Mycophobia

I don't think this is needed at any point before the full release, but it should be something the dev can keep in mind in making the game. Making the game mod-friendly imo will be extremely helpful by allowing the player to create more assets and enriching the content of the game. This is not a function we need any time soon, but I think it is probably much easier to make the game keeping it in mind compared to trying to add that functionality in the end.(which might be impossible by that point)

Awesome to finally have custom battle, even if it may have some issues. Definitely didn't expect for this to come so soon. Thank you very much for the hard work! Most gameplay and balancing changes looks great and is heading towards the right direction as well!

Hopefully not too nerco'ing but I just want to add Victory at Sea Pacific's campaign system is worth looking into. It did a very good job combinging the strategic maneuver of ships with tactical combat, and became even better once carriers are involved. Even without, it can help making the tranisition between tactical combat and fleet movement over the waters more smooth. I don't think it will be too easy to incorporate into a very RTW style campaign right now, but is a good possibility to look at. Peace time management however should definitely remain fairly similar in style to the RTW games, with some polishing and quality of life improvements ofcourse.

I Like HOI's emphasis on range of operation and more relevant positioning of ships, task groups and roles compared to RTW. But the overall turn based structure and campaign mechanics should be more focused to RTW imo, at least during peace time. The old Steam and Iron game is great for operational campaign during war time, which I feel is probably better than HoI. That said, its probably quite difficult to effectively integrate. Giving how similar the campaign is rtw during my brief experience with it in 0.60, I'd be pretty happy if its simply "RTW Plus". Main things I hope for is more control over task group formation (I still want RNG to make me fight in non-ideal situations, but at least some agency over fleet composition even if I cant always have every battle with the "ideal" fleet), and some more strategic decision making besides putting a buncha of ship in 1 sea zone and hope for stuff to happen in your favor.

The actual benefit of armor angling is very questionable in reality. A plunging fire hit will care very little about how your ship is angled if it impact the deck and not the belt. A horizontal belt hit benefit from angling, especially at closer range, but then without the silly "autobounce"/"overmatch" mechanic, they are far more likely to hit bow and hit the transverse bulkhead, which will not be angled against such a hit. Not to mention in that case almost any hit you receive are likely going through the transverse bulkhead into your magazine/fore turret barbette... Not to mention head-on turret hit should be far more deadly than they are in WoWs, and close range-bow tanking basically means shots are more likely to go to the turret. There can be some defensive benefit to angle yourself a bit(and something like a 20 degree angling, not bow tanking....) at a shortish range, but certainly not a core-mechanic you plan battles around or do all the time. From a realistic perspective, you'd think if bow tanking was very useful people would do it where possible. Warships are designed to take hits on their belt armor, not their bow.

With regard to quality, as of the current patch, the over-estimation of armour quality are still an issue. As mentioned in the old armor quality post, the game use close to IRL penetration value against krupp armor for its guns, but the starting point for in game armor is wrought-iron. This issue have been somewhat mediated in the current patch due to the small upward shift of gun penetration, but armor still feel somewhat too effective. Regarding the overall gunnery model, I don't think there is any issue with a "simple" model that does not have WoWs/WT like ballistic. RTW operates entirely on abstracted numbers and can deliver a quite realistic simulation. There is no issue with being "gamey" if the number/factors themselves are not "gamey or exploitable". The game accounts sufficient factors that I don't think the min/max, which as pointed above is something all real life naval designer do, is something easily achievable. I'd only be concerned if the accuracy factors are overly simplistic and unrealistic, making it easily exploitable by cheesing certain factors. Currently I think my only issue with accuracy is the comparative inaccuracy of secondary guns, especially at close range, which looks like is going to be addressed for the next patch. Ofcourse, for something that has a visual element like UAD, there should be some effort to smooth out the visual presentation. Currently seeing shell passthrough non-intended targets is quite immersion breaking, and I think the game should at least account for the possibility of shells impacting none intended target. (I.E Italians overshot the British BB during battle of Calabria but damaged escorting British DDs)

Besides independent secondary targeting, I'd also like ability for secondary ammo choice to not be tied to primary gun's ammo choice. Formation AI also need serious rework at the moment, while I don't know if its appropriate to ask it to be fit into this patch given the amount of work that seems to be already on the table, it should be tackled sooner than later. My other pressing concerns, namely incredibly durable ship near death, underpowered secondary, and poor torpedo warfare seems to be worked on in that patch, so I look forward to see how things turn out. Lastly, I personally think it will be best to either release campaign in limited scope, or some kind of custom battle that places everything on a more even tech level rather than the current bouns we get from Academy. It will help us better gauge the balancing change if ships can actually engage each other at comparatively tech levels. For example, having very modern guns in the attacking armed convoy mission may skew our perception about effectiveness of those weapons, likewise being able to put very heavy guns on pre-dread in "power of dreadnoughts" may also give a false impression. This patch note is looking good so far, keep up the good work!

