RedParadize

@RAMJB About how fast battleship sink. Bismark is the most documented case for sure. In some case battleship sank much quicker. The Pre-dreadnought Borodino sunk pretty quickly. I would say that its extremely contextual, Bismark was fired at a unfavorable angle. (wreckage exploration was very revealing) For Borodino it is was fire getting in armory. Now, I think one can argue that we do not have enough sample to figure out how much it take to sink a Battleship. One good hit might do, 700 might not. There is one thing that make UA:D truly different from reality trough. Generally speaking, warship were out of combat way before they sank. The enemy would usually stop firing at a ship when convinced it was gonna sink (or not a treat anymore). At the moment it does not happen in UA:D because: -Damage in general affect accuracy, but not rate of fire or ability to shoot. -Water damage is either catastrophic or fully containable. Damaged section do not let water get from one compartment to another. -Fire rarely spread and almost never result in catastrophic damage. Therefore it make more sense to shoot at a target until its dead.

The accuracy buff and mechanics change is quite nice. In big ship vs big ship, secondaries are now definitively worth their mass. Before this patch I was playing Pre-Dreadnough era with the all big guns logic, not anymore! Post 1910 secondaries are still quite good, but not as much as before. The main problem is the roll penalty you get form adding them, its huge. Considering a Battleship have few thousand tons of belt armor on each sides its a bit extreme to get massive base accuracy penalty for a few extra tons off center. As for smaller ship, it became really bloody at close range. I think its fair, at 2km it should be pretty deadly. But DDs battle should happen further away, specially in late game. Now we do not have late game DD hulls and bridge, DDs vs DDs have to get very close to each other to even see each other, so that may change in the future. But one thing worry me, a DD can now relatively easily own a CA with just its gun. I do not think its due to small caliber buff. Turret still behave strangely during maneuver, they turn away from target in sharp turns. AI do pretty intensive maneuver, for DDs and CA it often it result in them not firing for a long period. I do not want to include needless detail, so I will cut this short and simply list things that I think need some improvement: 1-Roll penalty is too high. 2-Belt and deck armor weight should be added to Roll penalty 3-Sharp turn make the turret turn away from target. (it should still be able to make them lose target however) 4-Penality when firing against DD is too high. Aiming penalty should be tied more closely to ship size. (to target signature maybe? that too need to get better balanced) 5-AI handling of DDs need to be tweaked so that they stay more far, specially in late era. (Atm all ship turn around their target, regardless of the other foe in the area) Now I am of the opinion that this patch may have overshot a bit, but its hard to judge unless the problem mentioned get addressed. I think once these are fixed accuracy could be nerfed a bit as these change will make small caliber even better.

Sometimes, quite often in fact, a caliber group will get stuck in ladder firing forever. You can easily see it when it happen as the hit chance number stall and never lock. The only work around this bug is to change target. If there is only one target... well...

As I said elsewhere: Secondary battery issues: 1-Small caliber accuracy effectiveness is still too low at close range. 2-Secondary often get stuck in ladder fire bug. 3-Secondary turret turn too slowly to track target. 4-Secondary will not fire until all turret of the same caliber in firing arc are aimed. All weirdly positioned turret will delay salvo. 5-Turret (all of them) sometimes stop turning during maneuver. (Sometimes it even start turning in opposite direction.)

Torpedo started to out range secondary battery as early as 1900. That was one of the main driver for bigger caliber.

I am not sure what you are complaining about, my design a always better than AI ones. Even in the scenarios. can you show us your design? Maybe we can help.

@RAMJBIf only you would have said it like that 4 page ago. It would have saved allot of needless argumentation. As you said UA:D team is really small. To compare it to RTW is unfair, for allot of reasons. I have work on games. There are the core feature that are essential and there are the ones that would be "nice to have". If its not on the released test version (some call it Alpha, others Beta) then it is more likely to be on the "nice to have" side. Now, many "nice to have" do not make it into the game. UA:D could very well contain no more feature than the one present or announced. I surely hope the crew feature (that is planned) will include morale, but they did not mention it. Bottom line is you should not have expectation beyond what is advertised.

