Steeltrap

Yet there's only ONE I could find of a pre-dreadnought BB. Not the other ships, the BBs. ONE. There certainly are at least a handful of pre-dreadnought BBs sunk by torpedoes, however. To me it;'s another mechanic that has been put in the game in its current form on the basis of belief, NOT on the basis of a realistic appraisal of the realities of the day as best as can be determined. Doesn't mean it SHOULDN'T happen, DOES mean it should happen VERY rarely. Perhaps more importantly, it ought to be possible to build so it CAN'T happen at least against torpedoes of similar era tech. As for a BB with any sort of "more modern" TDS? I'm not aware of even ONE. Plenty of BBs were hit by torpedoes in WW2. NOT ONE suffered this fate. Which means between pre-dreadnought BBs and then dreadnoughts through to the last tech BBs built during WW2 there is ONE example where a BB was struck by a torpedo and immediately exploded and sank. If anyone knows of more than one, please do let me know as of course I want to have accurate knowledge. I'm aware of a RN pre-dreadnought (class started in 1898 I think) that was sunk in WW1 by TWO torpedoes fired quite some time apart (from memory more than an hour separated them). The loss of life largely occurred because of the very poor conditions that severely hampered the rescue efforts of attending ships when it finally sank around 3am in the English Channel, not because the ship sank quickly. Faced with that, you have to ask on what basis the current system, and particularly the chances of detonations or the misnamed "flash fire" within it, were built. Certainly doesn't seem to be on any real verifiable evidence. Again, I don't have a problem with the mechanisms being there as they DID happen. What I have a problem with is inflated and largely arbitrary chances of either occurring. If it happens to a BB with more or less the best possible tech against torpedoes etc then that's frankly BS, just as it is for "flash fires" that clearly are uncontrolled fires reaching magazine spaces. To the best of my knowledge, that NEVER happened to any BB except where there was no opportunity to do follow usual damage control measures up to and including flooding magazines. THAT happened famously to HMS Barham and IJN Yamato where one was caught on live film while pictures were taken of the aftermath of the other. All points I raised when giving feedback of this mechanism in testing, just as I had for the equally obviously flawed "flash fires". It gets a bit frustrating after a while.

No, I realised that, and tried to phrase my feedback in keeping with what I imagined your intention to be.

Try a scenario where you shoot transports. Even 6" HE over-pen left, right and centre, regardless of the angle from which they strike. I don't know how a 6" HE shell is imagined to penetrate the flat side of a transport (what would be its belt) and not get fused by SOMETHING. I'm not convinced the normal hull plate of even a merchant ship of the period wouldn't be enough to fuse a 6" HE shell, let alone one that's clearly going to bump into all sorts of things in the ship (which I see frequently). I see this even when it's entered from directly astern and MUST be going to pass along the entire length of the ship's interior. What happens to it, does it just vanish?

French Suffren was torpedoed and sank in minutes from an apparent magazine explosion according the the German u-boat responsible who surfaced but found no survivors. It's the ONLY clear example I was able to find of the sort of thing the game models. I pointed all this out when giving feedback on the mechanism when it was being implemented, and did the same with flash fires, too (including the ridiculous sight of transports popping 4" shield mount guns all over the place, supposedly for "flash fire" reasons).

We haven't even mentioned something rather important: By the end of WW1 and the introduction of the 'green boy' AP shells, Royal Navy BBs carried almost (or sometimes literally) ZERO common/HE shells. Kind of makes you scratch you head when you measure these game mechanics against the fact that the world's most powerful capital ship fleet DIDN'T CARRY HE for its main guns (most of which were 13.5" and some 15"), The main reason a shell would "over-pen" is it would not encounter enough resistance force to trigger its fuse in time for the shell to explode within the target. That's it. If it DOES encounter enough force, even if it's somewhere later in the ship, the fuse will be triggered. It then becomes a matter of the velocity of the shell multiplied by the time delay of the fuse to tell us how much further it will travel before exploding. That could well be OUTSIDE the ship, a "through and through" so to speak, as happened at Samar as you mentioned. OK, I've left off the potential issues of de-capping and tumbling etc, but we don't need to go too crazy, lol. Besides which, an HE shell ISN'T capped. So it COULD be possible for a heavy HE shell to over-pen, but it would largely come down to the fuse timing. Suggesting a 6" shell can penetrate a transport's side from ANY angle and not explode, however, strikes me as utter bollocks. Either it would explode on the surface plate (most standard ships were constructed with well under 1"/2.5cn plating so that won't help), or it would travel a certain distance inside before doing so.

