Reaper Jack

This isn't wholly inaccurate, especially for what appears to be an older vessel (though modern looking guns) shooting at you. As Ramjb himself said, turning your superstructure to slag will not sink you, though I would have expected your towers and secondaries to be destroyed at the end and they were not, that clearly needs work. 13 inchers are also woefully inadequate in the 40's for anything much more than convoy raiding and defence, or against cruisers, 14 inch or 356mm guns were considered the minimum for battleline usage at this point for a reason. Nice vid though, this is the sort of stuff we need to talk about so the devs can change things in a positive direction.

Well, unless you're a French DD or a Russian one that doesn't have it's guns or ammo on board, heh. yeah same equipment. If that is the case then my issue becomes two things; one, yeah that sort of speed is insane (did a cursory look at the Hood hull and the default middle of the road speed is 36 knots. Thirty six.) And two, the accuracy issues shooting at ships doing more than 35 knots have clearly not been resolved.

Quick question, what fire control were you using and what were the stability/pitch and smoke interference stats? I'd like to confirm if I did something wonky with my Bismarck I posted earlier or whether firing at a BC going 45 knots just makes accuracy Hellish because speed affects it too much still.

As we're posting pics though, here, have a Bismarck, almost entirely accurate I believe, right down to the weight. Again though I wish the hull was double ended teardrop shaped as it should be. Sadly from what I can see she'll be horrendously overpriced for the campaign. I designed a German BC with the new BC hull in custom battles afterwards and got 6x356mm guns and the same armor and more speed with the same components for 14k less tonnage and a quarter to a third of the price. (And under a quarter maintenance price.) Only reason I couldn't go 6x381mm was because the tower barbette can't hold them for some reason. Which, speaking of, neither the German CA or BC hulls can mount historical secondaries in their correct snap points, only the BB hull can. The picture below is to prove my point about the accuracy issues I was having with full modern fire control and gunnery. 40% at ramming distance, the AI BC had 100% accuracy on me for some time at that point, and somehow ammo racked me at an angle with the same guns as I had (seeing the German 381's on the Hood hull was also depressing) through a 360mm Krupp IV belt, meanwhile my guns when they did hit shattered on him almost every time despite his hull having a top armor score of 280mm at Krupp IV. My point here is, the German hulls look pretty, but so far playtesting them, they have all felt very underpowered and that's mostly down to awful accuracy. The exception is the CA hull, in which I took out 2 historical Hippers (slightly uparmored but the same weight) against 4 CL's and a CA with 1940 tech and wiped the floor with them with both torps and gunnery.

Which is a feature I thoroughly dislike, no capital ship ever reached 35 knots. The Iowas are the fastest BB/BC in history at 33 knots and they had an engine setup in the 210,000 SHP region and excellent hydrodynamics. The fact I am seeing the AI design BC's from the 1920's that can do 45 knots is frankly absurd, such a ship would have zero armor unless it weighed in at upwards of 80,000 tons (where it would need more engine power to get to such speeds so therefore even more weight...you see the circle repeat...) and buckle under the weight of itself at that sort of speed.

Denmark Strait Mission is completely borked. The Hood design does FORTYFIVE knots (always did after multiple reloads) and the speed modifier to accuracy means it basically can't be hit. Best Fire Control, best Radar, best possible guns, 6% accuracy at 3.7km. The Cruiser representing the Eugen that you get is also usually trash, barely having 13km range and with guns at 203mm that reload slower than your BB's do. It feels like you have every disadvantage when you should have the more modern ship(s) at your disposal. The German designs look nice, though the hull is not quite rounded enough. The German ships look like elongated teardrops from a bird's eye view (with tips at both ends of course.) Rather than the straight lines of the Iowas and Yamatos. Also experiencing a bug where one of my ships simply refuses to fire. And again, I have more modern ships equipped far better, and older enemy Battlecruisers have quadruple my accuracy with older guns and worse fire control, both sides are traveling at 33 knots. Something feels really wrong.

Yep 1890 is already pushing things. Germany for example doesn't have any pre-dreadnoughts until 1893 historically, and she's one of the major naval powers of the era, so think about the position Spain, China, Russia and a late 19th Century Japan will have. IIRC, only Britain and France had modern (for the time) capital ships in 1890 with some of the other powers beginning to build them or having them on the design table. -Edit- Nope, even Britain did not have a true pre dread until 1892. We're looking at oversized, mixed battery super ironclads before that.

This is the casemate that was to be mounted on the Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser right? Interesting looking weapon. The question here is if typical BB casemate positions can fit it, as the German CV's were designed with the space to do so, but I can see this particular mount causing issues with top weight and stability as well as upper belt armour on say, a Bayern.

