RedParadize

As of version 0.98, you do see ship further away than 3000m on a clear day. Exept if its 1890s, because tower balance.

Not all ship are equal in term of sighting, a "wet" open bridge isn't equal to a fully protected one. The biggest factor against the "You see me, I see you" argument would be the ship size. But now I am the one that is too picky. These factor could be removed. The game would be just fine if the "You see me, I see you" would always be true. As for the tactical aspect of your argument, such as crossing the T and all. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Its one of the aspect that lack the most in the current iteration of the game. Would you not agree that deserve much more attention than spotting mechanics?

I could concede that, but form a gameplay perspective, not realism. If you look at night battles like Guadalcanal it really show that it doesn't work that way. Or at the very least you can see roughly where they are but you can't fire at them, but isn't that already the case? you see where the shell are coming from.

It isn't stealth, its weather and time of day. Its already in the game, it just isn't displayed. You can argue that view range is too short across the board and cite example that support this, I will gladly concede that it is true. But there is also instance where ships had to get right next to each other. All thing considered, what we got isn't that far from reality. I find the realism argument mildly annoying at this point. Because when it come to what is actually wanted, this is the kind of answer I get: The dev could redo spotting mechanic, make it calculate mast high, structural stability, heat wave from funnels, number of windows and so on... Or they could take a exel sheet and re-balance the spotting value of every tower... Effectively, its the same thing! Except one detail: The first option could take weeks and that the later could be pulled off in a single day. But you know what? Either way it doesn't matter. At the end of the day it would still fell like arbitrary values. Because spotting distance rationals can't be easily explained to the player. We would end up exactly in the same situation as we are in now. I have been around since 2017. Back then noone was really complaining about spotting distance. Why? there was 10 towers, all more or less balanced against each other. But over the course of the last 4 years they added dozens of them across era that were not covered before. It ain't a surprise that it need some readjusting. Considering what is left to do, that part of the game is more than fine.

@DougToss You missed the point. Result is artificial, but spotting mechanics are not to blame. I believe whats needed a balancing pass, not a code rewrite. @ColonelHenry Lets try to analyze how it work. If you have a different interpretation let me know. Leaving aside tower balance, how the mechanics seem to work is that you have a spotting value attached to front and rear towers. Note that these value do not stack, only the best of the two value is is retained. That value is then reduced by factor like weather and time of the day. Finally, the target signature is taken into consideration. I ain't sure how that part is calculated yet. Anything wrong there? Granted, it could be more complex, they could add humidity and all to that, but in itself it isn't bad. I think that adding more factor would just confuse the player. Now, if we do look at tower balance: Early game tower have a spotting metric ranging from +800 for TB up to +5000 for the US BB cage mast. Most of the BB/BC/CA sit around +2500. Late game, value are sitting around +2000 for DD to up to +8000 for the best BB tower. On average, BB/BC/CA are around +7000 On top of that, you need to take a look at target signature balance. Not only there is huge disparity between early and late game, and also between tower. For me the problem resides there.

Ah, I think we are now getting somewhere! I would say that there is no issue with fog of war, the current spotting mechanic is not artificially limited per se. No, the real issue is that towers are really poorly balanced. In fact, the comment that started all this, form @akd, can be also read that way: There should be a better visibility in modern tower because of the numerous minor ergonomic improvement they have over the older ones (more spotter, and generally speaking betterly protected from environment etc...) But all in all it should be fairly minor. Tower are way too decisive atm, too much key metric are stacked into them. Spotting is one of those metric, and it ain't really linked to how tall the tower is atm. Problem is, the tower come in a single big block, and we do not have many of them. Good luck balancing them from tower to tower. It needs to be balanced across nations as well...

I do not follow you here. That mean seeing enemy at night and during storm, regardless of the range. That would also translate into perfect tactical knowledge, which contradict one of your previous comment. What do you mean by "That doesn’t mean visibility is perfect all the time" ? In term of firing mechanic we already have the penality for bad visibility, I am not sure what form it would take.

I am not thinking on the small scale. I am trying to get back to the context. The context was that people complained about the spotting mechanic. My point, since the very beginning, was that day/night and storm are not displayed currently. Fog of war, in that context, isn't just the line of horizon, but how far can something be seen. You still did not anwered my question. You said: Does that mean you want the fog of war to be removed? Here I mean the actual fog of war, as the game mechanic, not the philosophical one.

I feel you are moving the goal post here. The matter at hand was that people said that spotting distance was unrealistic. Literal fog in this case.

It does, but much less than it use to. It ain't perfect, but such is life. The way it currently work is not that bad.

