Reaper Jack

Yeah they're the same guys. Nick = Darth Hence his forum picture haha

Good news that is. Would also like to see turrets split further into nation, mark, artillery size and also caliber i.e. barrel length. No one for example would say that the Deutschlands and Scharnhorsts used the same guns precisely because of the caliber difference between the two. Despite otherwise being the same size, design and relatively similar vintage.

Damage model needs serious work combined with AI not having hard limits on anything so it almost always outperforms the player. And the biggest issue in the current iteration being the target ship speed modifier to accuracy which renders your guns useless. Best example? German Pride. You cannot build a ship that goes more than 31 knots and still have enough weight/cost to do anything useful while the AI can field 381mm guns in 4 triple turrets, go 35+ knots and have a 500mm armor belt all on less weight than you. And they get a cruiser squadron and destroyer squadron in addition to your historical German pair of ships. Hard caps on designs are long overdue. Especially on engines. Capital ships do not exceed 33.5 knots. Period. This was simply never possible irl in the game's timeframe. Hard cap it. While we're at it, hard cap armor values at 450mm (for belts) as well, thicker than that isn't possible. Cruisers also never exceeded 200mm of belt armour but can have far more in game. Capping these things isn't the best solution I know, but it is the best temporary solution until the weight/power interactions and armor model/compartment model are complete.

Was using High TNT myself, HE would do damage but the entire enemy BC was red except for four compartments at the bow so was sitting on 23% structure for 300+ 381mm rounds I pumped at it. So the damage done was entirely superficial. Saturation is...a stopgap measure as mechanics go. A real ship that got hit in an already effectively destroyed compartment would still take more structural damage to that compartment, resulting in floodings that could not be stopped or even taht section of hull being torn away entirely, we need this in game as well as allowing AP which can penetrate past red sections to actually do something against ships that run away presenting their stern. Also worth noting, the most extreme test of new shells I did was 4 x CA with 8 x 229mm guns apiece taking on 3 light cruisers and a battlecruiser in custom battles, guns only. The Light cruisers went down like swiss cheese at 14km distance, all three took about 10-15 shells apiece and flooded out (poor AI design) and i actually couldn't tell if less shells had caused the 'finishing' blow on any of them. The Battlecruiser did put two cruisers down to 60% structure and 70% floatability each before it too was sunk by the four heavy cruisers holding distance at 8km and 33 knot speed. It took about 200 shell hits, I was not penetrating the armor (except the extended sections) until about 9km, and that was when the flooding started, it still had about 40% structure left when it flooded out.

So post hotfix, stern chases are still impossible to win, you always run out of ammo. Transverse bulkheads need to be in game, period. Additionally, entire columns of structure that are damaged to red need to either still take 25% of usual damage or perhaps start to flood due to the integrity of that entire section of ship being completely compromised.

Yep, and this is why a lot of peeps take issue with these ships making such high speeds, irl that ship's engines would account for 20k tonnage alone, and then the ship itself would have to be bigger, more tonnage, less hydrodynamics etc. It just wouldn't work. Also the armour values are insanely high for that weight as well. Bismarck with a 15 inch belt had that armour take up a quarter to a third of the entire ship's weight.

Low ammo counts are actually good for early to mid game ships. Their range will generally be quite bad unless they are purpose built raiders/escorts and their natural risk of detonating is higher. This means getting back to port for more ammo quickly or shorter patrols in general. And in any case, the ammo counts only feel poor right now because of the very high armor and resistance we see at the moment.

All of the scaled down hulls have this problem, the BC and CA Hulls for Germany for example cannot mount their four inch guns in the correct snap points either. CC was only ever used for command ships and proposed for the Alaskas due to their defined class as 'Large Cruisers' itself only coming about because the USN used it to pretend they were cruisers and not capital ships in order to secure funding. This was not officially followed through on. BC has always been the definition for Battlecruisers. This is an issue with the scaled down hulls, both the American and German CA hulls should have a much narrower beam as well, the British one is just a copied scaled down Iowa so completely wrong. They're placeholders for now. Also, the German ww2 capital hulls are too straight, historically they resemble a pair of teardrops overlapping with their ends pointed away from one another, or an extended, pointy oval shape. See? The hull is not straight lines at all. Again I am assuming that is because the present base hull (before superstructure) is moreorless the same for all capital ships regardless of nation at the moment. Going by this image the turrets for the mark 4 381mm guns should also be not quite as elongated, and the barrels should be ever so much shorter. (I wonder if we will see the same mark of guns with a different length in game? Like the Graf Spee 283mm vs the Scharnhorst 283mm?)

