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So I promised I would check this out, and in fact, there is something horribly wrong with the Iowa that up until now has only made the rounds in text, as opposed to something tangible and explainable beyond “The superstructure for the Iowa is bugged.” I had known this to be fact, but I had no idea the Iowa’s superstructure was this bugged. This is a critical bug with no workaround, and provides the Iowa significantly higher survivability than any other ship in the game against smaller ship classes that rely on HE to do consistent damage.
Let’s start off with some terminology describing what I’m testing. Superstructure has its own HP, which after it receives enough damage, no longer receives damage. Each ship has this, but it is only really noticeable on battleships, for example the Myogi and the Iowa are the biggest offenders. You will hit the ship and stop doing damage all of a sudden with HE. The only remedy is to set the ship on fire, or switch to AP rounds. Superstructure that no longer takes damage is saturated.
My test ship for today is the Atlanta, as it gives the finest granularity of HE damage, and I can set my mouse to fire at a constant rate to narrow down exactly when the superstructure is saturated. I do not have Pyromaniac, but do have the reload skill. The stat we are using to measure is # of hits, so that shouldn’t matter as much.
We’ll start off with the control subject, a Montana.
Saturated at 247 hits, 1443 HP remaining.
30% fire damage from a single fire = 67410 remaining HP for superstructure fire.
Damage fully saturated at 1443 HP remaining. 67410 – 1443 = 66,000 HP for Montana Superstructure before it no longer takes damage.
66K/294 damage per shell = 225 hits. Hit differences may be accounted for by AA emplacements absorbing damage.
Fire, as always, bypasses the HP system.
Then we have the Iowa. Unfortunately, I have no friends, so I grabbed a stock bot and used this one.
Saturated at 23 hits.
Damage fully saturated at 62400 HP remaining. 68100 – 62400 = 5,700 HP for Iowa Superstructure before it no longer takes damage.
5.7K/294 damage per shell = 20 hits. Hit differences may be accounted for by AA emplacements absorbing damage.
I keep trying to do HE damage to the Iowa but am unable to find a location that actually generates damage. I have to switch to AP in order to actually kill it. The superstructure HP for the Iowa is only 8% of the Montana.
What does this mean?