@RAMJB Listen. The fact that I did not mention all the point you make, do not mean I do not know them. It doesn't mean I do not agree either. I said some of these point myself. You are giving me intent I do not have. Answering to things I did not say. As for UA:D, you seem to expect all these things to make it into the game. I do not. I critique the game as it is right now, not against something it might or might not be in the future. As it is, small caliber is ineffective.

@RAMJB Are you gonna pick up all the sentence of my post one by one, write a book about them and yet still miss the point I am trying to make?

@RAMJB You did it again.

Coming form someone that quote people out of context and completely miss their point this is a bit rich. If you look at the all comment made about small caliber/secondary here. The overall tone is that many find them too inaccurate to be effective. Each time it had been pointed out some people (you included) have argued against it. I did read your post you know, I know you see small caliber as hail of fire and dissuasion. But who say dissuasion say credible treat. Now lets cut down the details and explanation. Whatever if it is accuracy or else. Do you think that in UA:D Small caliber/secondary is effective enough in UA:D?

@Skeksis I would take a budget and ability to design all ship too. I am sure they will do it at some point.

My favorite design so far:

Hahaha. I was not sure where to look for the F1g. Did not even realize that was the thing you were talking about.

@Steeltrap The Dev did some change on small caliber guns on alpha 3 so it is relevant. However I see your point. It did get out of hand a bit and there is probably other things that need to be discussed here. I have a topic open about secondary if anyone want to jump in.

Can you show us a picture of that?

Is that confirmed? Where did you got that from? I would welcome a armour overhaul. The ability to go for the "all or nothing" armor scheme would be nice. What would be even better we had to care about layout inside the hull. Like engine and ammo box placement. All of it would restrain where you can place stuff on deck and influence how long the main belt is. That way making a Nelson would be something.

@RAMJB You make allot of claim. About history. About what the dev plan. About how campaign will be balanced. About what other people know and not know, even their personal agenda and bias. Are you really that sure?

@Skeksis @captinjoehenry Exactly. Atm, under 2.5km range 3x9" will do better than 30x5" and it will cost/weight more. In one of my test, I had 51 5" guns firing at least 10 salvo at 15% hit chance (0.6km) against a DD. So of the 510 shot fired +-75 hit. Ignoring the low accuracy, 75 5" to sink a DD is a bit much. Large volume of low caliber do not work in UA:D.

@RAMJB I was expecting that as a answer. Ok then, show me a better balanced CA that make use of secondary and that would not be better without it.

I do not have high expectation for Smaller caliber guns, however they must have some use. Currently not only they are not worth their mass and cost. They also have huge negative impact on the main battery because of roll. I feel roll stack way too quickly, but that's another subject. Even when centerline Secondary just do not pull their weight. So I basically never use them.

@RAMJB What do you think is better? This? Or that?

I return the question. Why using secondary battery then? What it should be good at?

I am sorry. But you are doing it again.

Here is the accuracy of guns at 2500m and 5000m Basically the range secondary battery should exel: 2500m 5000m 2"(mk5) 86% 2.9% 3"(mk5) 75% 9.6% 4"(mk5) 59% 10% 5"(mk5) 45% 10% 6"(mk5) 44% 12% 7"(mk5) 55% 16% 8"(mk4) 51% 15% 9"(mk5) 90% 32% 10"(mk5) 79% 29% 11"(mk5) 81% 32% 12"(mk5) 78% 31% 13"(mk5) 77% 32% 14"(mk4) 77% 29% 15"(mk4) 79% 36% 16"(mk3) 70% 31% 17"(mk3) 72% 32% 18"(mk3) 77% 37% As you can see small caliber, and therefore secondary, do not exel significantly in term of accuracy. They only weight and cost less. Now that does not take into consideration fire rate, damage or DPS. Against DDs hit chance and damage is much lower than stats suggest. so there is that...