I've been raising this for the best part of a year. In fact I've a bunch of screen snips of various scenarios aimed directly at questioning the interaction of the armour, pen and damage systems I was going to lay out in the "Issues" thread, but haven't raised the enthusiasm to take the time required. You'll see the same thing even with 4" to 6" HE shells hitting transports. I believe it is due to the crude mechanism regarding how pen/overpen/ricochet is calculated. Have you noticed HE shells NEVER ricochet? Same issue. 1. When a hit is scored, the system seems to check for ricochets first. It appears HE shells are exempt from this. 2. The system seems to have a set if thresholds along the lines of checking to see if the pen exceeds the effective armour thickness. If it exceeds by "too much", however, then it becomes an "over-pen" and does 10% the damage a pen would in the same situation. 3. As far as we know (someone looked into the coding in more detail), the HE has a pen of 1/3rd that of the AP. Thus the problem becomes a large calibre HE round may be treated as having 7" pen at relatively close range because the AP has 21". If it hits something with 0 effective armour, it falls outside the "Goldilocks zone of penetration" (that's an unfortunate image, LMAO) and thus becomes an over pen. More annoying still, it doesn't matter WHERE it hits. You can hit a ship from astern such that the shell ought to be travelling the full length of the ship and it STILL treats it as an over-pen. In another thread I pointed out that the famous USN 16" "super heavy" AP shell had a fuse that required only as much force as would be applied by striking 2"/5cm of armour plate at 90 degrees, or as little as 1" at 60 degrees. The very idea that large calibre AP shells "ricochet" from the 1" bow of a light cruiser in any but stratospherically rare instances yet HE detonate perfectly under the exact same conditions is a load of BS straight out of WoWS. It's also why I immediately force my guns to use HE whenever a ship is doing the whole "angling" thing, again another mechanism disturbingly familiar to any WoWS players. Other people around here disagree with me on this, but, to be bluntl, my many years (35+ on and off) of reading all sorts of sources suggests they're incorrect. It's another core mechanic I see as needing some attention. It's currently WAY too crude. If it's because we're dealing with another instance of "placeholder, good enough for now" core mechanism, fine. Provided, of course, the devs indeed see it as such and plan to update it to something more accurate. Well, that is if they want to continue to mention "realism" anywhere, lol.

