Damage with NO hits? How does this work

[The_redReiter]

Got a hit on a DD from the Nelson.  Yet post game stat shows NO hit for over 10K.  Here is a screen cap.  Thoughts?

 

rR

[jager_geist]

Blast radius?

[ScarySnowman]

A detonation from the splash damage of your HE shell.

[pmgaudio]

[The_first_harbinger]

OUR ONE AND ONLY TRUE LORD

SMILES UPON YOU

 

[mofton]

As others have said, detonated by blast radius.

This is what it looks like from the other side. 0 Bomb hits for 15,500 damage. Full HP detonation from a miss. Blyskawica in a T9 game.

[ExploratorOne]

I believe Nelson has a 39.2m HE blast radius. (6,900 alpha damage, 101mm of penetration, 46% chance of fire.)  A shell landing within that distance of a ship will cause damage.

[Sotaudi]

@mofton,

While technically correct in that the physical ordinance did not contact the target, calling it a miss is not really accurate.  As you stated, the blast radius not only contacted the target, but penetrated enough to damage and detonate the magazine.  I find it hard to characterize that as a "miss."

[Sotaudi]

OP,

If you watch the loading screens before battle, you will occasionally see a notice that a torpedo hit near a magazine can cause a detonation.  This is not because the torpedo slams into the target with so much force that it penetrated the outer hull so far that it got inside the magazine before it blew up causing the detonation (i.e., like an AP shell).  It is because the torpedo detonated against the hull near the magazine and the blast radius penetrated into the hull and damaged and detonated the magazine.

HE shell mechanics work the same way.  They have a blast radius.  That radius can penetrate into the innards of the ship even if the shell does not physically contact the hull.  If that radius affects the magazine, a detonation can occur the same way.

Thus, what you saw there was an HE shell hitting the water next to the ship.  The impact on the water cause the shell to detonate.  The shot did not register as a hit because the shell did not physically contact the ship.  However, the impact was close enough to the hull that the blast radius penetrated into the hull, hitting the magazine, damaging it, and causing a detonation.

[mofton]

2 minutes ago, Sotaudi said:

@mofton,

While technically correct in that the physical ordinance did not contact the target, calling it a miss is not really accurate.  As you stated, the blast radius not only contacted the target, but penetrated enough to damage and detonate the magazine.  I find it hard to characterize that as a "miss."

If you put a space between the @ and then start typing the name you can get the message sent like this: @Sotaudi

 

Well, yes except that the way detonations and damage in this game work is kinda weird.

So, a near-miss with splash 'damage' deals damage which can only hurt modules, unfortunately for destroyers magazines are modules so can detonate meaning a near miss will either deal 100% damage for a detonation, or zero. That means that 99% of the time a near miss will do no damage and 1% of the time - detonation. That's weird.

Whereas a hit will either bounce, damage or detonate.

 

If near misses actually did HP damage I'd feel it was a lot less strange (not that I'm calling for that kind of DD nerf...)

[Ghostdog1355]

I could use a couple of blast radius HP the way I've been shooting lately

[lskid]

When HE hits water it can still do splash damage to the ship.

[Sotaudi]

15 minutes ago, mofton said:

If you put a space between the @ and then start typing the name you can get the message sent like this: @Sotaudi

 

Well, yes except that the way detonations and damage in this game work is kinda weird.

So, a near-miss with splash 'damage' deals damage which can only hurt modules, unfortunately for destroyers magazines are modules so can detonate meaning a near miss will either deal 100% damage for a detonation, or zero. That means that 99% of the time a near miss will do no damage and 1% of the time - detonation. That's weird.

Whereas a hit will either bounce, damage or detonate.

 

If near misses actually did HP damage I'd feel it was a lot less strange (not that I'm calling for that kind of DD nerf...)

First, thanks for the tip.

Second, I think the only reason it seems "strange" is that you are somewhat oversimplifying the circumstances and, as a result, are falling into conformational bias.

For instance, a hit from an HE shell can cause module damage without doing any HP damage because module damage does not tally as HP damage.  This is also true of a bounce with AP.  An AP shell can damage a module then bounce or bounce and damage a module without causing HP damage.  Thus, even hits can do zero damage, not just near misses.

Second, the after battle statistics only show the number of hits and the total damage done.  So let us say you fired only two shots the entire battle.  One was a hit and the other was a near-miss.  If you did, say, 500 damage, the after battle stats would show two shots fired with one hit for 500 damage.  You would have no way to know if that 500 damage was caused entirely by the hit, 250 from the hit and 250 from the near-miss, or zero from the hit and 500 from the near-miss, or some combination thereof.  However, what are people going to assume?  They are going to assume the hit caused the damage and that the miss landed somewhere in the next county, not an inch from the hull.  Likewise, when a detonation occurs, whether from a hit or a near miss, the damage tallied is all the ship's remaining HP regardless of how much damage it would have done on its own without the detonation.

The bottom line is that you cannot honestly say that near-misses only result in no damage or a detonation.  People only notice near-misses because of the occasional detonation (something I have never noticed in over 6000 battles).  And the truth is, there is absolutely no reason to believe that there is the slightest difference in the calculation of an HE hit and an HE near-miss.  It is the blast radius that is causing the damage in both cases, and they use the same calculations.  Since a near miss can occur further from the hull than a shell that actually contacts it, the effects will be reduced the further away from the hull is, but there is likely virtually no difference between a shell impacting the hull and one exploding an inch from it other than the fact that one increments the hit counter and the other does not.

It is not really that strange when you look at all the factors.

 

[mofton]

Just now, Sotaudi said:

The bottom line is that you cannot honestly say that near-misses only result in no damage or a detonation.  People only notice near-misses because of the occasional detonation (something I have never noticed in over 6000 battles). 

Yes, I can because that's how the mechanics work. Module damage is for all intents and purposes not ship damage.

Park a ship up, shoot to near miss it thousands of times and eventually it will blow up. Until it does, it wont take a single digit of HP damage.

 

I posted a concrete example of a zero hit detonation which I'm entirely confident about as it was the only 'hit' recorded period. There was no confirmational bias. As for if you sometimes get detonated by a near miss but never know it was a near miss - entirely possible too, yeah if you're taking a bunch of hits and the 10th is actually a near miss but detonates you, you'd never know. In my screen-cap it's 0 hits, full HP damage.  Similarly a non penetrating hit causing a detonation is a possibility, but there was also a chance that hit could penetrate and do damage - a near miss never will.

It's weird to me that the shrapnel thrown up by a near miss, carving through the hull and into a magazine (presumably damaging the hull en route...) does no damage, unless it then blows up that magazine.

[The_redReiter]

Great info, guys. I had no idea their was some sort of "damage area" in this way.  I think they should count anything that does damage as a "hit."

 

Thanks,

 

rR

[vonKaiser]

Does this also come into play with this "Close Misses" on cap?  IE enemy DD capping, fire a salvo, no hit ribbons, no damage, but you still get the base defense ribbon?  always wondered about those.