Mycophobia

I can assist with Qing Dynasty naming, although to be fair, they don't really have a naming scheme to go for. Still the current naming scheme in for Qing ship is both inconsistent with their naming scheme, and sometime don't even make sense in Chinese (Of which I am a speaker). Still, I understand this is far from the priority right now. But it rather difficult to come up with a "naming scheme" since : (Quoting myself from the RtW forum, where I've edited a expanded Qing ship namelist) The main issue with Chinese ship naming at that time is that ships are really not named based on their type. Ship names are generally picked based on certain particular meaning, and to an extent convey the ship's role. For example, the two ramming cruiser of the BeiYang Navy are named Chao-Yong(Exceeding Courage) and Yang-Wei(Display Might), where as cruiser have names like Zhi-Yuan(Reaching Far) and battleship like Ding-Yuan(Pacifying great expanse)(These are very rough translations since many of these terms are old Chinese figure of speech). Furthermore, ships ordered at similar time tends to be named similarly, regardless of type. This is why there are many xxxx-Yuan ships in the Beiyang Navy. There also seems to be no practice of naming ships after location and people as far as I know in Qing Dynasty. But in anycase, should the team decide to go with a more appropriate naming scheme for the period, I can be of help. (Though someone with more knowledge in old Chinese is probably going to be even better)

Looking at people's reaction with the 2x speed limit two patches ago, it becomes rather clear that things are already rather slow paced as is. 5x was fairly tolerable, and 3x is already feels very slow for me in larger battleship engagements. But slowing fire rate to more realistic level will likely mean that we have to have 10x or even more speed up to get much action happening continuously, at which point I think will cause more problem than the benefit of having realistic RoF.

My two cent on CVs. Since this game, like RTW, is one that tries to explore alternative historical possibility rather than exact historical progression, I don't see the problem if we have a game going into the late 20s without CVs really entering the stage (In the 20s many IRL navy are not all that committed to the ideas of CVs in anycase). Thus CV 's introduction should just be a stage of tech development in the game, which may come earlier, later, or on time. I don't think there is harm in having a RTW-esque "Varied tech" or "Delayed CV" option to reduce the influence these things had to make for interesting scenarios. I like the idea of exploring possible alternative historical development, so options to jumble up tech progress and CV development would both be nice options to have. Personally I want CV included if they can be done appropriately, more than just strategic element with very little player input, which does not make for good gameplay. However for a good chunk of the game (1890-late 1920s), CV's influence on most navy are extremely limited, and if we are limiting our scope to that period, CV can be safely excluded even if they are present in some form. But if the game wants to cover into the 30s and 40s, I very much would like to see CVs becoming part of the game, and even if I'd like an option to delay/turn off their appereance for that one "what-if" campaign, I think they are too crucial to the period to ignore. All that being said, the game's priority right now should still be getting the campaign and combat smoothed out and working. I am more than happy to pay for a CV expansion or DLC later down the line.

In Jutland, after finding the range the RN battlecruisers were able to come close to this RoF. In practice ofcourse most ships fired slower, especially when finding the range. For realism, the Historical RoF would be the average 30~ second reload speed under ideal condition, and further modified by ingame factors such as "not yet ranged in", firing at enemy at long distance, etc... The baseline is the optimal, and modifier brings it to a more reasonably realistic level given the circumstances. However, doing so means that we can probably expect one shot per minute, or one shot per several minute even on a WW1 era ship. In games like RTW, this is 1-2 "turn" or click away. In UAD, we had to wait for the cycle with little to do in the meantime. This does not make for good gameplay. So as long as the relative RoF guns are kept proportionate(for example, predread era main gun shoot much slower, with a 60-90s reload, if not longer), I think its fine to simply use the RoF in ideal condition for the sake of preventing battles from becoming more of a slog than it already is. (Especially as very high speed might lead to crashes/make player miss details like incoming torpedo or particularly damaging hits)

Well, even when considering earlier portion of ww2...battle of Java sea shows how atrocious mid-long range gunnery still are even with better optics. Granted, Japanese cruisers don't have quite the same level of FCS capability as capital ships, but Japanese optic were quite good to my knowledge. http://www.navweaps.com/index_oob/OOB_WWII_Pacific/OOB_WWII_Java-Sea.php

