Testing Iowa vs Yamato vs Soyuz survivability

I created a user mission to test how survivable Iowa, Yamato and Soyuz are to barbette fires and shell room explosions.

First up, barbette fires. I used a Yamato to shoot the ships 2-5 km range at a flat angle. 3 shells (1 turret) were shot per test. Time measurements are rough estimates. Enemy ships had full ammo, because reducing ammo count in CDK doesn’t seem to do anything, or I’m using the wrong option.

  • Iowa:
    – 1. turret: shell room explodes after a minimum of 5 seconds. Ship survives. Time to explode seems to depend a lot on how much shells damage the shell room. Shell room always seems to survive the initial hits.
    – 2. turret: ship dies after a minimum of 5 seconds. Again, time depends on quality of penetration
    – 3. turret: ship dies after a minimum of 3 seconds. Even if the penetration is bad, it seems to only take 5 seconds.

  • Yamato:
    – 1. turret: ship dies after 5-7 seconds.
    – 2. turret: ship dies after 5-7 seconds.
    – 3. turret: ship dies after 5-7 seconds.

  • Soyuz:
    – 1. turret: shell room explodes after 10-15 seconds. Ship survives.
    – 2. turret: shell room explodes after 10-15 seconds. Ship survives.
    – 3. turret: ship dies after 10-15 seconds.

So to sum up:
Iowa can survive first turret fire. Yamato can’t survive anything as per usual. Soyuz can survive everything except 3rd turret fire, but has enough time to put out the fires, unlike Iowa and Yamato.
Iowa and Yamato will sometimes take longer to burn if the penetration isn’t as deep, although this applies more to Iowa and less to Yamato. Yamato seems to die within 7 seconds pretty consistently.

Soyuz has a massive advantage due to being able to extinguish the fire in time. This is probably due to the Stalinium Teleportation system which allows the shell rooms to be disconnected and far away from the ammo elevator while having the best reload of the 3 ships.

Next up, shell room explosions. In this test I used all 9 guns to shoot the shell room, making sure to not hit the magazine too. Everything else is the same as the previous test.

  • Iowa: it’s very hard to test it. The shell rooms don’t like to die due to the troll armor. Seemingly the first turret shell room detonation is survivable, while the second and third turret shell room detonations kill the ship.
  • Yamato: all the shell room detonations result in the ship dying.
  • Soyuz: ship does not die from any of the shell room detonations. Of course, you will die from crew loss if all 3 are destroyed.

To sum it up:
Soyuz behaves as expected, shell room detonation kills a lot of crew but doesn’t kill the ship. Iowa and Yamato seem to be dying from shell room explosions, which doesn’t seem right. I’ve created an issue for Yamato: Community Bug Reporting System. I might make one for Iowa.

Regarding ammo load, I can’t say if Iowa dies from shell room explosions when it’s not at full ammo load (because I don’t have the ship.

I can say the Yamato does still die from shell room fires and detonations even when you’re at 50% ammo load. And this is what I have a huge problem with. If you’re at 50% ammo, your shell room and magazine are pretty far apart (much further apart than Soyuz), but you still die. I have never ever survived a shell room explosion in Yamato, or seen anyone else survive one. That’s why I created an issue report.

You can try the user mission yourself (if you have Yamato): https://live.warthunder.com/post/1146598/en/

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Do you unloaded the half of ammo for the tests?

No, as stated in the post, I can’t manage to do that with the CDK. The “Bullet Count” option doesn’t seem to do it. I set it to 100, I get 900 “bullets”.

But in live games I’ve never seen Yamato survive a shell room explosion, even at 50% ammo.

But you could get different results with Iowa or Soyz, Iowa as far as i know could survive 3 ammoracks on all turrets if ammo halved.

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I would test it if I could figure out how to change ammo count in the CDK, but no luck so far.

Regardless, should Iowa really explode with full ammo? Looking at the ammo layout, it similar to Soyuz with regards to how close the magazine and shell rooms are, and there is a 25mm plate protecting the magazine.

Just find a friend with all ships.

•`_´•

Anyway, let’s forget about 50% ammo load for now.

Yamato: Blowing up a 160 x 25kg = 4000 kg TNT shell room enveloped by 50mm armor (barbette) kills the ship.
Soyuz: Blowing up a 300 x 40kg = 12000kg TNT shell room enveloped by nothing doesn’t kill the ship.

Makes no sense.

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Bug report got accepted