Friedrich

These two parts are pretty obviously supposed to go together, so it's more than a little annoying that they can't.

Diesel II provides a 75% boost to capacity, which is at least on par with induced draft boilers, but there's no bonus provided at all to gas turbines, which strikes me as odd since unless I'm mistaken gas turbines are quite efficient in terms of exhaust.

Here's an example. As you can see the barrels don't actually intercept the middle super-firing turret even at 0 degree elevation, yet the hitbox is oversized thus preventing placement.

Not sure why, but despite the UI going higher I was unable to create skirmisher or cavalry units larger than 450 800 men respectively, and artillery are capped at 20 guns. This is despite far larger unit sizes being shown as the maximum. No idea of the cause. Edit: Looks like it's just a visual bug caused by me having insufficient Army Org. The UI doesn't reflect the true limit of non-infantry units.

There's a bit more to it than that, but in essence yes. Also, for additional components I'd like to see properly scaled components always present. For example, the German Superbattleship's superstructure and funnel aren't to the same scale, causing the models to be out of alignment. In that specific case a larger funnel is probably needed for gameplay reasons as well, since there's only room for the one funnel and even the largest one isn't enough to support the kinds of engines such a high tonnage ship requires. A lot of other components are a similar story, where you can tell that they are supposed to fit together in a certain way, but just don't. Fixing that is a relatively low priority, but among the low priority features/fixes it is one of the higher ones, at least in terms of proportionate effort.

Fundamentally the issue is that adding more guns to a turret doesn't have any bearing on the size of your barrettes, so if your triple turret tech is reliable enough, there's literally no reason not to use triples. Even weight isn't a major factor since you can get more guns in fewer turrets for the same weight.

Yeah, basically this. I get why it was done, but it still raises an eyebrow and would ideally not be how displacement worked.

That is to say that they are a bow and stern with a slabsided hull between them. This is a uniquely american design characteristic which was only in place due to restrictions imposed by the panama canal. If one looks at british or german ships you'll see that, lacking this restriction, they have a very different overhead profile to their hulls. Have the devs commented on this yet?

This sounds less like artillery and more like a scramjet missile with a gunlike launch platform. Interesting, but probably not revolutionary considering that the technologies presumably involved could be applied to current missile designs, thus making this a merely evolutionary change.

If OP is still around could you add my own suggestions regarding turrets/guns to the list? I agree with so much of this and it would be nice to have everything in one place to refer back to.

First, that was their ideal. The fatal shot shouldn't have been able to pull the plunging fire through the deck armor into the magazines at that range, though at a longer range it would've been vulnerable to just that. So b-lining it into their presumed zone of immunity was the only sane thing to do, wasting no speed on major turns. Second, at sufficient ranges slight adjustments are all you need. Third, what do you mean the escort carriers didn't have any guns in the fight? They were suckering them into 40mm range! Goddamn, Taffy 3 was awesome.

Well first, most of the game takes place before then, so developments that only arise in the 40's are endgame content not representative of the 1890 to 1940 (not sure what the actual end date is, but it's 1940 in custom battles ATM) timeframe the game is set in. Second, that doesn't actually help, since you are mostly accounting for your own manuver, which just makes this tactic even more of a no brainer since now there's basically no downside to it. You don't even need to restrict yourself to slight course adjustments, you could be swerving and weaving your way through the oceans and since your own course and speed is far easier to know than your opponents, the fire control computers can account for it. By contrast a hostile doing the same couldn't be hit with anything but strays, since if they change speed and/or course every 30 seconds, and it takes about that long for your shots to arrive, it is literally impossible to hit them without relying on lucky shots going stray, the enemy captain forgetting to continue maneuvering, a saturation attack against every possible location the enemy could be once the shots arrive, or guided ordinance capable of making mid-flight course corrections. And even then there's a limit to how much can be done. Going back to my extreme example, the SR-71 was doing the exact same thing to evade guided hypersonic AA missiles, so I don't think a more advanced fire control is going to do anything to help you hit an evading target. It might make salvo chasing less optimal on the receiving end, (although correcting for rangefinding errors based off where shot are actually landing isn't going to go away... pretty much ever) but for the user it just makes your own manuvering not interfere with firing solutions, or at least not to anywhere near the same degree as it would otherwise. So instead of subtle corrections of only a few degrees you could be dodging torpedoes and still use your main guns at least somewhat effectively.

That's not actually true. I think it was against Bismark where a British ship evaded her fire by making slight course corrections into the splashes of the last salvo. The result was that Bismark would fire her guns, and the shells would land pretty much right on top of where her target would've been had those adjustments not been made. Now obviously this only works at long ranges, does nothing against torpedoes, and makes your own firing solutions require somewhat more frequent range corrections, but it's a real tactic, and an effective one at that, performed during at least one peer engagement. Plus, if you are trying to open or close the range to your target the few disadvantages basically disappear.

I'm not holding out much hope, seeing as none of the other Ultimate games got it, nor appear likely to receive it. Still, it's not like I'm happy about that, and a change in trajectory towards being more mod friendly would be a pleasant surprise.

Yeah, the principle concern has to be with the foundational systems. Making super complicated stuff which tracks stockpiles of ammunition in detail and stuff like that isn't important for the base game, although the functionality to mod it in, and mod support in general, is something I would very much hope to see in the finished game. Not sure about the shell types you mentioned though. There's Armor Piercing, Semi-Armor Piercing, High Explosive, Star/Illumination-Shells... and that's about it. Unless we count special cases like the japanese diving shells, american super heavy shells, british supercharges, or really esoteric stuff like the non-rotating projectiles and super-heavy AA. Of course those last two are for anti air, which isn't even in the game, so it's not really relevant. The ones you mentioned are more tank ammo varieties/variations on the AP and HE shells, which might vary between nations, and occasionally guns/ships, but aren't really distinguished, tactically speaking.