Me looking at this thread: 🧐 🤔 😲 🤣 🤪 😬 😖 🙃

One might counter that by asking why the devs seem so obsessed with events that happened VERY infrequently. You could be forgiven for suggesting because it gives an opportunity for "cool visual effects" and because the average pleb knows only about those spectacular anomalies and not that they ARE anomalies. There's also the problem that putting these things in the game as they are now yet giving players very blunt instruments with which to address them is the antithesis of allowing variation in the game. If even 20% of my capital ships go "pop" if I don't put in the required citadel scheme etc etc, how long will it be before all my capital ships have that? So much for variation in design, lol. Why, for example, do you think all my capital ships have Max Bulkheads? Because those are the single most absurdly powerful tool for increasing a ship's survivability. Lastly, and I know some people don't accept this, the Steam store spiel on this game EMPHASISES REALISM. Ships didn't frequently blow up from propellant/shell magazine explosions due to fires, torpedo hits or shell hits. The notable exceptions are notable precisely because they ARE outliers. Nearly all of them were a product of flawed crew behaviour, NOT design. So we've (rather ridiculously) increased incidence of these things when the cause of the most famous and numerous historical examples was crew failures, yet we don't have crews in the game. Lastly, the things that ARE accurate when it comes to preventing these things, namely means of flooding and/or extensive sprinkler systems etc are NOT things available for the player to specify. So this element largely devolves into picking things that reduce "flash fire" chances even when many of them in the game seem utterly arbitrary and removed from genuine, realistic design risks. Yeah, ok. smell the realism, LOL. OK, I accept I'm being perhaps a little excessive for emphasis, so in a more serious mood the pertinent question seems to me to be IF the devs are going to insist on having mechanisms such as "flash fire" (which currently I really dislike because so few of them ARE flash fires as that term is commonly understood) and "magazine explosion", how ought they go about doing it? Should it be utterly arbitrary RNG where the player has limited means of reducing that value, but it still means every sort of hit potentially can produce a "flash fire" which more or less seems to be what we have now? You can see the chance in the shipyard. For me, the answer to that is NO. At the very least we NEED a far greater explanation of how the thing works. Imagine the average player in a campaign suddenly having their capital ships go off like various fireworks due to a mechanism that's not well explained and thus something they didn't give much attention. They're going to LOVE that, aren't they? Meanwhile I punch holes in ships' main belt and frequently seem to do a whole lot of nothing, which is kind of odd when you consider what the main belt covered. Yet again we're back to armour, damage and ship internal layout issues, which frankly is one of my greatest objection to what ought to be frankly fringe elements (because as soon as the danger was understood EVERY navy did its best to address them). Why are they being included AT ALL when the absolute core necessities are still in clearly inadequate, incomplete forms?

Just FYI, I added a fairly detailed comment on this very point in my post in the "Issues" thread. I suspect that point, along with stacking up accuracy penalties plus inadequate armouring are the 3 single biggest elements of the AI's design output "problems". If an AI could take drugs I'd just as easily blame that.

Wrap this into @SonicB's Clown Car thread?

Issue: AI SHIP DESIGNS @SonicB started a thread which is both entertaining but with some serious points behind it, too. Clown Car Thread (LOL) I posted something in there, so thought I'd make the same points here. I've often wondered at the accuracy penalties some of the AI monstrosities must have from smoke interference, pitch/roll and longitudinal weight imbalances. Which got me thinking about the AI design parameters. As I've said so many times (yeah, I know I repeat myself), my own professional experience in process design has taught me it's just as vital to have a list of "must NOT" conditions as it is to have the "must" ones. Some examples inspired by designs in that thread might include: Must not place a barbette without a turret. Must not place a funnel ahead of the main tower. Must not place a main armament super-firing over a secondary mount. Must not produce accuracy penalties greater than 'x' in any specific aspect OR greater than 'y' in total. I think this is something the devs might want to experiment with ASAP. Must not place extra guns that grossly reduce the firing arcs of existing ones. It's far more efficient to have a broadside of 10 secondary guns through 5 twin mounts with as good arcs of fire as possible rather than placing 10 twin mounts because they're so close together you need 2 mounts to cover the arc of fire a single one could achieve. I make a point of having as few mounts as possible necessary to achieve the firepower I want, and that means having each with the best arcs of fire to achieve that. Same applies for main guns, obviously. I say that because while it's obvious to us as players, it clearly ISN'T obvious to the AI as is. Must provide armour sufficient to meet the requirements of an intended combat role in the campaign, where the durability ought to reflect the degree of financial and resource commitment building the ship represents. I've noticed the AI tends to build glass cannons. Rather frustrating to face them in a scenario when you consider that they'd be utterly disastrous for the AI in a campaign if a better balanced design can defeat them despite their firepower (especially in light of the issue of gunnery penalties I've mentioned above). In which case I'd suggest there ought to be a minimum armour factor, too. Just as happened with BC v BB, it's fine to have a more lightly armoured version of something with greater speed provided it's at least armoured against likely CA firepower AND the AI has the brains to run away from "proper" BBs that are going to punch holes wherever it hits and from any range. Right now the AI doesn't, although of course in part that's because of the restricted scenario or random battle world we live in. To summarise, I'd suggest at some point some greater constraints ought to be put on the AI's designs. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea. Ships armed to the teeth with next to no armour are possible but not a great plan if they're the ONLY things you build, for example. Same goes with considerations of the various gunnery penalties you can stack up. I'm sure it's something that's being worked on in the background, so my purpose is simply to throw in some thoughts that I think might be useful for "campaign AI" in particular. The game will be pretty pointless if the AI keeps making ships that "don't work" if it's also limited to the same budgets and other constraints as we are, and we know Nick has said he doesn't design AI with "cheats" such as we see all the time in the Total War franchise for example. Anyone got other rules to add? I don't pretend this to be an exhaustive list by any means, more illustrations of a general principle with some amusing and/or serious examples. Cheers

