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There were limits, thus no turrets on early light cruisers (i.e. 2nd and 3rd class protected cruisers that preceded what later became light cruisers). I wasn’t talking about gun caliber; you changed subject to that after not reading what I wrote correctly and assuming I was talking about gun caliber. A turret versus an open / shielded position is completely different system of protection, crew operation, ammo feeding, etc. and the weight demands for the former are much higher. It matters very much, and having them in the wrong places and wrong types of ships looks wrong and works incorrectly. Anyways, it’s an easy visual fix (which hopefully comes with appropriate weights), at least for 5- and 6-inch guns as the Mark II models would be fine for Mark I versions on light cruisers. Early 7-inch guns for light cruisers need something like the 8-inch guns on Elswick cruisers (and indeed single 8-inch guns should also probably be an option, but with much less protection than a full turret):

Nice new video from Drachinifel to review in consideration of a refit / modernization / rebuild system for the campaign:

These were not mounted in enclosed turrets but in a barbette position with an open shield, a very different gun arrangement. Note that her 6-inch secondary guns are also in shielded mounts, not enclosed turrets (and also note that she has 6-inch secondaries, not 5-inch, so even early Armored Cruisers are in fact under-gunned in their caliber options, at least for secondaries). And since protected cruisers aren't a thing in the game, Esmeralda is definitely more in line with the starting Armored Cruisers than the early Light Cruisers. Even the 5-inch Mk. I turrets in game look pretty silly on the early light cruisers; the 7-inch simply absurd, and would still be so if just one were mounted fore and aft on the centerline. Fully enclosed turrets were not done on light cruisers at this time, or highly atypical if there are some examples (I can't think of any). You may say it is just aesthetics, but turrets should be much heavier than a comparable open or shielded mount and require different internal arrangements (direct ammo supply, etc.). The turreted main guns should be reserved for Armored Cruisers and larger at this time. What's especially odd is that more appropriate shielded models are available for both 5-inch and 6-inch guns on Light Cruisers, but only with the "Mark II" upgrade. There's not really an appropriate 7-inch mount for early light cruisers at all, however.

Got a coastal defense mission: my TB and 3x TR vs. 1x Brit TB. My TB ate 2x torps from the Brit TB due to an accidental wrong heading click, but it was his last two torps, leaving him with just 2-inch guns vs. 3-inch guns on me and TRs and my remaining torpedoes. Absurdly my TB survived the 2x torpedo hits, so I continued to slowly follow the convoy off into the distance while the enemy TB popped into and out of view over and over again. Continued this until the END BATTLE button appeared. Was awarded with a DEFEAT! Me 1x yellow TB and 3x green TRs, him 1x green TB. Me 1 VP, him 2 VP Huh? The mission was protect the transports. Also, how do you take screenshots with the UI showing so I don't have to type out all that nonsense and can just show it?

Pretty sure I just saw a flash fire that destroyed the forward turret on my CA where the event in the log immediately preceding it was a penetration of the forward belt by a 2-inch gun (from a ship that was roughly perpendicular to my ship). It's possible that the flash fire was from a spreading fire, but the log does not distinguish that as the cause of the flash fire (e.g. noting fire spread to a magazine or turret). The forward turret was located completely within the main belt "box" region.

The guns available to early CLs and their possible mounting points desperately need work: Early turreted 5-8 inch guns should only be available for Bs (as secondaries) and CAs (as primaries), and even then they would be questionable in many circumstances (shielded 5-7 inch guns were more typical), but thrown on to CLs like these 7-inch turrets they are totally absurd. For the kicker, a single 5-inch turret placed in a totally nonsensical location behind other turrets and between boats. Also, to those who say the only problem with the spotting system is the lack of visual weather effects, I just played an campaign cruiser battle where my CLs can only spot enemy CLs at less than 5km during daytime, clear, calm, smooth conditions. In RTW2, a circa 1895-1900 CL has visual horizon of about 25,000 yards in clear, calm conditions at about 13:00 (max sighting range for Bs and CAs in same scenario is 28,000 yards) and first picks up an enemy CL (as unidentified ship) at about 26,000 yards. Of the two, RTW2 is what matches up with historical accounts.

