SonicB

Honestly, looking at the Furious class as commissioned, I think Jackie Fisher would have got round to something like this eventually. But... my god, that thing is the most heinous crime against aesthetics I've seen this patch. It looks like something I drew when I was six.

Adding to all the above: a fix for the AI auto-designer that this time actually fixes things. Dropped this in the clowncar thread but it's worth posting here just to count the sins: Oversized destroyer tower: check Shrunken 1920s battlecruiser hull: check One (1) main gun on a pointless barbette: check Unused rear deck big enough to land a plane on: check (feature or bug? you decide) Is clearly a tugboat cosplaying as a light cruiser. An attempt was made.

Can't stop laughing at this one. Toot toot I'm a tugboat

I guess the hard cap on targeting range would be to simulate occasions when ships had the theoretical range but didn't have the targeting ability to even consider firing. That said, I just played another battle with my QE-class where the ships got separated and one could spot for the other, and found the soft cap actually worked reasonably well - the further ship had a 0.8% hit chance while still well within theoretical maximum range. This is accurate to ships of that generation which often outranged their fire control. I haven't yet looked for this specifically with lighter ships. What I would like to see (alongside increased spotting range) as an alternative to a hard targeting range cap is more granularity with regard to aggressiveness. Five settings rather than three, going up in increments from 2% to 20% (of the locked CTH rather than unlocked) would provide a useful amount of control.

My current interim suggestion to make this playable is just raising the base spotting range by 50% and doubling the effect of weather conditions on spotting. A better overhaul of spotting and targeting mechanics would make a distinction between spotting range and targeting range. Both should be separate stats: Spotting range would be much larger, universal across the fleet and therefore displayed to the player without confusion - the equivalent of running up the 'enemy in sight' signal. Targeting range should be an individual stat for each ship, dependent on damage and weather conditions. It would represent the ability of that ship to direct accurate fire, and be effectively a hard limit on its gun range. Like gun range, it would be represented as a circle around the ship. Ideally, multiple ships would display their individual targeting ranges when selected as a group. @Cptbarney / @Marshall99 / @BobRoss0902 / @Cpt.Hissy / @DerRichtigeArzt / @IronKaputt / @CapnAvont1015 / @Fishyfish / @Skeksis / @Aceituna and everyone else in the previous threads, would love your thoughts.

Starting this to get suggestions about the spotting distance problem raised by @Jatzi and myself in @1MajorKoenig's excellent Ship Designer suggestion thread. Right now the spotting distance is far too low. As I said in the earlier thread: in WW1 a lot of battles and strategy hinged on comparative ranges - staying out of range of your opponent while continuing to fire, or otherwise trying to close the distance to bring a more numerous but smaller calibre battery into action. This was important precisely because both ships could usually see each other outside the effective range of their weapons. The situation we have now is very different, with destroyers magically popping into existence a few km away like they're rerunning the Philadelphia Experiment, and even heavy ships unable to spot each other before they're within weapons range, or even secondary weapons range. Case in point: 1917, and a squadron of Queen Elizabeth-class superdreadnoughts are cruising in good weather and calm seas. Out of nowhere, a deluge of 9" HE shells rains down from battlecruisers equipped with the latest Romulan cloaking devices. On the bridge, Admiral Beatty remarks, "There must be something wrong with our bloody eyes today." Come on, let's fix this. It's ridiculous.

Relatedly, it would be great if ships with wing and centreline turrets of the same calibre should have those counted as one battery for the sake of accuracy. A game called 'Dreadnoughts' should aim to accurately represent HMS Dreadnought.

This bothers me a huge amount, especially in early/mid time period. In WW1 a lot of battles and strategy hinged on comparative ranges - staying out of range of your opponent while continuing to fire, or otherwise trying to close the distance to bring a more numerous but smaller calibre battery into action. This was important precisely because both ships could usually see each other outside the effective range of their weapons. The default in this game right now is that before radar, even large ships usually 'pop up' within range of heavy secondary or lighter main battery weapons. It's completely unrealistic, as well as immersion-breakingly poor gameplay. This x100000. There is no need for ugly, often oversized separate barbettes which don't match the turrets or even fit the deck width - British Dreadnought I, looking at you. Just making a raised barbette an option when placing a turret is an elegant solution from a more civilised age.

If Gauloises made destroyers...

Thank you for addressing this. It's understandable that it has low priority right now, but it's very good to hear that it's on your radar for eventual improvement. I think that's the case for a lot of suggestions and complaints mentioned here (dare I mention the ship designer...) No-one is expecting a lot of major improvements to be done in the next patch or even before beta, but it is very reassuring to know that suggestions are listened to and such improvements are in the development pipeline. Personally I'm finding the collision improvements to be a big step in the right direction. Screen and scout behaviour definitely needs improvement as I find escort ships often choose to hang back out of range rather than supporting capital ships. I have one suggestion regarding formations, and that is to rework the 'cruising speed' targeting bonus so that it gradually reduces right up to the ship's top speed. This would make 'medium' formations a better compromise between accuracy and speed, and would also generally feel more realistic and less gamey.

I always had this problem even in Alpha-9, and with heavy artillery too. I'm also noticing ships losing lock randomly even when neither they nor the target are maneuvering. It is mostly in these cases that the turret is unable to recover the lock until I manually repeat the attack order.

The cloaking device mechanic frankly shouldn't belong in a game of this complexity. It feels pretty arcadey, and as said above, it unbalances the rest of the torpedo mechanic. If it's to be included at all, I would love it to be done properly, with persistent smoke that can be toggled on and off freely, that gradually degrades from time and wind conditions, that can easily hide other ships, not the screening ship, and that can cause loss of sight as well as decreased accuracy. And for good measure, do the same to a lesser extent for gun and funnel smoke, especially in the coal-fired era. Ultimately, smoke should be a tactical decision used when it benefits your entire fleet, not a spam-as-soon-as-it-recharges buff from an MMO.