This thread is both valuable and comedy gold. I've often wondered at the penalties some of these things must have from smoke interference, pitch/roll and longitudinal weight imbalances. As I've said so many times (yeah, I know I repeat myself), this is yet another example of why good design includes a list of "must NOT" conditions. Must not place a barbette without a turret. Must not place a funnel ahead of the main tower. Must not place a main armament superfiring over a secondary mount. Must not produce accuracy penalties greater than 'x' in any specific aspect OR greater than 'y' in total. THIS one I think is something they ought to experiment with ASAP. I've noticed the AI tends to build glass cannons. Rather frustrating to face them in a scenario when you consider that they'd be utterly disastrous for the AI in a campaign if a better balanced design can defeat them despite their firepower (especially in light of the issue of gunnery penalties I've mentioned above). I'd have thought this is pretty basic stuff. Perhaps I should put it in the "long list of issues" thread? Mind you, there's plenty I could put there along with relevant screen snips etc. Trouble is I'm kind of tired of saying the same things, lol, when they never appear to be acknowledged and thus do any good. Edit: I posted something on this in the "Issues" thread.

@Fishyfish No need for the sadface, LOL, I DID have a laugh at your post. 😁

I don't bother with citadels at all. Why? Because I can get more effective armour thickness simply by stacking on Krupp whatever than a lesser thickness of Krupp whatever + the citadel bonus. That's because those bonuses don't work on a cost benefit basis. You lose base armour thickness because of cost and weight penalties from the citadel and the loss of that base thickness exceeds the bonus effectiveness you get from the citadel. Furthermore, not getting penetrating hits is waaay better than any damage mitigation bonuses you get from any citadel scheme. In other words, 10" of +100% armour > 8" of +110% armour. I don't think that's changed. Can't say I've checked, however.

"Hurry Up". 1. You're at the mercy of AI designed ships, both the CLs and, in some respects more importantly, the transports. If you win "the bulkhead lottery" you're soooo much better off. 2. You're at the mercy of the AI manoeuvring the TR, and it remains as dumb as a bag full of rocks. Here's a hint as to why I say that: Imagine you're a convoy commander. You're on a generally Westerly course, and you're told a vastly superior enemy is to the North (to starboard). You are told a friendly BC is heading at maximum sustainable speed from the South (to Port). Question: Do you A. Continue on your current course in line ahead, following a transport many km ahead of you, or B. Immediately turn ALL transports to Port and make their best speed, effectively at least being in some sort of line abreast formation heading AWAY from the threat and toward the BC coming to your aid? If you chose B, congratulations, you're correct in 99.99% of cases and have acted as pretty much any naval officer in those conditions would. If you chose A, congratulations. you're the AI. Keeping TR alive is a crap shoot as it is. Forcing us to be at the mercies of the AI is adding insult to injury, LOL. 3. The victory conditions make little to no sense. You are outnumbered AND have to protect the transports. Yet you're expected to keep 50% of TR alive but ALSO kill 75% of the enemy? WHY? Your mission OUGHT to be to keep the 50% of TR alive for a certain time period. Going on the ATTACK against a numerically and generally technologically superior enemy is just daft on so many levels, ESPECIALLY when the weather is locked in with VERY bad conditions that make longer range gunnery very difficult. So you're meant to close on DDs with loads of decently ranged torps yet you can't hit those ships worth a damn because you can't even SPOT them until they're in torpedo range (they see you before you see them, even though you have radar that ought to turn the tables on them)? Even ignoring all that, their ridiculous speeds (not affected by heavy sea waves, by the way) plus size means your ships can't hit them even when you CAN see them. Putting a condition that requires you to force an engagement that is ENTIRELY AT ODDS with sensible tactical behaviour is just daft, It's just a mess from top to bottom. I'd prefer the missions to encourage sensible actions, fitting the doctrine of navies AND that would make sense in the context of the campaign. I probably can work it out. The thing is, do I want to, and If I succeed will it be fun? Absolutely not one bit.

