shaitan

This is the monstrosity I completed it with recently. Note, it mounts a single (1) fore mounted 10" gun, and 4 x 8" guns mounted in the rearmost broadsides. The armour was sufficient that the opposing ships weaponry was practically ineffective at all ranges. It is so slow it barely turns, so the tactical usage requires you to sail straight at the monitors using the fore 10" gun. When the orbiting monitor exceeds the available traverse on the fore gun, turn in the opposite direction, and keep turning, until the 10" gun bears on the target again. Rinse and repeat for the eternity it takes to score damaging hits sufficient to sink your opponent. Shellwise I was running an increased load of super heavy shells packing ballistite, with enhanced reloading. The 8" broadside batteries were sufficient only for setting fires and slowly (very) reducing the opposing ships speed. Note that this battle took a very long to complete for this ship.. particular when needing to re-align the fore battery, time acceleration is highly recommended.

For what I was hoping for the game, I'm with Doug on this one. If the current mechanical state of the game is how it is going to be, definitely disappointed. Campaign may still be fun regardless, if it provides a decent challenge/some interest mechanics to play around with pretend ship design ala Rule the Waves, but yeah, the combat feels lacking in its current state because it is to far towards the gaming abstraction for my specific tastes. That's fine though, doesn't mean it is a bad game, just not the game I have been hoping for ever since I played Great Naval Battles decades ago.

Been mentioned by others already, but seeing as how it has become a sticking point for me, I feel compelled to inquire: how final is the current implementation of the damage model?

Related to the difficulty of destroying a fleeing battleship however, is that the deck armour is modeled as being at the height of the upper deck, such non-penetrating plunging hits are deemed to do zero damage, whereas a realistic armoured deck will merely stop plunging hits from damaging -vital- components. Combine this with penetrating plunging hits still only ever destroying the highest deck location, this leaving the mid and lower damage locations completely untouched, and it contributes to making battleships beyond a certain tonnage and armour level nigh on impossible to kill if they choose to run.

With respect to saving custom battle designs, and being able to design more than one type of vessel, would it be useful to work these two features together. Basically, have a separate design screen, whose sole purpose is to generate saved designs. Then for the custom battles screen, if you want to use a specific design, just point it to one of these pre-saved designs?

I can't help but wonder, with regards to the preceding comments, how much the AI factors probability of armour penetration into its target selection mechanics. Given that increasing angles of incidence reduce probability of armour penetration, if this consideration were bumped up in the AIs target selection priorities list, it could lead to less focussed target selection across a a fleet. Ships relatively distant from the lead element would have their shots land at a less than ideal angle for armour penetration, reducing the value of that target in the eyes of the AI. It wouldn't go all the way to fully distributed firing techniques, but would spread out into a few groupings along an opposing line, depending on how strictly it was applied and exactly how the selection logic was written.

You may be correct in your assessment, my ordering is down to my inherent biases with regards to the limitations of an AI opponent. In my view, if a player is primarily driven by the desire for challenging game play, then they will gravitate to multiplayer titles. No AI opponent no matter how smart it appears will ever truly challenge a competent players tactical decision making for any long period of time unless it is playing on an asymmetrical rule set (such as in AI War) or is allowed to somehow cheat the rules of the game that a player must adhere to (as in many other RTS titles with omniscient AI with production buffs). Given this understanding, I believe for a single player historical title, it is more important for the longevity of a game to primarily provide an immersive experience that gives the illusion of simulating its world faithfully. A player will always have the ability to circumvent the historical wisdom of the time and experiment with abusing the rules and systems of the game for maximum performance should they choose, part of the fun of historical titles is seeing how operating in an ahistorical manner changes outcomes against historical opponents, at least for me. Again, you are correct, in that many of this issues interact and influence each other. That being said, while 'passage of lines' is interdependent on the ability of the AI to manouver cleanly, the core decision making that is trying to send light units in between two groups of battleships is still something I believe is flawed and was thus worth highlighting as a separate item for consideration concurrent with the aforementioned issue. I agree that for AI sub command of player units, greater ability to define roles and responsibilities for AI commanded sub divisions would be extremely useful. However, my focus in this discussion was directed towards wholly AI commanded fleets (ie. the AI opponent a player will face), so in the context of this discussion I mentioned 'primary gun lines' merely as a shorthand for the leading formation of the heaviest type, which the AI uses as its reference point for all other orders issued to its subordinate units, be that to follow or support that unit. In a player fleet many of these issues can be circumvented by experience and more time spent micromanaging ones forces to avoid them stumbling on each other, thus allowing a player a distinct advantage in large fleet actions such that they may easily manouver their well ordered fleet to a position such that it can piecemeal pick off AI ships escaping their customary traffic jam.