I don't agree that this necessarily needs to be the case. Its not that the game is systemically incapable of simulating certain aspect of reality with any degree of accuracy. Rather, the current game is also deficient in other areas of realism, therefore enforcing realism on only one part of the game will cause imbalance. Before modification of torpedo damage itself, what should be done Is another look at the damage system overall, which may have chain reaction on both the durability of smaller ships and effect of torpedo on ship in of itself. If smaller ships can be more effectively stopped from reaching an easy firing position, I don't see any issue with moving torpedo damage to be closer to reality. Torpedo warfare in game needs to be changed, because DDs doing loop after loop within 2-3km of enemy ship and scoring volley after volley of torpedo hits to slowly wittle down a BB that cant hit them except relying on high caliber "secondaries" or its main battery is neither realistic nor enjoyable. Whether current the torpedo themselves needs any actual change will depend on what other changes are being done. I agree duds is likely a bad idea, but if we end up still seeing extreme ease of landing torpedo hits, torpedo reliability may be a way to balance that (Though in that case it will be much more appropriate to make torpedo hits harder to achieve) Signaling and coordination is another issue entirely, and probably an important choice the game have to make down the line. However, even if player is given ability to issue directional order to each destroyer squadron, I am of the mind the degree of micromanagement plus the fact that we don't actually decide the exact angle of launch of torpedo attack should, to an extent, make it difficult to execute overwhelmingly effective torpedo attack, especially against enemy with effective screening and secondary fire.

I wouldn't mind "spacing the guns" just makes it slightly harder for the turret to be knocked out if its too much work to actually model the two-halves turret.

Torpedo hit and the bulkhead damage seems to at least be location based, with a bit of randomness, which is good in the sense that you can try to aim for the undamaged parts. Bad in the sense that you can end up with repeated hit in the same general location keep re-flooding the same bulkhead.

I can understand the need to avoid PR drama, but general outline to show what the team is currently working alone would be great to know what the team is working to address. This can help shape forum discussion in the right direction and help us understand dev's position. If anything, I'd be happy with the pre-.62 patch update from the dev to tell us what are some changes being worked on for the next patch.

I think he replies with regards to torpedo damage, not torpedo effectiveness overall. As far as damage is concerned, submarine torpedo hits are just as viable source of information. How torpedo hits are best achieved and how that should be balanced is more complex of course. But like you said, some change to the current bulkhead system/dmg to small ships could already make significant change to remedy the problem, we will just wait and see.

Overall I like the idea, I suggest for ease of player understanding, each turret create a visible turret barbette going down into the ship on the bulkhead views, and hit to that corresponding bulkhead risk damging said barbette. This is probably a good way to help player visualize the extent of the area that are at risk and protection. Rather than mandatory citadel size scaling with turret/machinery, we could have options of narrow/normal citadel protection. So the player can decide whether they wants to spend the extra weight to give those out of citadel turret additional protection, or cut back and bit and take the risk with BE. As for funnel, I think the current system is fine since it is unlikely that you get to place funnels in a way that actually puts them closer to either end of the ship than turrets anyways. (Although that maybe a cool way to incorporate all-forward arrangement without special dedicated hull). A little thought to add to AoN. It doesn't need to necessarily eliminate flotation damage nor does it needs to restrict BE/DE. What it should do is reduce the relative weight of non-citadel bulkheads has on flotation and possibly structure. AoN ships should not sink without damage to its citadel space. BE/DE can still be used for a bit of protection against small caliber if you dont want to take on some minor flooding that may slow you down etc.. but lose some of the weight saving you could've recieved. (for example, 8" hit outside of citidel on South Dakota was able to cause some flooding and minor damage, not threatening to the ship, but can be troublesome.) And armored scheme choices like, Sloped Deck v. Flat Deck should have a bit of influence on how the actual armor value of the ships are calculated, weight, and some possible effect on comparmentlization. Whether AON is applied can be separte from this (To my understanding most if not all AON ship had flat deck, but I am not sure if this necessarily had to be the case)

