RedParadize

@CptbarneyHahaha,I do not think DD's are not fine at all. Try 1 BB vs 6 DDs or more, from both sides. In Alpha 4 they get annihilated at max gun range, often in few salvo. I do manage to launch torpedo, but in agressive mode only. AI never does that and almost always loose all dds before launching a single torp. Damn, I am derailing the tread again.

@Cptbarney In the case of Destroyer I am convinced that they added a direct "to hit" bonus against them. For that reason I think it should be left out of the of the current discussion about speed vs hit chance.

@Steeltrap This will be much worst when people will manage full fleet and not a single super battleship.

@Cptbarney It would be better for sure, but so would be the torpedo. The sword always beat the shield at the end.

Its more the fact that there is hundreds of man dedicated to damage control aboard a battleship. Just imagine a totally overkill amount of screaming kamikaze firefighter storming a house a minute after fire started.

@Cptbarney Here of some of the picture I took form alpha 3: Me Killing a BC with only guns: Enemy AI torpedoing me at 600m

This is a good reminder that Torpedo defense is not uniform. The context matter more than the number of hits. Can we really say that the Bismark faith would have been the same if the torpedoes had hit around the same area mid ship? All on the rear? all on the front? All on the same side? No we can't. If there would have been twelve Bismark torpedoed to death we would have twelve different story to tell.

@arkhangelsk Destroyer were pretty hard to hit in alpha 3... well except against 18"er. A dd could get in the 2km range up to mid 20s quite easily. One of the main problem is that AI wait too long before launching torp and stick around even after. Now its bit of another story, Destroyer die as they enter range more or less. This obviously is a hidden nerf of some kind.

@ThatZenoGuy @Hangar18 TDS, for the most part, is a damage mitigation mechanism. It does not negate the damage, it only make it less likely to be serious. If everything work as it should, and history show us that it is often not the case, torpedo hit will breach some already flooded compartment (fuel or water) or coal depot for older ship. Structure is damaged and water leak in several compartment, but pump outpace the leak and allow crew seal some compartment out. For big and large ship there is a good chance water wont leak in the burner/boiler room or other water sensitive place. That is more or less the best scenario. Now, it might not be life threatening on the short term. But now the ship is significantly slower, have a strong tendency to turn on one side and is off balance. In combat that can turn out to be deadly. Out of combat and on the long term, ship will need substantial repair in a drydock. That is a single torpedo hit, not two, not three. Each hit have this effect and compound the problem, until it can't be mitigated anymore.

I originally liked your post, but after reflection I changed my mind. Its not that I do not like the basic idea, problem is that ship in this game almost always run parallel. Even when going in opposite direction, ship are circling around a central point both range and bearing remain constant. So most case scenario there would be no penalty if just Δ range and Δ bearing is used. Something else need to be added on top of that. After a quick reflection, what could work is something like: "How much do you have to shot ahead of target to hit it, vs targeting accuracy and shell travel time" In other term, more you have to shoot ahead, bigger is the effect of range and bearing error in the targeting solution. This compound with target size obviously. But ignoring that part for a moment, it mean that it can be reduced to shell travel time vs target speed. Note that bigger shell are slower... What do you think?

I noticed this too. It seem that if the deck torpedo are too far from the border they have chance of failing to launch. Try placing them closer to the border, it worked for me.

