dwg
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I've been poking around the ASW parts of the devices database(s) and there seem to be a few holes, not sure if anyone's made an attempt at a systematic fix, but Babes and Stock seem to have some common issues and some distinct.
Effectiveness
It looks like effectiveness figures are based directly on the warhead weight in lbs, but they don't seem to have been corrected for the fact some are TNT, and some aren't. Torpex, for instance, has a relative effectiveness of 1.5 in comparison to TNT, which means some of the depth charges are being fairly badly undercut in comparison to their contemporaries, e.g. the US Late-War Mk 9 replaces the earlier Mk 6, but it's shown with an effectiveness of 200 versus the 300 of the Mk 6. That's a true reflection of their warhead weights, but (according to navweaps) the Mk 9 had switched to Torpex from the TNT of the earlier weapon, so they should actually have equivalent effectiveness (300x1 and 200x1.5). OTOH Squid is way out in Stock with an effectiveness of 35, which corresponds to the weight of a Hedgehog bomblet, the Squid bombs were actually 207lbs of Minol (anyone have a relative effectiveness figure for Minol?).
Accuracy
Some of the accuracy figures are distinctly iffy. Most DCs seem to have been given an accuracy in the 8 to 10 range, but the Mk 9 in stock has an accuracy of 30, it's quicker-sinking, spin-stabilised bomb should increase accuracy a point or two, but not triple it! In stock, Squid has an accuracy of 164, in Babes it's been cut back to 24 (though the effectiveness is fixed). Squid was reckoned to be around as effective as Hedgehog (168 in both Babes and stock), and Double Squid distinctly better (RN late war single attack kill percentages: DC 6%, Hedgehog 25-30%, Squid 25%, Double Squid 40%).
Range
Aka depth capability in feet. These mostly seem accurate, but some weapons had mid-war updates that increased their ability to target deeper-diving boats and not all of these are represented. One issue that caught my eye is that Babes has the Hedgehog cut down to 400'. It's a contact-fuzed bomblet, unless it's hitting it's crush depth I think it should stay the 1000' of stock (I'm perfectly willing to be argued out of this if someone can point me at a reliable reference).
What actually got me looking at all of this was trying to see if the UK Mk X (and it's 2000lbs of warhead) was in the database. Beyond the stats issues, the Mk X needed special racks for use on the Captains (it was initially designed to be fired from a 21" torpedo tube on DDs), and that got me thinking about racks in general, and the way the game models ASW weapons. There was a lot of scientific analysis on attack patterns, and an evolution of how attacks were conducted. Initial '6 pattern' attacks fired 4 DCTs and 2 racks during an attack, for 6 DCs, but this evolved into the 10 pattern, with 4 DCT shots, and 3 shots each from the pair of rails, there was even the 14 pattern, and the ex-Brazilian Hs, with 8 DCTs and 3 rails, could manage a 17 pattern. Eventually the RN seems to have settled on the 10 pattern as the optimum combination of single attack lethality vs depth charge loadout.
What this means for the game is that the ASW model probably isn't using the rails nearly as much as it should be. Rather than firing as often as the DCTs, they should be firing two or three times as fast. So there's an argument that rather than saying a ship has 2 DC Rails, we should say it has 3 attacks from each of 2 rails, it might look a little odd to see a ship with 6 DCRs in the database, but it should give a result closer to what we're looking for.
(N.B. this is all biased towards RN experience, I'm not sure whether the US attack strategies matched, and I suspect the IJN never really got far enough into proper Operational Research to realise they needed to alter attack patterns)
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