Reaper Jack

Using that, Avenger has misread the extended armor as well, which should be 35mm for the belt and 60mm for the deck. Making the in game armor significantly lighter than his previous posts.

Get rid of that extra TEN THOUSAND tons you've slapped on for no apparent reason, and the ship weight will also be reduced to well under Bismarck's historical tonnage. She should also have Long Range and Barbette II at the most. Her Extended Armor is also nowhere near that thick and her Anti-flooding should not be above level II. Her turret armor was a known weakness and her TDS was bad on paper, though turned out pretty decent in actual combat. Her Shells should also be Light, not Standard with her guns having full Reload in game, between these two things the 380mm guns will reach about their historical 28 second reload with roughly 1 ton shells, as was also historical.

I've made all those same types with roughly historical equipment and vastly superior armor, and by vastly I mean in the region of 30-40% better. Armor is too light. The OP for this thread uses the Algerie as the example, where in game the armor weighs one third of what it did irl for equal belt thickness. I've seen Heavy Cruisers of 11,000 tons with 300mm+ belts in game as well while still sporting 15 guns and going 30 knots. A LOT of the weight mechanics are completely off. I can design the same ship in RTW with about the same parameters and the weights given are completely different.

Algerie is also the example I used a ways back when I said armour was embarrassingly light. RL Algerie's belt armour alone (not deck or turrets) is 1,500 tons. The same belt in game was something like 450. This along with engines also being too light is the main reason all the AI ships are speed demons with insane armaments. I once saw an 11,500 ton cruisers with 15 203mm guns and a 367mm belt. That sort of belt would weight more than half the ship's entire weight in real life.

I've noticed that accuracy seems to be having some issues after the patch; especially with quad guns. While the aiming itself seems to be fine, sometimes the guns seem to aim at a position that is not where the enemy ship will be. I had volleys that were quite obviously aimed two ship lengths behind the target at ranges as low as 2km (With 50-90% hit chances.)

WW1 is a bit of an odd area for DD's agreed; as around 1916 (post Jutland) is when the switch was being made from Night Attack massed tactics to Escort Roles for Destroyers. Though Torpedo Boats made some very well documented successes in WW1; with the Italians using a patrol boat to sink one of the Austrian Dreadnoughts (admittedly a day after it had been transferred to the new proto-Yugoslav Navy without them knowing.) As I've mentioned in my other posts; torpedoes have a physical size, more than two full reloads should take up both considerable space on a Destroyer to the point of main gun ammunition being basically bare bones and anything above a single reload should be a huge explosive hazard as was the case historically for the IJN. Reloading under fire needs crew to be implemented as well in order to make it as dangerous as it realistically should be.

This. a DD's primary roles were ASW and AA. Ship to ship combat for DD's was only employed on a major scale by the IJN (hence Long Lances designed specifically for this along with the other IJN torpedo specials like the powered loading equipment and turreted mounts) as neither of these roles has much use in game right now, all Destroyers revert to Torpedo Boats instead. While other nations certainly used their Destroyers against other surface ships, the cases where this resulted in the Destroyers winning the engagement were rare. Most of these engagements ended in either a stalemate, failed attack by the DD's or the loss of one or more of the DD's for no real gain. The only major success that comes to mind is the squadron of 4 British DD's which sunk one of the Myoko's in mid 1945 in the last gun to gun naval engagement in history, with no losses. Also note from my earlier comment; I forgot the obligatory *except the IJN which is always needed when discussing torpedo reloads. Other nations did not carry more than one full reload on their Destroyers, though some Cruisers did. And of course there are exceptions for one or two ships throughout. The problem I have in game with carrying an insane amount of reloads (2-3 full) is that it's not reflected that there are literally dozens of tons of explosives lying around on deck or in containers which are just eager to be set off. Torpedoes are big, much bigger than is usually realized, fitting even 30 of them aboard a ship takes a lot of space, that space is unlikely to be armored enough to resist even 127mm guns unless it's deep in the hull, in which case you're trading shell storage for it irl.