I also feel the dev can potentially open the floor on some of the more contentious subjects like damage model, torpedo's, or carrier. It will help the player understand the position of the team and hopefully either produce more contributive discussion, and ensure that useful points are focused at one place rather than spread across probably 10 threads right now. A dev dairy is also extremely helpful in keeping us informed and connected with the devs and knowing what they are planning. A general roadmap can also be very helpful as well.

I don't think a game cant successfully combine both, and the transition period is extremely interesting and fun as well. Look at RtW2 for example, the system at Victory at Sea also allows for both. That said, rather than abstracted carrier content or somewhat rushed carrier ops, I much rather have a highly flushed out dreadnought era, with some additional content for what-if (or even realistic) developments past the 20s. We are dealing with somewhat alternative historical development in a game like this anyways, its not like we are modelling the pacific war but leaving out the carrier content. The game was never advertised as one that is carrier centric, and I am okay with that. If carrier is going to be included at all, it deserves more attention than a kind of abstracted system.

Personally, I'd like a game to eventually cover naval development from 1890-1950 ish much like RTW2. UAD's additional detail in the pre-dread period is definitely being appreciated, but I feel a longer time span will make for a even better game and campaign experience. However, none of these should come at the expense of the earlier portion of the game. We know for certain that the game will cover 1890 - roughly 1930s, and that it will incorporate some techs in to 1940s. The campaign year seems to indicate the game goes further, but it may just be RTW style campaign extension that gives player chance to play past the end date. I want what is already in the game to be done well and down right first and foremost, and that, without doubt, is going to be focused on dreadnought era naval warfare. We do go into the earlier years of naval aviation, but that is a hugely complex and nuanced area in of itself. I don't want carrier in the game if they aren't going to be done in an appropriate manner. It is of course, up to the team to decide how much they can take on, and while I very much would like carrier at some point, I wouldn't mind that be a post release DLC or even expansion that I'd gladly pay for. For now, the priority for me is to have the dreadnought era, campaign, and its associated content done correctly. I am more than happy to for the time being treat the later tech era as a "what if" scenario in which naval aviation never took off.

Probably a graphical issue more than anything else, but yeah current turret fire perfectly until destroyed. (Although accuracy are lowered as ship receive damage) Most likely once dev introduce crew or similar mechanic we should get a better way to see a ship's performance further degrade as it takes on damage.