@Nick Thomadis I noticed that you seem to read our feedback on a regular basis. I am grateful for that, I tagged you anyway because I want this to stand out of the usual debate we often have here. Anyways here is my feedback of alpha 4: Guns & Accuracy: Leveling base accuracy across the board had interesting effect, In Alpha 3 we were restricted to go for the biggest gun for accuracy, now its more a question of penetration. Going for smaller gun is much less punishing in Alpha 4 and I like it. I however feel that big gun should have a slight advantage in base accuracy, specially at top range. Now I noticed that Smaller caliber are often more accurate despite being at the limit of their range, if I look at the base accuracy they should not. If it is some kind of buff due to them being easier to aim at moving target then I am for it. It give us a reasonable justification to add secondary battery. However it should be visible somewhere in the stats, ideally both in designer and in combat. I also want to stress that the shell per gun error must be fixed asap. A 15" have 100 shell in single mount, a double have 400 and triple 900! Armor & Resilience: In alpha 3 armor almost didn't matter, alpha 4 is a big improvement on that aspect. There is a problem trough, armor is now better than guns. We now have to get pretty close to target to have a reasonable chance of sinking target before running out of ammo. In fact, armor now more or less defeat guns. Torpedo plus extreme armor are now a much better option pound for pound. I would say that balance probably reside somewhere between Alpha 3 and Alpha 4. However, addressing shell count and how torpedo works might do it too. Torpedoes: At the moment torpedo are both strong and weak. They are strong because they bypass armor and cost/mass is very low. They are weak because you need a unreasonable amount of them and with good pumping a ship can stay afloat after being hit by hundreds of torpedo. It should not be possible to deliver massive torpedo wave at point blank range without being punished for it. In alpha 3 you could do that with destroyer, not anymore (more on that later). But you can do it even better with larger heavily armored ship. A possible solution would be to make deck torpedo more damage sensitive and have catastrophic result when destroyed. If exploding torpedo launcher would damage surrounding object and hull, it would make deck torpedo hazardous and large stack of them truly dangerous. Torpedo could also have a wider spread, it would increase hit chance at range and make multiple hit less likely. These two measure would limit the amount of torpedo that hit, thus allow a significant buff to their damage. Ideally a single torpedo should be able to sink a poorly protected ship and significantly impair its fighting capacity of better protected one. Multiple hit should be able to sink anything. Target Signature: It is unclear how hull size and target signature affect hit chance, but it does. I am all for the concept but it seem poorly balanced and definitively under explained. What is for sure is that casemate guns, deck and underwater torpedoes should not have any impact on target signature, if possible, sides and tower mounted secondary too. Speed as armor: This will hurt me, I really like super fast Battlecruiser. But the level of protection speed offer is a bit over the top, specially for large ship. It should be reduced a bit. The case of destroyer: In alpha 3 a destroyer could get unreasonably close to a heavily armed ship. In alpha 4 they became so easy to target that even AI focus and kill them at extreme range. I do not like "artificial" nerf, but I am not dogmatic about it. In this case I think it is a over-correction and unnecessary. With the current level of accuracy I think that making the deck torpedo more damage sensitive should be enough to prevent destroyer from getting too close. AI should take this consideration too and launch torpedo from a greater distance.

@Steeltrap Didn't notice that! Oh, I think it is fair that you can see ship launching torp even if you do not see torp themself. I remember reading that it was something to look at during ww1. I do not remember exactly where I read that but it was clearly written that they failed to see the torpedo being launched and got hit because of that. I do not recall what was the range trough.

@Evil4Zerggin When I did my gimmicky torpedo CA/BC/BB I did encounter a group of super battleship that would not sink regardless of the amount of torpedo that hit them. Just like seen on your image at the end all their underwater compartment were red. They had maximum bulkhead and I suspect they had the best pump and torpedo defense. So they were pumping out water out of the single big hole that used to be their hull. At the end they had more in common with hovercraft than ship! About the gimmicky torpedo CA/BC/BB. It turn out that it doesn't need to be a quick ship. A heavy armored slow BB with strong resistance can do it too. Same for CA, but you most likely gonna need to maintain some distance as going above 20" of hull armor is difficult. A cheap 15kt CA can reliably destroy a 3 BB, exept when they have the very best torpedo protection, this doesn't sound right. Now that I have played allot of match I will post a detailed feedback with some suggestion.

Btw, you can know what weapon a ship have before identifying it. If you click on it the range circle of each weapon will be displayed, revealing the caliber and all.

@Evil4Zerggin Ah, I see what you mean. Move the displacement slider, you will see the HP and engine mass change. Basically what it mean is that if you do not max out your ship to its displacement you do not get a reduction in engine mass. I am fairly ok with that.

