Torpedo Duds

[uber.aegis]

I am playing on historical and have a few questions.
Impact Detonators: I know they have to hit fairly square to the ship but even if they do is there still a chance that it will be a dud?

Magnetic Detonators: If this is a dud and doesn t explode prematurely will it stop when it passes under ship or just carry on travelling?

If the torpedo is a dud is it a dud on both detonator types or can it vary.
Regards

[The cursed Jäger]

Originally posted by uber.aegis:

Impact Detonators: I know they have to hit fairly square to the ship but even if they do is there still a chance that it will be a dud?

Depends on the pistol type and angle. If it is a flat 90 impact, no dud. If it is a 60 impact, perhaps.

Originally posted by uber.aegis:

Magnetic Detonators: If this is a dud and doesn t explode prematurely will it stop when it passes under ship or just carry on travelling?

If the torpedo is a dud is it a dud on both detonator types or can it vary.
Regards

They will keep on travelling if they don't detect the hull.

[Dewgle]

Originally posted by uber.aegis:

I am playing on historical

Please don't fall into the trap most new players do regarding the game settings you chose at the beginning of your career.

Before the devs added in the selection cards for "Simulation" and "Crew management" that let you choose between "Entertaining, Balanced and Hardcore", most new players used to just drag the slider at the top to 100% without carefully reading each and every individual game setting. And when you asked them what settings they chose, they would just say with confidence "I play on 100%, of course, but why is 'X' doing this? I'm confused"

Case in point, the torpedo flaws game setting. This is the popup hint that displays at the bottom of the screen for each torpedo flaw setting:

Basic - Torpedo impact angle is ignored and torpedo duds are determined using a flat chance. This chance is very close to zero, if torpedo is properly maintained by a trained officer.

Semi-realistic - Perfect impact angle is rewarded with an almost guaranteed detonation of a torpedo, although sub-optimal hits usually end up in a detonation too - especially if the torpedo is properly maintained by a trained officer.

Realistic - Torpedo pistols have flaws that match the historic records. If a torpedo with an impact pistol hits the target at a high angle, it most likely won't detonate.

So when asking about torpedo failures it's important to let us know exactly which setting you chose at the start of your career. Personally I play on semi-realistic which means when using the impact pistols, the torpedo will detonate 100% of the time if the impact angle is good.

I haven't tested out the Realistic torpedo flaw setting but from my understanding there's still a chance it won't detonate even if the impact angle is good. It essentially combines the flat chance of the Basic flaws with the impact angle sensitivity of the Semi-realistic flaws.

Regardless, I highly recommend using the TDC mod as it actually features an angle-on-impact dial built into the machine that will tell you at what angle your torpedoes will impact the hull of your target in real-time.

[uber.aegis]

Apologies, I got my words confused. I meant to say I had selected realistic torpedo settings. I can t play without the TDC mod, however if my settings are slightly off it means the angle of impact might not be as square as I thought. Regards

[Dewgle]

Ah if you're playing with realistic torpedo flaws then that means there's a chance your impact pistol still will not detonate even if the impact angle is good. But maintaining your torpedoes should greatly reduce this chance.

[uber.aegis]

Thanks, I m hoping that they increase the time torpedo s are maintained for as it seems I m having to maintain them just before an attack which is problematic if a destroyer is in the area. Regards

[ExParrot]

I play on realistic and can confirm that sometimes even good shots fail. But that pretty much goes away once you research T3 as the pistols get much better.

[Team Triss]

I fired four warmed up torpedoes and three were duds. Impact angle should have been pretty close to 90.

Are we saying that maintenance does not fully remove chance of a dud in B129?

[ExParrot]

Never fully removed, no, but much reduced.

[Team Triss]

They need to update that tooltip again because it still says removes chance of a dud.

[Dewgle]

@Triss, it depends on which setting you selected for torpedo flaws.

Basic torpedo flaws will generate a dud based on a fixed chance, this is basically how torpedo flaws used to work prior to patch b129. This is based purely from memory, someone might be able to correct me if I'm wrong.

T1 torpedoes had a 25% dud rate
T2 torpedoes 30% chance
T3 torpedoes 16% chance
and T5 torpedoes 14% chance of being a dud.

And warming/maintaining your torpedoes would reduce the dud chance by 60% iirc.

Now if you selected semi-realistic then when using impact pistols, so long as the impact angle is good then your torpedo has a 100% chance of detonating just fine. Magnetic pistols however still have a chance of exploding prematurely the moment they reach arming distance (200 meters) or every 100 meters on the way to the target and finally they have a chance to simply not detonate at all upon reaching the target.

