arkhangelsk

Yes, that's why I counted in only the last 73 minutes of the battle (1517-1630) as the comparison, rather than 13:50 to 16:30 (oh sorry, it wasn't 3 hours, it was 2 hours 40 minutes) from first contact. We won't be able to get 100% recreation in any case, but come on, we are talking about 5 times faster. I think that the scenario is equipped with huge margins.

To be more accurate, the base (before modifiers) is now 100% accuracy at 2500m, and even if they are not 100% they are higher than the bigger guns at 2500m which is a manifest implausibility. As are the 1100m/s muzzle velocities or eye-popping penetrations. Well, AFAIK, the combination of effects, you know, that tactical accuracy never got to the point before this hotfix that people were actually succeeding in getting the battlecruisers with the destroyer. The changes mean a lot more "real" penetrations than before, and the 1/12th little gun hits auto-bypass, even if it also happened before this hotfix, must have hurt a lot less when the hit rate was realistic than after they buffed it, which gave the battlecruiser substantially more chance to hit the destroyer at least once or twice before it died. Well, you might remember it was you who brought the Battle of Texal to the table. So, I used the Custom Scenarios to build something similar (and on the first try the computer proved cooperative and gave me pretty much what I needed). The real scenario took over 73 minutes in the decisive phase and 3 hours from first contact. When I played it, three of them went down in under ten minutes and the only reason the fourth didn't die in at most five minutes more is because it was placed outside my sight and for some reason my ships won't increase speed to chase it (and it wasn't because they were hurt). If in game the torpedo boats die in ~15 minutes and in the real thing ~75, then the indication is that the guns are 5 times as effective as they should be. In a way, I'm almost as appalled as the DD vs BC thing because at least the latter is exploiting the speed modifier in an extreme scenario, while Texal is a real one being replayed, and the exact thing they were trying to "solve" in this hotfix.

Look at this post where I catalog some of the manifest artificiality that were stuck into the stats to get the results: Next, the recreated Battle of Texal, that I used to see how much aggregate effect there will be on the "intended" part of the consequences (since DD killing BC was an unintended side effect). Basically, ships that were very close replicas to the real victims being attacked by replicas to the real attackers died about 5 times faster than the historical result.

Actually, both were sunk. As far as the lessons of the battle go, the A-class are approximately 1400 ton destroyers. With six inch armament and a WWII hull, Scharnhorst took about one hour to sink each destroyer with six inch guns (open fire 1627, Ardent bites the dust at 1725, then Acasta on 1820). We can make excuses, but that's what goes on the scorecard.

Even right now, they give up to 10 hours to finish in Custom Battles. I think a lot of smaller seaplanes can't last that long. I am more on the side that if we are going to do this at all, let's do it right. Let us launch the aircraft and see it fly off and even direct it a bit. For starters I don't think we should have land based or carrier air. Just seaplanes of the type you can shoot off a battleship. This will ensure the protagonists remain the same as the title.

I'm mostly a realism player, and the evidence on the side that they were more or less accurate before this patch was much more convincing. If smaller guns cannot "win" on their realistic merits, the solution is NOT to artificially inflate hit rates or penetrations, but to present scenarios to the player where they might be useful. And if all fails we can use it as an accurate simulator to write essays on "Naval Secondaries: Never Really Correct?" and post on Naval History or something. Since even Steel Panthers have been used as a basis for military-related essays in the past, there is no reason UAD can't be as long as we keep up the dedication to realism. Let's leave it at that. :) I hadn't tried Lyddite II in the newest hotfix - is it still that effective? Part of the problem is the damage model, where for some reason it seems like destroyed compartments (usually all at the top) are indestructible objects, so your structure damage stops decreasing after awhile. Maybe the fires are reaching into more areas.