Agree. In the past I've never bothered with citadels at all for pretty much the reasons you've said. The in-game reality was it proved more effective simply to pile on thickness because the mall bonuses to effectiveness the various armour schemes offered didn't stack up with the various penalties such as weight and cost. To put it simply, 10" of +100% armour > 8" of 110%. And that's before the other points you correctly raise. Whether it's true under the new patch I've no idea as I've not really bothered with it given it doesn't address any of the core systems that I find most critical to the playability of the game. I will add, however, that attending to formations and the like IS very important, so I think it's great that got attention. It's just not enough for me to be interested in testing and giving feedback as the other things will have remained the same. In fact some of the changes I don't like at all, but those aren't related to the formations, nor is the update the subject here. While not wishing to sound harsh, there have been times when I've wondered just how much about the entire subject matter of naval tech, design and performance the devs understood when they decided to do this project. I say that because in my opinion there are many, many design choices that seem so far from known realities that I find it difficult to accept they knew of those realities when making the choices. Having made those choices, trying to make them "fit" reality becomes more and more difficult. Even more so as they try to introduce more and more factors, most recently what I have always regarded as truly awful "flash fire" nonsense; even IF you wanted to add it, I just don't see why you''d do it the way they chose to. "Flash fires" on open 4" mounts on a transport? How? They don't even have separate propellant charge magazines, nor feed trunks down which a "flash" can travel. Magazine explosions, meanwhile, don't have any effect on a gun mount's ability to fire. Maybe I'm peculiar, but I'd have thought you might want to fix that before adding something else that, while famous due to the BCs at Jutland and HMS Hood, generally happened extremely infrequently, not least because navies understood the need to be able to flood such spaces so that even in cases of ships having very considerable fires below decks they didn't have such detonations. If someone can show me evidence to the contrary, I'll happily change my opinion. Then again, the same is true of torpedoes causing magazine explosions; I was able to find ONE case of that through the entire history of BBs known to have sunk due to damage from enemy fire (for anyone interested, it was a French pre-dreadnought that was torpedoed by a German sub, exploded and sank in minutes with the loss of all hands). Yet we saw that added and, entirely predictably (I know because I predicted it in a post, LOL) of course BBs going "pop" due to the armour/internal layout simplicity (as per your point 3). Neither of which is to say those mechanisms need not be present at all because they DID happen, even if practically next to never. Just have to wonder as to why they'd receive priority. I could guess, but it hardly matters. Well, it's their project thus entirely up to them. Hopefully they can surprise me, but I find the lack of movement in the direction of even "roughly realistic" of several core elements over the 13 months I've been here somewhat concerning. But that's just my taste, not everyone seems as bothered by these things.