That I agree, tracking the bismark kind of thing. But we were not talking about that. What about the fog of war?

@Danelin Aruna In RTW there is fog of war, at night you do not see anything. In RTW a DD can drop its torpedo before you see them. It is like that because its something real. The Titanic did not see the iceberg. The Empress of Ireland did not see the Storstad. There is a long list of ship that ran into England cliffs because they could not see them in time. In a night or in a storm, you can't see very far. And not all ships are equal regarding this.

@DougToss you want to have no fog of war at all?

@Danelin Aruna I am sorry, but what players have been debating for 3 pages isn't about realism at all.

Fog of war is necessary... and as it is in the current version of the game its not bad at all. The problem is that night and weather isn't displayed. The day it will be players will know why they did not see that DD until it was right on top of them.

As I said elsewhere what I worry the most about is the "BUILD THE BATTLESHIPS THE WAY YOU WANT" part. Given how the tower/superstructure are single block it will require hundreds of new mesh to get the bare minimum level of diversity.

@The_Real_Hawkeye You are on a open bridge ww1 destroyer. Going at 38knots, those fancy binocular are a tad wet. Assuming you are in the northern hemisphere the sun is front left of you. Winds coming from your rear, smoke is passing over the bridge... And its almost night. Yes... 5km isn't that unreasonable. There is limit to the realism argument. None of what I just said can easily be passed to the average player. Oh, btw, do you guys think the spotter on the Titanic had binocular or not? Would it had matter ?

I noticed something really annoying while playing the campaign. Maintenance cost seems to vary allot depending on the hull you chose. As a example, look at these two ship: Exept a difference in speed, almost everything is built the same way. While they cost about the same, maintenance of the second ship is only half of the first one, I aint sure why. Accuracy, speed, almost everything is better on the second ship. I think a balancing pass his hugely needed. Not only for hulls and tower, but perk too.

I do not have much of a problem with torpedo or dd spawning too close. There is instance where night battle happened at "point blank" range in history. But as I said before, while I think it could be better, there is far more pressing issues atm. Question: when was the last time you lost a BB/BC/CA to gun shots? Personally, I did not lose a gun fight in ages. It isn't that torpedo are too strong. Its that AI build fast ship using hulls that can't go fast. Ship generator makes thin, all or nothing armour, and that doesn't work at all. On top of that, it make weak main battery and overkill secondary. Oh, and without any consideration to stability. To fix the stern chasing, square to square damage transmission was added. Its not a bad feature in itself, but now you can defeat a BB using HE only, as damage will spread from the weak extended belt to the interior of the main belt. Besides working on the campaign, I would argue that this is a issue should be on the top of the priority list.

The way I understand it, for the dev combat mechanics are 'good enough' for now. I have no doubt that they wish to improve it, but they would ratter work on other aspect of the game for now. Such as the campaign. As someone that that have worked for a short period in the gaming industry I can understand that. My real field of expertise is movie Fx, as a Layout artist. A rough pass of everything is needed before getting into details, otherwise you will lose focus, time and money. As a layout artist, this is exactly my job. There is many aspect that I really want to see improvement. Historical accuracy and spotting mechanism are somewhere on that list, but not at the top.

talking about daylight, one of the main issue is that night is not displayed as so atm. You have to look at the stats on the left to see the time and weather, both of these factor influence spotting distance.

All other things being equal, more eyes matter allot. I remember being at the bar of a small sailboat on the st-lawrence river. Me and the other guys on the deck were having a chat and we did not notice that the tanker we saw behind, what seemed a moment ago, had almost catched us. At sea, there is long period where nothings happen, its really easy to get distracted. I can easily imagine the same being true on a warship.

Arguably, the only improvement was that there was more people on the taller tower of later ships. More eyeballs helps.

If the AI can know its in inferiority right as the battle start, it should be possible to calculate that before the battle start. If the AI decide to flee and has faster ship, then you get a message saying they slipped away. If player have faster ship, then he get to chose if he chase or not. Note that there is no point fleeing when your foe is faster, it would make sense if bellow a certain range AI in inferiority would decide to fight instead of just helplessly try to run while it cant. This would prevent the scenario where a AI BB that still can win just turn way, preventing its front turret from firing.

As Germany its fine, for England it isn't enough for sure. One thing that bug me a bit is that training quality and quantity are not dissociated. It should be really. If I may suggest, why having a slider with limited value? On the long run you may want to add buildable training facility, but in the main time both player and AI should be able to decide how much is invested in training, transport and research. Slider value could percentage of total budget. Doing so, the deciding factor would be budget alone. While at it, you may want to add slider for repair and building. That way both Player and AI would not go bankrupt after two hard battle.