Different sizes. Submarines in WW2 carried 21 inchers usually, aerial torps are smaller 18 inchers by necessity, and then surface torps include things like the 24 inch long lances. Differences do not sound like much, but the payloads of those sizes are orders of magnitude different from one another. As for the Yamato's weakness in her TDS, the Shinano, which in theory should have had a similar TDS, did indeed go down in relatively short order to a pair of torpedoes hitting that same weak spot on a deeper run, with additional damage of two more torpedoes further back along the hull. This was all on one side of the ship, and despite deliberate counter flooding, she capsized just as Musashi did. Yamato herself was the exception, not the rule, when it came to that particular hull type's TDS.

Modernizations were a lot more extensive than that generally. Sure, some ships would only receive some more AA, some new fire control if they were lucky. But others went through extensive and massive rebuilds. Take a look at the Andrea Dorias or the Kongos for example, the Italian ships had their gun size increased (though the guns themselves were not replaced, but some were removed) and their entire silhouette restructured along with massive hydrodynamic and machinery rebuilds, as well as armor. While the Kongos received one of the largest engine reworks in history, again had their entire machinery and superstructure rebuilt, and also had several armor improvements. I have no doubt that they will be included in game, it's basically a must for a 50-60 year campaign run.

Intended to achieve is just that though, many designs had fundamental flaws after production that there was no or at least very little method of seeing in the design itself. The Yamatos in particular come to mind here, as well as over-engineered German ships post Deutschlands. The KGV's as well with quad turrets that had issues for several years, same issue for the French. Some designs would exceed their designed speeds (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau both did by half a knot.) while others fell short. (Bismarck almost never made her 30 knot design speed, one of the reasons the Tirpitz was given larger engine power.) While other navies fudged the numbers so their ships appeared faster. (Soviet Navy and Tashkent, doing speed trials with low fuel, no guns installed and no ammo carried, on the calmest sea in existence.) Another note on the Bismarck in particular; from Battleship Bismarck, A Survivor's Story. 'As the ship's stability and manoeuvrability were being tested, a flaw in her design was discovered. When attempting to steer the ship solely through altering propeller revolutions, the crew learned that Bismarck could be kept on course only with great difficulty. Even with the outboard screws running at full power in opposite directions, they generated only a slight turning ability'

Agreed, also a 7 knot difference from 30.5 to 37.5 knots should not be eight or ten times as effective as the difference from 20-27 knots, that's just poor consistency. I wouldn't be too bothered by poor hit chances on destroyers attaining these speeds, but precious few cruisers and no capital ships ever managed more than 36 knots. With capitals never exceeding 32 until the Iowas and only then making 33 knots. And even then the vast majority of battleships top out at 30 knots with battlecruisers topping out at 31.5 (Scharnhorsts and Dunkerques.) On paper the only capital ship designs to exceed these boundaries before the Iowas were the Project 1047 BC's and the O-Class raiders. Both of which sacrificed massive amounts of armour to hit 34-35 knots.