So when using semi-realistic torpedo flaws, impact pistols rely soley on the impact angle but magnetic pistols have a chance of failure depending on the variant of pistol. The earlier p1 magnetic pistols have a higher chance of failure than the later P3 pistols and so on.

Realistic torpedo flaws actually combine the features of basic and semi-realistic settings where impact angle matters but the torpedo will still have a chance of failure even if the impact angle is good.

If your impact angle was truly within tolerances then the only answer must be that you have realistic or basic torpedo flaws enabled.

[Team Triss]

This is from my "why can't the AI target anything" run, so I'm assuming I'm at full realism re: torpedoes.

EDIT: found the settings and yes, Realistic.

[ExParrot]

Personally I would prefer the maintenance rule to work in reverse - i.e. instead of regular maintenance making your torpedoes more reliable than historical records suggest, that rather lack of maintenance should make them less reliable.

Equally as such you could argue that if I wanted the game to be harder I should just learn how to target torpedoes manually. *Shrug*

[Jim (VG)]

Originally posted by LoR Team Triss:

I fired four warmed up torpedoes and three were duds. Impact angle should have been pretty close to 90.

Are we saying that maintenance does not fully remove chance of a dud in B129?

Originally posted by ExParrot:

Never fully removed, no, but much reduced.

Apparently the chance of a dud torp can be fully removed if you give your engineer officer / torpedo mechanic the "Thorough" skill (second from the right on the top row on the engineer skill points screen):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2608195040
But I'm not sure if that skill is bugged or not... Both of my engineer officers have that skill and on my last patrol I had several dud torpedoes, which I'm sure they'd maintained / warmed up because the torps were shown as "red" when I launched them. Unless it's the "dud" report that's bugged and the reason those torps didn't detonate was actually due to another reason (impact angle, depth, etc.)

[Dewgle]

I dug into the datasheets so I could grab the correct values for you. Here's the flat dud chance rates which applies to basic or realistic flaws.

T1 = .19
T2 = .3
T3 = .16
T5 = .14

And maintaining/warming your torpedo will multiply those values by .4 which reduces them by 60% essentially. And regarding the values for impact and magnetic pistols. Here's the raw data for a T1 torpedo with a Pi1 pistol.

Originally posted by Entities.xlsx/Equipment:

Range1 = 5000, Range2 = 7500, Range3 = 12000, Speed1 = 22.64, Speed2 = 20.5555, Speed3 = 15.5555, DudChance = 0.19, Damage = 4.9, CrewDamage = 0.8, DamageRadius = 40, DamageEffectsRadius = 7.0, DamageEffectsIntensity = 1.0, MaintenanceCooldown = 1200, MinPistolActivationAngle = 40, MaxPistolActivationAngle = 69, MagneticExplosionOnArm = 0.1, MagneticExplosionAfterArm = 0.005, MagneticExplosionFail = 0.1

MinPistolActivationAngle: This means means that so long as the impact angle is within 40 degrees, the torpedo will explode with 100% certainty. But between 40 degrees and 69, the 'max' pistol activation angle, then there's a chance it will not explode.

And if the angle of impact is over 69 degrees then the torpedo as a 100% chance of not exploding.

When using the magnetic pistol, the torpedo has a 0.05 (5%) chance of exploding the moment the torpedo reaches it's arming distance of 200 meters.

After that, every 100 meters the game checks the 'MagneticExplosionAfterArm' value of 0.0025 (0.25%) which determines if the torpedo will explode on it's way to the target. The longer the run time of the torpedo the more chances it has to detonate prematurely.

And finally when it reaches it's target the game will check 'MagneticExplosionFail' 0.125 or 12.5% chance to not detonate upon coming into contact with the hull of the ship.

All of these values are reduced by 60% when you warm/maintain your torpedo and when using realistic torpedo failures, a T1 torpedo would still have a 19% chance of being dud even if all of the above values had a good dice roll.

[Dewgle]

Originally posted by ExParrot:

Personally I would prefer the maintenance rule to work in reverse - i.e. instead of regular maintenance making your torpedoes more reliable than historical records suggest, that rather lack of maintenance should make them less reliable.

Equally as such you could argue that if I wanted the game to be harder I should just learn how to target torpedoes manually. *Shrug*

Do we have any solid records that indicate the failure rate of German torpedoes based on torpedo variant and generation of pistol?