madham82

Yea I wish I could play with the files to test my theory. I would say modify the transport hull values to be a number similar to the hull/towers of a BB. That should make them visible at ranges like a BB. From the game stats, the values are clearly modifying surface detectability after the fact, when surface detectability should be fixed for the hull/tower. Adding turrets, funnels, and torpedo launchers should not "magically" increase that. You can't even make out those kind of features except at relatively close ranges. Just look at all the times ships get wrongly identified IRL.

Quality wins short wars, quantity long ones. Japan's strategy was a short war, which obviously didn't happen. Just look at the number of ships the Japanese built "during" the war versus the US. Yamamoto was right.

Do you know how to modify the target signature values for hulls and components? I'm starting to believe these values are responsible for the unrealistic sighting ranges for most ships. For example, transports might not get sighted by a DD until 2-3KMs. This is because their target signature is so low and DD tower spotting is already low.

Lots of good ideas but want to bring more attention to this one as it a horrible gameplay experience. AI just needs to take a run or fight to the last man stance. Run if it has speed to outrun, fight if it can't. Could add something to make the ship run behind friendly ships to have them draw fire. If no friendlies to flee towards, fight to the end. Separate topics: 1. Spotting needs a rework based on how other similar games in this genre work at the very least. Right now we have a mix of WoWS, C&C, and RTW. This is not a good mix as the balancing of competing ideas has created completely arbitrary system that is full of exploits and contractions to what gave rise to the historical era the game is based on. 2. Torpedoes reloads should require special equipment and take up valuable deck space, crew, and displacement. Torpedoes are lethal and have already shown to be way more effective in the campaign than historical. This throws out of balance many of the core concepts in the games and ship roles. By making single shot tubes common and fixing spotting, we will find torpedoes back in balance with the whole reasoning behind building dreadnaughts. 3. Refits refits refits....need say more? 4. Torpedo protection needs to degrade with hits to the same side/sections of hull. What is technically feasible I am not sure, but ideally keep track of sections hit on both sides of the ship. Right now protection offers a flat damage reduction to hits regardless of how many. This will help balance torpedoes with the other suggestions above and make avoidance that much more imperative even for well protected ships. 5. Armor viewer/editor to allow us to see the placement of the different sections of armor to ensure designs are protected as intended. Ideally would like to change the length/height of sections, but I would settle for it being a factor in choosing hulls. 6. Retreat option for ending battles or ordering ships to flee. This preserves your ship/fleet, but is considered a loss for the battle. This could go in with fixes to the stern chase AI.

Seems like the last time this was brought up there was some evidence to suggest that turrets placed in those stern section (think it was the last 3 boxes on the damage model) would be outside the main belt. Flash fires frequency seemed to confirmed this. So the theory is the belt is fixed even though the hulls may allow placement of guns outside.

And also why GOG is struggling.

There weren't many triple setups in WW1. Most came about later. The US Navy was the one I remember primarily with the issue. Also the quads all seemed to have issues with reliability vs. accuracy. My guess is you would have to dig but find most navies solved the interference issues with similar techniques. Here's some good reading from Navweaps: Salvos could be fired as full salvos, where all guns were discharged more or less simultaneously, as partial salvos, where half the main battery (usually either the forward after group) fired together, or as split salvos, where one gun of each turret fired together. Each system had its own advantages and disadvantages. Full salvos looked spectacular, but resulted in relatively large patterns which were difficult to spot and which arrived at relatively long intervals, thus making corrections difficult. Partial salvos reduced the pattern size, made spotting easier, and meant that corrections could be made (on the average) twice as often. Split salvos, due to the extreme separation of the guns, lead to the greatest accuracy and, theoretically, to the highest rate of fire as the director could fire as soon as any arbitrarily selected number of guns was ready to shoot.13 The Navy started experimenting with delay coils - simple mechanisms which prevented adjacent guns from discharging absolutely simultaneously - about 1935. Prior to the installation of delay coils, shells fired in salvo could travel in such a tight formation that they could actually collide, or "kiss" in flight, a phenomena which could be occasionally observed through binoculars. The velocity difference between projectiles traveling in salvo was so small - often less than ten feet per second - that shells fired very slightly late, and perhaps traveling very slightly faster than their counterparts, could spend a considerable amount of time in the confused air stirred up by the leading shells in the group. This increased their drag and made them fall short. An associated problem was that shells were often disturbed by the muzzle blast of an adjacent gun, especially if the muzzles were close together. The resultant wobble also increased the drag. The net result was a considerable number of "wild-shorts," i.e., shells which fell far enough short to be completely out of the pattern. http://www.navweaps.com/index_inro/INRO_BB-Gunnery.php#notesnote14.1back

I know interference from the tightly grouped barrels (think like USS Arizona) was a thing. I believe most countries solved this by delayed firing of 3 or more barrels. ATM the game doesn't really simulate solutions to this. The idea behind it may be more gameplay balance related. On a related note, I know the weights were not right on triple/quad turrets at one time. Not sure if that was ever fixed.

There is a target size penalty currently which I believe is related to the hull types/sizes. I'm not sure what the values for it look like, but I would say it works well enough. The fast moving target was one myself and others badgered the Devs enough to nerf significantly. It still is not calculated correctly from my experience as ships not maneuvering still have it. At one point BCs with 37+kt speeds were unable to be hit by any ship, so we have came a long way on it. Turret rotation, which would be the only thing a straight fast moving ship could take advantage of (and even then only at close ranges) doesn't impact it. It is calculated directly by the speed of the target ship (and supposedly takes into account the ship maneuvering). There's another penalty currently broken, maneuvering itself. A ship doing 1kt with the rudder hard over gets the same penalty as a 30kt DD with the rudder full. Just goes to show it is hard to tell what kind of changes to make to the game with lots of fundamental mechanics broke or out of balance. To be fair to @Skeksis, we have largely inflated accuracy numbers already. The reason is gameplay, and some sacrifices are needed for the sake of it. The topic of this thread is not one of them IMO.