- Never said so, I am saying that maneuver penalties are not severe enough, I do not expect to see an 1895 armored cruiser one shot Destroyer after Destroyer at 7km with 229mm guns, hitting nearly every volley from one turret, all the while at full rudder shift and changing speed. (Yes, I watched this happen to varying levels on repeat.) - Oxygen torpedoes can reach over 22km in game, or at least I have seen AI torpedoes that reached 22km. Yes, they should be the most powerful, never disputed that (they should also be a massive explosion risk and be very, very expensive.) Cheap torpedoes have shorter ranges, this is what you paid for historically, if you wanted 15km range with the German G7a for example, you slowed the speed to 26 knots, meanwhile electric torpedoes never achieved ranges in the double km digits through WW2, which frankly is a price they should pay for an 87% boost to their stealth. Agai, there are factors we don't currently have to account for which are at play, such as the campaign economy and the fact I haven't seen torp tubes get detonated since Alpha 2. Oxygen will not be the be all and end all weapon for torpedoes if you go in a different direction. - Guns did deter destroyers from making torpedo runs, several times. The most famous example is the night action versus Bismarck before she was sunk, her secondaries did exactly what secondaries were built to do, not sink, but tell the enemy Destroyer to sod off in the most explosive manner possible. - 7.5% is plenty as far as accuracy is concerned, add modifiers and it goes up, my heavy cruisers have gotten up to 20% accuracy at current max range. (Which is too much.) And also, no, you're not protected from 6 inch weapons, the range difference between them, especially if different shell types are used, or different propellants, can be less than 1km. 11 Inch guns are fine and dandy, but be prepared to pay through the nose for them in the campaign. From the designs I have made if you're putting 11 inchers on cruisers you might as well build a small battlecruiser instead going by the little costs window.

Aye, I went off on a bit of a tangent indeed. My concern with torpedo dodging is that the AI gets no penalty for making maneuvers literally every 5 seconds (in terms of accuracy, realistically they would be constantly acquiring a new firing solution.) And as of right now, the AI can micromanage dodge with individual ships while we as the human player cannot, a simple check box to automatically maneuver when torpedoes are spotted would go a long way, seeing as the AI clearly already does this, and would mean we still have control over our ships. I also believe this check box should exist for a ship retreating to the rear part of the line, or that it should be a given order to do so. I've had a few too many times where the lead ship attempts to do this and simply blocks off the other ships, forming a pile up of sorts. Torpedo damage on the other hand would need to also be more realistic if we are going to go in the direction of actual realistic torp numbers on board. This will vary heavily and mean that you as the designer have to consider the very real threat of torpedoes and allocate weight to protecting against them. However I also believe that only Oxygen torpedoes should have range above 10km, while I am sure that some regular and electric torpedoes could go over 10km, the cases were rare, or they sacrificed speed to do so, this would give our secondaries a better opportunity to do their job, combine crew into this as well, and near misses will persuade destroyers to break off attempted torpedo runs as will direct hits, before they enter torpedo range. As for gun ranges, no, I must disagree. In game Eighteen Inch or 457mm guns can reach almost 40km, as they did historically, but modern heavy cruiser guns can barely make half their historical range? This presents a problem to me because half the point of the modern treaty and post treaty cruisers was mobile actions that required dishing out damage almost surgically while taking as little as possible in return. Outranging smaller guns was part of this strategy for all navies as even destroyer shells and especially light cruiser shells could be catastrophic to Heavy Cruisers, especially the low armoured treaty cruisers. The only guns that should have a range in the 10-18km region are destroyer weapons up to 140mm. (Also, 139/140mm or 5.5 inch guns are something I would like to see added, as several navies used them historically. Notably France and the USSR, with dual purpose 140mm secondaries considered for use by many more.)

