Marcomies

While it might not be the most pressing issue here, even with the turret weigh changes the AI still loves putting 3 to 4 barrels on every possible secondary and tertiary turret.

I'd argue that US with its massive industrial capacity was probably the least limited by manufacturing when it came to testing and innovating. It's also not like all the 5"/38 turrets were same standard model either. That Wikipedia article alone lists 13 different production mounts, 7 of which are different enclosed dual-gun turrets for different ship types with weighs ranging from 34 tons to 77 tons and many of them were used concurrently. With aircraft dominating the naval warfare, dual purpose gun's weren't some low priority weapon system either. If the Navy's AA-firepower could have been improved by triple-gun design then surely that would have been pursued. Losing a battleship to torpedo bombers stings a lot more than redesigning a small turret, so surely that wasn't the main reason.

Without getting into the subject of post-war developments and military priorities, I was never arguing against triple-gun turrets being the go-to primary weapon of 1930+ cruiser sized and bigger warships. If you look at the Cleveland-class that you mentioned for example, yes, it has triple-gun main turrets. A significant amount of space on a 20th century warship is usually dedicated to the primary weapon turrets so space isn't that much of an issue there. However, if you look at the secondary weapons on the Cleveland-class, those are are 5" guns in dual-gun turrets and they are packed tightly. Those turrets are basically as large as they can be and still fit on the available deck. All of the ships you mentioned had dual-gun secondaries and Mogami's primary weapons (6" triples) were even upgraded to larger caliber dual-gun turrets (8" doubles) during the war. The Mk 12 5"/38 gun itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5"/38_caliber_gun) was very popular and effective dual-purpose weapon through WW2 and was used in various mounts on warships from Destroyer Escorts to Battleships. It came in various single and dual-gun configurations. The dual-gun turrets generally weighed more than twice as much as a single gun and their dimensions were clearly larger. This weapon was the best US intermediary caliber naval gun of the war but I'm not aware of it ever being deployed or tested in triple-gun configuration. Many US destroyers used these in dual-gun turrets. Even the Atlanta-class cruiser, the idea of which was basically to fit as many 5" guns on a light cruiser as possible, still used dual mounts for all its 8 primary turrets. That decision might simply be due to manufacturing efficiency, but it also seems like the most likely candidate for testing a triple gun version if there ever was any interest or need for such version. If I had to speculate why 5"/38 wasn't used in triple-gun turrets, I would guess that with the required size increase you might as well use 6" guns. The loading process on the best 5"/38 turrets was very fast and effective and squeezing in a third gun without sufficient space increase would probably have slowed down the loading to a point where it would negate the addition of another barrel.

Thanks for the example pictures disc. Those British 4" triples look really impractical. It does seem likely that UAD is currently too optimistic about the efficiency of triple turrets that haven't been up-sized. Reload penalty for smaller calibers could be one way to encourage more historical turret choices but at the same time it risks making the triple option entirely redundant even without the anti-air specific issues being a factor. I wonder how the various French multi gun turrets were arranged internally and how they compared size- and space-wise to similar caliber dual and triple turrets.

