[I really want to support this game but I would like honest opinions.]

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.

[HE Overpenning?!]

On 11/24/2020 at 6:12 PM, Steeltrap said:

I've been raising this for the best part of a year. In fact I've a bunch of screen snips of various scenarios aimed directly at questioning the interaction of the armour, pen and damage systems I was going to lay out in the "Issues" thread, but haven't raised the enthusiasm to take the time required.

You'll see the same thing even with 4" to 6" HE shells hitting transports.

I believe it is due to the crude mechanism regarding how pen/overpen/ricochet is calculated. Have you noticed HE shells NEVER ricochet? Same issue.

1. When a hit is scored, the system seems to check for ricochets first. It appears HE shells are exempt from this.

2. The system seems to have a set if thresholds along the lines of checking to see if the pen exceeds the effective armour thickness. If it exceeds by "too much", however, then it becomes an "over-pen" and does 10% the damage a pen would in the same situation.

3. As far as we know (someone looked into the coding in more detail), the HE has a pen of 1/3rd that of the AP.

Thus the problem becomes a large calibre HE round may be treated as having 7" pen at relatively close range because the AP has 21". If it hits something with 0 effective armour, it falls outside the "Goldilocks zone of penetration" (that's an unfortunate image, LMAO) and thus becomes an over pen. More annoying still, it doesn't matter WHERE it hits. You can hit a ship from astern such that the shell ought to be travelling the full length of the ship and it STILL treats it as an over-pen.

In another thread I pointed out that the famous USN 16" "super heavy" AP shell had a fuse that required only as much force as would be applied by striking 2"/5cm of armour plate at 90 degrees, or as little as 1" at 60 degrees.

The very idea that large calibre AP shells "ricochet" from the 1" bow of a light cruiser in any but stratospherically rare instances yet HE detonate perfectly under the exact same conditions is a load of BS straight out of WoWS. It's also why I immediately force my guns to use HE whenever a ship is doing the whole "angling" thing, again another mechanism disturbingly familiar to any WoWS players. Other people around here disagree with me on this, but, to be bluntl, my many years (35+ on and off) of reading all sorts of sources suggests they're incorrect.

It's another core mechanic I see as needing some attention. It's currently WAY too crude.

If it's because we're dealing with another instance of "placeholder, good enough for now" core mechanism, fine. Provided, of course, the devs indeed see it as such and plan to update it to something more accurate.

Well, that is if they want to continue to mention "realism" anywhere, lol.

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.  

[Gunnery. Big guns, secondaries, speed, evasion and so forth..]

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

[More communication is needed.]

On 6/28/2020 at 6:00 AM, Joryl said:

Personally I would rather have them work on the game then constant chatter.  This game has so much potential it fixes my P.T.O 2 itch.

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

[Armour scheme]

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.  

[Guns reload time]

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).   

[Benefits of 4 turrets, twins super-firing over triples.]

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.  

[AON armor scheme is a death trap]

3 hours ago, Accipiter said:

by the way just as a heads up, in real life too, All or Nothing was merely a design philosophy and a guideline, it does not mean LITERALLY no armor whatsoever outside the citadel and turrets/barbetts. it just means maximum armor possible to vital parts, while reducing to the reasonable bare minumum (but rarely to nothing) other armor. in most places a few mm of armor to act as anti-splinter and anti-HE was kept.

and in addition, there is almost always a decent amount of casemate armor for the upper decks, plus some rather heavy armor on some crucial parts outside the citadel too, like, often, the rudder steering compartiment, and the main battery director towers.

especially the americans which often used very high quality and expensive STS steel (which is armor, by the way) as the Structural steel as well on all of their ships (!) from WW1 onwards. so effectively all of their ships had a minimum of 5-15mm or so of armor absolutely everywhere, which helps a lot already vs HE and splinters.

but all nations still added armor in various places outside of the citadel and had some "skin armor" across the hull too, to an extent.

so if you did a literal all or nothing design in game, with zero armor on most of the ship, it's not a problem in my view that it sucks and has crippling vulnerability all over the hull. it was a known danger irl and was basically never done on any real ships either. Nelson Class was probably the closest BB to literally no armor at all outside the citadel (as far as i know), and that sucked. the lack of armor and light superstructure meant they always caused serious damage to their own hulls from just the muzzle blast of their own guns (sometimes even rupturing electric and hydraulic lines in their bow section when firing many broadsides in a row.) let alone what whould have happened to them if they had ever actually been shot at in combat...

see for yourself:

Iowa class: all or nothing? Yes. but...note the long citadel tail-end extension to cover the whole steering gear machinery, the 38mm of weatherdeck armor all along the ship, 13-16mm of armor on all the lower compartiments in the bow, 25mm casemate armor, 38mm fire control tower armor, ect ect...

 

Littorio class: all or nothing? yes. but... notice the 2 armored deck extensions in the bow in front of the 1st turret, and in the stern above the citadel, 70mm casemate armor, long rear citadel extension to cover the steering gears. 45 mm deck armor on the casemate between turrets 2 and 3, ect ect...

Yamato class: all or nothing? yes. but... notice the 35-50mm weatherdeck armor. mutiple small armored compartiments at the rear for the steering room and damage control centre. 50mm armor on the funnel, ect ect...

 

 

 

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.  

[Do you want Multiplayer? Poll]

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.

[AON armor scheme is a death trap]

Interesting!  Good info.

[Design the H class]

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.

[AON armor scheme is a death trap]

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.  

[Damage model makes stern chases impossible and is outright wrong]

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.