madham82

Yep truthfully sinking other ships is not why they were mounted. Putting down enough RoF to make getting that close a living hell for anyone one deck, much less being combat effective was the idea. Really comes down to morale, but even then look at Taffy 3 and HMS Glowworm.

Not sure how maneuverability is really going to help in this game. A ship with a destroyed rudder moving at 1kt gives the same penalty as 40kt DD turning figure 8s. So that shows maneuverability is really irrelevant (again in the game as of now). Also torpedoes are seriously broke against high levels of torpedo protection, but the protection does not reduce with multiple impacts. Couple that with max bulkheads and anti-flood making flooding incapable of sinking large ships. Only thing they are good for is slowing a ship down at this point. All of this is a mute point since we don't know any of the details besides the visual layout of ships in this thread anyway.

NavalArt proves it can be done. Just wish it had the complexity and realism of UA:D.

Yea we shouldn't just be looking at the "layout" but the overall build to post a "good" design. Though realistically the clown ship thread probably focused more on the layout too. Regarding the above Alsace type, I would rate the layout bad as why did the AI not put the 3rd quad on the stern. A mid mount like that is practically useless. Even when they were used, it was in addition to stern mounted guns not a replacement for one.

A perfect example of why this game has an identity crisis. Not to mention said ship with a destroyed rudder can still turn and apply a negative penalty to your accuracy, all while sailing in a 1kt circle.

Wow I cannot believe I read past that without catching. @Nick Thomadis please revisit that idea. That isn't even WW2 technology, see HMS Grey Goose. I mean hell nuclear reactors went to sea the next year. Funny, I see his post has 10 member likes and yours has 0, and his post is one of the top 3 most liked in this entire thread. Pretty sure that means he speaks a majority opinion based on that alone.

Yep good suggestion. It was and should be a game of guessing what the opposing side's status is and what they may be planning.

First off, thank you Nick and team for the hard work that has been done. There's a lot in this update, and not just campaign which I am glad to see. I do have a serious question, how exactly is a hull "stealthy"? More specifically how are ships stealthy in this timeframe? Today that term is only used for ships that have design elements that reduce radar or infrared cross section. Of course that doesn't apply to this time period because ships were primarily sighted due to pumping out huge rising plumes of coal or fuel smoke that is visible well before the actual ship can be sighted on the horizon. So help me understand what you are implying here, and what it is trying to replicate in terms of realism. I'm with you here. When I read that I immediately thought of a counter, keep my ships from firing all their torpedoes. This shouldn't exist and needs to be yanked along with the ability to see the AI's ammo counts, or at least make it part of the realism/difficulty settings. Alternately we could have the AI react to the lack of torpedoes spotted over X timeframe (despite being in range) to change tactics.

Welcome Stealth17! Really enjoy your all your gaming videos. One of the reasons I picked this game up.

True in many ways unfortunately...

Your response is irrelevant, because the in game visibility system works as expected in 1v1, but not when multiple ships are involved. That is the definition of a defect or bug. The very fact you mention height of the observer in your next sentence indicates you have no idea what is being discussed. Let me put it again simply, no one is arguing about when a ship is visible. The issue is what justification is there for ignoring said visibility system and allowing unimpeded, accurate fire on a ship that is out of visual range of the ship firing. The game is already tracking visibility of each ship. The game already tracks and assigns penalties/bonuses based on individual ship situations. It is a quite simple fix: Ship not in visual range of ship being fired on = hefty penalty or prevent fire (debate is fine on which is better for gameplay) I am done arguing this issue with you, so there's no need to reply. Let's move on, everyone's feedback is in this thread for the Dev team. It is up to them, not any of us.

You seem to be preceding from a false assumption that visual range doesn't dictate engagement range when it does. The burden of proof is on you to provide otherwise, as you have dismissed any facts and historical examples when presented before. Also from your previous analysis on spotting, you proved that theoretical visual range does not correspond to actual visual range. So I fail to see what you are out to prove here. That a BB in majority of cases will not be able to engage a target at maximum gun range? Isn't that realistic? You seem to be suggesting a whimsical fancy that you can create a small stealthy ship that could just keep the enemy fleet "lit", enabling you to fire with impunity with ships so far away they can't actually see what they are aiming at, much less where their shots are falling in relation. How is that not a game breaking mechanic exactly? How will the AI know how to react to that? What would be the use of towers and radar on anything but a purpose built spotting ship?

I was thinking about how they just happened to get a chance to sink shipping during this engagement. Glad you shared that. I mean let's be honest here, a Hellcat with .50cals could and did sink destroyers (let that one sink in when it comes to discussion of the in game damage model). But hey it does give us proof Iowa's could engage effectively at the limit of visual range

Yea but the first Midway class didn't arrive until the last month of the war anyway. My point was the 54 cal just wasn't needed at this point in the war. I also seem to remember that the 20mm and 40mm mounts were credited for most aircraft kills during the war. When the first kamikazes started being used, the problem with those mounts is it took multiple hits to completely destroy a plane. That's what led to the rapid fire 76mm mounts designed specifically to overcome this. Not disputing the 54 cal had some improvements in AA, just wasn't as applicable to the what the main threat was at that point in the war. In the end Midway didn't keep those guns long after the war, as guns lost favor in AA defense due to the speed of jets and standoff weapons.

