rustysi
Posts: 7472
Joined: 2/21/2012
From: LI, NY
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quote:
Within the abstraction, the wished for nuances are already in place.
Seems to me that some of the posters are rather loose with their use of the term "damage control" within the context of the game.
Within the game context, the term "damage control" has one basic meaning but two different applications. The basic meaning is the band aid "in the field" (aka whilst out on the high seas) actions to keep a ship afloat (and consequent checks to see if a ship sinks). It is easy to forget that in the game, the damage control routines are different from the ship repair routines. Damage control is not ship repairs.
An application of this basic meaning is found in the "systems" damage level found on a ship. The more damaged the "systems" are, the less capability there is to keep the ship afloat. It is far harder to significantly damage a warship's systems than it is to damage a merchantman's systems.
In practical game terms, the major application of "damage control" and what most people really have in mind when they use the term, is fire fighting. Here again there is a distinct difference between warships and merchantmen, for crew experience is a factor fed into the fire fighting (aka damage control) algorithms. The higher the crew experience, the better is the fire fighting capability out on the high seas. The crew experience cap for merchantmen gained from just engaging on a shakedown cruise is considerably less than that for warships. Plus to exceed that cap, participation in combat is necessary and again warships are much more likely to survive combat than merchantmen.
One poster in the thread wondered whether the toggle is a once only or if "damage control" improves throughout the war. It is a once only toggle but understand that Allied reinforcement ships enter the game with improved crew experience later on plus crew experience can increase (and also decrease) during the war. Thus taking into account the general upward trend in Allied crew experience, "damage control" does improve.
As to differentiating between the Allied navies, there is no explicit differentiation, although again one needs to take into account the different Allied crew experience (and by ship type too). The abstraction applies equally to all Allied nations just as logistics (aka rearming) is applied in simple terms to all Allied nations.
In theory the code could be made to distinguish varying "damage control" capabilities between the different Allied nations but the work would be substantial and the benefit of doing it would be at best marginal. Some of the difficulties would be
identifying what, if any, material differences existed in damage control between the different Allied nations. The difficulty of this fact finding exercise is not to be lightly dismissed
how to reflect the "differences" in a TF with mixed nationality without breaking other algorithms eg would the DC capability of the TF nationality be the sole determinant, or is it on a ship by ship basis and if the latter are all ships types equally involved in providing assistance
then there is the problem of when you get to a port, how to be consistent with the additional factors which are fed into the DC (fire fighting) routines. Those additional factors are not really identified as separate Allied nationalities eg naval support squads. Port size could be national based eg in Sydney add Australian DC capability but what if the port has been recaptured and now is no longer the same Allied nationality as it was on 7 Dec 1941 (think of Soerabaja)
The first time an American warship was lost because of the "assistance" provided by lower DC capability of an Allied nation would result in an all mighty THE GAME IS BORKED thread. So the task of researching, coding and testing would be very substantial, and frankly, considering the level of abstraction found in the game, not worth the effort.
Almost all requests made for "improving" the game are fundamentally requests for more micro management and moving the game closer to a simulation. For this commercial product, that is a dead end which in fact degrades the playability of the game and reduces the potential customer base.
Alfred
Thank you Alfred. All I can say when I see threads that get this way, 'is here we go again'. Its a game people. To code things to take in every single instance of every occurrence is near impossible and certainly outside the scope and cost of this great game. Besides as Alfred has stated its handle abstractly within the parameters of the game. OK, rant over.
Now to the original post. Yes you can turn off Allied damage control, but to do so would be unfortunate IMHO. Allied DC was generally better during the war, and US in particular. Yes there was a learning curve for all sides, but in most cases the Allies handled it better. Some have mentioned various things to support this and I agree with what has been covered above.
To add a bit I think it even goes further. Yes the Japanese did attempt to improve after Midway, but even these efforts did not produce much fruit that can be alluded to. Kinda like closing the barn door after the horse is already out, but OK. Also many Japanese warships had rather glaring shortcomings in this area. One, for instance (alluded to above) is 'compartmentalization' of fire mains. Many (if not all) had only port/starboard sections. Lose pressure in one the whole side of the ships' firefighting was out of service. Some Japanese vessels had caste iron firefighting plumbing, very fragile compared to steel, but less costly. That was why they did it that way.
Anyway I like the feature and will always play with it on, Allied player or not.
< Message edited by rustysi -- 3/25/2016 12:21:22 AM >
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Printable Version
RE: Allied Damage Control Option - 
) that due to budget, time constraints , shortage of time and talent, and other factors, these "problems" cannot be easily resolved, explained , and are probably not a feasible use (or practical one) of the very limited resources (most notably people's time) for the result. So logically resources should be used on reasonably fixable issues , rather than "pie-in-the-sky" issues which may only be perceived as real? Is this at all close? Again , please forgive my question if I'm way off, I'm just trying to wrap my elderly brain around the concepts. It's not your explanation ,It's more my comprehension. 
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