Zak MacKay

I sank 1 enemy battleship assuming the lone division. With the 2 battleship division still existing. After some time battling I sank enough destroyers and the mission just ended. The requirements say sink all their battleships which I clearly did not do.

I would rather they be known for the most part. Missions are meant to be more a test of skill and learning right? If I wanted random missions theirs the custom scenario for that. I feel like missions should be more crafted events where restarting for a new seed is not a big factor. Having a crafted ship may give players hints on what a good ship looks like. Instead of something vomited out. With random ships it may be reset and try again. Which is just a RNG check not skill. Where if you lose against a pre determined ship you just need to learn and improve. I feel like hard missions could then be much harder. Because theirs no randomness to make the mission easier or harder. So it would be a achievement to do it without some seeds being impossible to win. Yes you can prepare exactly for it but the challenge does not have to be randomness it can just be a unfair fight you need to win with superior crafting ability. Maybe their should be a second type of mission which are more random and intended for fun. But I don't think their really needed.

On the ships being samey that is more a issue for dreadnoughts. Fast battleships have a lot more customization. Older models also tend to be a lot more restrictive then newer ones. But many of my ships tend to be similar as ships just seem to trend towards a few designs. Things that don't show in the picture tend are where the main customization is. Theirs probably quite a few major differences between are ships. But on a surface design they are similar with similar towers, weapons, and secondary layouts. Armored cruisers are kind of in a weird place they should be closer to battlecruisers which can get 8" casemate. They have not gotten much love and attention yet so it may just be time before justice is given to them. It is a alpha game. Plunging fire can be kind of important. Its not always the best idea to close in. In the mission the US ships do seem to have high armor but most of my damage comes from deck penetration it seems. So closing in against them may actually reduce damage not increase it. You can also soften them up from a range and once they have some damage close in. If you have a advantage in long range gunnery you can really exploit it. Same with maneuverability you can often use it to get a advantage. I am often liking to put 1 torpedo in to disrupt their formation and give tool to help finish them off. Many of my battles are determined more by plunging and long range gunnery then closing in to finish them off. Some I will just bum rush them though. Slow heavily armored ships I often defeat by maneuvering to reduce their accuracy. Moving in a straight line would increase your accuracy but that may not be in your favor. It may sound cheesy but I will often cross the T when attempting to close in. From both the front and rear of the enemy line. But shooting and moving at a long range is probably the majority of it. 8" secondaries are a interesting conundrum. I know many of my early ships had a very big secondary battery but I am now heavily cutting it down. I think I had a ship with 20 barrels of 8" secondaries per side in a combination of turrets and casemates. When I realized how insane roll was it dramatically changed my designs. Roll is actually kind of insane at times.

FWI alt screenshot to take pictures of windows without your desktop Are you sure its not your ships? You seem to be using protection and maneuverability focus right? Your using 8" casemate, mk1 guns, 7.1% fore weight, and a far ends of the ship. Your ship has many features which almost make it as inaccurate as possible. Just because you have 14" does not make them the best weapons. You are using mk1 instead of mk3 guns. Also are you sure you did not hit and failed to penetrate. Without the better gun option you need to get dangerously close to have a chance to penetrate instead of hitting from far. Ships of the biggest size tend to have weight issues. I am preferring smaller to mid range ships now instead of biggest possible. Casemate guns tend to cause excessive roll especially 8". On the ship details scroll down to see how insane your roll is. Your also investing a lot of money into something which probably makes your ship worse. 5 or 6" are my most used secondary sizes because their cheap, and effective. 8" secondaries are more useful against cruisers and battleships instead of destroyers. Or at later tiers where you need extreme ranges for oxygen torpedoes. Just because the AI is bad at piloting does not make it a unbalanced mission. Destroyers are easy to counter if you know what you are doing. AI are often bad so would have issue dealing with them. Here is a ship I made with firepower focused. When I let the AI have control I hit on the first salvo of the fight for a penetrating hit. In fact I absolutely stomped the enemy ships in every category with no need for a second chance as they where just utterly devastated. No torpedos where shot as the destroyers where torn apart as soon as they where spotted. The Americans scored their first partial penetration when they where half dead. They only did minor damage with 99% structure remaining on one ship. I possibly could have resisted these as my deck was on the lower end. But I have been playing this game for a while and am a min-maxer so I know the ins and outs of ship design. You may just need to better know what aspects of ships are needed and not needed. I cut many things from my ship which allowed me to get 3 of them. It also lets my invest in things that actually matter and not just meaningless fluff. The reason I picked firepower focus was just for more firepower. In the majority of scenarios its just the better option. In some protection is nice but firepower is better here. Theirs also a lot of accuracy benefits added by firepower focus while survivability is more weight. Things like auto loaders and super heavy shells can make a massive difference and. My 14" guns fire like 10" guns giving me more chances to hit. With the higher penetration from shell weight and tiers my 15km belt penetration is comparable to 5km. Getting better armor just lets you get closer. Where with better guns you don't need to get closer. I did not pick the biggest but picked the most economical guns I could find. In this case it was mk3 14" vs mk1 so it was a easy decision. 15 and 16" where mk1 so where just inferior weapons. 2 gun turrets are more cost/weight efficient over 3. I will often only have 4 turrets but was kind of forced to have room for the fifth turret. 15x2 will shoot faster and more accurately over 10x3. Destroyers are fragile the most important thing is hitting them instead of destroying them with a single shot. 6" where historically one of the most used calibers as they packed a good punch while being quick to fire. My ships can fire at 66.88rpm per side each. If I used 8" I would only be able to get 29.22rpm with 8" guns. Another advantage 6" have is their mk4 over mk3. This means their only a bit less accurate over 8" which is compensated for by volume of shot. The cost and weight savings of 6" are about the same as a 2 vs 3 gun 14" turret. 6" are often the best secondary as they just work with a reasonable cost.