I totally missed the addition of the ability to add secondary turrets on top of main gun turrets. This is really silly and just encourages AI to overequip secondaries even more. Should be obvious why this a problem and was never done in reality. In addition to it being hugely problematic (if not impossible) to provide ammunition supply through one rotating turret into a separately rotating turret, you also make the armor for the main gun turrets and their potential connection to the main magazine whatever armor is assigned to the secondary (or even tertiary) turrets. If that turret on a turret is penetrated and flashes, that goes right into the main turret. Who in their right mind would provide a route for explosive shells through light splinter armor into a space with a direct opening into the main turrets? Now someone is going to bring up the USS Kearsarge-class battleships. The Kearsarges did not feature turrets on top of turrets. The 8-inch guns on top of the the mains were in a "double turret" gun house integrated into the main turret. These guns could only elevate independently of the main guns, otherwise they were essentially all part of one two-level turret. The idea was that given long reload times for the mains in their design timeframe, the 8-inch guns already trained onto the target along with the mains would be able to get off several rounds during the mains' reloading period (the difference in range was irrelevant given fire control at the time). This was also a completely failed design that was already obsolete even in its very poorly conceived intended use by the time the ships went to sea. Weld between lower and upper gun houses can be seen here: Somebody else is going to bring up the tertiary anti-torpedo boat guns (all open gun mounts, not turrets, btw) that made an appearance for a time on various capital ships. These could not be manned and fought while the main guns were in action. The idea with these was that they would be manned and provided a limited local ammunition supply (which could be also be replenished by hand by crew on deck because the main guns were not in use) at times when the ship might face surprise attack by torpedo boats (e.g. in an anchorage at night) as the main guns were considered unable to contribute to defense in these circumstances. Later, some main turrets featured light AA gun positions on top, but the rationale here was the same: they would be needed and manned during an air attack when the main turrets did not have anything to contribute to the defense of the ship. While the main guns were in action, nobody would be there as they would obviously be killed or incapacitated when the mains fired. EDIT: admittedly, for some nations only small caliber shielded or unshielded open mounts are allowed in the positions, so in that case it is possible to have such guns mounted this way, but this still ignores that they couldn't be operated at the same time as the main guns. The closed turrets that can mount on top of turrets seem limited to, for example, the secondary guns provided to German capital ships in 1910. This appears to simply be an error in the configuration of the secondary guns provided for the time frame for a number of nations. Given that the appearance is anachronistic, hopefully they are simply missing the needed 3D art, but the game does currently treat them as turrets allowing you to set top armor values. These small caliber secondaries / tertiaries should be in open or shielded mounts, not turrets. @Nick Thomadis, was this intended or are the mounting points for the main turrets some how getting duplicated in the same position above them?

Generally changes to ammunition were fairly independent of ship design, the exception being shell length (light, heavy, super-heavy), which would obviously effect the whole design of the ammunition handling system, and propellants or explosive fillers that would require different levels of climate control in the magazines to maintain stability.

Not working correctly and broken mean the same thing. I did not use it to mean that the game is not functioning, but that this aspect (fore / aft weight offsets based on fore / aft armor allocations) is not working, and this is a significant issue because unlike in reality, the player has few other variables to manipulate to distribute weight in the hull itself (rather than with stuff put on top of the hull). If I load up the default Brit 1890 battleship hull, slap towers, funnels and main turrets on it so that I have an offset (either fore or aft) then increasing the corresponding fore or after belt / deck armor (and that armor only, not the central citadel) will decrease the offset, e.g. the hull loaded with a default 1.3" fore deck armor and with other stuff on, has a 6.3% fore weight offset. Increasing the fore deck armor (and nothing else) to 3" decreases the fore weight offset to 5.9%.

Only if there is not an existing offset. Otherwise you get the opposite effect, e.g. increasing fore belt / deck will decrease an existing fore weight offset rather than increasing it, but if there is an existing aft weight offset, then increasing fore belt will correctly decrease the aft offset (opposite for both with aft belt and deck). Very broken.

Are they not defending a convoy in this case?

Fore / aft belt and deck armor extension offset calculations are completely broken.

Is this a parody account? A nonsensical, inconsistent spotting system totally disconnected from reality and directly contrary to the tactics of the time does nothing but immerse players in confusion and frustration, and of course flavor it all with a deep sense of inauthenticity. You can have everything you describe above but in conditions that make sense, work consistently and don’t allow for the impossible. And in conditions that don’t allow for that, you adapt with different tactics, instead of saying actual fleet tactics are boring (even though they were actually quite interesting, otherwise no one would be here interested in gaming the subject), so instead…invisibility cloaks.