Looks like a bug to me saying you need a main tower, when you clearly do. Use the in game tool to report.

We can also "see" enemy ships that we haven't identified either. And if seeing a ship grants every friendly ship the ability to fire on it, then why do we have ranging shots, target lock, and all other in game mechanics that make up accuracy? All those mechanics assume the key factor of being able to "see" your own shots fall and adjust the firing solution. Your idea isn't far off mine, which basically to assign a heft penalty that could reduce with techs to all blind fire situations. The game is already calculating what ships can see each other, just would have to use that to calculate if a blind fire scenario. Though this is still a departure from reality, I think it is a good balance between game and realism. What we have right now is completely at odds with how gunnery works in 1v1 engagements. IRL, it was impossible for a single ship to act like Forward Observer for multiple ships firing. You have to know exactly who fires when, shell travel time, their exact positioning from the spotting ship, and the spotting ship's positioning from the enemy. Calculate all that and pass it along the radio to the firing ship. All at a time when admirals had trouble keeping their own ships in formation with signals and radio, much less passing complex shot fall observations to multiple ships. Everyone remember the main reason for the all big gun dreadnaught? That was just one ship trying to track all its own guns. How about tracking 10 ships?

Thank you for that. These type of engagements rarely come up but is a perfect example for this thread. At an average range of 14,500yds, Iowa closed with Katori and fired 46 16-inch (406 mm) high capacity (non-armor-piercing) rounds and 124 5-inch (127 mm), straddling the cruiser with eight salvos. CAG 17/A16-3 reported Iowa hit Katori with her second salvo. Just after Iowa's fourth salvo, Katori quickly listed to port exposing seven large shell holes about 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter in her starboard side, one under the bridge about five feet below the waterline, another amidships about at the waterline, plus about nine smaller holes.[citation needed] The damage on the port side was much worse. After being under attack by Iowa for about 5 minutes, Katori sank stern first, with a port side list at 07°45′N 151°20′E about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Truk. Couldn't find any real details on the New Jersey engagement, but references seem to indicate her 5" batteries sunk Maikaze.

Part of that is due to the rapidly shrinking naval forces on the opposing sides by that period of the war as well. I mean look at the Iowa's, who I don't believe ever used their 16"s in a surface engagement. But both their 16" and 5" were heavily used in shore bombardment. UA:D is out in a completely ahistorical setting without aircraft, so are these secondary batteries by the late game period by extension. The US originally planned an increased caliber for the 5" planned for the Montana's to make them more effective in surface engagements. When they were cancelled, they could have pursued using them for other ships, but none actually were until end of the war. Reasonable to assume because they didn't offer an advantage in air defense over the 5" mounts in service, there was no rush to replace them. Now if there had still been large numbers of surface engagements occurring, that situation would have likely changed.

I would say in majority of cases you would be correct. However historic engagement ranges were frequently much shorter than people expect. Just take a look at any of the night engagements. In general ranges over 30K yrds were exceedingly rare, while ones under 20K yrds were common. Under 20K yrds and suddenly these guns can start coming into play. Unfortunately, most of these type engagements were not between full fleets, but small task forces or individual ships. So take it for what it is worth.

My point wasn't fighting a battle with that many ships, but just that playing a campaign as someone like the Royal Navy you would have hundreds of ships to manage at any one point. You can't even get good control over 10 ships atm, much less 150 lol.

Yea 150 would be the most extreme battle. Doing it as ships launch makes sense too, assuming you won't be launching dozens of ships a month (believe that was the timeframe of each turn). Start of the campaign would likely be the the point when you would spend the most time managing them.

All good ideas from everyone, but again I want to go back to thinking about the manageability of having officers on every ship. Example, there were 150 ships in the British Grand Fleet alone at Jutland, not the entire Royal Navy. Even if you take 2 officers per ship, does anyone want to manage 300+ officers during the campaign? Realistically you would 10x that number for large naval powers, not to mention the turnover that would occur. This is probably the best way to do it and keep it manageable IMO.

How is it handled in UA:AoS? Personally, there is no need to simulate officers down to the ship level. You could keep it much simpler and easier to manage by only having a flagship commander. After all, each engagement will be with one fleet vs. another. You could then add more complexity and gameplay dynamics than would likely be feasible at a individual ship level.

Adjustable difficulty/realism is IMO, the only way to balance the game to suit the largest audience. That also breeds replay-ability and helps with the learning curve.

Well there are only two directors for the main or secondary battery (though secondaries could have 4 on some ships). That's standard in design. What you are wanting is the ability to revert to local gun control. I think most are on your side there and is should be possible. At the same time, local gun control is horrendously inaccurate unless the range is close enough where the crew could clearly see their round. Even that is problematic when you think of shell splashes and smoke down at the gun level. I think most of the damage problems come down to a few of the hull modules creating unrealistic damage handling (max bulkheads, anti flood, etc...). Another big issue is the magic hulls with stats that reduce huge amounts of damage. Others can probably describe the issues better, but I am with you on the damage model. Just have to keep in mind what is feasible to simulate and balance that with this being a game.