SonicB

Interesting idea. I feel like we ought to have triple/quad secondaries in this game, but with predictably massive disadvantages, so the only real reason to go with them is a very specialised design or simply for RP/flavour. Personally, I feel this game will achieve the best balance of fun and realism if it lets you build the weirdest, most impractical ship ever suggested during the period, then proves conclusively why it was a terrible idea. I call it the 'HMS Furious' approach.

I'd be absolutely up to contribute. I hope @Nick Thomadis and the rest of the dev team know we're so dedicated/such a pain in the arse (delete as appropriate) because we love this game, love the concept, secretly wish we were working on it too, and want it to be the absolute best it can be. But in the same spirit I'd like the opportunity to put on record what we do like compared to other similar games, and especially (for our older residents) the changes they've made that have really improved the game since early alpha. (In fact, since I've only been here a few months, I'd like to read that too.)

I'm absolutely with you on the rest of this post (and would add the fixed barbette/superstructure hardpoints as my personal bugbear) but just wanted to clarify, didn't they fix the accuracy/speed thing in the last update? It's still not perfect but it was a vast improvement on alpha-7. THIS! Torpedoes are ******* heavy and they're difficult enough to load when they're in the same room, never mind while maneuvring under fire. If this game is going to persist with ahistoric torpedo reloads being the standard for external launchers, please can we split the reloads between launchers or at least between port and starboard? It makes logical sense since the ship designer ties torpedo ammo weight to the location of the launchers anyway.

Once you've beaten any mission, it would be nice to have the option to play it from the other side.

Seconded. This timeline is vast, and no matter however many ship parts they produce, people will still want more. Allowing easy steam workshop modding (at least from beta onwards) would be much more preferable. In general, I think more assets/models at this time should not be the priority over improvements to the ship designer itself. Of course, I'm thankful for quad turrets, but being able to put them and their barbettes precisely where we want them would be even better.

This is a great read and well worth creating a free jstor account if you don't have one. In particular I want to point out this maneuvring board as used by the USN and others: One of these in the corner of the screen would be a far better way of managing formations than the current approach. Simply drag your formation ship icons into the position you want them relative to the lead ship, or choose a preset and instantly see where it will put your ships relative to each other. Battlestations Midway/Pacific used this method and it worked very well indeed.

@Aceituna Just a thought, but were you close to an enemy when this occurred? I've noticed there is a bug where the speed is limited automatically when the collision evasion logic is triggered, even if your ship is under manual helm control. With the latest update that seems to have hugely increased the radius of collision detection, the problem is much more noticeable.

In the notes on the upcoming patch (Alpha-9) they are reworking formations significantly, and I really hope this is going to include a fix to the over-sensitive collision avoidance that was introduced in Alpha-8.

I would like to see a little more unpredictability and scare factor with torpedoes, as I feel that would more accurately reflect their historical impact. Right now in mid-late era, you can reliably spot them very early and avoid them at long range with ease - even travelling at 30+ kts at which sonar and hydrophone performance would have been severely degraded. On the other side, torpedoes are usually very accurate and are 100% reliable, meaning that a close-in shot is an almost guaranteed hit. To achieve this, I agree that torpedoes should only exceptionally have combat reloads, and furthermore, there should be a dud percentage and less accuracy (this would not be a complete nerf as it would make it more difficult to evade large spreads.) On the other side, torpedo visibility should take a significant cut, especially at high speed, spotting torpedoes should be a chance that improves with proximity not a hard spotting radius, and the enemy's torpedo reload status should not be visible. Right now the only torpedo type that accurately reflects reality is Electric. Fighting an electric-equipped ship, unless you cheat and look at the reload times, you need to anticipate when the enemy will launch, watch his behaviour carefully, and always maneuver your ships with the torpedo threat in mind. This to my mind is a much more interesting game than playing dodgeball with torpedoes spotted ten kilometres away.

I agree. I'm sure it may have been a tactically relevant factor among many others, but I for one would be happy with "whew, that was a lucky ricochet, glad I was closing/opening the range" as opposed to the current "if I angle I can probably tank those 11" rounds with my light cruiser." I can almost guarantee that the first sentence has been said historically and the second... has not.

^ THIS! In terms of effort vs reward, this is definitely the first thing that should be changed in the designer. Quad turrets and new hulls are nice, but actually being able to create realistic, stable, well-proportioned ships on the hulls we already have would be amazing. As many people have said in many threads, it must be possible to make superstructure, funnels and barbettes ctrl-placeable in the same way as turrets. If it confuses the AI, simply restrict it to existing hardpoints, but please allow us a bit more freedom!

I could not agree more. I'm glad to see they'll be removing artificial formation bonuses in the next patch, which is encouraging, as I hope that means that other performance buffs and nerfs will eventually all be done in the same 'organic' way as the game engine and balance matures. Next, I'm hoping for smoke to get a serious re-work - now the speed targeting malus has been largely fixed, it's the most obviously arcadey mechanic in the game.

