the enemy and that is PVP gaming all over ,same with AIR and GRB
So much in War Thunder is not realistic but it makes for a fun game.
Itt’s not terminology nuances but completely different things like men and women:
All of the examples you listed are relevant to the propellant charge storage (magazine), which is full of inflammable powders contained by silk bags or otherwise brass casings, hence to be dangerous. Shell room contains thick chunks of high-hardness steel with shock-insensitive explosives deep within:
When I play Standards, I die in a single hit;
When I play Alaska… I may not die in a single hit; but I am rendered unable to shoot in a single hit, instead, hahah. Furthermore, even if they are no insta-kills, they kill a huge portion of the crew and cause unrepairable floods that leave your ship on the brink of being sunk, so even if it’s not an instant death, it’s a death sentence anyway.
I think they should just fix shell rooms entirely or at least make them incredibly hard to detonate (maybe 10 hits, instead of just 1), if they want them to still detonate for balance purposes or whatever.
WT already made changes a few years ago by making shell room detonation not lethal. However for some ships in game, the shell room detonation is strangely powerful that always set off the magazine nearby, which is coded to be lethal in game
They did make changes. Shell room detonation used to be lethal back then when I wrote that thread, and naval players from that time all remember how US cruisers used to be floating ammoracks that dies to everything hitting their barbette. As I mentioned earlier I am not entirely unhappy with the current handling of shell room DM in game but something seems to be broken in case of standard battleships. As long as they work consistently like the Alaska and other ships in game I’m kinda okay with it.
I know they changed shell room detonation lethality, but, in practical terms, it didn’t change much in the case of many ships, like the Standards, where such detonations lead to kill via chain detonation of the magazines. The reason why Standards still blow up is because shell rooms are close to the magazines; and there’s really no reason at all why shell rooms should cause such explosions that would lead to a chain explosion on the magazines on the first place, that’s my point.
By changes, I mean actually big changes; such as shell rooms not being able to detonate at all, which is what should be the case, or at least be more difficult to detonate instead of detonating to 1 single hit.
And that being said; even if Standard Battleship shell room detonations didn’t ever lead to one-hit kills, they would still lead to what it leads in Alaska’s case; you become a floating pillbox unable to fight back. So even if you are not dead as in going straight to the respawn screen, you are as good as dead, just wishing to be finished off so that you can respawn on a functional ship instead, so such detonations would still be a problem, hahah.
Honestly, if at least it took 10 direct hits to blow up shell rooms, it would be almost fine for me. Issue now is how a single impact on a shell room ends you.
The issue has to be that no two ships are the same.The sinking of the Hood is a fine example with so many reasons given for the sudden explosion of the magazine all of which would need to be taken into account as a reason for a Battleship sinking so quickly.
The was in many ways an old ship in WW2 ,WW1 some might say and we have mixed WW1 and WW2. This game also has the mixed era thing to deal with.How does an old ship respond to a new missile firing ship.No historical data.
That in some way is why some players are reluctant to even try War Thunder at sea.it’s road we already went down with tanks and not a pleasant journey either.
Also, even USS Alaska is still very often insta-killed by shell room detonations.
Just look; I survived a whopping 1 minute and 17 seconds into this match before my shell room was hit and my whole ship blown up.
Every time I’ve tried to play America, it has led to the same. That’s why I switched to Germany and why I’m not going to look back until shell rooms are fixed.
Why you’re still mentioning magazine detonations? No one in this thread is questioning about that magazine should explode and destroy the ship.We all agree with that. The problem being shell rooms irl that were supposed to be a sort of additional protection to the ship rather than a dangerous weak spot is modelled unrealistically in the game, and it severely hamper the survivability of some ships.
I mean, if we’re being a little pedantic, how do we even know that that wouldn’t happen, if an Alaska shell room had a fire in it that did eventually cook off rounds? Neither Alaska or Guam ever took any hostile damage in real life. Those carousels don’t look like “additional armor for the magazines” at all. For all we know War Thunder has uncovered a massive weakness in the design from hundreds of ship destructions every night. :)
Saying shell rooms should be insensitive to shock damage is not saying the same as they should never explode due to a sustained fire, as it’s pretty clear they would and did. You certainly didn’t want to just let them burn. And, as in Hood’s case, if the secondary magazine can explode and chain over to the main magazine, then presumably that would happen too with any kind of shell room exploding in near proximity too.
I just don’t think there’s anything in game right now that would reflect the series of events (interruptible in real life by good damage control) of a shell room hit producing a shell room fire, which, if unable to stopped, eventually will lead to a chain detonation to the actual magazine and ship destruction. In this case the War Thunder time dilation on all things repair-related is representing a chain of events that could happen but could also be stopped in real life by prompt crew action, accelerated to what feels like a ludicrous degree for gameplay reasons.
I don’t think making shell rooms inert as another form of armor is the answer here personally. They should still be able to catch fire and (eventually) explode from that fire. I also think they need to expand on the damage control mechanics to introduce additional options for player skill to stop such catastrophes in time, such as some form of magazine flooding mechanic.
Well, I am not talking about fire damage, I am talking about instantaneous detonations after the impact of a single shell, as the screenshots I shared above of Alaska blowing up because a single 283mm shell hit a barbette!
I agree that they should probably still be able to catch fire and (eventually) explode if a fire on the compartment is not dealt with after a while; however, I don’t think they should instantly detonate because a single shell hit the compartment they are stored in.
This could be a bit complicated topic. Insensitive explosives can be cooked off by prolonged fire, that was proven irl, indeed. However the shell room itself really doesn’t have much things to catch fire in the first place, meanwhile magazine prone to that because powders are extremely inflammable.
In terms of the shell room itself, to generate a powerful explosion, a chain reaction must happen so that the explosion impulse transfers from the initial unit of ammo to the adjacent ones, and subsequently the whole storage. It must fulfil the following conditions:
A) The initial explosion of one or a few shell(s)
B) The probability of an explosion setting off the adjacent shells is sufficiently high to sustain the chain reaction
Real life trials had demonstrated that A) is unlikely in the first place (in case of large calibre shells), and B) is even more unlikely. Now imagine the scenarios where the shell room receives a direct hit, the most likely result will be either:
The attacking shell explode inside the pile of shells, the shockwave and shatters are absorbed by the adjacent shells
Or
The attacking shell luckily detonate one of the shell in the storage, but the explosion impulse fails to transfer to others, so it ends up having one or two shells partially exploded (keep in mind the explosives are unlikely to fully unleash its power in such irregular way of detonation), and don’t forget the adjacent shells would still absorb the shockwave and shatters in this case
Now compare to the case of Hood, the detonation (or ignition) of the secondary magazine was almost certainly much more powerful than the partial explosion of one or two shells surrounded by pile of other inert shells. Therefore I don’t think Hood is a good example to imply that the shell room can be a great danger to the magazine. Also don’t forget that American battleships have their shells stored in the barbette, which is isolated from the magazine with the handling room and thick flash-tight bulkheads.
Yeah at the very least Gaijin could at least model those flashtight bulkheads that protects magazines from shell room detonation. Standards being easily popped from a barbette hit should be looked at like a bug not a game mechanic. If they’re to suffer poor reload they could at least be tanky turtles they were designed to be.
To also add to your point, what makes barbette hit dangerous is that sometimes a shell could set off the propellant on its way to the guns. Thats what sets off fires, not the shells themselves.
But currently a barbette hit is just a minor inconvenience, really the whole turret should be knocked out. Fires there should be treated as a life or death situation to put out. But the only ships that have to worry about their barbettes are american BBs.
