The explosive barrel should not be able to damage ships from underwater

@schelmflosse300 Are you sure we're talking about the same physics here? Like physics that function on earth? Because an underwater explosion definitely would damage the hull of a 15-17th century wooden ship. Hell, they would damage the hull of a modern steel ship. Why do you think Germany filled the Baltic sea with mines during WW2? Even to this day undetonated mines are a hazard to modern boats. 5 seconds of google searching should save you rants about real-world physics.

Hmmmmh okay maybe you are right.
Alltough this "primitive gunpowder" barrels and WW2 technology stuff is not something I would compare which each other. :)

Ahhh, a pity. That means we will see this "Pirat hu Ackbar" players regularly.
Means I can just hope they won't try it and play with more style.

Physics! Physics you say sir! This game lets you swim with a box of 50 cannon balls in your hands haha!

@xxxrookxxx and replaces oxygen with bananas!

@a-trusty-mango https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/02/bushnells-mine-nearly-sinks-ship/ TL;DR, in the revolutionary war, this guy pretty much filled vessels with gunpowder to make early, rudimentary mines. So in real life, someone has tried this with a small degree of success.

The "Jacobi mine" example was the equivalent to 14kg black powder, so not to far off to say the sea of thieves gunpowder barrel could carry at least 14kg, assuming one could create conditions to ignite it. No recorded verified "sinkings" due to these, but apparently they were serious enough to discourage British ships from getting too close. And to disagree with your "big wave" theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWIqhSOrNcM Granted the mythbusters were using much more equivalent kilotons gunpowder, however they were deliberately trying to use a "slower" explosion to deliberately create a wave without destroying the boat. As you can see by the missing boat at the end, they were unsuccessful. Funny enough, this other test from mythbusters shows that because of the properties of water it actually makes water a better conductor of shockwaves generated by an explosion, potentially doing more damage than a surface or air-based explosion of the same kiloton-force http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2n9c04. And yes, what other people mentioned about healing yourself with bananas and carrying a 50-cannonball crate can be taken into consideration here. Of course, you could call discovery and have them re-instate the mythbusters series to try to detonate the assumed kiloton-equivalent of the SoT gunpowder barrel against a wooden hull to see what happens.

I have too much free time in my life.

@SchelmFlosse300 @A-Trusty-Mango

It's a pirate fantasy video game, bud.

We fight skeletons, shoot ourselves out of cannons, use bananas to heal life threatening wounds and prevent suffocation, and transport back to our ships via magical mermaids, but you're going to go on about the logistics of igniting a powder keg under water putting holes in a pirate ship?

Quit arguing realism for a fantasy game. It's the most pointless and fruitless endeavor anyone could pursue.

@a-trusty-mango

Sure, but if you want to debate logistics of how ole timey ships and such actually worked compared to Sea of Thieves, there's an entire section of the forum dedicated to out of game discussion.

Discussions of realism vs. fantasy don't really belong in feedback/suggestions. It just clogs up the already over crowded line of threads.

No to all counts, including ladders, especially the ladders, do boarders really need to be easier to deal with than they already are? Against an even remotely competent crew, trying to board is a suicide mission and unless you hit them with a barrel first you'll end up with 1-4 blunderbuss shots up your nostrils, and that s*** aignht easy to wrangle outta your nose hair... tbh, I kinda like it when people hit me with a barrel and then try to board, tells me these people have at least some sense of strategy and that the fight might actually be worth it, as for the retractable ladders, great for aesthetics and immersion, terrible for gameplay, having said that, if they do add that feature, they should add climbing/grappling hooks, or something you can use to draw your ships together and board that way, else boarding will be 100% impossible, unless you wanna ram, but that's easier to avoid than people on the ladders

@a-trusty-mango

@a-trusty-mango said in The explosive barrel should not be able to damage ships from underwater:

@supriseautopsy @BaconWrappedSAC No. Here is why. In the article you linked, and I am pulling directly from it here is what it says

"In September 1776, he had engaged in a brilliant but failed attempt to use what is called the first submarine to attach a time bomb to a British warship. The attempt failed because the operator of his vessel, called the Turtle, could not bore a hole into the submerged vessel’s hull."