One displace 39kt and the other 27kt. For boat friction matter allot. Edit: I am not happy with simplifying this into "friction". So let me explain it a bit further. Displacement type of hull require to move more than their weight each time they advance their own length. Slim and well profiled hull help when it come to that. Also, since volume scale to the cube and surface scale to the square you get a appreciable reduction of friction on the hull when the ship get bigger. For that reason bigger displacement hull ship require proportionally less force to go the same speed. Anyways. Hull form buff seems to work fine. Not so sure about HP trough, but if I was you I would not pay much attention to it. It doesn't mean the same thing as it does for car.

HP must be wrong. Minor bug I would say. If I had to bet, under the hood only mass, hull form and speed must be considered. HP is most likely a calculation on top of that. Much less annoying than the shell count that confuse the am mount per barrel and the amount per gun. Effectively you get 3 times more shell in triple gun than single mount. For that reason I only use the triple mount.

@Evil4Zerggin Hull form seem to work ok. BC of 1940 (all unlocked). Kept speed at 36 and bring tonnage to 40 000t and touched nothing else: 1st Modern BC +110H.F. Engine Mass:4 765t 2nd Modern BC +120H.F. Engine Mass:3 902t 3rd Modern BC +115H.F. Engine Mass:4 333t 4th Modern BC +100H.F. Engine Mass:5 628t BattleCruiser V +125H.F. Engine Mass:3 470t (my favorite hull!)

Overall I like this patch. Leveling the accuracy across caliber brought some interesting choice. There is some hidden buff for smaller caliber I believe. I noticed that 8" was twice as accurate as the 16" at range. Bonus against fast mover maybe? I do not know. On the other hand, Destroyer got nerfed to death. AI always target the easiest to hit right? Well at 20km it target the Destroyer... And kill it in one or two salvo. I like the fact that big ship are more resilient, but its not quite consistent across the board. It lead to some weird design like this: 1920 torpedo BC: This meta work from the point were you get deck torp to end game. Basically, you snipe DDs with guns, they do not need to be big, and use massive volley of torpedo against anything else. Max speed is a must, some decent armor just to be sure. With a ship like this, you can kill a handful of Super Battleship and their escort. Not saying that this should not be allowed. I mean, maybe it would have worked. But I would prefer if that was the job of DDs.

He did not, just 3 wall of text on a single page that doesn't count lol. Joke aside, I can't wait to try it.

Hahaha, I actually trough that patch 4 was out... I think I did that mistake on every yet to come patch note.

@Nick Thomadis (Sorry to tag you, but I want to make sure that this message is seen as directed to you and not a answer to other messages.) At the moment, most of the important decision are made during design phase. Battle can last quite a while and there is very little to do. Basically battle is just a testing ground for your ship. I fear them becoming repetitive during campaign. For that reason I think tactical side need to be worked on prior or side by side to campaign. Here is few thing that I think would make battle more tactically interesting: -Fleet Formation. -Fleet Maneuver. -Better enemy AI. -Crew and crew morale.

Maybe we can give you some advise. Can you show us your design?

@Steeltrap I just reread the post you made here and here. Let me reformulate, I think you made a fairly good description of the process. You made good points. As for why I "mostly" agree, well you deliberately left out the change on the damage model and I trough that was something important given the complain people had. My partial disagreement was a question of emphasis basically. Now, in your first post I trough that the later part were separated points. I did not see that all your argumentation was leading to you questioning their methodology. It only became evident when I read the two one after the other. I do not want to make a big fuzz about it. But if your core argument is that "making changes to ALL the primary processes was a error", then I take issue with that. First of, they certainly test variable independently on their sides, I will assume we agree on that. Secondly, on their sides they know where they are going with this, we do not. Thirdly, they added new damage mechanics too, they are obviously not balanced yet. For these reasons I do not see the change from alpha 2 to alpha 3 hotfix as a deliberate balance choice. Certainly not to the point of being representative of what will be the game at its release. I am more of the opinion that it might have been a error to show us these change too early. It left us a bit confused on their intent.