Preface. I am not the kind of player who can remain engaged for very long with static missions such as offered in the Naval Academy. However, give me a custom battle setup with AI controllable forces and a spreadsheet, and days will fly by. Thus recently with release of the latest Alpha update (Alpha 4 v67) I have been spending a fair amount of time smashing fleets of AI ships together while I patiently await the arrival of the campaign mode. During this time I have observed some behaviours that I feel it would be useful to begin a discussion on. Unfortunately this means a wall of text of incoming, but hopefully someone will find the time to read it and perhaps some useful points to engage with and discuss as development of this fine game continues. Perceived desirable traits. As of the time of writing, this will be a single player game. As such, the AI opponents needs to provide a challenging and engaging game play experience whilst not being so complex as to be to computationally heavy and bogging down the simulation. To my mind, providing this engagement can be done in two complementing fashions. The first of these is verisimilitude. The AI should exhibit behaviours that mimic real world/human behaviours, to provide the illusion that hidden away behind your screen an enemy Beatty or Scheer is directing the opposing forces and doing their damndest to prevail against you. The second element is to provide a challenge. The AI should understand the systems inherent in the game it is playing. It should utilise those systems at the least in a competent manner in order to provide the greatest tactical challenge to a competent player. This includes at least giving the illusion of pursuing a coherent tactical battle plan, with some variety of overall approaches roughly appropriate to a given engagements strategic/tactical considerations. With these traits in mind, I will now highlight what I think are the largest negative factors presented by the AI admirals as currently implemented. Target selection. I have observed ships of all classes primarily engaging the lightest visible opposing elements with all available weaponry unless engaged at very close ranges. This results in some very spectacular explosions when a battleships main battery lands a square blow on a torpedo boat, but is perhaps not entirely desirable and certainly challenges perceptions of verisimilitude with the games gunnery model. I believe that a ships primary and secondary batteries should engage opposing forces with respect to the vessels role within the fleet. Ideally ships primary weaponry should be engaging their opposing class first, engaging down only when no ideal target presents itself, and only engaging up as a last resort. Secondary weaponry should prefer to engage down, although certain classes of secondary weaponry may be optimised for other targets. This assumes relatively historical ship design considerations, although given the design flexibility inherent in this title, perhaps prioritising targets dependent on the calibre of the individual battery would be more appropriate? As a suggestion, perhaps a useful guideline for weapon based target selection would be: 2-5” weaponry would prioritise torpedo boats and destroyers 4-7” would prioritise light / protected Cruisers 6-9” would prioritise armoured / heavy Cruisers, possibly lightly armoured battlecruisers 10”+ should be engaging enemy battleships and battlecruisers as priority. Torpedoes should be prioritised as engaging the heaviest viable targets, though as a weapon of opportunity they should be used against any target that presents itself. Perhaps the margin of allowable error should be judged much more strictly when choosing to engage light manouverable elements such as opposing torpedo boats. Currently an entire fleet will engage a single enemy vessel until its destruction. While probably the correct choice for the damage model as currently implemented, as more gradual reduction in fighting ability from accrued impacts is implemented (through crew casualties and the like), it should become viable to implement a more historically accurate tactic of each ship with in a line engaging its opposing number in the enemy line, only beginning to double up when friendly forces maintain numerical superiority. Formation Keeping. This mostly comes up when a unit tries to fall out of line due to battle damage. Currently a unit seeking to fall back to the end of their squadrons battle line will do a full 180 turn to achieve this via the shortest path for their current relative position (often coming to a complete stop in front of the enemy gun line and disrupting the formation of following friendly elements, also causing them to come to a complete stop). However, ships of the era -should- be aiming to maintain constant speed. The correct course of action for a ship unable to keep pace with their squadron is to pull out of line -away- from opposing forces, before settling into a parallel course