Well, to again restate the need to see torpedo's need to change, lets look at current state in game. Because the "giving torpedo historical damage in the current environment will make them game breaking" seems to be main argument against it. Currently: DDs are impossible to stop with secondary fire, and very difficult to stop with other DDs because these low caliber gun either do not do enough damage/ or small vessel's bulkhead are to effective in isolating these damage. Torpedos are very reliable and accurate provided the DDs can get close, because player controlled DD will fearlessly close range to 2-3km, meanwhile AI usually fails to turn away until the actual torpedo are spotted. Torpedo damage are low, it takes far more than the usual historical number of torpedo hits to sink a ship. (For this purpose I believe hit from submarine and aircraft are usuable data as well). This is likely due to the issue with the lack of progressive flooding into additional bulkheads, inability to cause meaningful damage when hitting a damaged bulkhead. Torpedo reloads very quickly, allowing DD to essentially "cycle charge" their opponent. SO currently, DD can easily approach their target, Torpedo hits are easily achieved when DD gets close to their target, their damage are fairly mediocre, and they can come around for another pass. From a game balance perspective, this is not imbalanced but very bland. Further, the most effective counter now seems to be targeting the DDs with your main battery, since one hit can destroy most DDs, and the accuracy is almost always better than your secondary, despite poor rate of fire. There is little tactic and strategy involved beside sending your dds in again and again, with some micro to make sure they do not launch to early, and at least attempt to get infront of the enemy ships for a better launch angle. Torpedo are not a high risk weapon, nor is it particularly rewarding to set up a good torpedo attack. This "Feels" very off from how they performed historically, and this also does not make for interesting gameplay. Why Would Changes Help: To clarify, the issue at stake here is more than "how torpedo can be changed" alone, but rather the entire game environment around torpedo warfare should change to make for a more interesting and realistic use of these weapons. As I've said before, torpedo use are not limited to fleet salvos to disrupt formation(which in of itself can have many use, from covering a retreat like in Jutland, to disruption during a fleet engagement) , they can be used to finish off damaged ships with the support of other battleships. As I don't believe the game will be limited to perfect weathered day time engagements, they can make night time attacks on a retreating enemy like the aftermath of tsushima or the night action at Guadalcanal.(Even if we overlook the unsuccessful torpedo attack on Hiei, which seems to be due to USN torpedo+far too close range, many USN cruisers were indeed sunk by IJN torpedo attacks, with good accuracy). Thus those should be their uses in game, but ultimately it will be up to the player how exactly they should be used, and they shouldn't necessarily be limited to the few instances we've seen in real life. We only had Jutland as a example of a large battleship fleet action, but in a UAD game, the player are likely to see many more, and through the differing circumstances, weather, force composition and technology, I don't see why more historical and potentially more difficult to use torpedo will necessarily be ineffective in all those battles. So here are some of the changes I see that can be of use in making the environment for torpedo warfare more realistic and interesting: Secondary fire accuracy against small vessel, and their damage(or smaller vessel's resistance to damage) tweaked to make secondary fire a viable defense against DDs attempting to close range. 2-3km torp launch should be difficult to achieve outside of night actions, but should be deadly if achieved. - The danger of carrying torpedo reload can likewise be simulating, but to be honest just a improvement in dmg model for small vessel could well be enough to stop the DD from free reign. AI be made more responsive to torpedo attacks rather than sitting in their line until the torpedo show up. Adjusting torpedo damage make taking multiple a risky proposition for any ship, but these weapons are fairly easy to avoid if used merely for a disruption purpose Torpedo reload be made much slower, we can, perhaps for gameplay purpose assume all vessel that carried spare can perform some form of reload in combat (at least when shells aren't directly exploding on deck), even though I highly doubt this is the case for most in reality. However, the time it take must be much slower than what is currently possible. This should make launching torpedo less "brain dead" and require more careful decision making. Bottom line is, I believe in UAD we use "historical" technology to fight "ahistorical" battles. Battles like Jutland, Guadalcanal, Narvik, etc are good indicator of the technical aspect of how torpedo worked in combat, what should be likely result if they are used in a certain way. It does not limit us to fight "template" battles that necessarily ends in a certain way. Perhaps, with some luck and support, a player's destroyer can pull off a Taffy-3 style charge and sink a somewhat poorly escorted battleship.Perhaps, using the night as cover, player DDs can surprise a enemy battle fleet and get off multiple torpedo hits, or the AI could do the same to player. Perhaps, as was the case with many real world battles, the DDs simply couldn't get a good opportunity, and sit back providing support and perhaps launch disruptive value to cover a retreat if things turn out poorly. Again apologies for the long post again, but I do wish to try my best to lay out the changes that IMHO, will take the game in a better direction. We are still early in Alpha, thus we don't have to take other aspect of the game as given, and be overtly concerned with how torpedo change will "break" the game. In fact, for my 4 points above, with the exception of reload, the torpedo themselves may not needs to be changed at all. I am not overtly concerned with the game necessarily simulate every aspect of torpedo warfare "exactly, and by the number", but the overall experience player has with torpedo warfare should be realistic.