Will finally post a general list of issues that I can see with the current update. - As others have said, AP post penetration damage is pitiful. - AP would also massively benefit from a realistic armor model instead of the placeholder we have, including transverse bulkheads being added. - Ship speeds per horsepower and overall possible speeds remain unrealistic. Right now engines are generating too many knots per horsepower (given the horsepower I see in the stats list compared to historical designs.) Capital ship hulls need to be capped at 34 knots, and that's still being generous to them. Cruiser hulls should be capped at 37 knots. Destroyers capped at 42. Early hulls should be capped even lower due to poor hydrodynamics and the inability to build large engines, not to mention the fact that earlier hulls simply didn't have the space to fit larger engines, especially early destroyers. Maximum engine size should scale with ship size. In the campaign those same engines should be under the ability to be modernized or replaced later. - Shell types and turret stats. All turrets still have unrealistic weights for shells as well as muzzle velocities. I would like to see each nation getting their own turret stats as well as shell weight and velocity differences varied between all nations, but not always enough to use the different shell types we have now. To take as one example, the recently added 'Mk 4' German 381mm, the muzzle velocity is too high and the shell weight is too high, only becoming close to historical value if you use light shells which then makes the muzzle velocity far, far higher than historical. Gun range is also far lower than historical as well, a 203mm turret at mark 4 or 5 can achieve somewhere between 14-16.5km range in game, while historically they achieved between 29-33km, the 152mm secondaries on battleships also made 27km historically and barely make 13km in game. Larger gun calibres seem to be better but still slightly short of historical values. Reloads on all late turrets are also marginally too slow with standard shells unless you use the best reload tech (which if I am not mistaken should not be available in the late 30's historically, unless the Des Moines style autoloader is just not in game yet.) - Crew is a much needed mechanic. Crew members dying and reducing efficiency or having to be replaced will swing things in a completely different direction than right now. Ships will have to either keep shooting back or put out fires etc. and crew morale is a massive factor that cannot be overlooked. Once a ship hits 20% structural integrity will it's captain retreat, keep fighting, or give the orders to abandon ship, assuming that she's lost? Perhaps crews could have prestige or captains have minor personalities to reflect such choices? - Compartment damage is too minimal at the moment, as are floodings and module damage. I don't think I've destroyed a single module on any capital ship post update (I still can on cruisers) to complete red, only yellow. Conversely, engine damage seems much more common now, even when my citadel belt or deck armor has not been penetrated. - Campaign economy. While RAMJB was kind enough to point out some reasons for the differences in some of my earlier screenshots, there are outliers. Construction cost seems to be mostly fine except for heavy cruisers, which cost almost as much as a battlecruiser of far greater size. But I also noted that most heavy cruisers are actually more expensive or just as expensive to maintain per month as BC's of similar period and tech. I understand this is not a priority right now but it is something that needs to be looked at before the campaign is deployed, elsewise all these beautiful cruiser hulls will become kind of pointless. - Certain Naval Academy missions are impossible under the current patch due to either the timers being too short (with damage being nerfed this patch.) or due to the enemy ships being near impossible to defeat except through luck, mostly because they run away at greater speeds than you can even build for that mission when the mission is to kill them, and you can't slow them down due to poor shell performance under current patch. - We need the ability to design our secondary vessels in both custom battles and the naval academy, some fights are decided based on what your AI built vs what their AI built. (Biggest gripe here is the Prinz Eugen you get for the Denmark Strait mission, it's 203's reloaded slower than my 381's nine times out of ten. Just one example.) - Torpedoes need to be reduced in number (as I noted in a post just above this) but their damage when they do hit needs to be realistic also. Right now they seem to fare slightly underwhelmingly against cruisers but very underwhelmingly against capital ships. - Transport ships take an insane amount of shells to sink, even with HE. In Destroyers vs Transports it took literally 400+ 102mm shells to bring down a single transport, the old problem of ships not taking damage when their structure drops low is back and very much unwelcome. - The AI is too good at dodging torpedoes, or, if the AI wants to constantly move in circles and zig zag and do all these extra things to dodge torps (that no human will ever have the time to do micromanaging your entire fleet, especially as you can't give individual ships rudder orders, only divisions) then it needs to start taking severe accuracy penalties, MASSIVE penalties. That's about everything I believe. Apologies for the wall of text.

Very much agreed, even taking reduced torpedo ammo counts still gives me 2-3 reloads per tube, this is far, far too much, there simply isn't the space on board most ships to carry even a single torpedo reload with mostly the IJN doing it historically. Reduced should be no reloads, standard should be half a full reload and Increased should be one full reload. This will also stop the AI from staying at 20km+ range with Oxygen torps from DD's that effectively become submarines and launching dozens upon dozens of them that poorly mobile, heavy units will not be able to dodge. (H Class mission the 8 enemy DD's all had 15 tubes with 3 full reloads. I was approached by a wall of torps somewhere in the 60 number that I was simply unable to dodge all of, though I did minimize damage, the issue was when it happened again...and again...and again, completely unrealistic. I also vote for increasing their damage and reducing their number.)