allowing friendly units to pass between themselves and the enemy. Similarly, when formations are disrupted, the lead ship should reduce speed to allow the rest of their squadron to catch up, currently once disrupted any lead element that missed the blockage will quickly become isolated and find itself facing enemy forces alone and distant from supporting friendlies. Position selection for supporting units: when given the supporting role (as opposed to follow), squadrons seek to position themselves between the supported formations and the enemy fleet. While this is the correct choice for scouting units before the main battle lines become engaged, this positioning is suicidal once heavier enemy forces are within firing range. Ideally supporting forces should be withdrawing to a position behind the primary gun line once battle is joined, only sallying back through the line should it become necessary to fend off enemy destroyer/torpedo boat attacks. These attacks should also not be the default behaviour for destroyers and torpedo boat, these forces should be held in reserve until such times as the battle lines close to a short distance or to finish off vessels already crippled by gunfire. Supporting units manouvering around primary gun line. This remains problematic and causes many of the formation issues mentioned above. When mixed category fleets are manouvering together, the heavier elements at most should hold their course when approached by lighter elements. A single torpedo boat trying to reach the other side of a battle line should not disrupt an entire squadron of battleships. Heavier elements should hold their course and allow the lighter units to perform the bulk of the evasive manouvering. Similarly, when selecting an appropriate path, unless capable of performing a well timed turn between gaps in a battle line (probably a bit complex to ask of an AI tracking many constantly changing variables of speed, position and tactical situation), the AI needs to be aware of all ships in a formation it is trying to manouver past. Ideally, instead of just trying to avoid the lead ship in a formation and disrupting all vessels trying to follow it, a formation should choose to reduce speed and allow the interceding formation to pass before cutting behind them to reach their intended position. Fleet manouver. Probably the lowest priority to adjust/implement as current, as addressing all previous issues will drastically change the conditions in which the current implementation is working and possibly produce different outcomes. Current observation seems to indicate 3 broad class of AI/AI engagements. The first, and most aesthetic, is when the lead element of each fleet chooses to make their initial turn onto parallel courses, forming something of a classic battle line IF the majority of supporting elements have been set to follow and thus falling out of the engagement envelope of the leading gun line, allowing the classic gun duel to develop. If lighter elements are supporting and thus interposed between the gun lines however, the second type of engagement evolves in which battleships seeking to engage light elements end up clashing at a 90 degree angle at close range, the initial stages of this engagement are often slightly farcical with Battleships within spitting distance of each other engaging distant torpedo boats with everything they have, and as lighter elements succumb finally devolving into a close range slugging match, if one side fit torpedoes they tend to win at 1890s tech, if both side fit torpedoes, everybody dies. The third engagement resolves when lead elements turn onto opposing courses, resulting in a circling engagement that will first slaughter supporting light elements caught in the middle (who often find themselves entangled with their opposing numbers), before falling onto the following support elements at the tail of each fleet, the battleships only finally engaging their opposing numbers when all lighter shipping has been eradicated. Closing Remarks. I understand that at this stage of development, many of the core mechanical systems the AI must utilise and work around are still very much in flux. Thus until the game systems themselves stabilise at some closer to a releasable state, to much work on the AI can be seen as a waste of developer time and effort. However, as we approach the time in which the campaign mode is released to the public for testing and comment, having a functional and satisfying AI opponent will go a long way towards showing the systems in place in their best possible light and allow current and future players to remain engaged with the games future development. This engagement would generate further interest with the titles progress and hopefully contribute towards the success of the final product. All errors and misunderstandings of the systems currently on show are my own and no fault of the development team. Finally, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