It has, by myself and others, the devs decreased the possible available reloads as a result. I know that for myself at least I was left unsatisfied as no ship in history ever carried more than one full reload for all tubes with some extra torps to spare on occasion (usually Japanese ships) except for subs, which would carry multiple reloads; type IXs for example carried at least 2 reloads per tube with a couple torps left over at full load. Most of us who discussed this before also felt that reloading mid combat should be impossible without special equipment such as what the IJN used.

As others have pointed out before me as well, realism and gameplay are linked. Real life ship designs work or do not work because they are subject to real life conditions; if those same conditions are not simulated in game, then the ships that are best to use will not be anything like real life designs that worked historically. Right now this is why the ships that work in the single use scenarios are almost always the biggest, heaviest, most armored or bust. Most of the gameplay issues you mention are AI problems, and Nick has confirmed they are working on making the AI much smarter.

One of the biggest problem with armor in game right now is it weighs barely a quarter of what it did historically. For example, the Algerie class has a belt armor of 110mm at a weight of about 1500 tons (and is around Krupp III equivalent) whereas 110mm of Krupp III belt armor in game weighs significantly less on an in game Heavy Cruiser, to the extent where you could slap multiple extra main battery guns on board to make up that deficit. This is imo the main reason AI ships tend to have so many guns. Armor simply does not weigh enough. This is also why in game Heavy Cruisers of even 12k tons can magically have belt armors of the same level as a Battleship.

Yeah this is what I was getting at. I'm aware that single launches were rare historically, though they did happen. Having that control is needed right now when your DD has 3 or 4 launchers.

The problem with only carrying a single torpedo reload at the moment is simple. In real life, you could launch one tube at a time, you did not have to launch a full 'salvo' every time you wanted to fire a torpedo at something. Right now in game the ship just dumps all torpedoes onto a single target when launching no matter how few or many are in the tubes. If we had manual torpedo firing (click a button to launch one torpedo at a time) a lot of the problems with having historical reloads go away.

Unless we're talking dockside camouflage as used by the Tirpitz, Gota Lejon and the rather amusing Japanese jungle paint schemes, then no, this was generally not the intention. 'Camouflage' on ships was generally used for aircraft recognition (in the case of the German stripes and swastikas and painted turret tops specifically) or to break up a ship's silhouette and make it harder to identify, the most famous example of which is the infamous dazzle camouflage employed by the USA. The Kriegsmarine in particular however experimented with a number of paint schemes to make their ships appear different to what they were, on almost all Heavy Cruisers and larger the KM painted white bow waves, left the bow and stern a different color and painted a bow and stern in darker colors along the hull and many other things to make their ships appear smaller or as different classes, this of course actually worked for Prinz Eugen at the Battle of the Denmark Strait (or at least we can generously assume it may have been a contributing factor to why she was identified as Bismarck aside from her being the lead ship in the line) and the Scharnhorsts were misidentified on occasion because of it, though usually not for long.

It should balance itself out with the cost. Sure, you could build a 100k ton plus BB, but you have to then build the drydock to build it, and the docking spaces to berth it, and this is on top of the ship already being three times as expensive as a normal Battleship. Personally I don't plan on building anything that exceeds 60k tons and might not even go for 18 inch/457mm guns at all, once things are properly implemented there really won't be much point to them except to hunt Battleships, but at that point you're better off using a smaller fleet of the same cost to do that.

6-7 Long Lances is enough to sink as many cruisers/destroyers or on average 2-4 Capital Ships. 100 fired is if we're still talking IJN, a single volley from two 6 ship squadrons of a DD group leader (CL) and 5 DD's If that was my result I'd be overjoyed as the IJN admiral. 12 ships of 2 CL's and 10 DD's equates to about 35,000-40,000 tons of steel, or the same as a single Colorado. If those ships can get into range like that, fire, and sink that amount of warship every time they do then even if this happens only once a year those ships have paid for themselves 4 or 5 times over while making Juane Ecole very happy in his afterlife. It's easy to forget how many torpedoes were actually being carried around by ships at sea during the war, the number is in the tens of thousands at any given time, increasing as time went on, they were and are a lethal weapon system, far more so than guns ever were. and therefore need to be balanced as such. Spending every battle in game dodging torpedoes every 2-5 minutes from ships that don't have the room to carry them or the ability to reload them mid combat irl is tedious, frustrating and unrealistic. They *should* be powerful yes, and more accurate and harder to detect than they are now, just as was the case in real life, but they should also be just as limited as real life and have the same weaknesses (you hit torpedo! It cooks off! Enemy ship goes big boom!) to balance that out.