TL;DR? No, the weight of armour is determined by its type and thickness and the area covered. The scheme is how and where that armour is applied. There's no such thing as "turtle back armour" v "all or nothing armour". =============================================================== It's not as simple as one weighs more than another. The more accurate answer would be to say there are a few different factors involved. One is the type of armour (in the game shown as various Krupp ratings). Another is the thickness of the plate involved. Thus the weight of armour plate as it emerges from bing produced in the foundry is Armour type base weight x armour thickness. The last part of the equation is how and where you apply that armour. THIS is the true, real life difference between the various armour schemes. One way to think of it is that the different armour schemes are different approaches as to where and at what thicknesses to "spend" the "total weight of armour" you have allowed as a proportion of the total displacement of your ship's design. If you took the exact same ship characteristics with say 40% of its weight taken up by armour (which is roughly correct for Bismarck from memory)) and produced two versions of it, one with a "turtle back" and the other as "all or nothing", you'd end up with quite different placement of armour and different thicknesses, too. ALL armour schemes reflect the thinking of navies at the time as how best to allocate armour to defeat the most likely, most dangerous threat known to the designers at the time. The TB scheme was a reflection of lower range combat which meant an emphasis on shells arriving at relatively flat angles of attack, which means favouring vertical protection (the ship's sides). The AON scheme evolved when longer combat ranges were becoming possible due to the many changes to systems that added up to greater accuracy and thus effective ranges (you're not effective if you can't hit). This meant increased thought about horizontal protection (decks), because those shells at greater ranges are arriving at steeper angles which meant they could penetrate more armour. You can't realistically keep the same vertical protection and then simply jack up the horizontal as well as the weights involved would quickly become absurd. The answer? Concentrate the armour thickness on only the most vital areas, which means the engine spaces and magazines in simplest terms. So you end up with an "armoured box" containing the propulsion and weapons, otherwise known as the citadel (taken from castle design if I'm not mistaken). Even then, there were many different views of just how to do that increased horizontal/deck protection. Experience and studies, both in the war and then after, pretty much concluded if you had a total budget of say 7" of armour on "the top of the box", the most effective layout was to have almost all of it placed in one deck rather than equally divided over multiples. I was watching a recent video from the BB New Jersey (an Iowa class) museum YT channel about its horizontal armour, and the curator gives a very good run down on the armour scheme and the thinking behind it, filmed sitting on top of the "splinter deck" that was immediately below the main armour deck. If interested, here's a link: All of this overlooks the fact that ships used all sorts of different armour types because each had attributes that made it better at some things yet not as good at others, so you had to decide the principle role and thus most suitable type of armour. Here's a pretty decent summary of some armour development etc from Drach. too: Effectively, yes. While I understand why they've done that, I'm not really a fan of them putting so many different factors under the umbrella of armour schemes. Why, for example, is one version any better for preventing fires than another? I'm unaware of any particular justification for that. If your citadel is penetrated you're probably having a bad day regardless of what armour scheme your ship may have. LOL, bad Fishy, naughty Fishy.

Oh I agree entirely, and possibly ought to have made that clear. My answer was intended simply to convey that the cards DO work to produce the same result as the player's own ones, it's just there's that added step in there for some reason.

I know for a fact exactly this discussion came up when the 'warning triangle' was introduced because I pointed out having the triangle disappear meant practically you'd lost them unless you happen to have been looking at the right part of the screen at the right time. The simple fact is it's MORE realistic to have them permanently marked until such time as a functional plot is introduced. I'll repeat what I suggested those many months back (might even have been late last year): 1. Have the "XTZ ship sights enemy torpedoes" message in the battle log be in BOLD, RED TEXT so it's VERY clear. 2. Have the message remain in the log for however long those torpedoes remain within the torpedo detection range of ANY of your ships. 3. Make it so double clicking on it results in the screen jumping to where the torps are NOW (at least one of your ships can see them, remember) as a good way of simulating the fact that someone is going to be watching them closely. Doing so would allow a decent means of simulating the fact there's no way any ship's command staff is going to forget where hostile torpedoes are yet also avoid having what I agree would be rather ugly graphics on the screen. The screen doesn't have ugly triangles rushing all over the screen. WE have an effective means of going back to wherever any enemy torps that are still visible to any ship of ours may be at the time, just as it ought to be. Seems a pretty good solution in the absence of anything else. What do you think? I made EXACTLY all these points when it was introduced. Nothing has changed, so I regard them as just as applicable now as then. I also expect repeating myself will achieve pretty much exactly what it did when I raised this the first time, LOL. Cheers

They do. Trouble is you need to left click somewhere else for the cards to expand i.e. it's not immediate as it is with your own cards.

