What cargo should tankers carry? | Forums

[Tater-SW-]

Sounds like a silly question, but in the mission editor, tankers are allowed freight and "fuel" as cargo, while cargomen can carry "oil."

Odd.

Also, in the merchant and convoys layers for the campaigns, NONE of the tankers carry "fuel." None, (unless I missed a few in the long list).

Is that right?

tater

[Tater-SW-]

Sounds like a silly question, but in the mission editor, tankers are allowed freight and "fuel" as cargo, while cargomen can carry "oil."

Odd.

Also, in the merchant and convoys layers for the campaigns, NONE of the tankers carry "fuel." None, (unless I missed a few in the long list).

Is that right?

tater

[snavesuk]

It's a developer shorthand. Not all tankers carried liquid cargo that was flammable or explosive. By calling it cargo I suspect you define it's explosion potential. Tankers in ballast usually have a large amount of water in the tanks.

[ElAurens]

I think most are carrying liquid cork.



I put seven torps into one last night and it cruised on for over seven hours at convoy speeds, matching all maneuvers of it's convoy, with it's decks totally awash. Only the fore castle, superstructures and rear deck were above the surface.

I got so angry that I used my last torp on the closest destroyer, killing it, then surfaced, and killed the other 2 destroyers, the wounded tanker, and the remaining 4 merchantmen in the convoy with my deck gun.

[Tater-SW-]

I'm fine with tankers not always having oil/fuel aboard, that would be expected at least half the time they are sailing (back from japan to the oil fields, for example).

The problem is that in the campaign files there are NO tankers with fuel. Not in any direction, not at all. None.

Honestly, it's like they made a few TF and convoys, and just copy and pasted the files together. All convoys are identical except the class of the DD changes, there are no cargo choices (or hardly any) off the defaults.

Sloppy.

[ElAurens]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Tater-SW-:
Sloppy. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd say rushed is a better descriptor.

[Tater-SW-]

The other possibility is that the fuel explosion effect is overdone, so they didn't select it to avoid single torps from shattering AOs.

I made a test mission with the same tanker, one dry, one wet. Wrt on blew up like it had ammo as the cargo with a single mk14 amidships.

[thenewyorker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Tater-SW-:
The other possibility is that the fuel explosion effect is overdone, so they didn't select it to avoid single torps from shattering AOs.

I made a test mission with the same tanker, one dry, one wet. Wrt on blew up like it had ammo as the cargo with a single mk14 amidships. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well that would have just been realistic. A single torp hitting a tanker would be all that it took. There was an incident late in the war in which a Japanese submarine mistakening thought it had sunk an aircraft carrier because one of the torpedos it had fired toward an Essex class missed, hit an AO instead and caused such a massive explosion the Captain figured it was all the plane fuel and ammo going off. And this was from a single Kaiten suicide torpedo.

[KKestrel]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Tater-SW-:
I'm fine with tankers not always having oil/fuel aboard, that would be expected at least half the time they are sailing (back from japan to the oil fields, for example).

The problem is that in the campaign files there are NO tankers with fuel. Not in any direction, not at all. None.

Honestly, it's like they made a few TF and convoys, and just copy and pasted the files together. All convoys are identical except the class of the DD changes, there are no cargo choices (or hardly any) off the defaults.

Sloppy. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think they should have fuel onboard most of the time. Transporting raw oil to Japan, and transporting refined oil back to the forces in the field.

[GerritJ9]

They would not necessarily transport refined oil from Japan only to the field- Japan captured several refineries in the NEI, most notably around Palembang though they had, by and large, been destroyed or at least heavily damaged by Dutch forces, and required extensive repair before being able to produce refined products again. Typically such repairs would take six months to a year. In the case of Tarakan, though, the oil found there was of such a quality that it could be used as ship's bunker oil without any refining at all. Of course, the oil wells in the NEI had usually also been set on fire before capture so they, too, needed fires to be put out and wellheads to be repaired before the first drops of oil could be shipped. So, after the necessary repairs to the refineries refined products could be shipped from the NEI as well, not only from Japan.