Feels like significantly more when I've seen destroyers carrying over 100 torpedoes. Worst case was 112 on 20-24 tubes. The 4 quad launchers were carrying 80 between them and the remaining smaller tubes (I think it was a couple doubles and a couple singles?) made up the rest. This was on a DD. I might see if I can replicate it later. So as you can see this is a 20 torpedo design, and indeed I was wrong, 10 reloads is simply what it felt like when I had to face similar designs, but still, carrying 108 torpedoes on a ship? Where are they for starters? In this design I could only imagine they're all stored in the raised sections beneath the tubes, but if that's the case I expect any hit to that region to send my ship into pieces of fireworks, it's just not realistic at all.

Wasn't aware some carried more honestly although it is obviously not standard procedure and I am not counting underwater launchers (forgot to mention that) due to their irl use being basically worthless and even here with the singular exception of the Shiratsuyu and Asashio they all fall under the reduced category in game. But perhaps more importantly, my original point can be added to by saying that torpedoes even if the reload is not available should not be able to be reloaded in mere minutes, it takes at least 15 minutes for a crew to load torpedoes under combat conditions (the entire launcher that is) and that's assuming they're not being fired at while they do so. And again, that's a rather small list of classes considering and mostly limited to the Japanese and Germans except for underwater tubes which were as discussed historically not very useful. And even here the Germans carried only two reloads at the most. Not the up to 10 we commonly see in game. Even the Asashio/Shiratusyu is only eight reloads and we all know how easily IJN Destroyers went up like Christmas trees.

Agreed. There isn't a single ship in the entire game that should have more than a single reload of torpedoes, with the majority having half a reload or sometimes none. Even the Torpedo obsessed IJN only carried one reload's worth of torpedoes per tube. The fact that reduced torpedoes still gives 3-4 reloads, normal gives about 6 and increased gives up to 10 is frankly insane, if a destroyer is carrying 30-50 torpedoes in deck cases I expect it go big boom when it gets hit by even a 2 inch gun. As for torpedo range, I honestly have a big issue with it. Again, only the IJN actually solved the issues of using fleet borne torpedoes at extreme range with the Type 93, everybody else had to live with torpedoes that were effective out to only 12-15km at the most and even then that was on slow settings as low as 20 knots to get the range that high. The Type 93's were expensive and volatile by comparison to other torpedoes, not to mention the increased weight and maintenance cost of including an oxygen generator system on the ships (which also increase big boom risk) that carried them. Torpedoes should be more powerful but unable to be launched willy nilly, and with more historical speeds and ranges. Only Oxygen torpedoes should be able to make fast speeds at range and oxygen torpedoes need to come with that extra risk factor to balance them out alongside their higher cost. As for playing non modern stuff, I thoroughly suggest you try building some Sverige type CA's at some point (1911 design) and have some fun with them Steeltrap, I had three of them going practically toe to toe with AI British BC designs I was throwing at them, was quite interesting to observe and has lead me to think that such ships would be quite useful for cheap but heavy firepower in the early game for Germany, Russia, Italy, France and Austria-Hungary.

This is fine and I don't think anyone has an issue with this, the issue is that we're consistently seeing enemy ships with worse tech/guns that have higher accuracy than we do under the same conditions. The fact that if I range fight I have an average hit ratio of 1-2% is perfectly fine. It's not fine when the enemy with older guns and fire control on a less stable platform firing at my faster, maneuvering ship has 5%.