I was being sarcastic. DDs vs BCs are but one of the horrible side effects, because you can't just make something (like little guns) artificially powerful against one type of target (overall effectiveness increased by something like FIVE times over the realistic value) without having some "unfortunate" side effects. Yes, but to do that it needs hit rates (even unlocked ones) a bit more than less than 0.5%. With the current rate, it'll be more than a few salvoes before it can land the hit. One problem that may not be visible to us is the computer not investing enough in the best fire control equipment. Still, it could probably avoid dying to your destroyer if only the penetration values are less "optimistic" and the AI thinks more about armor, not more little guns. BTW, if you really want something debugged, sending them as much information as possible could not hurt :)

To be fair, there is such a thing called "base-fused HE" shells which retain some penetrating capability. But it is questionable about them ricocheting. In fact, maybe we should just get rid of the whole ricocheting concept for main gun rounds - they either penetrate, partially penetrate (the damage can be very small, but it should probably never quite hit zero) or over penetrate. Those three categories should cover it. And you are preaching to the choir about the "merits" of the current hotfix.

You know? Despite the time cost, I'll actually Yes this. I don't mind measures to encourage people to use secondaries as long as they are naturally justified. The planes will also allow much more complex tactical scenarios, and if you want planes to be integrated well at both the tactical and strategic levels, you should start ASAP.

Maybe it doesn't, but with that picture you put up, I think most people would first notice the accuracy than anything else. You will probably have to show a series of photos within one scenario to better get your point across... It's not really that likely it can save itself by shooting at such poor hit rates. DDs being able to destroy BCs is apparently the "feature" of this hotfix, albeit one I have not yet and have no real enthusiasm in reproducing (I'm also overseas and surrounded by mega-weak computers). The solution would seem to be a mix of nerfing the new super penetrations they are getting (given your enemy's 90% armor quality, a Mark V 5" gun would enjoy 4.1" of penetration at 7500m increasing to 5.89 inch at 5000m, which means it can penetrate most areas of your photo's "enemy battlecruiser") and making sure the enemy tacks just a bit more armor (rather than putting on 5 different calibers of secondaries) to their battlecruisers. In fact, secondaries until 6 inch should probably just fire HE instead of any AP - just lock their ammo choice on HE Lyddite if we need to make their hits a bit more useful by raising the fire chance.

It is Range accuracy: ± (15 yards + 0.1% of range.) Bearing accuracy: 0.1° to 2 mils. So at 20000m, the range error will be about ±215 yards, lateral error would be ±20m. But the resolution is up to 10 degrees (about 175 mils), so the target blips may well be merging into each other and hard to see.

I wonder, how much trouble would it be to give us more information on gun status? I guess the current display is just fine for secondaries and tertiaries, but for the Main Guns and Torpedo mounts, can we have individual circular status displays for each turret? Since there cannot be more than 7 of them, we should be able to fit them comfortably on their current corner of the screen. Further, it'll be nice of the relationship of the firing arcs versus target bearing is overlaid on those circles. Basically, right now when trying to decide how much more to turn to open gun arcs, we are turning and moving the targeting cursor on and off the target to find the point where 6 firing guns increases to 9. It'll be nice to be able to just issue one turn order based on displayed information rather than this iterative method. It will also be nice if for example those circles can activate indicate why they are not firing - for example, they might blink or have a green rim to show they are moving into position, yellow rim to show they cannot get into position due to closed gun arcs, and red to indicate they aren't firing because they are damaged or destroyed. Further, if the guns are not firing due to low hit chance, maybe we can have the minimum required hit chance displayed, so we know either to switch to aggressive or to move closer/reduce to best firing speed ... etc. If we see this on the enemy ship, at least we know that what is happening is not a bug, but a feature. Basically, I just want to know more about what's going on.

Honest questions: Since the guns are only measuring accuracies in the 0.x% range, even if they lock the percentage will only be 1-2% or so. Are you sure this is a bug and not a feature (computer electing to not waste ammo)? Have you tried rushing your destroyer closer to increase their hit chance and see if that "frees" the guns?

