Cabusha

I was doing a bunch of YouTube videos on this game last spring (March or so?). Then stopped when the construction season kicked off (seasonal, Alaska work). Anyway, didn't end up returning to check on this game until Feb this year... And nothing has happened. Pretty much a year of development later. I'd save my money if I were you.

Unfortunately, I've seen far too many games where "placeholder" mechanics linger into the core product. Considering the lack of development on the armor, engine spaces, and penetration mechanics, I doubt we're going to see anything better in the final product. I'd like to be wrong, but I suspect we're just going to end up with a WOWs "light" offline mode.

Definitely agreed. The RNG hit percentages are pretty annoying and abusable.

Holy carp! Someone else who remembers PTO2!!!! (high-five)

Yeah, currently I end up doing a homogeneous Belt+BE, cause the Belt doesn't dynamically expand to cover all turrets/barbettes. Regarding AON, I'm only selecting it if I want to extra protection for my engine spaces/ammo. So on light cruisers with limited armor, it makes some sense. On the big capital ships though, the tier IV Turtleback feels better and with how cheap armor is, it's pretty easy to get a solid zone of immunity.

If anything, some of the ships are firing too slowly. I just did a skirmish and tried to replicate the Bismarck's 3rounds/minute, and the fastest I can hit with the guns is ~2.5 rounds/min (Tube ammo, lights shells, auto firing turrets).

Funny! I've seen the exact opposite happen! EG, I built a ship with tripple A and Y turrets, superfiring twins in B and X. The Twins acted as the primary armament, while the tripples targeted with the secondaries.

You'll note in your example of the Iowa, the main armored belt extends all the way to protect Turret A. That is the issue here, as currently Turret A is unprotected in a full AoN scheme. 0inches or 6inches in the BE, it doesn't really matter as the protection scheme in game is wrong. Often testing in the extreme is best to explore flaws in a system, such as this early access game. I completely agree no one in their right minds would design a ship with 0 protection in those areas, and as you show, have at least some protection. I've had plenty of fun before looking over and replicating Iowa equivalent ships in say Rule the Waves, within it's limits. Good information, but the lecture is misplaced.

This strikes me as a fairly small dev team with limited resources. I expect multiplayer would probably take away too much from the core focus. For instance, I backed Battletech, but the kickstarter eventually pushed all the way to multiplayer support. For a game running on Unity, this pulled valuable dev time away from the polish work that game still desperately needs, just for a fairly limited PvP. And once the multiplayer was out, it didn't really evolve into something special. The meta builds were quickly learned, and it just devolved into stun-locking firestarter spam, which pretty much killed it. So no, I don't want to see multiplayer, especially not at launch. If it's polished, then perhaps add that a year down the road with an expansion or FreeLC update.

Interesting! Good info.

I've beaten it once through complete luck. I went with max tech and a very minimum tonnage ship (for torpedo beats), closed to short range (5 or 6KM) and successfully ammo detonated both ships with rapid-fire 16" guns. Most of the time though, I only succeed in sinking one of the ships, with the second fleeing as you've seen. Once you're in a stern chase, you're pretty much done.

So I've been doing some testing with the AON armor scheme, going full AON. EG only armoring the Deck, Belt, Turrets, and Secondaries, 0 armor on the DE or BE locations. Full immunity to my own guns 10K and out. 1) You obviously take a ton of chip damage from AON. 8" and under tend to arm in the unpotected areas, and capital guns overpen (as you would expect). What's interesting is I've noted a number of Mid-Deck penetrations at ranges of say 14K. Inspecting the damage model, it seems to be calling the superstructure pens (oustide of the armored conning tower itself) as mid deck penetrations. Since my ship is immune to plunging fire at such ranges to the deck (I checked the oppositions guns) This leads me to believe that it is actually the extended deck providing this protection. Since the superstructure is so large, this is a HUGE weakness. 2) Second is the critical problem. AON doesn't actually protect your ammunition stores. I have been successfully detonated from an ammo explosion, via a penetrating hit, to the stern belt extended. I would construe this as meaning a bow, deck extended, ammo penetration is possible as well. The point of AON is to focus the protection into your critical areas, EG the machine spaces and ammunition store/barbettes. Since it's currently not fully protecting these areas, then any ship designed around AON is a tinder box waiting to happen. See photo below.

Further, plunging fire from range seems to receive the same ricochet chance as the vertical side armor. A ship that is running will regularly have a ricochet chance of 90%. This is true for the side armor, but if you are at sufficient range for plunging, that shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, the game seems to apply that same ricochet chance to the horizontal deck armor, thus making it bounce city in any stern chase scenario.