SonicB

A good solution for both could be to tie the armour placement explicitly to the location of components you could place freely, and show the outline of the armour and vital areas when placing those components. For instance, machinery is under the funnels, and the belt extends between the forward and aft main turrets, or the machinery spaces in the case of an all-forward design. Then the citadel type would explicitly determine the performance of the armour versus varying types/angles of hits, and have nothing to do with the placement of said armour. The opaqueness of the present armour placement scheme is the main problem. I would really like to know where the armour is going and how much my layout choices affect its placement, weight, cost, and impact on ship stability, but right now we can see nothing. It's frustrating to have all these numbers under the hood. Gunnery... is pretty frustrating at times, but I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth talking about. I was browsing threads back from the middle of last year in which some pretty knowledgeable people (including yourself, iirc) were pointing out the problems with the system. I've only been playing a couple months and I've been submitting bug reports and suggestions, not knowing they'd already been raised ages ago. So to bring this back to a genuine question for the devs: we're in alpha, and you still have the time, and access to people here who seriously know what they're talking about. Do you have any plans to work on the gunnery model based on community analysis and testing - or are we just going to see a series of tangential hotfixes addressing individual issues, that create balance problems of their own?

I think a lot of people would like to hear the answer to this question, and it's not a big ask... Are there plans to remove the hardpoint restrictions for towers, barbettes and funnels, so we can arrange our ship designs the way we want them? Thank you!

Relatedly: since the hulls are already in-game, will we be able to design and use converted merchants as commerce raiders, Q-ships or Armed Merchant Cruisers? Some of the greatest single-ship actions of the 20th century involved them (Carmania/Cap Trafalgar, Jervis Bay, Stier, Kormoran, etc.)

This 110%. They're fine as guidelines for the AI ship design, but I can't think of a single reason why they couldn't be replaced with a single line down the middle of the hull for manual ctrl+ arrangement. More flexibility, better accuracy for RL designs, better balancing. At present I'm having to achieve decent stability on some hulls (looking at you, pre-dreadnoughts and accurate N3/G3) by using heavy bow/stern torpedo tubes essentially as ballast. Another option that's been suggested would be optional ballasting, but that would be almost entirely unnecessary if we could just put the components where we want to put them.

Yep, I would love this. Aside from torpedo tactics, this could also apply to the frequency of critical hits and equipment malfunctions, which also decided battles or strategies much more frequently in real historical engagements than in the current game. In theory, but realistically in battle situations, nigh-on impossible to spot launches for any ranges beyond about 1900 tech (we underestimate the distances in this game because of the camera, but 2km really is a big distance to spot something 18" across.) Also, that would only apply to tubes above the waterline. Sorry to interrupt the slippery slope argument, but knowing when the enemy is going to fire their guns is tactically useless. Knowing when they can fire torpedoes, on the other hand, is incredibly valuable.

Ammunition count for guns is a little gamey, but fine, you can explain that and it doesn't really affect the game much. What really messes up the meta right now is torpedo reload time. Knowing when a ship has fired by watching its reload timer allows me to evade any torpedo unless fired at point blank range. Knowing when a ship is reloading or out of torpedoes lets me choose when to close with the enemy and when to withdraw. This feels like an exploit, not a functioning game mechanic. This problem ties into the issue that a lot of people have already pointed out on here: the role of torpedoes is very different to their actual use in combat. Historically, fleet maneuvres and often entire battles were controlled by the -threat- of torpedoes. Ridiculously OP spotting mechanics/systems, combined with the visible ammo/reload status on enemy ships, make torpedoes from most ships a temporary obstacle at best - unless they're mounted on a DD or CL fast enough to ridiculously abuse the speed evasion bonus, at which point they become hilariously overpowered.

The heavily damaged first-class cruiser HMS Andromeda rams the armoured cruiser USS Norfolk (ACR-15) in the Battle of Cape Breton Island, during the Canada War of 1921.