To reply to each of your points in turn: Reload Reload being stored somewhere on ship is a very different scenario from "being able to reload in combat", or even like the case with Japanese torpedo reloads being at least designed with mechanism to assist in speedy reload should it become necessary. I have not came across the reliability percentage in Mark 10 though I have searched around for a bit, granted I did not go through any of my books (and I don't have the most impressive collection either), so it will be good to see where that information came from. Edit: So I did take a bit of looking around and noted that the IGN DDs, with the appropriate torpedo storage and system for reloads, can accomplish a full reload in as quickly as 3minutes, but will usually take 20-30min due to the gears “usually not functioning properly". This might be the basis of the game's reload speed. If that is the case, I am okay with giving a slightly faster reload rate for ships at higher tech level, but they should definitely not match this rate early on. http://fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ Reports/USNTMJ-200D-0530-0549 Report 0-01-3.pdf Effectiveness in Battle Torpedos are often used to finish off already damaged ships, in night battles and like you described, used for fleet disruption. It is entirely up to the player how he wish to use his torpedos, and if the torpedo barrage is what they decide to go for, the game return a similar hit rate and disruption effect. But as well see from battle of Narvik, Guadalcanal, and Samar. Destroyer torpedo attack are able to score hit on the enemy to deadly effects, I am not aware of any reload occurring in any of these cases, even if USN DD in question did carry any reloads. A undamaged ship actively trying to avoid a torpedo is not an easy target, but one that is damaged and slowed can make an easy prey. In this game we will have many opportunities to have fleet battles where BBs are present to back up the destroyers, and there is no reason why destroyer cannot be used to opportunistically finish off ships damaged by friendly BB gunfire, IGN torpedo boats had great success in this regard after tsushima, hunting down the Russian fleet in the night. Reliability While USN, RN and Kreigsmarine all suffered from faulty torpedo at the start of the war, the use of magnetic detonator had to do with all of them (granted, it was not the only reason), but with the exception of USN these issues are quickly remedied, if not fully fixed. USN's notorious scandal with its torpedos should be seen as the exception, rather than the norm. Unfortunately I did not find any actual % data in my relatively quick search, except a chart on reported torpedo hit vs launched in WW2 by the royal navy, which due to risk of overreporting I will take with a grain of salt. However, if we examine the torpedo performance of RN destroyer in Narvik, IGN in Guadalcanal, or USN in Samar with the worst issue of the Mk14/15 cleared, we see that torpedo attack by DD, without reloads, are able to inflict a effective number of hit on the opponent and cause real damage. Conclusion I am not cherrying picking realism here, I am asking for the game to deliver an experience that corroborate with real life performance, which can at the same time be balanced and fun. Its not every battle where destroyers will be the star of your fleet, nor is that the case with your cruisers or your battleships. It depends on the situation in the battle, composition of the fleet, weather, and perhaps a bit of luck. That is what makes naval warfare engaging for me and I think the game can capture that without making excessive compromise to reality. My suggestion on torps is basically as follows : Damage can either be improved from current level, or simply modify the bulkhead system to make torpedo hit and progressive flooding more threatening. (I suspect the issue rn is not the actual damage value of the torpedos, but the fact that again, hit on flooded bulkhead does next to nothing) Reliability can be incorporated, but can be slightly better than they are IRL and limited to duds rather than things like pre-mature detonation or failed gyro(though honestly I personally don't mind those either if the team decides to incorporate those). This can be improved through tech, and improved/decreased by either war/extended peace, or national traits. Even if reliability are not incoporated, the inherent difficulty in setting up a good torpedo attack due to screening and secondary fire maybe enough to keep things balanced. If nothing else, somesort of torpedo accuracy penalty from being underfire, and smarter AI maneuvering can both help. Right now AI does not react until your DD are less than 2-3km away, when in reality many commander would've begin to turn away or sent out their escort from a much longer distance. Reload can be added to ships, with the corresponding risk. Even at highest ammo capacity I believe no more than 2 reload per tube should be carried on a DD. These can be reloaded in battle but slowed to a more reasonable speed from the current 3-5min. Perhaps at least 15min or more, being underfire/hit can further slow down this process or halt it all together. However, later on technology may allow a faster reload process, but I think the current 3-5min remain to fast for a ship underfire. Torpedo can be used in their disruptive salvo role to force the enemy to turn away or disrupt their formation, the high individual damage of each torp will actually cause the player to be catious rather than facetanking every torpedo. They can be used to finish off damaged ship with much better accuracy. When under smoke/night cover/with good maneuver, DD that closed sufficiently to enemy BB with poor screening can cause heavy damage with closer ranged torpedo, with corresponding risk from taking secondary fire. (I understand that this is not often done in real life except for night battles, but in game we do have the ability to command our destroyer to take that risk.) If you still believe DDs might be OP, I might suggest that this is due to the enivronment in which the usual counter measure, namely secondary guns and other screening ships, failed to do their job.

