arkhangelsk

Yes, unless you exploit the speed malus, that's likely to happen to you. They have Mark 4 guns. You have Mark 3 guns. That's where the difficulty and challenge lies. You know very well that players usually can make a better ship than the AI if they are equal tech (and thus learn very little from the exercise).

Is that what they do in World of Warships? Because that's not what they do in real life. To suddenly reverse speed is to place a large load on the shafts (the more so since as you know, our ships are allowed way too much horsepower) and moving backwards makes for a much harder to steer ship. As a tactical option it's not AFAIK very realistic - ships use reverse basically only when putting themselves towards a pier.

I don't mind national specific turret designs, as long as they are aesthetics only. On the other hand, that doesn't make them a high priority. If they actually have different performance, my eyebrow raises and questions if this is pandering too much to the "I want to exactly recreate ship X" crowd at the expense of the free-form intent of the campaign. As it is, even now some countries are more blessed than others when it comes to hulls (the only nation-specific factor) right now. For example, if you aren't Germany, US or Japan you don't get to go above Dreadnaught IV, and further, while the US and Japanese superships have pros and cons relative to each other, for some reason Germany's ship is better than the other two. There's also the 1899-1905 period, when Japan, UK and Spain get the semidreadnaught while everyone else is stuck predreadnaught (including Germany even though that thing looks suspiciously like Nassau), and China also gets a kind of pocket predreadnaught that's kind of a plus and a malus at the same time - it is small but you can cram three centerline turrets on it before anyone else can. While to some extent such choices can be rationalized as a balancing factor, it nevertheless creates artificial inequality between nations. Some countries are inevitably channeled to suboptimal choices that cannot be substantiated in a free-form game. Or what's next? Only Japan gets oxygen torpedoes because that's what's historic? Only Germans get diesel engines because they are the only guys who did it historically?

Well, whatever we do, we need more size malus for destroyers. I was just doing one of those early tutorial missions (Speed 2) and I noticed: 900 ton destroyer, size malus -15.4%. That is to say, insignificant and as a result it was killed with ridiculous speed. We need to make this game more historically accurate and the destroyers harder to hit, or we'll never be able to recreate tactics like ships cutting in close to make torpedo attacks - the enemies will hit too quickly.

Your ship isn't exactly convincing me you are. For the record, here is my ship. First, don't make your ship half-arsed fast. Make it fast. The last few knots towards 37.5 knots really count towards increasing the effective malus. Further, it helps you keep out of the fangs of that horrible CA. Second, having chosen to go half arse fast and having wasted some more weight on torpedo tubes, now you don't have enough armor. Objectively the other guy is better armored and has a more stable firing platform as a battleship plus he has a cruiser so why do you expect to win? I'm guessing that you are hoping torpedoes will come in handy during that pursuit phase where the angle makes the other ship nearly invulnerable, but since right now you are getting your ship ripped apart you might want to deal with that first. If you can at least get to the point of beating the battleship off then at least you've won in campaign terms. Get there first and then think about killing the BB later. Also, if you want more accuracy, you might want to consider, fewer bigger guns which hit harder and don't get a penalty for being triples. Prove your Might is a new scenario so there is no "It was easier before".

Just because there is more of a realistic scenario in a lesson doesn't mean it is not educational, just as a math question using real life doesn't stop being a math question. In your case, it seems you are still not doing everything possible to set yourself up for success. It is one thing to not win, but if the enemy is showing a higher hit percentage than you, your ship design in this scenario is wrong. Not having seen your design, I guess it may be because you have put too much faith on armor, but as a battlecruiser hull you are fundamentally crunchier than your opponent so you can't win by toughing it out. Make your hull over 38 knots (something like 40) so you hit him with the maximum speed malus, and you'll start hitting more than he does. Oh, BTW, it won't hurt to NOT have any secondaries, too. They decrease your main gun accuracy and even if they hit only peck at your opponent. On my design I have exactly ONE 2" gun, and that's so I can set it to track the ship I am not hitting. BTW, you are supposed to control what the CA is hitting using your destroyers. The basic idea is to keep your battlecruiser at around the edge of its firing range and split its attention between your three ships. Try to keep those destroyers alive as long as possible, but they are there to draw fire. Remember that if this is a campaign, you don't have to sink the battleship, so you can consider it half a win as long as you beat them into retreat. Think of the last ditch stabbing as the scenario artifact that encourages you to keep everything in as good shape as possible in the Main Combat phase.