I have been following the progress of this game for a while now. It mostly looks amazing but there have been two issues that have kept me from buying it. First issue was the high top speeds that could be achieved without really compromising anything else in a ship design. I'm no longer that worried about this as the achievable and practical top speeds have been toned down in couple updates. They still seem to be higher than what was historically common but maybe the requirements of campaign mode will address that. --- The second, and more significant, issue is the extreme prominence of triple-gun secondary turrets. Looking at historical ships, there are very rarely triple-gun secondaries on anything smaller than a battleship (like Yamato-class or Richelieu-class). In general, turrets with more than two guns tend to be small caliber AA-guns (40mm or less) or fairly large caliber (~155mm). I'm not aware of any cruisers with triple guns on anything other than the main turrets. Even in 1940's when triple-gun main batteries were already a common concept and naval treaties were no longer a factor, majority of up-to-date secondary armaments were still in double-gun turrets. However in UAD the triple-gun secondaries and even tertiaries are everywhere starting from light cruisers. Regardless of caliber, triple gun turrets offer the best firepower, best weigh efficiency and best space efficiency. In UAD it always makes more sense to have have 2 triple-gun turrets over 3 double-gun turrets. If this was realistic, then surely the historical secondary turrets would have been (at least) triple-gun as well. --- With UAD's current turret weighs and sizes, the best design practice seems to be taking the largest caliber turret you can fit with most barrels available and that's it, anything else is sub-optimal. This makes me suspect that UAD doesn't really model all the downsides of triple-gun turrets. I haven't found any definitive explanation for why double-gun secondary turrets were considered preferable option. Spreading out the firepower to increase damage resistance alone doesn't explain why every navy with different doctrines came to similar conclusion. Cost and weight are also unlikely to be the reasons as triple-gun arrangement would surely still be cheaper and lighter than having same amount of guns in more turrets (and all the facilities that come with them). The best explanation I can think of is the space requirements. Surely the turrets were not any larger than they had to be for the best (or sufficient) efficiency. As far as I know, every turret in UAD, whether single-gun or quad-gun, uses the same turret size for the same caliber. You only need to look at some of the in-game triple-gun turrets (especially the smaller ones) to see that they are often packed implausibly tightly, almost breech to breech, in a design based on double-gun turret. Reloading 3 or 4 guns packed way too tightly would probably take far more time than reloading the same amount of guns arranged more practically in double-gun turrets. The space wouldn't be an issue just inside the turret either. Unless the ammunition transfer capacity from magazines to turret was increased in proportion with the additional guns, the total rate of fire would suffer. The space required for larger facilities and barbettes would probably be easier to arrange safely at the center-line than near the sides of the ship. --- In game I think this could be basically modeled by increasing the turret size for each extra gun: One gun turrets could be a size smaller than what they currently are, two gun turrets could be as they are and triple-gun turrets could be a size larger than they are and the quad-gun turrets a size larger as well. This would impact secondary armaments the most as the center-line main turrets usually have more dedicated space to work with. With increasing turret sizes there would actually be a real choice between 4x5", 3x6", 2x7" and 1x8" guns for example. A more restrictive option which wouldn't require changes to the turret models themselves would be limiting triple and quad-gun turrets to main battery guns. This would limit the secondary class guns to dual-gun turrets while still allowing smaller "primaries" to be used as triple/quad secondaries (which would allow replicating designs like Yamato and Richelieu for example). I read that the Update 9 will be increase the relative weight of triple and quad-gun turrets but I suspect that alone will mainly effect the primary turrets since most of the weight usually comes from the largest guns. With the planned change the relatively light secondaries in triple and quad-gun turrets could become even more preferable if the main guns had to be downsized. --- I realize the idea of the game is to allow the players to make their own designs but at least for me the sheer amount of implausible triple-gun turrets on almost every player-made and generated ship is just too much of an immersion breaker. Just to be clear, I'm not asking for the ships to be artificially limited to historical designs, I'm just saying that the current performance of triple-gun secondary turrets surely can't be realistic as otherwise they would have been used far more widely in reality. Other than the triple-gun secondaries the game really looks amazing and every update has been taking it into the right direction. Can't wait to see where this game goes in future.

I don't see any problem with the 4th rates using only high grade notes. In my experience you can usually find gold cheaper than silver since so many players are sailing 5th rates and all crafted upgrades use mid grade notes. Having exceptional 4th rate use 2 mid and 2 high notes would probably keep the material price about same and only save 100 labor hours which is only about 2.2% of the total labor hour need. The suggested change could inflate the silver prices even further.

Frigate being called Frigate is easily the most confusing ship name in the game. Cutter, Brig and 3rd Rate have bit of a same problem but nowhere near as bad.

Having even just two positions for the guns without animation or one-dimensional animation without any more detail would be great in comparison to the guns not moving at all. Closed gunports is something I'd like to see in the open world mode for all ships and also many traders have their gunports open even though they can't have guns in those positions.