I wonder if the Revenge class crews cracked jokes about making 20 knots in 20 minutes. In any case, I am slightly surprised the battlecruisers took so long to hit max speed, but if I recall correctly their engines were vintage and underpowered for those designs. (By WW2 anyway.)

Haven't played RTW but I think I understand the point people are making, if this is the case then making ships such as dedicated convoy raiders as Germany would not be viable for example as they would be constantly thrown up against random ships in a random order themselves? General purpose ships are great, but specific role ships also have a place, convoy raiders, destroyer leaders, escort ships etc. come to mind. AA cruisers are a moot point as of right now as are ASW ships of course, as no carriers or subs. (Both of which I would like to see in game as designable units, if for no other reason than so everyone cannot build super destroyers or have ships with no AA because the weight of the additional equipment simply isn't present. Also dual purpose guns are a thing that have genuine advantages and drawbacks compared to same size guns that are purely anti-ship weapons.) Subs I think would work fine in the battle mode we have now, and carriers would also work fine as aircraft did not truly become powerful until the 40's, which is at the very back end of the timeline. I think implementing both types as they are in Atlantic Fleet would work nicely, just in real time. So both as actual units you control, and for subs, ticking tonnage if enemy convoys are left unescorted.

Sure, as long as you can't hit anything with them and your top stability gets turned to trash, again reducing accuracy. Quads were already pushing the boundaries of what was viable and as such were not useful until 1938 (On the KGV's) while the French ones were terrible until 42/43 when the dispersion problems were finally getting solved. Sextuple turrets in 1917...are just decoration. Triple superfiring is perhaps possible on certain designs, but your ship stability and center of gravity would take heavy penalties for them.

Correct me if I am wrong, but prior to WW2, wasn't it the Mk 9 which was in service? I know the New Orleans and older cruisers had their Mk 9's replaced during the war, but I am not sure what the Baltimores or the Wichita were constructed with. My point about the good performance was that the German gun was good for a weapon designed in the first half of the 30's, compared to the latter half or early 40's as the American guns were. Not that it was any use to the Kriegsmarine anyway, with the gross incompetence of many of the Naval Staff and worst of all, the complete lack of foresight for building escorts that could actually ESCORT the raiding ships. Short Range Destroyers and inferior Light Cruisers being the two major issues throughout the war, at least while the Kriegsmarine was still trying to use it's capital ships. I often wonder how much more effective the Panzerschiffe may have been with a long range diesel powered large destroyer or very light cruiser equipped with an AA and ASW Suite would have been. Same story for all the German Capital Ships really. Though for the doctrine the Bismarcks were a waste of resources, nothing larger than Scharnhorsts were needed, and even they were a big stretch in that regard; a stronger focus on escorted cruiser/panzerschiff raiders with more numerous U-Boats would have been far more terrifying. Ah but the benefits of hindsight. Still, you would have thought someone would have at least attempted to tell Hitler that huge Battleships did not fit the doctrine for fuel reasons or practical use, or maybe that did, but Hitler was Hitler and said he wanted the big guns.

As long as the AI gets the same system it should be fine. Having faulty equipment is also a methodology for stopping players from building designs that were historically absurd, such as triple 18 inch turrets in 1910. There's a reason it wasn't done historically; the technology, while possible, was not up to standard yet.

In some designs perhaps, adding deck armor to a turtleback would be a nightmare regardless, and adding any armor to the deck would still require ripping out the old armor under the superstructure, barbettes etc. and replacing it, you can't just slap extra plates on top either, that's a half assed job that will throw top stability completely out of whack. Belt armor is again, doable but not worth the effort usually. The Deutschland class pre Graf Spee had planned minor upgrades to bring them to the 100mm belt standard of the Graf Spee, though these plans were only realized under construction for the Admiral Scheer, and then only partially, and the Deutschland itself was never upgraded armor-wise post construction. From wikipedia - 'Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee had some improvements in armor thickness. The barbettes, 100 mm thick in Deutschland, became 125 mm for the two sisters. Admiral Scheer had the belt somewhat improved, and Admiral Graf Spee had a much more improved 100 mm belt, instead of 50–80 mm. The armored deck was improved as well, and some places had up to 70 mm thickness.' Some ships did receive changes to their belt armor, but this was exceedingly rare and when done tended to be minor changes at best.