Sure, but at least some of them are supposed to be challenging. It seems way too much like Dirlinger's idea of "fun" = "easy". I'll actually think he won on design. If he hadn't been thinking about how to build the right ship and optimize his fire distribution decisions, he would never have gotten to the point where luck had a chance to push things in his favor. He just doesn't notice how his efforts pushed the odds in his favor. He went from no chance at all to some chance, then the RNG helped him over the edge. As for what LESSON he should pick up for the campaign, the first lesson is try to not allow himself to get into that position. Concentrate on research, don't be a penny-pincher on the hull. The second lesson is for if he falls into that situation (maybe he is playing a weak nation or got into too many wars that drained his chances to set himself up for success), it might be worth sacrificing the transports rather than the battlecruiser. The third lesson is that at least he knows how to best fight such a battle to maximize what chance he does have. I'll call that quite educational. Here's the problem: This is Naval Academy. Basically, the harder the mission is, the fewer combinations work, and the mission is more educational. Reducing the difficulty of the mission thus makes the battle less educational and defeats the point of putting it into Naval Academy.

First, again, the mission is in a list called Naval Academy, not Fun Missions. I just tried it again and did not win (I actually won with this ship once). I think the "orthodox" method of beating this mission is something like this - first, build a ship with big guns (so you can actually penetrate the BBs armor and counter his survivability advantage) and 40 knot speed (so you can exploit the speed modifier to counter his armor advantage). Overall you should be giving him 5-10 hits to every one you take. On the tactics front try to keep at least one of your two destroyers alive and the basic lesson you are to learn is to distribute fire between the BB (which will be very hard to sink but is the thing damaging your ship) and the CA (which can still hurt your BC and is a destroyer killer especially if the AI arms it with the hero 9" gun which it does maybe 75% of the time). You have to compromise between using your DDs to draw CA fire (they can be a meat shield for a little bit) and conserving them. Once you've forced the BB to retreat, kill the CA and chase the BB. The destroyer is useful in convincing the enemy battleship to give your BC something other than its arse. My basic mistake this time was waiting too long for an even better angle for my BC to shoot at before opening up. Instead, between my delay, the slowness of my turrets (I had to use Hydraulic turrets because it was the sacrifice in the struggle to fit everything else in), the fact the AI thinks HOLD FIRE means not to aim them at the set target, and RNG, the computer killed my destroyer and managed to show me its arse again before I could get some good hits in. I was reduced to "stabbing" the enemy battleship at point blank range. I really hate doing this because I keep worrying the computer can turn things around with some good RNG, which I've actually been kind of lucky on so far but this time, the computer won the mutual stabbing contest and managed to get a speed advantage for the first time in the fight, which reduces my chances of killing it to virtually nil. I quit. Ah well... at least it felt like I lost because of RNG rather than I won only because of it. Basically it is this "reaching out to win" part that makes you learn the system. I remember in the old patches at least two people complained that the naval academy missions are won in the ship designer and they want tactics to play a greater role. You know what? The only way to do that is to up the difficulty sufficiently that just making a good ship is not good enough, and that's the theme of the new missions. We have gone from "any ship" to "best ship" to "best ship plus doing the right things". I've also been told that designs with a lot of torpedo tubes can work - maybe you can try those. TL:DR is that you are doing exactly what this mission is trying to get you to do, trying different things to get closer to victory. It makes the victoy when finally won all the more satisfying. Then recover your mental balance by going to the Custom Mission and building a 1940 super battleship to crush a 1906 dreadnought.

What interests me is: 1) Can that gun shoot from that position (on the ship designer graphic, IIRC it'll be all red)? 2) Does the fact this gun cannot shoot affect the others (the AI often waits for all guns to line up before it fires)? Is it at least smart enough to shoot only the guns that can shoot?

First, the accuracy was rounded up - it is closer to 3.25% (rounded up to 3.3) than 3.3 proper. Second, (1-0.0325)^12=0.327315092=32.7%

Try putting on more speed to reduce the number of hits - with the current ruling you can make your ship go 36 knots with 12 18" guns. I think the intent of this mission is to teach you how to distribute fire. You need to know when to stop hitting the battleships (I've been able to kill two of the three before the last one put itself into the Hard to Kill Retreat mode) and start going after the destroyers so they don't torpedo you, then go after the battleship again while you still have some ammo left so you can stab it to death.