We still need a full breakdown of how the accuracy system works, badly. Target fast speed is still waaaaaaay overclocked for what it is (to the point that going at cruising speed for the accuracy buff is entirely pointless as you lose out too much compared to just going flank speed to avoid incoming rounds) but most importantly what I think needs to be looked at is base accuracy and I think there are hidden modifiers that we can't see when holding the cursor over a target ship. Let me explain. I have two Mk. 5 356mm armed BC's with C-V rangefinders and Radar II, their base accuracy versus target ship is 3% at 9km. Enemy ship is armed with Mk. 3 381mm guns, has S-IV rangefinders and Radar I, her base accuracy at the same range is 6%. I had the tech edge in every department and yet my base accuracy before modifiers was half that of the enemy ship. Additionally I went down the list of accuracy modifiers on each side as well, my overall modifier was about 200% higher than the enemy's, and yet I still had a 3% overall accuracy when the enemy ship had 12%. It just doesn't make sense even with the lower base accuracy. This is why I'm convinced there are some modifiers that we can't see.

Likewise would prefer this system. If I send out a Panzerschiff with a long range escort of a Diesel CL and a pair of diesel DD Leaders I want all four to be in formation when raiding. (The main reason I even want such escorts is for ASW and to see off DD's and CL's that want to torpedo the Panzerschiff so it would make no sense if they were not involved in a battle.)

Personally when I play my first Germany campaign, I'm going to attempt to get around this by building mostly surface raider squadrons for Ocean duty, and a Swedish style Coastal Defence Fleet for home waters; this will both make up the numbers and project power as needed to counter the issue of having a lower budget and falling behind (by building ships that take less time to complete) and while I will invest in Battleships, they will be lighter armed, just enough to be a threat to anything smaller than them, while I will use cruiser fleet doctrine to bring down heavier enemies. I've been trying this in Custom Battles lately to mostly good success, cruisers armed with big enough guns to see off other cruisers while having the torpedoes and speed to threaten BB's has done a great job so far, as long as they themselves are also screened by escorts with yet more torpedoes; this is the Coastal Defence idea I want to go far, freeing up heavier units (such as 6 x 356/381 armed BC's or 6 x 406 armed BB's) to project power in the Atlantic alongside smaller, stealthy raiders similar to the historical Panzerschiff.

You should be able to build them sure. The cost of doing so should be as immense as the Yamatos was historically (and worse for even bigger ships) and stunt your navy in other areas, again, as it should. There needs to be a push and pull system, where you can't just get the best toys without there being a drawback or some sort of pay off, this system not existing is actually causing a lot of the game's issues right now aside from armor not being modeled correctly yet. Mostly with ships that can have it all, armor, huge guns and speed.

To clarify, I was not advocating actual limits, more what the rough limits would be per year considering the tech and hulls we'd likely have access to.

Not exactly. Ships at the moment are designed with the full load weight, what this doesn't show you is the fuel weight as well as a few others weight stats that are presently hidden under the 'hull' weight. (This is all range is by the way, it's just how large the fuel tanks on board are; and personally, I would prefer to see this mechanic moved to a place-able fuel tank(s) which then gave us a maximum operating range in km at x speed, this would also allow fuel tanks to be hit in combat unlike currently, and let us fine tune them a bit in terms of fore and aft balance as well as use them as additional armor, as ships did historically.) There's also the issue right now that certain components have massive weight compared to historically, such as radar, radar gen II increases your tower weight by a stupid amount for how small a radar unit actually is while other parts of the ship are horrendously underweighted, this is most visible with armor, where currently for example belt armor is often less than a quarter of the weight it should be. That is HUGE. Meanwhile torpedo belts are also very light compared to historically, and they're actually quite heavy components already. WW2 Heavy Cruisers such as the Hippers only had 80-100mm belts for a reason despite weighing near 18,000 tons, the Algerie's 120mm belt weighs 1500 tons alone, meanwhile in game we have heavy cruiser hulls with 300+mm of belt armor that weighs 500 tons. At the moment, you don't have to choose between guns and armor, you get both, when historically this was a tremendous struggle to get right. Meanwhile a 9,000 ton light cruiser can have a 100mm belt and 18 180mm guns in game, yet irl similar Light Cruisers of that same weight class and same class of belt armor such as the French La Galissonniere class could have only 9 152mm guns while only pulling a speed of 32-35 knots. And we cannot forget that those particular French Cruisers were praised for being a very efficient design on the displacement available, or in other words, the best case scenario.