So I have tried the above build of multiple 8" 9" on a BC(I've fitted a bit more guns, but otherwise followed the above build, including using heavy shells and white powder) and tested it against cargo vessels in the undefended convoy mission again. In 146 hits(based on the damage tracker), all of which are being shot at 2 enemy merchant (I'd like to focus on one, but the secondary on the other side will target ships on the otherside). Both ships were reduced to about half structure after 70 shots or so, flooding was low to begin with, but begin to follow up after another volley or two. However, the effectiveness of my shots dropped significantly as the ship approached <10% strcture and flooding. It took a entire volley of at least 7-8 hit to bring the strcture from 10 to 6, another volley (shown in the pic, with over 10 hits and a ammo explosion) brought the ship down to 3%. The floatiation, while at 1%, did not kill the ship until he next volley brought it under. Near the end of scenario, I ran out of time, have scored about 400-450 pens+overpens(also, HE overpen makes no sense unless my shell have faulty fuse. Yet they are by far the majorty of my hits), and sunk 3 Cargo ship, heavily damaging 3 more. I could've probably sunk more if I spread my fire a bit and left the sinking ones to sink on their own, but again, I cannot rely upon any flooding to kill a ship unless I got lucky and have leak going on in sufficient bulkheads. To make sure I initiate the flooding in all bulkheads, I just had to keep shooting and hope my shell cause the flooding in enough bulkheads. Even then, the merchant ships can sometime bring the flooding undercontrol, thus requiring me to put yet more shells, hoping to damage an unflooded bulkhead. This imo, is ridiculous. Cargo ships are not made of paper, 8/9" shells are not quite comparable to those seen on the battleships, but taking at least 50+ shells to sink a merchant ship is ridiculous. This is not the issue of mission balancing alone, I've beaten the armed convoy mission with a pair of big gun BCs for example, and big guns are generally far more reliable since they have a much easier time damaging several components. But this need to hunt for a bulkhead is seriously hurting not only the realism, but gameplay value for me as well.

If that is indeed the case, then the extent of the spread clearly needs to be improved. Because in practice it is very common to see ships that is near death becoming extremely hard to kill. The cargo ship mission again, is the best way to see for yourself, try to do that mission with light cruiser grade weaponry is simply frustrating. (To be fair, sinking cargo vessel with gunfire may take awhile, which is why German convoy raiders all carried torpedo's, but seeing a merchant ship eat volley after volley of point blank 8" is too much.) Likewise I've seen torpedo hits in rapid sucession only cause flooding to a few bulkhead and no more(granted, they speed up flooding in the affected area and overwhelm pumping).

I've tried to use 8" secondaried BC against the Cargo ships in the "Sink Undefended Convoy" mission, and it took maybe 20+ hit to reduce them to roughly 50% flotation and 50% structure. I think secondary perform fine against larger ships in that they cant really do much against them besides occasional lucky BE pen, some structural damage and fires. Im also curious how your 8" BC was able to sink a BB? Was it through extensive fire? I haven't experimented in using large amount of secondary guns against BBs so cant attest to its effectiveness in game, but standard 14-16 5/6" gun in casemate does nothing to pretty much anything I've came across except the occasionally lucky ammo hit on CL or DD. Also to clarify, I do not want to penetrating hits to start 1-shotting ships, in fact, their damage could even be reduced somewhat against mid-sized vessels like Cls and CA, who often gets destroyed in 2-3 shots even without any detonation happening. What I have an issue for is that due to the way bulkhead works, sometime a critically damaged ship became extremely difficult to sink because all the hit on already destroyed bulkheads seems to do nothing. As for torpedo, I've seen later BB and BC taking 10+ torpedo, and go on with maybe 60-70 flotation. Pre-dreads can also easily take 2-3 torp at least, if not more. In reality we see pre-dreads in the russo Japanese war and WWI lost to a single mine（Granted, naval mine are probably more powerful than contemporary torpedo). Ships like Yamato and Musashi was sunk with 10 and 20 torps respectively, Barham sunk with 3, POW and Repulse with 4. Furthermore, torpedo hit that did not immediately sink the ship can still become extremely problematic down the line, if the ship is to receive further damage or have very bad damage control. (Like the loss of Taiho or Shinano) I am okay with most dreadnought era BB and BC surviving a few torps, but currently the ingame torpedo damage does not capture the ongoing risk they impose on the ship. Torpedo flood a few area+cause some structure damage and fire, because the way bulkhead works, there is pretty much no further risk to the ship if the ship does not sink from the torp hit. Bulkhead also meant multiple torp hit in rapid succession may end up just adding water to a already destroyed bulkhead and nothing else. This is what I see need changing.