That is what I would suggest. If it works for them, it should work here. Same goes for a lot of subjects honestly where RTW handles things differently.

They are? From what I have seen in the multiple threads about this topic and posts in the main feedback thread, people are overwhelmingly hating the current spotting system. Granted there are more complaints ATM about the "Smoke detected" issues, but I haven't seen a single post in support of "stealthy" ships either.

Yea it goes back to bad assumptions made about visual spotting or purpose built game mechanics that fail to prevent abuse. This is WoWS like thinking as in disregarding realism for gameplay. I understand where you are coming from, but it fails to prevent abuse like was mentioned by @akd , myself, and others. So in the end, gameplay is worse.

Luck? You should have posted the full text. It illustrates the point. They had an accurate firing solution, but that doesn't mean they will be precise with their fire. HMS Warspite and Scharnhorst both made hits at moving targets at ranges approaching practical limit of spotting. Doesn't mean they can do it every time. You can't have reliable fire without constant adjustment for both the target's movement and your own shells being affected by the environment, barrel wear, crew experience, and countless other factors. At 03:16, West Virginia's radar picked up the surviving ships of Nishimura's force at a range of 42,000 yd (24 mi; 21 nmi; 38 km). West Virginia tracked them as they approached in the pitch black night. At 03:53, she fired the eight 16 in (406 mm) guns of her main battery at a range of 22,800 yd (13.0 mi; 11.3 nmi; 20.8 km), striking Yamashiro with her first salvo. She went on to fire a total of 93 shells. At 03:55, California and Tennessee joined in, firing 63 and 69 shells, respectively, from their 14 in (356 mm) guns. Radar fire control allowed these American battleships to hit targets from a distance at which the Japanese battleships, with their inferior fire control systems, could not return fire.[51][49][page needed] The other three U.S. battleships also had difficulty as they were equipped with less advanced gunnery radar. Maryland eventually succeeded in visually ranging on the splashes of the other battleships' shells, and then fired a total of forty-eight 16 in (406 mm) projectiles. Pennsylvania was unable to find a target and her guns remained silent.[55]

At Surigao, US radars were advanced enough to see their shell splashes, which is exactly how you can shoot accurately at something with radar. Without being able to see the splashes, you cannot adjust fire and therefore are just "blind firing". You missed this.

Lots of good ideas in here. More than one way to fix it for sure. Devs just need to pick a solution. I still go back to my solution related to this that if the enemy flees contact, it should be a loss for them period. But that would require a "flee" command or some kind of retreat zone. So if they do either with a ship, it leaves the battle. If all ships leave, they lose. At the same time I like the idea of "lost contact" and just ending the battle in a draw. This whole topic is tied in with the AI behavior and spotting mechanics as well. So changes there have to be in sync with this.

Yes you do need to see a ship to engage it. Radar just provides sighting without using an eyeball. At Guadalcanal, they were so close that you just had to aim at the flashes/fires on the opposing ships to have a reasonable chance to hit. There was also friendly fire going on due to the chaos. At Surigao, US radars were advanced enough to see their shell splashes, which is exactly how you can shoot accurately at something with radar. Without being able to see the splashes, you cannot adjust fire and therefore are just "blind firing". The problem in the game is that blind firing has no accuracy penalty. If one of their ships spots yours, all of their ships in range can fire as accurately as they could if they were in direct line of sight, radar or not. This makes completely unrealistic tactics like sailing one of your DDs into spot their fleet, while the rest of your fleets fires from outside visual range with impunity.

What's funny is even WoWS understands this is an issue and has a simple mechanic to balance it. When you fire, your detectability increases to your max firing range. So no stealth ships firing with impunity. Yet some people defend how the game does it today.

Ah didn't know it was tied to radio components. Disregard!

Not saying this is acceptable, but when you see the message about smoke pop up pause the game. Look at your selected ship, there should be an arrow point towards the bearing of the sighting. It only lasts for a few seconds. That's why most people miss it.

Not saying it didn't happen, but for every example where they did..there's another that didn't. We definitely should have the ability to design separate classes in the same ship type, no reason not to have it.

I would say peacetime grouping versus wartime are two entirely different plans. Look at Guadalcanal for the US forces. Pretty much whatever they could throw together. Plus some classes may only have 2 ships (i.e. North Carolina's).

Balance is certainly needed. Right now main guns have too high accuracy compared to RL, but I can accept it to have more engaging gameplay. The problem is like mentioned above, you get out of balance with historical design/tactics or even other in game elements. Effective screening vessels are really the best way atm.

Nick, think it will be key to the thread created after the release that feedback should focus on these components only. Otherwise the thread will be a dumping ground for everything, not just campaign feedback. Not saying they can't provide feedback on other issues, but should be in a different thread to make it easier on your team. Easier said than done, so all of us regulars need to help keep the focus.

Nick has acknowledged this ask and said they would look into after the campaign (if I remember). That would go a long way to making some unique ships.

Valid points indeed. I already spent sometimes 30 mins or more in UA:D designing, NA style would make it a real chore. But there are quite a lot of premade ships (for 1 guy) and with Workshop which has tons of ships too, it could be done well. Right now NA is even more simplistic than WoWS. That's not a good thing. I've really have no desire to spend all that time designing a ship from the keel up, to watch AA guns sink it. I will be keeping my eyes on it as it matures. The potential is there, just not enough yet.