Let me put a ball in on BuckleUpBones' side, because I can kind of see a point. While I appreciate analysis, I can also see how it can be overdone and overshadow the overall holistic feel of the system as a whole. In other words, once you see a "bad number", it sticks to your mind like a dead pixel, and all considerations as to its contribution to the overall system, or that it might have a justification disappear. You see the bad number and your immersion is significantly reduced. Here let me use the much-hated speed malus. On paper, assertions like speed matters not with accurate plotting (a.k.a. against a faster target I'll just pull more lead) sound convincing. Further, it can be argued on a Virtual Course plot, two ships paralleling each other at 30 knots produces the same plot as both at zero knots - a dot indicating zero relative movement. Thus, in theory the speed malus should not exist. Okay, but historically there have been a number of instances that suggest that once speed gets above about 25 knots, the hit rate can get much lower than predicted. The speed malus plausibly reaches 90%. It must be noted not all of them involved high relative speed. Nowaki was not that much faster than Iowa, so she cannot generate more than a few knots worth of range rate unless she charges Iowa which was clearly not what happened. On some virtual course plot she'll look just like a ~5-knot ship. In the Battle of Java or Komdandorski the ships were broadly paralleling each other for much of the fight, And by the way, this also shows that they weren't always destroyers or "violently maneuvering". The only common thread is that the ships are uh, fast. I don't think I've ever heard of thousands of shells being flung at a slow ship and missing since the advent of director firing, regardless of its maneuvers, aspect or size. There are only so many times we can blame the poor gunnery of the ships involved (in effect, calling them "exceptions") before at least suspecting ... maybe the core problem is that they are fast, and the reasons we use to dismiss that being a factor aren't as strong in reality as they are on paper. The fact is that parallel @30 knots does not look the same as parallel @0 knots once you take your head out of the Virtual Course Plot and into the True Course Plot, and the assessment of course not always as precise as it might feel on paper. There's also the point that historically, destroyers are not insta-killed by battleships. I really don't think they've ever been that hard to kill once competent FCS shows up in UA:D and you are willing to use the main armament, but they definitely die easier than ever in Alpha 4 (of the new missions, Modern Battleships vs 12 destroyers is by far the easiest to steamroll). Apparently, the size malus was effectively nerfed in the face of complaints of its theoretical implausibility, and we are seeing the results. We get rid of the speed malus too, and destroyers WILL start being insta-killed. Look guys - if we don't want lots of dead destroyers, it's between the speed malus and the size malus. We already HAVE a maneuver malus too in case everyone has forgotten. But of course, none of this seems to matter - people see "speed malus NINE-ZERO percent" and vision of all other things uh, disappear. There's not a lot of discussion of whether the game overall "feels" right in terms of how fast ships are dying overall. A disproportionate amount of discussion is on killing the NINE ZERO percent speed malus 😅

Actually, we have a pretty good idea where the main belt is. Right now, the ship is divided into 7 blocks lengthwise. The center THREE blocks are Belt. The other blocks are Extended. Further, due to weight balancing the aft turret often HAS to go on the extremity, so basically if you want to protect that one you have to armor the entire length of the ship.

Check and compare the stat cards. It is already done.

Usually, nations put their best in guns, torpedoes and armor plate. The same is not as true of TDS, where the standard is more like the minimum. Usually, the standard for a battleship would be to resist your own weapons. For the Japanese in the 30s would be a 24 inch torpedo with over a 1000 pound warhead. They settled for 880 pounds resistance (before they added some weak points in a hasty attempt to improve the ship's shell resistance). Of course, this being a game, you can choose to make a wiser choice These four points actually relate to a fundamental tension between the "History" buffs and the Free Campaign buffs. People always want historic guns, historic hulls and historic everything, but they are not as aware of how they are likely to reduce one's ability to go their own way when creating their own nation's navy. The problem (geography and economy) should be realistic - that you are are forced to follow the historical solution should be minimized. By the way, anybody that feels the game is giving them too much information already HAS the buttons within the game to get rid of it - each window can be rolled up by clicking on that down arrow on its upper bar

Actually, it seems that the HP requirement is by type (BB, BC) rather than by Hull Form. If you ask for a certain speed with a certain displacement, the computed HP (and HP required per ton of ship) is always the same as long as you remain within the same type. Hull Form only changes the weight of the engines required for that purported HP.