Sloping tank armor is easier because most of the time the shell are going to come in at a near horizontal arc, this is not the case with ships. Shell at mid range are going to come in with a small arc that actually make straight plate more effective than sloped plates. Sloped armor itself is not necessarily beneficial to have on a ship. Though its worth nothing that many late bb do use armor inclined outward with flatdeck like so: \----/ . This increases the chance of plunging fire hitting the armored deck, while still give some benefit of sloped armor against more horizontal shots. Regarding Bow-tanking. WoWs auto bounce is just a gamey mechanic, and shouldn't translate into this game. Angling can have some benefit in deflecting shots if those comes in close range(and thus have a more horizontal trajectory) AND hit your main belt. The more angled you are, the more likely it will be for those horizontal shots to hit your poorly protected fore portion of the ship, which is protected by belt edge, which should be easily defeated by most capital caliber shells. Against plunging fire, benefit of angling is pretty negligible since most shells will be hitting deck.

To add to this, the current issue with turret farming can be partially addressed if each turret will have its own barbette and magazine(several adjacent turret can share a magazine) below deck. I am not very sure if # of turret currently affect ammo detonation chance from magazine hits, but this would be a great way to implement the system. Fire into magazine area should almost immediately result in either detonation, or flooding of the magazine and thus loss of its ammo, though seeing bulkheads are slightly more abstract, having a constant "ticking danger" of either happening for as long as the fire is burning is a good idea too.(Or even give a manual override for player to flood magazines if they really want to preserve a particular ship)

One RTW feature worth noting is the relative length of scenario allows for much more maneuvering, extended engagement, ability to retreat into the night, retreat into batteries etc... Scouting is extremely important in naval warfare and currently UAD scenarios are almost always set up to be meeting engagements instead. I would like to see more things happening in the movement stage for some scenario types. (Coastal Raids, Convoy Raids, and Fleet Battle comes to mind) When two fleet meet and engage, the current system works just fine, but I think the game could burrow a bit from RTW or Victory at Sea to have a "travelling map" where player can move around, send out scouting forces, lead enemy back to a main force, etc... Enemy ships can be spotted in this travelling map, but only with vague infos, and once fleet enter a set range(probably just a bit out of effective firing range), we go to the current tactical battle map and fight out the scenario as it happens. This allows things like the famous run to north in Jutland, ships withdrawing to wait for night before returning, baiting escorts away from the convoy etc... This "phase" does not need to exist in all form of engagements, but can add flavor to some type of battles.

Responding to the OP, how quickly a ship is sunk by gun fire can be extremely dependent on location. Furthermore, even a doomed ship can take a while to actually go below waves (seen with many ships that had to be scuttled with torpedo's after the crew abandoned ship). In game terms, I think the "sinking by structural damage" can also capture situations where crews simply abandoned ship. Moving on to main gun RoF, I think since the game already model the "ranging" period , I support increasing ROF to more realistic levels, especially since the game is a lot slower than say, RTW. It is important to keep things happening. Accuracy are probably a tad too high in conjunction with firerate increase, but honestly again, real life naval engagement can go on for hours, and without higher speed up option(and honestly, very high speed will take away from the tactical detail of the game anyway), its probably best to speed things up a little so most larger engagement can be done in the 20-40min range kinda like comparable battles in RtW

Just want to also note that most times "good battleship AA" is more a result of a much more comprehensive AA system with radar early warning, fighter CAP, and ship formations. Ship AA is already the last line of defence, and not an particularly effective one by any stretch. It was not until radar firecontrol and proximity fuse did ship borne AA really became somewhat effective at stopping air attacks. This coincide with Japanese use of kamikaze tactics and their loss of experience pilots, and us air superiority. This is a good source for AA performance. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/antiaircraft-action-summary.html ^Also bear in mind while the kill rate seems very high, this is mostly against kamikaze pilot whose method of approach makes them more vulnerable to shipborne AA(and may still crash into ships anyway even if they are downed). While US battleship likely have one of the best AA system in the war, they alone still remain a important, but ultimately last resort in stopping incoming aerial attacks. This is also against a foe who have lost both its experienced pilot, uses rather dated aircrafts, and have lost control of the sky. Lastly, as many above have said, even if the particular battleship can resist air attack with proper system of defense, It cannot strike back against Carriers and it does not contribute anything meaningful to a carrier battle. (US BB are used in AA role because they are available, not because they are idea compared to dedicated DD or CL for that role)

