tvaishar

I absolutely agree here. The armour limit has a huge impact on the game (and even bigger in campaign). Some armour limitation is desirable, but it has to be implemented carefuly. Current implementation not only hampers general survivability of ships (some classes more than others) but it also makes them worse gunnery platforms as the main belt and deck armour was used to reduce pitch and roll. And if you factor in campaign enviroment - you will lose more ships and your ships will stay longer out of service due to repairs. Not to mention changes in economy. But the "Icankilleverythingwithmy12inchers" problem is a coin with two sides. The other is the variety in charges, propellants, gun calibre and barrel length. You can equip your ship with a large gun of basically any calibre and have a large range of pen values over various distances. It is hard to build ship that counters that. I remember that before this variety was implemented I was able to build ships with immunity zones - with armour reliably protecting the ship against predictable pen value in certain range of distances. And work with this in battle. I don't think it is possible now. Nowadays we count much more (it was always a thing) on our gunnery being better than AI's rather than on armour.

Hi, I have the very same problem. Just to get pitch level from yellow numbers requires lot of undesirable design choices: decreasing aft and fore armour thickness, bloating main belt and deck armour, decreasing draught, decreasing number of bulkheads etc. I came back to the game after a year or so and I am quite surprised how difficult balancing the ship became. Back in the day, it was easy to get pitch slightly over 10% just by making the ship compact - not to extend turret placement towards bow and stern too much. But now, it is not possible. But when I inspect AI designs, they tend to have very high pitch - definitely over 25%, sometimes over 30%. Is lower twenties a new norm here or is it some kind of bug?

Well, armor was ok (12+ inches main belt if I recall correctly), main battery was 11 inches, secondaries of all sizes, few bulkheads and speed? 16 knots. But at least they used safe ammo (tube powder + tnt II), so it didn't blow up.

Japanese Nelson class tanker on a lot of acid.

Secondaries are not completly useless, they can hit a thing now and than but: Them to be really effective requires higher caliber and/or larger broadside Which increases overall tonage and usually roll (they are mounted on sides), thus lowering accuracy Relative price of reaiming your main battery to a sec. target isn't high enough not to be worthy - you are simply firing with larger, more accurate guns with much higher damage potential.

Are you sure this is a good idea? I don't put armor on my ship to receive critical damage by partial penetrations. Partial penterations quite often damage engines which kinda defeats any design a tactical considerations. You slap some armor on your ship, engage enemy from a safe distance from which a) you can damage the enemy and b) your armor works. And the armor works, you receive minimum full pens. But the partial ones still damage engines which is a huge penalty to your mobility and your design looks like a failure.

According to my experience, this mission begs for plunging fire solution. But I am not talking about v74, I finished it earlier, so things might have changed. To go bow in and destroy them quickly from shorter range is possible, but not likely. Reason A - destroyers. Their torpedo spreads are deadly. Reason B - zombification. You damage a ship, she starts to run away and you keep on hitting her already destroyed stern. And then you run out of ammo. Also your ship may had been damaged too so you can be even slower than the escaping enemy. But imagine this: you stay at around 30km and I presume your ship is armed with 17 or 18 inch guns, not less. With top technology, what accuracy do you have? 5-8%? Thats enough. Load HE (Lydite is not necessary, I was using some kind of TNT). You will pen decks no problem and doing a lot of damage. And they start to run away. But you stay at distance and continue hitting them from above. So no zombification from hitting them to the same spot over and over again. And DDs? When I was playing this mission, they always stayed with their capital ships, they never engaged me if I stayed so far away. There is a question of them firing back and doing plunging fire damage to you as well. But as I recall correctly, the four original ships were never armed with guns larger than 16 inch. So at distance, the accuracy difference between your 18 and their 16 can be substantial. The Super Yamato is armed with 17 or 18 inchers, you must deal with it. One more thing: Ammo count. I have a number of unsuccessful attempts with as small superbattleship as possible - with only three turrets. Which gives you around 800 shells. The results were always close and the same. All enemy ships heavilly damaged, all in range, just waiting for the the final blow to be delivered. And then I ran out of ammo. Always go with 4 turrets (double or tripple doesn't matter).

I have the same experience and made the same conclusion - I always favoured BC over BB, but the flash fire machanics made it no brainer. BBs are supposed to soak up damage, while BCs should avoid it (by speed). And no matter how sturdy and resilient you BB is, if hit to certain areas, there is always a dice roll (aka flash fire) which can send your ship to the bottom. And I can speculate, that this is exactly the reason, why the flash fire was implemented - it is an arbitrary RNG element to counter the edge which a human player has over the AI.

I can confirm that, even with different config (three turrets with dual 17 inchers). First salvo full, second salvo only one turret fires. And this keeps on alternating. No course change whatsoever, fully aimed.