The first attempt was that they tried to bore a hole into the hull of the ship to place the charge inside the ship. Then later on a second attempt, which was successful, they used two mines attached to a line.

"Thinking it was a fishing line, the sailors aboard the schooner hauled it in. When they got to the strange heavy iron mechanism, three men struggled to bring it onto the schooner’s deck. About five minutes after it was hauled aboard, while three sailors were tinkering with the mechanical device in the stern of the schooner, the mine exploded. The explosion destroyed the schooner, instantly killed the three men, and blew a fourth man in the bow of the vessel into the water, wounded. Captain Symons immediately dispatched a boat to rescue the survivor and ordered the line towing the second mine to be cut. The log of the Cerberus stated the explosion set the schooner “on fire and burst the sides of her out so that she sank immediately."

It blew up on board the ship, not outside it. And not just on board the ship, but in the stern as well. It is also worth mentioning as well that the vessel in question was a schooner which would be along the lines of a galleon in Sea of Thieves.

I read the article, he also mentioned testing the idea on smaller bottles before being given the supplies to attempt this. Would have been interesting if the British hadn't seen the mine and brought it on deck.

So now, back onto the powder kegs. A traditional powder keg weighs 100 pounds, now to which you might say well Mango that seems to be a sufficient enough charge to do some damage. And you would be right if they were filled with only black powder, but unfortunately, they weren't. The majority of powder kegs were in fact carrying Brown Powder and not Black Powder. It is a much more slow burning powder
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_powder)

So the kegs would have been filled with this brown powder instead of just solid black powder.

"Slow-burning" here is a very relative term. Brown powder was used primarily as the propellant for cannons, if you want to argue that cannonballs are moving too slow to damage a wooden hull then this debate has hit a wall lol. Watch the "blown out of the water" mythbusters clip, in the episode they mention they used ANFO precisely because it is a more "slow-burning" blast, as I said they were not trying to destroy their test subject, they wanted to replicate the idea of making a ship bounce on the water. They followed their small-scale observations but as you can see, there is little boat left after this "slow-burning" blast.

And now the final point of this long winded reply, I have made a image of the text that I had originally linked that pertains to this.

Guncotton was used to blow holes from one side of the ship to the other and not blackpowder. And here is the link to the information of guncotton if anyone is interested. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose)

So in conclusion, a full barrel of gunpowder being set off outside or under a ship would do nothing but cause the boat to rock as in a heavy sea and maybe have a chance to set it on fire. But not blow holes clean through.

The book is interesting, but I read it and it is just anecdotal q&a session with a naval commander with no evidence provided, or any theoretical math behind his assumptions. In this book, the same commander says that "several feet" of water between an explosive device and the hull of a ship will protect it, even though evidence shows that water is an excellent conductor of shockwaves. Is it possible that under certain conditions a barrel of gunpowder (that somehow was detonated, that's another problem in itself as our revolutionary friend was working on) would do nothing to a ship's hull? Sure, if the conditions were right. Maybe if the charge was very far away from the hull, or if for some reason a weak spot on the charge caused the explosion to direct away laterally or down towards the sea floor. Still, my money says an underwater charge of the same kiloton force of a 100pound powder keg will do plenty of damage to a wooden hull.

Tell me what grade did you get achieve in physics again...what a painful read.

Easy answer: It's a game and it's a fun thing to do, this is not a simulation in any shape or form.

Might as well remove eating bananas to replenish air, fire yourself from a cannon, fire weapons underwater of any kind, in fact, let's remove the 5 fun things about this game since it has so many already (I kid I love you SoT).

I stopped reading your post when you said water diminishes explosions. Water multiplies the strength of and explosion X10. how do you think depth charges work man. Barrels are the same concept. If you took a depth charge and set it off above water with you standing about 50 ft away you would probably be knocked off your feet and maybe get hit by some chunks of debris. Now go underwater with the same charge. You would be bleeding from the ears your eyes would probably be popped and you would have major internal injuries. I for one think the underwater barrels need a buff. three holes for a point blank explosion underwater is not enough IMHO but thats just because I love using this method so much. We pulled up to a skull fort yesterday and two sloops were co-oping it. I dived into the water with one barrel and sank them both. It was epic.