“Vat if we give battlecruiser 10” secondaries?” ”Ja! Vat if we give battlecruiser only 10” secondaries?”

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback. The problem with spotting is not simply that the visuals don’t correspond to the outcomes (but this of course adds an extra layer of confusion), but that it tries to oversimplify spotting down to a simple calculation where each object has a visible “horizon” for a given spotter, rather than the spotter having a visible horizon and then the visual signature of the object (based on conditions, behavior, etc.) being checked for chance of spotting once within that visual horizon. This completely misses things like the visible horizon for a ship on a clear night being the same horizon distance it has on a clear day, but the probability of spotting an object that remains dark (not firing, not throwing huge bow wave, not burning, etc.) is very low (and lower the smaller it is) within this potential range of vision under those conditions. It grossly oversimplifies visual spotting to the point of diverging completely from reality in ways that are very confusing (and that further amplify the problems inherent to the hive mind targeting currently in the game). I outlined problem and possible solution (at least conceptually) in post below. My first suggestion for this thread!:

Do the torpedoes hide behind the ship’s boats all the way to the target. 😛

If small ships need cover and concealment for balance, why not add barrels and crates for them to hide behind? Really big barrels and crates. If you are not going to implement the real factors that “balanced” their use in actual battles (i.e. tactics), and instead create something totally artificial to force fake balance because some other real factor is totally missing from the game, this would at least be clear and direct for players to comprehend. The destroyer is behind a crate. You can’t shoot it or see it, but it can throw grenades at you and shoot its guns over the top of the crate at you. The batteship behind it is not behind a crate so you can see it and shoot it. This is easy to understand. (Sorry, being snarky because also exhausted.)

This is a long-standing bug.

No, there are two factors used in a single calculation (edited above for clarity) to determine the absolute distance an object can be spotted for a given spotter. As described above, this results in big problems and inconsistencies, chief among them: if I can see and shoot at you then you must at least have a chance of seeing me (I’d argue that once firing with guns it is 100% and that uncertainty then falls into the realm of ID and firing solution, not knowledge of a contact that can be engaged, but even if you only engage with torpedoes, this still demands that you must be able to see my ship to get a torpedo solution, so there must be a chance that I can see your ship even that chance is very low because you are a widdle TB creeping about with low power on a dark night). That is not at all how it works in current system. Only radar modifies this, and then really only later generation fire control radar for breaking the requirement that if I can see you and shoot you, then there must be a chance you can see me. 1st gen radar would give you knowledge of a contact range and rough bearing, but not much else that can be used to get a full gunnery solution. It would, however, increase the chance of acquiring visually to near 100% once within the maximum visual range of the spotter not matter how low the target’s visual signature*. *I am assuming we are continuing to discuss ship-sized objects here.

