Why do freshly loaded torpedoes need to be maintained?

[BenRichards843]

Seriously, why not "warm them up" before they are loaded since when they are "warmed up" they are essentially reloaded?

[muffin <3]

If you customize your officer tasks, they can do this when they decide to load a torpedo. But it would be nice to have this as a command.

[BenRichards843]

Why even load a "cold fish"? Ever?

[Ax4711]

It's maintenance of some touchy detonators and an angry little steam engine... they need more love than the other kids ❤

[Tikigod]

Originally posted by BenRichards843:

Why even load a "cold fish"? Ever?

I'm not a text book theory expert on the subject by any means, but I'd imagine the potential for 'Inconvenient detonations' is much higher in the older boats with twitchy torpedo designs unless you knew for 100% fact you were going to be firing the torpedo immediately.

[VipreRX]

Originally posted by BenRichards843:

Why even load a "cold fish"? Ever?

Because in a pinch you can still fire them. To heck with the dud risk, I'm in the middle of a convoy, get the tubes reloaded and fire now!

[kimdownunder]

IRL a torpedo needed several hours to be serviced. They are complicated! And the batteries etc need to be heated to get max reliability.

[Drosta]

I tend to assume what they mean by "maintenance" is more like an arming task. Obviously the game doesn't make this an actual requirement and will let you fire a torpedo without doing it at all. But irl I doubt they were sailing around for weeks at a time with hot torps loaded. But I'm no expert. It's just my rationale for "maintenance" that isn't polishing them with rags and maybe these early generation of torpedoes were just always live.

[wolf310ii]

Originally posted by Drosta:

But irl I doubt they were sailing around for weeks at a time with hot torps loaded.

Yes they did and they do. The torpedos in the tubes are always ready to fire.
The warhead gets armed when fireing the torpedo.

[DECAFBAD]

Minor oversight, the torpedoes in storage can't be serviced in UBOAT.

It gets weirder: if you find the "reload and maintan" task and prioritise it for your mechanic, he'll load a fully prepared torpedo, ready to launch.
These are just things, that are werid, but you can learn to look the other way, and focus on the attack instead.

[BenRichards843]

Originally posted by VipreRX:

Originally posted by BenRichards843:

Why even load a "cold fish"? Ever?

Because in a pinch you can still fire them. To heck with the dud risk, I'm in the middle of a convoy, get the tubes reloaded and fire now!

This is why torpedoes (and most munitions) have an arming distance.