Hint number 1. Try bigger guns because they will do more in one hit. Hint number 2. Try staying close to 5000m because they really OPed the close in performance of little guns this hotfix and they will murder you at close range. It might also work to exploit this but I was too lazy to change my ship to a post hotfix config and it still worked. Hint number 3: Try keeping to cruise speed and forget maneuver. Concentrate on hitting the enemy.

I went to do some experiments with the hull Light Cruiser II, Year 1925 because that's how far you have to wind the clock back to ensure no radar is allowed. Just optics. First, you need the 4800 ton just to physically be able to put two 8" turrets on. As for its actual ability in game to become a heavy cruiser killer just because I crammed 6 eight inch guns on it, there seems little to worry about. Here is the enemy's design, an 8 inch cruiser, albeit with 15 guns: I did seem to get some advantage from my size, with the hit rate reaching 4% while the enemy's was 3.1. But it is so much tougher and it so outgunned me it did not matter. Soon I was dead in the water and its hit rate climbed to 10%. I was ruled sunk 23 minutes in the game, with it at something like 90% health. Admittedly, previously I did one with radar, and my ship was more lethal there (though since I didn't design the other ship I have no idea if they had radar). But at least in the equivalent of the Treaty era, where everything is optical, I don't think the heavy cruisers have much to fear from so called "cruiser killers" just as real battleships have little to fear from Graf Spee. Except in the game Atlantic fleet, where you can kill HMS Renown pretty easily with one of the Lutzow class pocket battleships. Full set of photos below: https://photos.app.goo.gl/P4RXivSGwCoH7stcA

Well, the upgraded turret does more. Why do you think it should be the same size? As I said I'm not against some kind of procedural part other than its cost on limited development time, but for this reason it can't be allowed to be as good as the pre-made one. Maybe you can't upgrade turrets or you'll have to upgrade to smaller caliber ones to keep everything fitting. And not counting explosives we already have like 20 gun variants per caliber. We have 5 tech levels. For each tech level we have four shell weights each with their own effects. That's more than Rule of Waves, which as far as I know has for each caliber quality -1, quality 0 and quality 1 (I have yet to see other qualities appear in Youtube videos). Oh, and you can click on "Increase elevation" in the ship design screen but it doesn't really change the weight of the guns or impose other visible costs so it's a no brainer - you just click it as soon as it stops being greyed out. The shape of the funnel is specially engineered. If you change the shape just because you don't like it, realistically it won't work as well. To an extent, that's also true of the towers. If the gun platform is absolutely unacceptable to you, you might have to satisfy yourself with a lesser tower that doesn't have that gun platform. As an aside, thinking holistically this may not be unfair. The gun platform often serves the de facto secondary purpose of keeping your huge main guns farther away from the tower's vital functions (even if you stick a gun on the platform, it'll be a smaller one). This creates the objective conditions for it to work better, and this may be the real, unspoken reason for the improved statistics.

Actually, the penalty seems to be size dependent. I was just shooting at a 9100 ton "light cruiser" just now. The penalty was ~30%. a ~15000 ton heavy cruiser was -3% BTW, the above was the "Light Cruiser III" hull that's up to 13000 ton. Then there is the Light Cruiser II hull that's 4-7000 ton. There is a Light cruiser I hull too (I suspect RamJB was remembering that one) but unless you unlock you can't touch it in 1930 or even 1920 - by the time you do it seems only singles are available. We may have historical evidence that 5.9" guns are too much for a ~3,500 ton full (2,500 ton standard) displacement hull, but without either historical evidence nor design studies that 8" is unfeasible for a 7k ton hull it is hard to substantiate banning the piece. The game is meant to be realistic, but not necessarily historical. It does not presume the existence of a treaty, and if there were no treaty and no evidence suggestion guns >6" would have disproportionately deleterious effects, it is difficult to believe people would not arm ships with larger armament.

The ship log I believe counts seconds, not minutes, so hits from two different salvoes should have different time marks..