It's not new to this patch, it's been doing this for quite some time, certainly in the previous version, I know because I raised it however long ago and included screen snips to illustrate.

Raised all of this a few times over the past 12 months. At the very least I wanted some option to turn off auto targetting entirely. If that means some of my ships aren't firing because I haven't given them instructions, that's on my head. It drives me nuts when I get forced to go through targetting and building up the "target locked" bonus simply because my idiot ship decided to fire the main guns at something that is no threat whatsoever. Yet there is nothing I can do to stop it. Common game design question to ask is "how important is this function, and how happy/unhappy will players be if they can't automate/can't turn off automation?". I'd suggest there's little that's more important in a naval battle than being able to issue fire orders to your ships; we KNOW that was done historically, and, as you said, there was a common doctrine anyway. Automation is fine. Not being able to turn it off is NOT. Sure, it's Alpha, so maybe they can get to it at some point.

Ah, the good old days when life was simple. 😀 Good luck with them.

Eels? 🙃 I'd have thought tentacle memes more likely from all the weebs in here. 😁 😎

I remember some of them; had some great pics too, I think? 500 hulls with the current mechanics won't make me any more inclined to play because it's what those hulls DO in combat that I'm mainly interested in. Having said that, the greatest mechanics in the world would be rather pointless with 20 hulls in total over 100 years. Really they need to do BOTH. As to which they do first I should think is down to preference. My reason for focussing on the mechanics is because they, more than anything, are what will need testing. It's not hard to see if a hull works; I'd expect them to have a PC more or less constantly running custom battles between the AI using certain hulls and tech to see what designs are built and how they perform. It's not quite as simple to revamp the damage model, or damage control, or introduce a proper 'stability' issue when flooding, or all the other important nuts and bolts that combine to produce what we see on the screen. That's not to say more hulls, especially not chasing so much late tech and even stuff nobody ever bothered to do (not that I mind that per se, I just don't see it as being as important), wouldn't be welcome. As you may have seen, I suggested being limited so much by hulls put in the game vs parameters that means various hulls can be produced but those hulls are not fixed with characteristics that aren't open to the player to influence much (stability, resistance and the like) is to me evidence of a short term 'quicker and easier' approach to the whole question vs an admittedly more difficult but arguably MUCH more satisfying and long term approach, and I fear it will come to bite all of us. I'd like to be able to prioritise speed or resistance or stability or whatever, potentially to extremes, and see what gets thrown on the table for consideration rather than be limited to A, B and C where those figures are arrived at and fixed behind the scenes without our involvement. Yes, doing that is more difficult, but I suggest it's ultimately more interesting and, dare I say it, more in line with historical evidence? The second method would be limited as they sorted out exactly how it would apply to various classes across time periods and so on, but in the long run could produce a vastly greater number of variations of hulls precisely because it's a system that generates hulls vs the current system OF hulls to which we're limited. The more difficult in the short term is IMO far, far more scaleable with potentially far greater variety and thus replayability in the long term. In fact I would argue that the fact we're sitting here discussing which hulls will be put in the game and when somewhat makes my point for me. I'd far rather be testing and giving feedback on what the system designed to toss up hulls based on OUR choices (that we can then build) is in fact putting forth than waiting for the next batch of fixed characteristic hulls from the Acme ship design bureau to be delivered, lol. Oh well. It's Alpha, who knows what they've got in mind or how long it will take. One thing's for sure, they've got plenty to keep them busy. 🙂 Cheers