Currently, I feel the combat section of the game still have many very jarring issues with realism. However, while I prefer the game's main aim to be delivering realistic combat simulation with a robust designer and campaign, I understand that for the sake of gameplay some compromise has to be made. But in the end, while it is totally fair to make some simplification and abstractions, the game should still "feel" realistic at the end. Thus I thought it would be good to point out some issue with realism I've encountered playing the game, and propose some solution that I believe will attempt to achieve a degree of balance and realism and gameplay. 1. Damage Model - Bulkheads I want to discuss this first and foremost because I believe it is a significant contributor of many other issues I will note below. Currently, a hit on a destroyed bulkhead does nothing. As a result, a ship becomes harder to damaged the more damaged it gets. This of course, makes very little sense. I understand that the team is considering using the crew mechanism to represent the damage control being overwhelmed, but it still require those damage being at the correct location first and foremost. I suggest that hit to a already destroyed section of the ship automatically radiate that damage to adjacent bulkheads, and if they are also destroyed, further down the ship, with some diminishing return. There should be a limit to this, or alternatively interacts with armor schemes (I.E AON scheme makes it so that damage outside of citadel area will not radiate into a undamaged citadel area), but still makes it much easier to destroy a damaged ship since you don't have to hope RNG to hit that particular undamaged bulkhead you wish. This effect is meant to represent that shell hitting an already structurally weak area can still rupture adjacent bulkhead or weaken structure, causing damage in a larger area. Some on the forums have also proposed that if sufficient bulkheads in midship region is damaged, the ship breaks due to the damage done to the keel/structural integrity of the ship, which I also believe to be a great idea to remedy the need to "hunt down" those few undamaged bulkheads. Ship size should also be crucial in determining the effectiveness of bulkheads in isolating damage, Currently smaller ships, with maximum bulkheads are extremely resilient to small-med caliber guns partly due to the fact that they have way more bulkhead than realistically feasible. HP aside, maximum bulkhead on a 350ton TD should not give the same degree of compartmentalization as a 30000 ton dread. 2. Damage Model - Armor Schemes This is to slightly expand on the idea of bulkheads, but bulkhead arrangement can be impacted by choices of armor schemes such as "turtle back" vs. "AON", which impact the overall weight of non-citadel area bulkheads for the purpose of sinking a ship. BE armor maybe very important for a non-AON ship since it can be sunk without its main belt ever penetrated, while AON ship can mostly disregard BE armor or only keep some minimal plating as historically done. 3. Accuracy Currently, most large caliber guns are too accurate over most ranges, this I don't actually mind. Since UAD operates at real time, having a realistic 3-5% hit rate for main battery in reasonable engagement range will drag battle on forever, so this is an area that we can go with what "feels right". However, currently, the base accuracy for secondary guns are still too low, making them less effective weapon in general even against the smaller craft they are supposed to defend against, while the main battery guns seems very good at obliterating destroyers by themselves. If we look at the reason that secondary guns are being used to defend against smaller crafts, their main benefit is traverse rate and fire rate. As far as accuracy goes, it is fine for their accuracy to fall off sharply at longer ranges especially before secondary directors, but they should improve to much more reasonable level as the enemy closes. Further, I think the traverse rate of the gun can be used as a factor when determining the penalty a gun receives against vessel that are small/fast, while this is an abstraction, it should capture the relative advantage of secondary guns against smaller vessals. 4. Secondary Gun Damage Beyond accuracy and rate of fire, secondary guns currently inflict completely negligible damage against all kinds of targets. While occasional lucky hit allow the higher end of secondary guns to cause some damage, for the most part they do almost nothing. If we look at damages received by US DDs for samar for example, 6" shells are able to inflict significant damage (destroying Johnston's bridge and cause rapid flooding). While location, of course, still have a role to play in the end, secondary guns should be very capable of sinking destroyers and inflict significant damage to cruiser sized foes they can penetrate. Their role as a nuisance weapon against large ships can probably be better represented if fire is made more deadly/crew mechanic is added, but for now they require a serious improvement in their effectiveness against softer targets. While larger shells should be exponentially more powerful, it is important to recognize that smaller shells are still deadly to smaller foes. Even if they do not kill outright, they should be effective in inflicting deliberating damage on most smaller vessel in a few good hits. 5. Torpedo and Torpedo Reloads Torpedo are still feeling too weak even in their current iteration. This could partly due to the bulkhead does too good a job in isolating flooding from spreading, but the initial damage could also use some upward tweak. Torpedo remain deadly weapon even against ships with intensive torpedo defence system. Further, the area flooded by torpedo hit remain a risk as subsequent hit, high speed, or poor quality of build could all cause subsequent flooding that risk the ship. A torpedo hit damage can have lasting effect on the ship, and can take extensive damage control to safely contain. Currently, once the initial flooding is complete, a torpedo hit pose no further risk, coupled with already flooded chamber are not further flooded, we can see ships sometime eat 5-10 torpedo in rapid succession but remains afloat, sometime not even too heavily damage. Furthermore, most ships in game carry a unrealistically amount of torpedo reloads, and reloads way too quickly. While again, I understand that for the pace of the game, reload can be speed up a fair amount, I don't believe torpedo ammunition should be as plentiful as they do now. I don't know any destroyer except Japanese WW II ones that carry any reload, and even the Japanese ones only carry one reload. I feel the relative weakness of the torpedo might be a result of the fact that we have about 4 shot per tube in game. I think torpedo should be adjusted to have a more realistic amount of damage balanced against the realistic limitation on ammunition. They are extremely deadly weapons but also very limited in ammunition, and that is something the game should strive to capture. 6. Armor Scaling Edit: I would also like to again point out the discrepancy between in game penetration and armor values. Since the last patch, fights between pre-dread era ships feels a lot more enjoyable and that's because penetration of guns have been improved so as to be relevant. However, the scaling of later period armor remains extremely high, and not in line with their realistic performance against gun's of their period. I wont reiterate the whole point here, but I think the OP and my post in this thread should be pretty clear in explaining the issue.