Okay, hands up, you may be right - I remember reading this in one of the Osprey books about a certain class but I couldn't say for sure it was Fuso. That said, from looking at that cross section and comparing to other turret designs, it was apparently usual for steam lines to the engine room to pass midships turrets between the magazine roof and the rotating turret base. That could explain the elevated shaft and ammunition hoist compared to '3' turret. Where did you find the deckplan, and any chance you also have the Ise class? Part of me just wants to buy the modeller's books to clear this up

Yes, that's the reason Nick gave further up in this post. It makes no sense to me because turrets - which penetrate further into the hull than barbettes - can be placed anywhere. Historically, a few designs such as the Fuso-class actually had their midships turret raised in a barbette to fit the machinery under it. If they really want us to worry about machinery space, then let us choose the location manually - or simply define it as a 'no-turret zone' around wherever we place the funnels. This would also provide a much-needed way to balance weight on older designs. For now, I think it would be far easier just to imagine that the machinery can be built around wherever we choose to place turrets - or barbettes. Yeah, I agree. I hope I'm not being too harsh while the game is still in alpha, but whatever we're saying now is going to be repeated a hundred times worse if this game makes it to release without a fully functional designer. I bought this game simply for the reason that I could play Jackie Fisher in 1906, sitting at my computer with my copy of Jane's Warships of World War One open on the desk and letting my imagination run free. This is what I've been saying for months. Frankly, I don't think the AI should even have this much design freedom, as we keep getting clown car designs. If they can't get it to play nice with the designer, then define a few default tower, funnel and barbette layouts for each hull, and let the AI pick the guns and all the invisible stats as it does now.

That's what frustrates me. The ship designer is literally a core function of the game, as well as its main selling point. It's sad to see it unnecessarily crippled with no promise of a fix, while minor things like reversing - which I've never felt I needed - are prioritised in patches. It's why I've largely given up playing.

Considering that half of my posts on here these days are complaining about the stupidity of fixed barbette/tower points when we already have free turret shift-placement, and how it needlessly handicaps so many designs... I would really hope that it's been read at least once. But the best we get is 'we'll add more points, on some hulls' and the excuse that certain placements would be historically unrealistic (which I've had to disprove multiple times) when literally 95% of the time all we're trying to do is make designs that look more realistic. If the AI can't cope with a proper designer without arbitrary restrictions then the AI needs fixing.

The more examples they see, the higher priority this will be to fix. Besides, it's funny. Go poop someone else's joke thread.

I also came here to post a hideously unbalanced hybrid battleship/carrier. Seems to be something about Alpha-9...

Honestly that's a damn good job - you had me there! Fingers crossed this game will have steam workshop support and be easy to mod.

Absolutely hits the nail on the head. (Or hammer on eggshell, if we prefer Churchill.) I can live with a certain amount of simplification, but basic mechanics that work directly counter to proven, repeated historical experience should be anathema in a game that sold itself on realism.

I have nothing technical to add here as you've summed the current state of the game vs historical reality pretty well. I think I can speak for most people who chose to support the game that I'm happy to support and sympathise with the devs as long as the current system is explicitly a placeholder. However, I do feel that in return for the serious trust we showed in laying down AAA release money for an alpha, we're owed a little more transparency about the development pipeline and future plans. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the great write-up.

Yep, it's the bloody limits. I fear a fair few of these completely unbalanced placements are a result of limited barbette slots. Frankly, if the AI is the main reason why we can't have unlimited barbettes and superstructure placement... it would make more sense to design 4 or 5 basic gun and superstructure layouts for each hull that make logical and historical sense for the AI to use, and then restrict it to choosing armament, armour, speed and systems.

I've been encountering a lot of those since alpha-9. Someone needs to tell the AI that the Ise-class rear flight deck is generally considered to have been a terrible idea.

@madham82@Cptbarney@Steeltrap thanks for the examples, you folks are always good for historical information. Have been looking into it further because it's a slow day at work and we have jstor access, and you guys are absolutely right. It seems that pre-dreadnoughts and early dreadnoughts that relied on coal bunkerage for their below-waterline protection were actually quite vulnerable (the volatility of their propellant and charges may also have been a factor.) After the move to oil and the development of dedicated torpedo protection this seems to have been mitigated pretty substantially. @Steeltrap is right in that while the chance was there, it seems to be represented quite crudely. My suggestion would be to keep the base chances as they are, and add a base -50% chance of magazine detonation through torpedo hit to any level of antitorp, improving by -10% each level.

Well, basic physics would appear to dictate that underwater explosions outside the hull are not likely to set fire to anything. Torpedoes are so much more deadly than shells for their size because the explosion shock is transmitted through water, which does not compress, rather than dissipated through the air. Furthermore, as far as I'm aware magazines were nearly always protected at least by coal bunkers and then by torpedo bulges. If any fires are going to be caused it would be because of shock damage to electrical systems or sympathetic detonation; not impossible with the unstable propellants used in the early 20th century, but also not likely. As for historical examples, if you're asking about ships being torpedoed (or mined), well, no shortage there, and hardly any of them blew up as a direct result. Admittedly we have less data for pre-dreadnoughts, but several were sunk by underwater weapons in WW1. (Edit: done a bit more research, and for completeness, I do have to add another ship, the pre-dreadnought Pommern at Jutland, whose magazines blew up after a torpedo hit and sank the ship. That's the only pre-dreadnought example I can find. So my conclusion remains not impossible, but not as likely as we see in-game.)