I havent gotten attacked yet, how does combat take place? All ive done is fire torpedoes at polish boats and they stand there and die without dodging or firing back, I mean surely sinking a polish destroyer is an international incident
Unless you changed it in the configs you will start as the USSR, which means poland will be your ally. As far as I know it's impossible to make an enemy an ally or an ally an enemy, so attacking polish boats does nothing. Go find an enemy dock and plenty of boats will be around it. West Germany and the UK are the closest, at least most of the time. Combat is really really arcadey at this point. Basically as long as you are orientated in the proper direction when you fire a torpedo the enemy boat will never dodge. Enemy boats will fire back at you, but it's fairly easy to dodge and projectiles they fire at you and right now fast travel is not locked while in combat so you can just fast travel away. Basically you can win any encounter by being at periscope depth and attacking first as long as you have a torpedo.
Also, it appears that you cannot repair torpedo tanks that have exploded unless you refit. Fixing ventilation does not cause explosions. Fixing the casing does not cause explosions. Any attempts to repair the HTP tank DOES cause an immediate explosion... and since repairs go down the list from where you start as soon as the casing is repaired the HTP tanks will be started on. This is one of the few bugs that I have found that really irritate me... and if I had an account on the forums I would post it. I wish alerts were tied to damage. All too often I'll have a "thump" in my engine room and one of my turbines will have the governor damaged. There's some really odd damage mechanics. Of my observations:
1) It's possible to get a diesel engine to end up... freaking out, power wise, as long as you are near a friendly port. Simply crank that puppy up to max and damage the speed governor while constantly refitting. It will end up showing -21474836 for total power, power generated from diesel gennies, and net as well as waste. The side effect is a constantly exploding engine that cannot be fixed unless you exit the game and come back. This is probably because if the speed governor is broken, the engine can go past 100% power. Eventually the engine breaks as soon as you refit, and this damage will damage the governor, causing the engine to speed up more, meaning when you refit it instantly explodes causing more damage, etc. If refits changed object states (IE is this bilge pump on, is this genny on) back to default settings like the nuclear gennies are it would fix that problem.
2) Some of the areas that can be damaged do... nothing. Obviously casing simply soaks up damage, and these areas that can be damaged also soak up damage, but things are a bit odd. For instance:
-The turbine generator's governor can be damaged to 100% without any ill effects (that I've observed) other than the fact that damage will no longer be allocated to it (I assume damage that would have been sent to it will spread out). This contrasts to the fact that if the steam turbines governors are damaged more than 4% (observed value) they will cause the turbine to take spontaneous damage to all systems seemingly at random... at least until the main rotor reaches enough damage that it causes the turbine to explode.
-Nuclear Generator's pressure vessel does nothing if damaged, at least as far as I saw. I assumed it would at least let out radiation if damaged, but nothing, even at 100%.
3) It is impossible to fix torpedo fuel tanks. Any attempts to repair a 100% damaged HTP tank will be met with an explosion.
I know this is a new game and all, and I'm not ranting about any of this... I'm just letting people know what I've found so far.
If someone wants I can do a small writeup with each object and what damage does to each piece of it.