Riccardo Cagnasso

I would love the ability to provide custom name lists for one navy in the campaign (or the game in general). It should be fairly easy to implement by external file.

I'm playing the campaign but the research doesn't seem to work. I unlock stuff but no upgrades are in effect and nothing new appears in the designer.

Nothing you are saying is incorrect. But this post demonstrates that it's you that don't read what other people write. I made a whole thread detailing how and why the gunnery model should be rewritten exactly for these scenarios. Yes, secondaries should be really accurate at point blank, at least up until a certain tech level. But this is difficult to model with the current implementation based on modifiers. You would have to add another modifier called "point blank" that happens in a certain range for a certain gun. And then it has to be balanced against all other modifiers. And then what about big guns with slow rotation time against "point blank" fast targets? The damage model is entirely another beast, and you are mostly correct when you suggest that small(er) caliber should do some "temporary damage" by distrupting ship functions. But it's entirely a moot point until you cannot hit anyway.

By the way, I did read the ongoing discussion about secondary batteries. It's hilarious. There are people here that are actually arguing that secondary batteries should be completely and utterly useless because of HISTORICAL ACCURACY. So, basically the theory here is that admirals and top brass of the entire world were complete idiots who spent unholy amounts of money to fit their ships with tens or hundreds of totally useless pieces of artillery. For decades. I don't know what to say. It's... I don't want to be offensive.

Secondaries are still unable to hit anything. I get like 0.3% to hit at 1km, which is hilarious. It's like secondaries are manned by orks. I read that they tried to fix this and other accuracy issues by "rebalancing" some modifiers. I reiterate. This won't work. You will never have an interesting gunplay if you don't model the gunnery in a better way.

The implicit idea that something regarding a videogame could be something else than a "first world problem" is hilarious.

Yeah, that's funny but it's a needed feature. Problem is that when you are an historical nut and you read and listen to stuff about warships, you get informations in both metric and imperial. Then confusion arises.

Code refactoring is often more of a mental barrier than a real burden

Also, think about the modding support. Say that you have a class class FiringComputer{ FiringComputer(Ship s){...} Point2D GetFiringSolution(Ship target){...} } You don't like how the firing computer was implemented by the developers? Write yours! Do you want a futuristic mod? Suit yourself. Want to differentiate the alghoritms between wwi and wwii? have fun. I can't sit here and rant for a couple of millennia about how awful Unity3D is. But the modding support is not one of its flaw. I bet that some crazy lunatic will pull out the specifications of an actual mechanic firing solution table and implement a software emulator of it as a mod. Now, try to think about the coolness of it without having your head actually.

That's the idea, but it you are incorrect when you say that you have to simulate every firing control and crew member. You can always choose an appropriate level of abstraction. You can simulate a single firing solution for every ship and then use some modifiers to handle the fact the different ships might have different "networking" of their fire solutions for different guns etc. The point is not to achieve a perfect simulation, which is nonsense and impossible, the point is have to have a handier and better suited model. Exactly. If you simulate this in a more accurate model, you will have a more natural implementation of the firing process. For example, ranging shots won't give a overall bonus to accuracy but only to the firing solution process. If your firing solution is already accurate it won't give you additional bonus or maybe it will make your fire solution process more robust. But if you are not hitting consistently because your guns are not accurate enough, better ranging won't help. Likewise, extremely accurate guns will be useless without a accurate enough fire control equipement. This is just a small example on how a more correct model will help you have a better simulation with less effort. This is not about purism. This is about how to write a software, videogame in this case, that is easier to develop, mantain, balance and expand. This is theorically correct but pratically incorrect. Calculate the firing solution before firing, is basically just another separate dice roll with his modifiers. Then you have what amounts to another dice roll to calculate gun dispersion. Finally you have to implement the balistic trajectory of the shell, which is marginally more complex . None of these tasks are computationally intensive. If implemented correctly, this won't have any computational impact comparable of actually rendering the ships models, the explosions and the shells themselves on the 3d engine. Without even starting to take into account that most of these are entirely separate tasks that you can easily move to some other thread and the average computer will have probably a couple of underused cores when playing a game.

The simulation of the full 3D ballistic trajectory of the shells is not the main focus here. You can just as well calculate the splash position and the time delta. But at the end of the day, a ballistic trajectory is a simple quadratic equation* and it's not that complicate to simulate. Regarding the "small team" argument, I learned a long time ago that when programming computers, choosing the correct and more fitting approach, albeit more complex to initially implement, will in the long run make your job simpler. "Programming is abstracting complexity" used to say Sussman. This means, amongst other things, that when your job is properly done, you have a powerful tool to (relatively) simply manage a (relatively) complex problem. For this context, for example, you don't have to mantain and balance a huge amount of horrible enormous tables of modifiers.

What?

You are slightly missing the point. Yes you can simulate armor penetration mechanics with a single dice roll. But can you simulate a whole tank on tank engagement with a single dice roll? Sure you can. Now you are playing "Risk". Of course you can add modifiers to the dice roll and it becomes "Axis and Allies". It will never become "War Thunder" this way though. Back to the point. You are trying to simulate the naval gunnery process with a single dice roll by stacking a unholy amount of detailed modifiers. This won't work, for three reasons. 1) It's difficoult to balance. You will always have some modifiers that are so big that render all the other things irrelevant. You can already see this in the curent alpha. 2) There are some things that you can't simulate. Like for example the fact that someone might manouver during the flight time of the shell and dodge. Or shooting in a tight formation of ships and hitting someone else etc 3) Some things you technically can simulate, but will require endless huge tables of modifiers. Like for example some type of rangefinder performing bad against small ships but very good against big ships. Or slower shells being more effected by the crosswind but only after a certain distance because the velocity drops under whatever. Lighter guns with faster turret traversal being more accurate against fast moving ships. Take your pick. Again, I reiterate: you have to split your gunnery model in three "phases". The first is rangefinding, that will produce an estimated target position. The second is the firing process that will produce a 3D trajectory of every shell and the third is to phisically simulate the actual shell path over time to the splash point to see if the shot connect.

This game could very well be THE BEST GAME EVAH for the naval enthusiast. But there's a weak spot: the gunnery model. At the moment, as far as I understand, it is a "simple" model based on a hit probability calculated from many bonus and malus. There are two problem with this approach. First of all, it will never be accurate enough. It doesn't matter how endless the list of possible modifier is. This model will always abstract too much. Also, is gamey. It encourages a "min max" approach that will kill any different approach and create a single "best" build in any tactical situation. A much better and more realistic approach would be to simulate the fire control with modifier to the accuracy of this process. Then the ships fire at the calculated fire solution and you add the accuracy characteristics of the guns to get a CEP. From there you use RNG to get the trajectory over time of every shell. Then you simulate the actual shell being fired in a way no different than WOWS or war thunder. This way a shell can actually be dodged, for example. I don't know if the developers can transition to a better gunnery model at this point in the development model, but they really should.

My two cents having played the game a bit: yes big guns are op. The most powerful ship at a tech level is basically a hull with the best fire control and the biggest guns that you can fit. The more the merrier but bigger is better than more numerous. Secondaries are completely useless. Doesn't matter how many you cramp on the ship, they won't hit. This is, as far as I understand, because the accuracy is calculated mainly by range vs maximum range of the gun. This is arguably wrong from both historical and gameplay perspective. A much better model would be the accuray mainly given by range vs fire control capability and then the caracteristics of guns modelled as relatively minor bonuses/maluses.