Mandatory speed lock definitely has to go, the game is already slower paced than RTW and even RTW got flak for limiting speed in several scenarios. The max speed should always be what is safe without crashing the game, and if doing more than 5x risk stability, then at least allow player to freely go to 5x for now(which don't seem to be problematic in the prior patch). Auto-slow down ship get close maybe decent to have as a toggle option, but it certainly should not be a lock. Being forced to sit there waiting basically a minute before a volley with little to do in the main time is dreadful. Not sure why anyone though making speed non-optional is a good idea.

Having spoken to the OP about this issue, I think I can help clarify the issue the OP is trying to point out. The Issue: Currently, the in-game penetration value of guns seems to be based off real life data (with the range fall-off issue seems to be addressed in the upcoming patch). For example, the in game 12" Mark 2 gun have a 1000m pen value of 15.3", this closely match the British 12"/45 Mark X gun used on Dreadnought, which have point blank penetration of 16" against KC armor. (There are many other similar case, like similarity between in game Mark 1 12" and the British 12"/35， I wont list them all) The problem is that while the most irl penetration data is measured against KC armor, the in game "baseline" for armor is the worst armor variant, aka wrought Iron. Meaning that the in-game Mark 2 gun penetrate 15.3" of wrought iron armor, not 15.3" of KC armor, which receives a 70% effectiveness thickness modifier. To see the implication of this discrepancy. The IRL 1888 French Pre-Dreadnought Brennus have an armored belt of 18“ Nickel Steel. This translate to an effective thickness of 25.2". This is the same as 1000m penetration of in game 16" gun in the modern battleship mission, with most advanced tech. In other word, the most advanced 16" gun in game cannot defeat the armor of an 1888 pre-dreadnought at point blank range. (Using SH shell and powder will allow it just barely do this) Solution: The underlying problem of the issue I described is that the game does not use the same baseline when dealing with armor effectiveness and penetration. The game takes penetration value of IRL guns against KC armor as the baseline for penetration, but takes wrought armor as the baseline for armor effectiveness. The obvious solution then, will be an uniform baseline for penetration and armor in the game. If the game's gun penetration are based off KC, then the 0% modifier to armor should be somewhere between KC 1 - 4, with earlier variants giving negative modifier instead. If that might be confusing to player, then it maybe better instead to increase the gun's penetration value, such that the base penetration of guns are high enough that they can keep up with the armor modifier. Ultimately, I believe what would be most intuitive to players would be having an UI element that allows scaling of gun penetration value based on specific armor type. But first, the game needs to stop using IRL penetration data of guns against KC or similar higher grade armor as the starting point for guns, while using wrought iron as the starting point for armor. I hope that clarifies the main issue I have with the armor system at this moment.