I'd say some modding support for player countries, and maybe world map modding will be a good place to start. Especially if naval battle aren't going to correspond to exact locations on the world map. To have both full random world generation, and enough option/constraint to make that world appear reasonable might be a bit too much work for the team's end(then again, I am no programmer), but if its something doable I do like to see it, but not high on my priority list compared to the game being mod-friendly

On the matter of torpedo reload, I am also under the impression that no WW2 DD at least, other than the Japanese ones carried reloads, or at the least is not designed to carry reloads in anything more than an ad-hoc fashion. But if you have source pointing to the contrary do please share. Looking at some schematics of ww1 period design also seem to indicate they don't have internal storage for torpedos (but my search is by no means conclusive), so if they carried any it will be laid on deck. Japanese DDs in ww2 carried torpedo in nearby storage and used cranes to hoist those into the tube, and I believe in some other instances positioned their reload torpedos in rooms infront of their launcher and moved them over. I don't believe they ever carried more than one additional salvo of reloads. In anycase, these reloads are not something you can complete in the 5min time frame in game, nor can they be safely done in combat situations (at least definitely not within 5km of enemy ship and being fired upon). I'd say the game should model the risk of carrying additional torpedo on board with all its implications, and extend reload on the torpedo to at least be comparatively longer to make them at most 2-3 time per battle weapons, that require very careful use. As is, you can really just torpedo away without much worry due to the egregious amount of ammo being provided. If the concern was no dud modeled+ more powerful torpedo is gonna be gamebreaking, a reduction in reload time and reload carried, together with corresponding risk of carrying additional reloads should be more than fair to compensate, without arbitrary reduction of the actual damage inflicted per hits.

Then what needs to be changed is the respective dud rate and reliability of torpedo, not the damage of the torpedo. The fact that number of torpedo required to be fired, vs number of torpedo that successfully exploded on target are two differnthing things. True, early torpedos had significant problem, as is the WW2 US torpedo(German torpedo had similar issue early on as well), but those can be fixed. The reliability of torpedos and the damage of torpedos are two different matters. Besides Royal Oak, Barham went down to 3, Repulse and POW went down to 4(these torpedo that hit the repulse and POW does not seem to have issues with duds, infact Japanese torpedo, where they didn't detonate aboard their ships, seems to be rather reliable in most engagements). Yamato took about 10 torpo hits to sink, the fact that torps were dropped, and missed/failed to detonate is a separate consideration entirely. If we go to WW1 era Battleships, while successful hit were comparatively rare, mine damage on pre-dread, the sinking of the AH dreadnoughts are all indicator these earlier ships are at least as vulnerable, if not more so to contemporary torpedo than WW2 ships against WW2 torpedos.(I am giving some leeway because the AH dreads have design flaws and the pre-dreads are all outdated by then). You are right that the torpedo right now are being more "effective" than they actually are, due to their perfect reliability. But it doesn't change the fact that they do not cause the same kind of damage they do historically. In particular, their effect on the ship structural and the potential threat they have to a ship over a longer period is definitely being underestimated. Whether the team decides to stimulate torpedo duds is their decision, I support the idea of having duds because that is what happened realistically, but can also see it being a source of frustration for players. From a balance perspective, not having duds but limiting ship's torpedo reload ammo/speed can make torpedo into a mostly one-two shot weapon should balance things out. The DD can only magically one shot your ships with OP torps if they can actually can get close, which will be much harder to pull off if said ship can actually defend themselves with competent DD screen and secondary guns. At current state, sure, letting torpedo 3-4 shot a 1915 dreadnought might be too much, but that's because we are in the Alpha environment where many other things have not been properly balanced. Anyways, aplogies that this post had became much longer than expected, but I don't agree with confusing # of torpedo launched to sink a ship with # of torpedo hits needed to sink a ship. In game we observe each hits clearly as it happens, It detract more from realisim if the damage of these hit had to be artificially toned down just to make it so we had to "launch" a more realistic number of torpedos in order to sink a ship.