It occurs to me that since we're welcoming quad turrets to the game (as was foretold in the prophecies...) it makes even more sense to start grouping armament* by calibre, rather than mount. The current system of separate aiming for different mounts in the same calibre is against the all-big-gun philosophy, and is an artificial nerf for historical designs such as King George V and Dreadnought. I know this raises the question of what to do about the (somewhat artificial) accuracy and reload bonuses for different mounts. My suggestion for the first would be to allow accuracy bonuses for different turrets to coexist within the same overall aiming bonus. For reloading, I suggest restricting salvos to the slowest-firing turret type within the same calibre, while drastically reducing the reload nerf for triple and quad turrets at higher levels of technology. King George V (14" in two quad and one twin turrets, commissioned 1940) could manage a salvo rate of two-per-minute, very comparable to most contemporary ships with uniform twin or triple turret batteries. * While I'm on the subject, fire control by individual armament group, rather than simply 'main/secondary' would be very helpful. 8" and 2" secondary batteries on the same target is rarely useful.

Since some of the 1900-1920 superstructures are clearly designed for them I would hope for some progress in this regard... but we will probably have to wait for a broader adjustment of the restrictive hardpoint system, which I very much hope is coming before beta.

Yes! Thank you for the update; it's much appreciated, as always.

I love everything about this post and this thread, but I'mma just jump in to say that smoke ought not to significantly affect radar-directed main batteries. First example that comes to mind is Admiral Hipper vs Glowworm, 1940. Glowworm laid smoke to cover herself (turning back into it, as would be possible above) at about 5-7km range but Hipper scored several hits through the smoke with radar, on a zig-zagging destroyer capable of 36kts. There were also quite a few Pacific battles at night where radar was used heavily and sometimes exclusively for gunnery direction, such as Third Savo Island and Surigao Strait.

This isn't particularly beautiful, but it is hilarious. The ramming mechanics in this game right now... I think this battleship captain took the words of 'Deutschland Uber Alles' a bit too literally.

Returning briefly, if I may, to the subject of collision avoidance... I've noticed that even when a ship is under manual rudder control, the evasion logic still seems to apply to its speed. Therefore, when anywhere near a friendly or hostile vessel, a ship will refuse to travel at the speed you have set. Needless to say, this is extremely annoying in close-quarters combat and needs to be fixed.

Nailed it. I've been reading the discussion above with great interest, and my conclusion really has to be that while physics dictate a certain amount of ricochets are realistic, the game damage model just doesn't have the complexity to simulate it effectively. For instance, if bow, stern and deck armour is so effective at causing ricochets, why did almost every 20th century armoured citadel have heavily reinforced ends - frequently, when combined with the bow and stern belts, thicker in total than the main belt?

I'm not trying to ram, I'm simply trying to get ships to maintain formation and not get stupidly out of place because of over-sensitive collision avoidance. Example: on the 'Prove your Might' mission I just played, I get two destroyers which spawn in the middle of the convoy. I immediately order them to head towards the enemy. The first one heads in the right direction... the second would have passed just behind a merchant ship if it maintained course, but instead turned into the merchant trying to pass ahead of it. This caused a completely avoidable collision and the second DD to turn in a full circle until I took control of it manually. Meanwhile any chance of a co-ordinated torpedo attack from both DDs is gone. I think you may be talking about a different bug which I haven't personally encountered, but which sounds equally annoying in a different way.

Just a simple request like in the title. It would be really great to have (preferably) a toggle-able overlay on the main screen showing the gun and torpedo arcs, or the same thing on the ship diagram. Or both! Both is good.

I've also noticed that the avoidance logic always requires ships to try to pass another ship across its bow, even when on their current course they would pass safely astern. This often causes formations to become needlessly separated and causes much unnecessary maneuvring. Since maneuvring applies a severe penalty to accuracy and a large part of the game is about putting your ships in the right place relative to enemy ships, I would say the new evasion change is almost game-breaking. It's a shame because the other changes in this patch I've found to be very positive.

I've found myself having to use manual rudder so much more since this update, because ships are far too sensitive about collision avoidance.

Agreed - I've noticed that in general ships get thrown around far too much. Part of this is actually that I haven't seen any sea conditions I would characterise as under sea state 5, and mostly around 6-7, even when the game characterises it as 'calm.' Obviously I couldn't measure the waves exactly, but I've been ocean sailing a fair few times so I know the deal (table attached for interest.) The diagram below shows different sea states in relation to a modern 4,500 ton warship. Here's an interesting article about the USN neglecting to design for even >3 sea state, as it adds a whole host of difficulties to operating and fighting even a modern vessel. Even full-on modern warships are not generally required to be combat-effective in anything higher than state 5-6. There is no way that the ships in this game can operate effectively, or even safely, in waves we commonly see. Also of note, the article mentions wave and wind modelling (research here) that says the sea state across the northern hemisphere is below 5 80% of the time. I'm sure the ship/wave motion modelling could use some improvement, but it would be nowhere near as apparent if we had a wider and calmer range of sea conditions. If that were the case, I would also apply a much more severe penalty to speed, gunnery, steering, damage control and so on in the waves we currently see. Imagine trying to do anything besides hang on and stay alive in a destroyer literally flying thirty-fifty feet in the air every five seconds.