This is why I am hoping crew becomes a thing sooner rather than later. In all likelihood you would have killed the men manning those guns, towers etc. before ruining the equipment itself, and then there is the question of morale and how much of a pounding a ship will take before a captain starts giving the orders to abandon ship.

Will second others regarding damage and specifically flooding and module resistance however. I'm finding it impossible to complete the H Class mission due to enemy ships running away at 30 knots after moderate damage and 457mm guns being unable to damage anything important enough to slow them down...meanwhile enemy 457mm guns go through Krupp IV 480mm thick belt armor to ammo rack me, go figure. AP feels really weak, penetration mechanics are fine, but post penetration damage is pitiful. And again, making the armor model more realistic needs to be priority number one. I am mostly seeing ships going down by a thousand cuts as the saying goes simply because they've been on fire for hours and hours, and while this is fine, it should not be the only cause of sinking I am seeing besides detonations.

Not my experience, properly applied 21 and 24 inch (standard and long lance sizes) are devastating even to ships of sufficient countermeasures. I took out a pair of heavy cruisers in custom battles earlier with anti torp II, anti flooding III, triple bottomed hulls and auxiliary power for water pumping. One took a single 21 inch torpedo for 40% floatability and 30% structure damage, flooding two compartments, the other took two for 65% floatability and 55% structure damage with four compartments flooded and one partial flood. Both ships lost between 50-80% of engine power despite my having installed redundancy systems. This was from three relatively standard issue torpedoes. Had that been irl I would have expected similar results, give or take a little in either direction. Both ships if not reinforced quickly would have been operational losses due to losing mobility. (See Bismarck.) That's something that is easy to forget, right now it is about sinking everything, in the actual campaign it will be about disabling and forcing your opponent to spend longer in port than you. Victory = / = All enemies sunk.

Bismarck took many, many torpedoes when she was sunk/scuttled, but not that many. I forget which of the Yamato class, Musashi or Yamato, took the most, one of them took torpedoes in the double digits before she sank. We shouldn't see even the best anti-torp systems prevent sinking after a dozen or so solid 21 inch torpedo hits (historical standard size for WW2 torpedoes.) Worth noting for future balancing.

@RAMJB So uh...about those maintenance costs we were discussing yesterday... Tried my hand at making a P-class scaled down to be a more realistic successor to the Deutschland Panzerschiff design. Yeah. More expensive to maintain than the BC almost twice it's weight and almost as expensive to build too. (Note that the compnents I used are not quite as modern, but only barely, I used Krupp III armor and anti torp I and citadel III instead of IV, III and IV respectively, otherwise similar components.) Just pointing this out so the devs can start to balance the campaign economy, seeing as that is the future feature most of us are after at the end of the day.

All are fair points, I would give a pretty penny for access to such information, this also raises the question of whether or not we will get to mothball ships in the campaign, and the cost of reactivating them, maintenance cost will also be a rather nice incentive to get rid of old ships (presumably we will get to scrap them for some monetary return, though I would like to see museum ships as a prestige option at the cost of not getting anything out of it...unless it generates income for you?) And aye, I'm actually looking forward to the infrastructure side of things, not in the least because I can't wait to see what the AI does with tonnage limits, as right now they always seem to go ballistic towards the high end. I just want the campaign already damn it.

Maintenance cost, forgot to specify. Hmm, in that case I wonder how they scale facing one another.

I still feel that quadruple the cost is rather silly. Double perhaps, but in this current case I would absolutely take four of these over one Bismarck.

To prove my earlier point about the Bismarck hull being prohibitively expensive. This battlecruiser hull actually has better overall armor than the Bismarck hull I built earlier, has better secondaries, has torpedoes, is 3 knots faster, still has the same internal components, only skimping by one level of torpedo belt, and is fully a quarter of the cost and maintenance cost, and take a bit over a year less time to build. The catch? I lose a single turret, that's it. While this isn't a problem right now, I do hope that the devs are looking at economy tweaks for the campaign, because paying quadruple the price for a single double turret on a new (slightly more stable) hull seems kind of daft.