Try not to use Lyddite if you want armor piercing performance. The best accuracy is from Ballistite, the best penetration I think is Tube Powder. See also:

Let me point out there is already a thread called Procedural parts in Shipyard Discussions which seems to be asking for similar things. I am guessing that Tower A has better stats, while Tower B takes up less room. Why should you be allowed to get the same stats for less consumed deck space? I know the feeling. I also think it is a game balancing function. Besides, I usually end up putting one set of 8 inch guns on that gun platform as an exception to my all big-gun designs . It is not completely useless. My sense is that first, any procedural part should be overall worse than the prebuilt-in parts. That way you get an incentive to use the prebuilt parts. I'll also point out that in some ways, we already have more options in designing our ships than Rule of Waves (they for example don't get to choose explosive type or the relative weight of their shells) - do we really need more? And further, as you confess, this is a pretty big ask. We only got about half a year left to make everything into a market ready state. This I believe is something for consideration for Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts II, which will depend on UAD I selling well. If the appearance is the problem, perhaps an easier solution is this. You can choose the shape and then click a button that either stretches the model by length or scale it up so it occupies the same deck space as the one you did not like. As for the stats, they'll scale up some proportional to their size, BUT the scaling will always leave them inferior to the dedicated model. So in your case, Tower Model B stretched up to A size will still be only 90 or 95% the performance.

Well, it is not a secret this hotpatch made ships overly squishy, but your indicator implies that 3 shells (three lines reporting the shells) hit, not one. BTW, personally I get my screenshots using Irfanview's screen capture function. All these boxes and even the overlaying black info boxes (if they are up) all show up nicely.

The speed modifier is what Nicolas Moran would have called a "soft stat", something well in the back that can be adjusted to get a desired result, be it for realism or balance without being blatantly false. If you are getting a reasonable percentage of hits (leading to kill effectiveness) on battleships moving within the normal speed range, this calibration is OK.

That is a pretty well known one that comes from Alpha-2. Technically the penalty should be for maneuver, but the AI can't S-curve that well and neither can the human player when he is managing a fleet of ships, so I can accept the compromise of tying it to speed - just imagine that ship maneuvering violently.

Cool, but perhaps we can beat the Jones-es (Rule the Waves) by adding a feature that I don't think they have yet - scenarios where your tactical choices can directly affect diplomacy. For example, an unrefusable battle suddenly pops up in the strategic screen. You enter into the tactical screen, and you see, perhaps 4000m away, 3 "??". And clicking on them reveals a patch of water (the ship model is concealed, unlike now where it often gives the game away) with maybe a wake or some lights. Could it be a torpedo boat or is it a fishing boat? If it is a TB what is its nationality. Maybe it is a neutral's torpedo boat. Do you wait for the ID bar to reach 100%, or do you try to gain advantage by opening fire as soon as you see them? And the torpedo warner just went on ... but you can't find the wakes for yourself - real or false? Maybe you can rule out they are torpedo boats because you can see (for yourself, not with the computer telling you) it is crawling through the water. But you could still be wrong. Another one might even involve your light forces being actually shot at by another nation (perhaps because they had a navigation failure and are in its waters, or your cruiser happened to be in a warzone). Can you extract your light ships without damaging the enemy ships, and if you have to damage them did you sink them? It might, of course, also be a treacherous attack by a really hostile nation. By the way, just to avoid the Save/Load method, the computer does not commit to an answer until A) It opens fire or B) you identify it. So even within a S/L one time you could have seen British fishing boats and another time Japanese torpedo boats.. Obviously, getting these things wrong increases tension or might even lead to war. Sometimes, you may have to choose to "eat" the loss of a small ship rather than risk inciting tensions, and so on.

Well, if such designs can actually give them an advantage under a realistic set of rules, I see no reason to disallow them. It's not like you can't build your own so there is no game balance problem, And trying to get one up on your opponent by loading up a few guns of large size on a relatively small hull ... wait, pocket battleship. 6 (down from 8-10) 11-inch guns ... is perfectly realistic and normal behavior. Do you propose they be banned, too?