Theirs also the 299.4kg of propellant. Together they are 1524.4kg which would be approximately the same.

I put my guns ontop of my ironclad. You expect you to not be able to put guns their but you can and they preform a lot better their. Yes a casemate ironclad with no casemates. 2 ironclads with 3 guns each. Maybe the enemy monitors just had too weak belt extended as they where penetrated and sank their.

I think they kind of due that already. I think I have had issues due to excessive listing not allowing me to properly shoot. If I remember ships do capsize when sinking. But a few will just break apart and sink in place depending on how it sank.

The limitation is kind of weird and seems more like a holdover in custom battles. I feel like CA and CL are getting more of a defined difference right now. Before the displacement limitation was more involved instead of just a few years. But in the most recent update their was a lot more CL's added and the displacement limit seems to be removed for many years. Armored cruisers seem to be in a weird place. They should be treated a lot more like battlecruisers which get 8" casemate guns. Instead their treated more like post treaty cruisers and restricted in size.

They are just not fully fleshed out. Some like france is made from components of other ships. It's in development and until recently many did not exist. UK for example may get a KGV for modern battleship. I think N3 is one of the few interwar hull forms. So their may be more comparable to it eventually. The game is in pre early access stage. It's getting developed. Austria hungarians modernized dreadnought is pretty strong imo. It's a large ship reaching if i remember super heavy battleship sizes. Its resilience is the highest in the game letting it greatly reduce damage taken. I think the difference is more hull form vs resistance for them. Dreadnoughts are thicker and have good resistance. Modern battleships are thin and can go fastm Some of them have bad hull form so not as suitable for fast battleship designs. You can still do it just you need to spend a lot more money and weight on it.

You could create 2 balanced ships and see how they do against each other. Or get a proper challenge like a another 18" armed super battleship. Not a 15" armed ship. You would also have a better idea how powerful your ships are if you compare it against your own. It would also let you have a kind of multiplayer. Where it could be my ship vs your ship.

Triples are also my go to turret. But I am frequently using 4 of them as their is a bit easy to spam. Twins don't cause that much pitch as their lighter and put a more even placement on the hull. I was just looking at twins and their just good. If I was weight/cost restricted I would use 4 twins instead of 3 triples or 4 triples. For larger secondaries I am now using twins as I had a nasty tendency to over invest on triple. Some secondary placements I use triples as space is more restrictive then weight. On the side 5-7" gun spam to reduce weight. Where a few key placements of 3-4" triples on the super structure. 4x2 have greater output in terms of shot then 3x3 while being more accurate.

Talking late game not early game. Single turrets I have found to be effective only really when using lighter ammunition. Casemate guns in particular can be quite a bit lighter but tend to cause roll. Twin guns I find to consistently be the most effective for weight and cost. Triples are space efficient. The 5% accuracy and ROF reduction is just too much reducing their weight efficiency quite a bit. I often use triples as I can only fit a few turrets on most ships. If you compare 4 twin vs 3 triples. Twins weigh less, shoot faster, and are more accurate. The size difference is really not that extreme either its a single barrette. So I am often using 4 twins or 4 triples. Twins are just kind of so much stronger then triples right now. I feel like a mechanic is needed to make triple main guns better. Maybe a overall weight increase as if you give up things like torpedo defense you can have a ton of guns. It would make it harder to make 12 or more gun ships. But compacting the hull and all or nothing around would help remove this weakness.

Maybe I should give the new super cruisers more of a try. One thing I don't like about the Japanese super cruiser is the 3" secondaries on the towers

My most recent ships with 6-7" secondaries have preformed reasonably. While their not as destructive I have found they can force back destroyers which combined with evasive maneuvers stops torpedo attacks. Which is their goal stop torpedo attacks so just because the enemy is not dead does not mean their doing a bad job. I found myself placing way too many secondaries before but have since reduced how many I put down. Lets say you have 2 dual 8" turrets per side you could in my custom battle test have 11 dual 5" or 4 dual 6". Secondaries tend to be on the otter edges of the ship where they can cause extreme roll. The roll and weight makes them best used in the center line. Navies put a ton of emphasis on larger guns. They just kept growing and growing until treaties forced them to stop. I have found myself frequently not using the biggest guns but often a smaller higher tier weapon. But only to a point. If you want to spam 12" 3 I think one of the things with this and secondaries is aiming time. It may be reworked in the future so you need a specific amount to be effective and cannot just use a single triple 8" and expect it to work at 15km. So at a given tonnage you cannot effectively use 18" and have to use 16" instead. Maybe campaign would solve that more with a tech system and in general. Naval academy missions right now are kind of based around building 1 ship. In the campaign it may not be viable to build just one super ship The only solution I can think of this is disabling systems like radar when shot. So they can disable parts of ships but cannot destroy the entire thing. That is just how things where. Theirs a reason dreadnought capital ships where so important back in the day. They where naval power. Technology! During the 20th century technology advanced at a extreamly high rate. On Wikipedia their is a naval artillery ranges to give a estimate. What is close range to a 1940's ship a early dreadnought cannot physically hit. Even though their only a few decades apart. Ships where not just outdated but obsoletted at a rapid pace.

So what is your current favorite hulls or ship types to build? For battleship mine is the Austrian modernized dreadnought. Its a flexible hull. Its engines can get up to 79.4% capacity with maximum speed and minimum size making it reasonably fast. It has the highest resilience in the game letting it get -82% torpedo and gun damage resistances. The towers have a very flexible position letting you place 3 guns forward. But I mostly like it for the massive resilience. I also like the new light cruisers and battle cruisers but don't have any exact favorites. Heavy cruisers I just find kind of boring to design.