Quantity is limited, but you can use the side mounted main battery weapons to enable larger sub batteries than the officially designated secondary calibers. Used this to mount some turreted 6" 'secondaries' to my oversized Mikasa.

Sure! Running an Intel i7-8700 @ 3.2 GHz with 32 GB of RAM. GPU is an 8 GB RX570. Not top of the line but still a decent system, did a budget upgrade earlier this year.

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster etc. Figured I finally had something worthwhile to say and share with the community. With the addition of the custom battles, I wanted to see what this game was capable of by chucking the software and my machine into the deep end. A quick trip to wiki to refresh myself on the numbers and the Battle of Tsushima Straight was quickly set up. As I had no idea yet what the AI generated designs would look like, and because I had included the coastal battleships in the Russian Battleship count, I decided to design the Japanese battleships myself. (Okay, honestly, I did it because it's fun). Pulled out all the bells and whistles and ended up with essentially an upscaled Mikasa. After final tweaks to the design, was pleasantly surprised by the rapid generation of the opposing forces followed by a very quick load into the sim. Took like, 10 seconds tops, very nice. Immediately paused and set about inspecting the cruisers and escorts I had been assigned. Set all the battleships to aggressive gunnery as this seems to help with the splitting of primary and secondary battery targeting, I would allow my squadrons to choose their own targets for the duration of the battle, aside from issuing orders for smoke in destroyer squadrons under attack I limited my input to controlling the battleship squadron at the lead of the formation and utilising the follow/screen/ai orders for everything else. Possibly made things worse for myself by shuffling around some squadron assignments before the fleet was underway but it bothered me having squadrons of 3 and 5 when I could make even squadrons of 4. The battleships were merged from 2 squadrons (4 and 1) into a single 5 ship squadron. Theoretically there were a couple of cruiser squadrons ordered to follow to form a battle line, but even though it seems to have improved from previous builds, AI controlled ships still struggle to order themselves from the large ball of ships they deploy in. (The battle lasted a couple of hours, most of the ships escaped slowly in a trickle throughout the entire duration, ending up with 2 destroyer squadrons stubbornly deadlocked together and completely stationary. Edge case I know, but it seems the AI is to eager to try to drive through the middle of a line of ships to get where it wants to go, rather than slowing down and passing behind the line once the obstruction is clear. This is somewhat exacerbated by the fact that all ships take evasive manoeuvre to avoid each other, a single stray torpedo boat can easily disrupt a battle line of battleships when ideally the smaller more agile vessel should be the one to make way. It does seem this has improved, but still some work to do). Even starting from 15km it seemed contact was immediate as the Japanese fleet got underway, the Russians sighted us first, and it was a test of patience to advance rapidly enough to reduce exposure to unanswered fire without over extending the lead elements of the fleet free of the initial traffic jam before their fellows could position themselves to assist. In future even with technologically limited sighting technology I would probably push my initial distance up to allow some time to sort the fleet out before contact is made. Not unsurprisingly, with 90 ships in play and hundreds of shells screaming towards their targets, frame rates suffered somewhat, by my estimation they probably ended up around 10-15 fps at worst, clearing up as the battle progressed. Admirably, control inputs remained smooth for the entire duration of the battle and the frame rate never stuttered so badly as to be a detriment to game play. Trailing the fleet out behind them the battleships of the Japanese lead squadron attempted to maintain a 4-5km gap and bore west towards the leading Russian battleships, this turned out to be a good distance to avoid attempted torpedo strikes with the screening vessels of the fleet giving ample warning for the battleship squadron to plan their reaction carefully rather than having to take last minute evasive manoeuvres. I got to use my latest newfound trick in that manually setting the rudder when controlling a squadron orders all ships in squadron on to that rudder setting, effecting a battle turn away in perfect unison and looking very spiffy and professional. The Japanese fleet proceeded to methodically peel apart their opposition, even without direct input of targeting orders for myself, the fact that I positioned my battleships to directly engage their opposite numbers played heavily against the AI, whose own battleships main batteries were preoccupied engaging the intervening screen of destroyers and cruisers. This is another area in which I have noticed improvement, in that secondary batteries appear to be much more accurate and effective at engaging small targets, unfortunately again, there is still work to be done, the quickest way to deal with a destroyer or torpedo boat remains turning the full fury of your battlewagon's main battery on them, I feel like heavy turrets could 'benefit' from an accuracy malus based on the radians/sec their target is preventing to them as used in Eve Online. The sheer mass and inertia of those massive turrets would make accurately laying guns on small nimble targets not worth the gun crews time, the job should be left to secondary and tertiary batteries or the ships escorts, as these were the reason these systems existed in the first place. The AIs obsession with my smaller vessels also further hamstrung them, the Battleship squadron was never actively engaged by enemy gunfire for the entire duration of the engagement, leaving them free to pick apart the nearest Russian battleships one by one. (The Russians ships it should be noted, though numerous on the heavy end, were deceptively fragile thanks to minimum bulkheads almost across the board, fire and flooding proved rapidly lethal once it had taken a foothold on any of the their vessels). The final result seemed to have been a forgone conclusion, somewhere in the mess some cruisers and destroyers managed to escape. I note now that there is an notification for enemy smoke once no vessels remain in sight, though the initial report indicates the last sinking ship as the nearest vessel, it rapidly righted itself to indicate what I presume was the correct direction once she had fully slipped beneath the waves. Sadly even after spending roughly 5 game hours under time acceleration chasing the indicated bearing I never again made contact, guess those lucky souls live to fight another day. Interestingly the torpedo boat squadron I sent ahead to scout eventually seems to have exceeded some maximum allowable distance and I lost the ability to issue heading orders to them, however switching them to AI control immediately directed them to rejoin the rest of the fleet as it cruised in good order. (Finally :P ) Overall, I must say, I impressed with how well the game handled me asking it to put far to many vessels into play, and while there are still niggling issues here and there (as is to be expected from alpha releases), there is definite improvement being made. Kudos to the development team, keep at it lads, look forward to seeing how this game evolves as we work our way towards release and (hopefully!) well beyond. Bonus screenshot of the Japanese flagship looking pretty as she engages the distant foe.