It is not simply the value assigned to tower spotting that is the problem. It is the gross simplification of deciding absolute range of vision vs. an object by simply comparing tower spotting value with visual signature value (with modifiers for conditions). This is a not a realistic system and results in deeply unintuitive outcomes that are baffling, and combined with borg targeting, deeply, deeply frustrating and confusing. Again this system allows the following: ship A has range of vision to ship B and can engage ship B. This is not a probability of detection, it is an absolute range of vision for this object. If Ship B moves a bit away, it disappears; if it moves a bit closer it reappears. At the same time ship C can be in between ship A and ship B and be completely invisible to ship A at a given range. Again this is absolute, not a lower probability of “noticing” ship C. If ship C moves a bit closer, it becomes visible, if it moves a bit further away it becomes invisible. All the while ship C is able to see and shoot A so in any system at all connected to reality, there must be possible line-of-sight between ship A and ship C (i.e. this is not some tiny globe where a small ship can dip below the horizon from a BB at a few thousand yards; but even if it were, ship A must have clear LOS to the full hull-above-the-horizon Ship B because engagements beyond the visible horizon were not possible until the advent of radar. If ship B is completely hull-up to Ship A, ship C in between must be also.) The game needs two separate spotting calculations: The range of vision - the absolute distance a ship can see given current conditions. For clear day and night, this is the visible horizon (plus a bit for initial detection). For conditions with any level of obscuration (rain, fog, mists, smoke, haze; day or night) the absolute distance a ship can see is limited to less than its visible horizon. Now you could say this needs to be calculated against the height of the object detected (i.e. the top tip of the mast), but this really not very important because: ships needed to be hull up above horizon to be engaged. all ships could be detected (but not engaged) for a variable and not perfectly fixed distance beyond the horizon due to funnel smoke. You could probably use just use broad categories as below if needed. Visual signature - once an object is within the potential range of vision of a ship, it should then start having a chance of being seen that is modified by the object’s visual signature. During daylight clear conditions this modifier should have little to no effect (these are all large objects that are easily seen during the daylight clear conditions once within the visual horizon). It should have its greatest effect on a dark night (when you are attempting to spot a dark object against a dark background, visual signature size is going to have its greatest effect). Under the following conditions the spotting chance modifier should be removed and the chance of detection would be 100% within the range of vision of the spotter (e.g. horizon on a clear day, possibly only a few thousand or even hundreds of yards in fog or heavy rain): Ship has already been detected by the spotter (i.e. once detected you remain detected unless you move out of the absolute range of vision of the spotter). Ship is firing guns. Ship is on fire. Later: ship is using spotlights. Probably there should also be a % increase in visual signature based on speed because bow waves from ships going full speed are highly visible at night compared to a ship holding it’s speed down. I.e. by going fast at night you could remove any advantage gained by being small as long as you are within the potential range of vision of the spotter. (Also, please stop having all ships default to max speed!) Those two factors together can be used to create a consistent spotting system that will interact logically with the tactics of the time. Tower modifiers would work against the chance of spotting (e.g. more spotters, better optics, etc.) to be rolled against the visual signature modifier if in effect, but it should be relatively minor with crew training being a more decisive factor. Absolute range of vision under clear conditions should just be set by broad class (e.g. B/BB/BC/CA has longest range of vision, CLs medium, DDs and TBs least.). If range of vision is limited to less than the visible horizon for the smallest ships, then it becomes the same for all ships (e.g. if a ship disappears into mists at 5,000m, it does so for everyone at that distance). Contrary to what was stated earlier in this thread, later battleships did not have signifcantly higher top spotting positions compared to earlier ones. There was of course variability, but for example the early US cage masts offered some of the highest top spotting positions. It is simply not logical that later towers see further.

This game does not have fog of war in any shape. Fog of war means units are left to make decisions and act based only on what they can directly observe and discern, with limited input from other units that is governed by technology and time limitations. This game takes that and craps all over it. This is a game where if friendly unit A sees enemy unit Z, friendly unit A-X can all fire instantly on unit Z (not to mention “know” and act with perfect knowledge of it’s exact location, but that is the usual problem with player as god that no single player computer game is going to deal with). And on top of that also gives you X-ray vision of everything that is happening aboard unit Z. That is not fog of war as it is defined in war games. What we have is a spotting system that says that if Unit A can see Unit B, Unit C can be in between and not be seen at all by Unit A (and I don’t mean have lower chance of being seen, I mean it is simply invisible at a given range). This is not fog of war.

My point was clearly (*hehehe*) that human eyeballs and ship’s optics did not “upgrade” to see ship-sized objects further away. But that’s how it works in game. Later towers simply see further, in all conditions and with no regard to any particular technology (e.g. better light-gathering optics increasing *chance* of seeing an enemy that is within the limit of the horizon on a clear night, but that is otherwise not revealing itself by firing, using spotlights, throwing a huge bow wave, etc.).

Such optics did not allow them to see further, but to see better at night. Regular handheld binoculars are perfectly capable of spotting an object as large as ship above the horizon. In fact, the unaided human eye is capable. The horizon imposes the limit, not the optics. And the seeing at night thing is way more complicated than just who had the best light-gathering optics. Regardless, any of that goes totally out the window once you start firing (and arguably once you start going full speed and throwing a huge, bright bow wave).

Yes, night optics could be improved (but the Japanese were, of course, completely wrong that this gave them a significant edge). But such optics were not the difference between seeing and not seeing a cruiser that is hull up above the horizon on a clear day.

Yes, a deeply intertwined problem.