Was mostly trying to point out that before the hotfix wasn't right either, and I know I went somewhere out of bounds with where some of my points started going, I get lost in discussing the history often. For the armor pen values, that's why I put *kinetic equivalent*, I know those guns could not pen that much armor as armor was built at the time. And besides, even 240mm of pen at 10km is impressive for eight inchers built in the 30's. Wasn't debating Bismarck's loss to small guns either, was saying they were a contributing factor, with many minor systems suffering damage from the cruiser guns, including pumps, secondaries etc. If we really want to get technical, she was a combat loss the instant Lutjens was an idiot and didn't maintain radio silence, or when her rudder was jammed, pick your poison, but those two things did more for her loss than any combat she took part in. Her actual loss is irrelevant the moment she became an operational loss due to those two things. Add to this, that the Germans scuttled her, presumably to prevent boarding and capture of codes/other secrets or the ship itself (she was still sinking regardless I believe, but a boarding party may have been able to order enough repairs at gunpoint to capture her, this is speculation on my part, but I would say it's sensible to assume the German Officers on board thought about such a case.) I do agree that the in game values are presently inflated for penetration and such, but the in game armor values are also horrifically inflated with Krupp IV providing vastly more protection than any ship had historically, this is also I assume down to the armor model not being finished, as you yourself have mentioned in posts before. Fixing one requires fixing of the other as well. And please forgive my errors, my memory of most of these things isn't perfect, and I don't tend to remember when or where I read about most of it as the majority of my knowledge comes from physical museums and pieces, though I am working on collecting as many naval history books as I can, or as my money allows anyway. Sadly they are not that common in the US as they tend to only focus on American history and victories here. As for the shell in the PoW, I was referring to the shell found while she was in Rosyth for repairs after the battles, looking it up again it appears modern consensus is that it was a 381mm shell from Bismarck in the aft boiler rooms yes. When I read about it, it was a 203mm shell, and I remembered the impact area wrong it seems. Good to know that more correct info has brought matters up to date.

Adjusting engine power/size and armor would also be hard. Engines due to needing to rip out half the ship to get to them, and armor again due to needing to essentially rip the ship apart and rebuild it, with some rare cases (Andrea Doria class, Kongo Class) this was done on a large scale, but not often. And of those two I am fairly sure the armor was barely touched in either case, though the engines were replaced/rebuilt in both classes. Which for the Kongos especially lead to a dramatic increase in speed.

I mentioned this in passing in the feedback thread a few days ago, in relation to German shells in WW2 being of notoriously shoddy/sabotaged manufacture, with half of all German hits during the battle of Denmark Strait being duds. Definitely would like to see it implemented, sensibly as arkhangelsk put it. Skimping on budget, suppliers, using slave labor or labor not loyal to the country, poor manufacture. These are all components we should see in a campaign, often on paper a ship can be better than others but in reality it's these background, secondary factors that mark it as actually being better or worse than others. (On paper some Soviet ships were actually decent, in reality they are all frankly trash due to reasons like the ones I mentioned.)

You say it's historically out of whack...but. Against early and all or nothing armor schemes, small guns at close ranges were devastating. Tsushima is actually one of the best examples of this; the IJN had less heavy capital ships and fewer high calibre barrels, but significantly more cruisers, torpedo boats/early destroyers and therefore smaller guns, and the effect of such massed focus fire was utterly devastating. (This may also however be in part due to the Japanese perfection of what is Lyddite in game, I'm not 100% sure.) More modern examples include Bismarck (It wasn't just large shells that made her a combat loss, many of her systems were knocked out by smaller shells during her final battle.), The Haguro, a Myoko class heavy cruiser, going down to a Destroyer Flotilla in a straight gun/torpedo duel at the end of the war. (Last gunfight in history for those who are interested.) The Prinz Eugen also penetrated both Hood and Prince of Wales with 203mm/8 inch HE shells, one of which was later found undetonated (a dud) inside one of Prince of Wales' secondary magazines. One of these shells set the fire on Hood that detonated her AA magazines for her secondary arms and AA guns which some still debate lead to her final detonation, and not the Bismarck. The Tenryuu sunk or damaged multiple US Heavy Cruisers with 140mm/5.5 inch guns and some torpedo action. These are just what I remember off the top of my head. But even up to WW2, unless you had heavy enough armor and a turtleback (and even this is not guaranteed protection), small guns were very capable of annihilating your ship at close ranges. Especially high velocity weapons, such as the German 203mm guns on the Hippers, could happily penetrate the kinetic equivalent of 400mm or more of steel at close in ranges. As for accuracy, Battleship main guns are actually among the least accurate of weapons until the Iowas, and even they could never boast more than a 3-5% hit rate under test conditions. To use the Denmark Strait as an example again, the Prinz Eugen collected more hits on target than the Bismarck did, despite firing less ammo overall. (If we include Bismarck secondaries also firing.) Fortunately for the British, German shells suffered many defects in production, and just over half of all hits were duds. Had they not been, it is likely the Prince of Wales would also have been lost. (Wondering if dud shells and torpedoes will ever also be added to the game. Perhaps reflecting poor economic conditions in the home country during the campaign?) As with all things in the Alpha, it will be balanced out, but just because ships had armor they were not invincible. Lighter guns could and would do significant damage to and through armor, whether the current levels in game are appropriate or not is up to the devs to balance.