Would be great to be able to fire a cannon salute on the world map, just couple visual puffs of smoke and sound. Currently the only way to greet a familiar player in the open world is through chat.

I don't think nation/corporation difference has as massive part in the matter as the OP thinks but it would be nice and healthy for the game to make the borders between nations a little less absolute and to add some more concrete rivalry inside the nations. Letters of Marque could make the players of different nations a bit more fluid. Maybe clans could have some exclusive options (taxation, usage limitations etc) available in ports that it has taken and invested in.

The game is open world MMO where ships and equipment can be lost for good and resources are limited. It's not an arena style game so PVP with only matching ships/BR is out of question. I think many of the players originally asking for completely even fights were hoping the final game to have a structure more similar to WoWS or the sea trials for example. While I enjoy an occasional 1 vs 1 encounter (and I have been ganked more times than I have taken part to ganking), even fight is rarely worth offering from a tactical or strategic point of view. I'm personally not completely against limiting the most tasteless ganking possibilities (e.g. 10 constis vs 1 cutter) to some extent but the implemented BR limit is adding more problems and unfairness than it fixes, with the main causes of the most serious unfair ganking problems (post-battle screen and invisibility) remaining unfixed and unaddressed. I think the main reason "no limits" is getting so many votes is that you bundled the BR difference and battle-timer into the same option, the timer being a tool to compensate for the different time and distance scale of the open world and battle mode rather than a pure anti-gangking measure. Opinion polls that go beyond yes/no/maybe or red/blue/green are rarely of much use.

The main problems with AI traders always having escorts in the current game would be that the traders teleport out of the battle instance if they are not tagged so you can't deal with the escorts first. Also it's very implausible that a single small trader ship would be escorted every time or by anything more than one or two small ships. If the traders have more escorts than that, they should be forming convoys with several traders.

I haven't played enough battles against the AI yet in this patch to give accurate feedback about this but giving AI unfair buffs is never a good way to compensate for its lack of tactics or "skills". It's very hard to have any sort of realistic predictions about the AI's capabilities in combat when it's not limited the same rules as the player. There is nothing more annoying than losing to an equal AI just and only because it has superpowers. The players can adjust the difficulty of their battles by picking enemies larger or smaller than themselves. There's really no need to give the AI unfair advantages for that reason. In the long run, the capabilities of the AI should be improved by improving their individual skills, situational awareness and cooperation/tactics instead. When it comes to the open world AI fleets, the current patch really feels like an overkill. There is next to no NPC fleets to attack for a lone player or even a small group and the massive AI fleets with half of the ships being 1st rates are just really hurting the immersion of the game. First thing I saw when I logged in after the patch was three 25 ship NPC fleets with smallest ships being 3rd rates, patrolling around Port Royal. That is literally more ships than what took part in the real Battle of Trafalgar both sides combined and probably more 1st rates than what was involved in the Napoleonic wars. In my opinion 1st rates should be reserved mainly as fleet flagships and be limited mostly to Large fleet missions and epic events.

Ultimately I would like to see capturing ships being rewarded more to encourage more authentic tactics for the period (maybe more xp or additional drops for capping). However, before any of this is done I'd like to see the boarding gameplay developed into some more interesting form and the AI being better prepared for it.

I'm not completely against anti-ganking mechanics but I think the current limit system will be exploited in various ways. The br limit should only limit the attacker side, not the defender and the post battle/invisibility system should be adjusted for this instead of having system like this adjusted for them. In general, if player is sailing in area where getting ganked is very likely (near an enemy capital for example) he should get ganked. Not taking the bait in front of enemy harbor is something players should just learn, it's common sense. Making PVE characters on PVP server should not be possible, that's what the PVE server is for. PVE characters on PVP server would undermine the whole player driven economy and PVP strategy. Safe zone should be limited to immediate vicinity of nation capitals and their main purpose should be to offer new players a bit safer and beginner friendly environment to do their first missions in and to prevent capitals from being blockaded.