The main practical functionality of the Target Signature modifier is not its visibility, but the chance to hit. While I don't deliberately shoot for "minimum signature designs", the fact I don't put a bunch of secondaries on my ships is usually enough to give me an advantage in signature. And I do see the difference in hit rates. But they still often detect me first. If the primary function of the modifier is the hit chance, since the volume of the ship is the same it shouldn't be changing just because has turned from a side to a end-on profile. From that perspective, perhaps the better route is to reduce the amount of things that have signature. Towers, sure. Main guns, certainly. But secondary guns probably should just have the increase waived - one by itself isn't that much of a deal but once people (or AI) start putting them on, they put a bunch of them on and it adds up.

Oh, I think I know what happened now, thanks - I confused the V-pen and the H-pen because at the ranges I was in the Side penetration should be larger, but it isn't because of the extreme angle. As for this, it is roughly as per the table - unmodified (using Black Powder), the 17" Mk 5 has a deck penetration of 14.7 inches of iron at 10000m. Every penetration value in this game is of iron.

The other points I don't predict on begrudging if they are put in and work right, but I must point out these two are a significant philosophical choice. What is more important - making historical ships or being able to decide your own way in the campaign. If you limit countries to "historical guns" (even making them the exact caliber to the millimeter), you are limiting them to take the same path as in history which is much less flexible and free.

Not really (at least as per the read-out hit chances). You have 6 guns, so your chance of getting at least 1 hit is 1-(0.74^6)=about 84 percent. His chance of getting at least one hit is 1-(0.84^15)=about 92.7 percent. And his hits are worth more. If you are getting hurt less, it's likely because of your FORTY-FIVE inches of armor.

I'm not thinking specifically of your post, but the grunts all over the place about the toughness of ships against torpedoes. For your pictures oh goddarnit it only ate 7 torpedoes. I also notice it only has 8 14" guns which means there's probably quite a bit of weight left for a good TDS. Just feed it about 5 more torpedoes and see how it reacts first. When people are talking about how overly tough ships are to shells and torpedoes, I think it must be remembered that ships in real life almost certainly did not have the equivalent of the game's maximum damage mitigation systems. Between catalog specs and more subdivision no one can see, the choice in real life is obvious. My technique when designing the Yamato in the link is based on the idea of first building the ship to the Standard displacement (which was about 71000 t by Wiki) with the range locked at Very Short, put in all the "surface stats", fill the unused displacement up with protective systems, then increase the range to Very Long while increasing Displacement to the Full Load, then shrinking the range bar back until everything is within weight limits, and finally another touch-up.

I actually have just done a test that gives me reason to suggest that the torpedo model is overall not working too badly. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PUJRScGSmHA4dh8e7 Basically it is a Yamato-class battleship dying to 9 hits once you actually give it the bulkheads and antitorp facility the real thing might actually have, instead of the best thing there is. Because Yamato's torpedo defense and even subdivision clearly isn't "the best there is". It is a knowingly compromised and flawed design for the sake of haste and draft. Using the 130,000 ton battleship that did not exist in real life with the best in-game torpedo protection and bulkheads and using it as a basis to say things are too tough simply is not on. Now, I'll go confirm how fast the components die if I use maximum defences. https://photos.app.goo.gl/Mk8cGSECuMCQ1etx9 Total number before dying: 59. It has to be noted that not everything was damaged even after 12 hits.

The angle of the ship was approximately 90 the whole time I closed. It is one of those situations much complained about - you close and close at a ship already on Retreat mode and it keeps pointing its stern at you. (BTW, the reason why the distance was opening in the above shots is that I have, like many people, expended my entire ammo stock of 17" shells and am forced to retreat).

What I'm thinking of is my penetration against the side armor, not the top deck armor. Isn't the number on the right supposed to estimate the side armor penetration? BTW, while these are not the best shots, what really rang my alarm bells was how my estimated overall penetration chance actually dropped as I closed. But they are not in these pictures. Oh well, I'll pay more attention next time I have to close a battleship to stab it to death and send some screenshots if I spot it again.

At least according to the armor calculator (the penetration has been decreasing as I close the battleship, but I forgot to take pictures then). And man did the shots bounce a lot, even considering the ricocheting - I am worried that's not just an armor calculator glitch, but what the computer "really" thinks and is making my shells bounce off on that basis.