I imagine after the first in game 'Great War' (remember conflicts are dynamic) we will have the option of convening treaties such as Washington and London. With further options for things resembling the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and cheating on the treaties, along with things like the Escalator Clause. (Allowed bigger ships and 406mm/16 inch guns if a nation left the treaty, this historically happened with Japan in the late 30's.)

It has been proven by Petrel's dive on Chokai that her torpedoes did not detonate the ship, rather that the sealed oxygen generator possibly contributed to spreading fires faster. That's it. She was sunk by other means (magazine detonation I believe, not torpedo detonation.) The only Japanese shipwreck studied that has been 100% confirmed to have been destroyed by it's Type 93's detonating is the Akizuki. They were more volatile for sure, and I have little knowledge of detonations that did not sink their respective ships, but as far as we know they were a contributing cause to losses, not a leading one.

Still think that the AI should not choose to upgun every single time. Smaller sizes have other advantages, lower maintenance, cheaper to build, industries were already in place to make said guns, rate of fire, ship weight, balance, reliability, historically cruiser guns tended to be the most accurate as well, etc. There's also the fact that 8-10 inches might not sound like a huge difference, but in naval gunnery it really is, an 8 inch gun is still smaller, with most shells weighing about 200kg/440 lb. To take say the Graf Spee's 11 inch guns, those shells could weigh almost 150kg more, or a 75% increase in weight for about a 42% increase in size, the technical issues this presents to mounting such guns on a smaller cruiser platform is a big one. There's a reason no designs for anything employing larger than 8 inch guns were ever approved for cruisers even after the treaties were done away with. And the Spee and other Deutschlands only got away with it by employing six barrels and lackluster armor to make up for keeping the weight reasonable so the ship didn't capsize in a small squall; any more guns and the instability would have been too much. Bigger was not always better. To use the 8 inch guns as an example, shells from the Prinz Eugen penetrated the Prince of Wales in vital areas (and the Hood too, into magazine spaces) during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, a dud, undetonated shell from the Eugen was in fact found in Prince of Wale's ammunition storage after the battle when she went to dock in the USA for repair. Which speaking of, dud weaponry might be a factor to add at some point. (To reflect a home industries/economy problem maybe? Campaign stuff.)

Liking the patch but destroyers have been massively overbuffed. Before you had a 5-10% chance to hit them and that was okay, but playing the new heavy cruiser mission I have two issues. One - They took (easily) 100+ hits from 203mm main guns and 102mm secondaries. This is too much, tried AP and HE. Two - The hit chance. My God. Three things here. - Small target profile, -70% - Maneuver (in ANY turn, even slight), -80% - High speed, -90% All in all that's a total of -240% to any incoming shell hit chance just because it's a destroyer, this is too much. I had to close in brawl the destroyers to kill them. (As in ramming distance.) And even here my hit chance was never above 5% until I started to damage engines. My other complaint about the armored cruisers you have to fight is they should not have access to Krupp armor of any kind, +100% armor on a ship with a 200mm belt is not fun to 203mm armed modern CA's. I actually think that all armors need to keep weight reduction and increase cost but barely affect thickness, some of the values we see right now are obscene which in turn makes anything other than the highest size guns kind of pointless. I beat the mission not with Graf Spee type ships or gun focused 203mm armed treaty cruisers but with IJN Style Long Lance Torpedo cruisers that wiped the floor with the armored cruisers purely with long range torps. I also find it very unrealistic that every single enemy armored cruiser we ever see has at least 230mm (9 inch) plus guns when historically this was an exception except in very early types with awful reloads. (and the aforementioned Panzerschiff types.) Right now it feels like the AI almost always picks the largest guns available to it, even if they're of a poor Mark.

Dunkerque Hull - Quad barrel and all guns forward designs are slated for inclusion at a later date. German Hulls - The Scharnhorst and Bismarck hulls are actually very similar, in game we have the dreadnought long and dreadnought wide hulls already, these two are like a 1930's version of those. This will probably translate to the tech for Hull number *x* researching both of them and you the player getting to choose which one you want to use. Heavy cruiser hulls - The hull of the Pola is being added today. She's a Zara class cruiser laid down in 1931, and about equivalent to the French Algerie, German Hipper, Spanish Canarias, British York, American New Orleans, Japanese Myokou and Argentine Vinticinco de Mayo. She was the most modern of Italy's heavy cruisers and actually survived the war.