I've given the scenario another shot, and it went more like what you've experienced, though it took me quite a bit longer (about 40-45 min total) because some TR simply refused to sink... The CAs again fell prey to ammo detonation, while both Bs were sunk after extensive HE fire that sunk them through "extensive fire". Interesting two of the TR were likewise sunk by extensive fire, which never happened in my 4 tries before in unarmed convoy battle, where I only had one BC. I suppose the volume of fire here made the difference. All in all I think at least in this scenario 8" are fairly viable damaging, but I might try to take them to other scenarios and see how things work out. In this particular case, you are using highly advanced 8" against whats basically a pre-dread era fleet. (Which is honestly why I hope we get the campaign soon, to make it much easier to compare things that are contemporary to each other)

The TR is bought to this current state after about three volley, I checked to note that its actually recovering its flotation points slowly before the next volley hits. Next volley, 9 hits total, structure reduced to 17%. Next volley, 9 more hit(seen from hit tracker). Strcture was only reduced by 3% despite 9 hits. Note the ship log saying most of the hits are midship/bow, location that has been previously destroyed. This, I suspect again, its why that the structural damage is so minimal. Flooding progressed a bit further, but I cant be too sure whether the ship would've sunk as my BC was detonated by a shot from the enemy B. I hope this demonstrates the problem with the bulkhead damage model. I think the damage model is a bigger issue causing the ineffectiveness of secondary guns. The CA and CL were sunk after a fairly reasonable number of secondary fire, but that is because their ammunation were set off. I could be lucky here, but I feel ammo explosion happen slightly too often in the current game. Inadequately armored CA and CL can be dealt punishing blows by secondary guns, but it should mainly be a fair amount of flotation and machinery damage rather than lucky magazine hits for the most part. I have no doubt that with a bit of luck and perhaps more cautiously keeping my distance, I might be able to pull off a victory with this build, but I certainly don't get the feeling that secondary is OP since I've had more success in my earlier attempts with 11" armed ships. The problem I see here is that even if the final result (winning the battle) may be the same, the way that it is done feels very unrealistic, and could be very problematic in different scenarios. While 8/9" guns, with autoloading and heavy shells can get fairly lucky with ammo detonation, 5-6" guns that serves as the more common secondary guns will struggle to do so. Soft target like merchants are incredibly resilient even to 8-9", 5-6" light cruisers will usually end up having an extreme hard time sinking them at all. (I've tried this) Granted, In naval warfare, chance plays a huge role, and It could be the case that either you or I are just consistently unlucky, but I've observed this difficulty to finish off dying ships across most missions. The weakness of secondary guns, especially in the 5-6" range, is also something I've noted across the my time with this game. Perhaps I've given 8-9" guns too little credit against more warships, but the fact that they are more effective against warships than cargo vessels is a problem in of itself in my opinion. To see why the current in game damage model is problematic, lets consider a different scenario from sinking transports. Using the sinking of the armored cruiser Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Blucher as an example. These armored cruisers all took a fairly reasonable time and many hits from pursuing battlecruisers to sink, none suffered catastrophic ammo detonation. These ships generally suffered gradual damage that piled up and eventually overwhelmed the ship near the end. In the game we see the exact opposite, high caliber hits can very quickly inflict severe damage on a ship (A little too much even), but then struggle to finish off the dying ship.Secondary fire generally do not contribute to the gradually worsening damage except getting lucky with ammo explosion, or when the ship in question is extremely poorly armored. As a result, while it may take the same amount of total time to sink a ship, the progress a ship receiving damage is completely the opposite from reality. Since structural damage and flooding are tied to ship's performance, its very normal to see ship quickly reduced to burning wrecks but then lingering on for quite awhile.

I am using heavy shell, white powder and mk 4 turret. The mark 4 turret in particular seems to suggest that this is a very advanced gun, and I feel something more appropriate to the period would perform much worse, but given the nature of naval academy I would not worry about that for now. I've tried my best to duplicate the ship you posted above and have an attempt at the Armed Convoy attack mission, incase there is some tech difference between this and the unarmed convoy attack mission. The result was quite different from your experience. The AP shells were able to sink both CA and the CL on the way in, all due to ammo explosions. The CL took over 30 hits to sink, but was close to sinking anyways when the ammo explosion happened. The two CAs were sunk rather quickly, after perhaps 10-15 hits before an ammo explosion destroyed the ship. I've then shifted my fire to one of the pre-dreads, and after perhaps 50 hits was able to bring it to half strcture, minimal flooding, before one shell detonated one of my BC. At this point I've decided I might as well just go test how well my shells will perform against the cargo vessels. (Aplogies but due to forum pic size limit I will have to make a separate post to show the screen shot for that)