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Instant_Goats

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  1. The system seems convoluted, and the results it produces are irritating. It's hard to measure without having an orthographic view mode, but the values given for the towers seem to correspond in no way to the positions of spotting tops/rangefinders on the 3D models. I come from Arma, so I am a bit coddled as far as viewpoints go (where there is a sight, I expect a viewpoint to be, and where there is a barrel is where bullets are supposed to leave, etc.), so this disparity between the values and the models is glaring at times to me. For example, I found a drawing fragment that shows the spotting top on HMS Dreadnought to be about 25 - 30 ish meters above the waterline. I tested a british dreadnought 1, with Tower 1 and rear Tower 6 (3250 + 3500 tower spotting) in 1906. Started at 10km distance, the ship lost sight to the opponent at 11.6 km (another Battleship.) Tower 1 is an analogue of HMS Dreadnoughts tower, so 25 meters seems to be a good guess for spotting top height. Top of the enemy dreadnoughts conning tower would maybe be 8 meters above the waterline. On a clear day, this would become visible above the horizon inside of 30 kilometers distance. Losing sight completely to a ship within not even half that distance is bonkers. What I see and know from reading documentation corresponds in no way to what I see in game. Doing it with a 2D environment would maybe work, but since UAD is 3D, the illusion shatters pretty quickly. The weather modifiers are also pretty opaque, but for this tower/ship combination, about 11.something kilometers seemed to be the norm for spotting another BB, which is too short no matter which way you twist it. Another case in point: it also means that battleships should out-spot destroyers, because the hull of the destroyer will be visible before the battleships, because of the disproprotionately taller observation platforms. All in all, It seems to be an arbitrary way of making conning tower "levels" matter. I have a couple Ideas, but I tend to post walls of text anyways, so I'm stopping here. Edit: RE: Weather. Even on a clear day, contrast to the background is more important than distance, hence why camouflage matters. Smoke is visible over vast distances, even above the haze, pointing to a ships exact location pretty much. It would add tactical pre-battle depth if CONTRAST mattered more than raw view distance: position yourself with the sun in your or the enemies back, make use of fog banks (British battle line at jutland) or coastlines (battle of cape sarych) to obscure your vessel or make it completely invisible. Bonus points for discounting shells that do not fall in a perfect line in front of the enemy vessel, since they cannot be spotted anyway against the background of the haze.
  2. I've got a question about how the armor buff works. For example, I got a BB with Krupp IV, giving a 108% buff to armor strength. What does that actually mean? Does it mean I have 11 Inches of armor that behaves like 22 inches of... what? RHA? Or does it mean that I actually have 22 Inches of armor for the weight of 11 inches of... RHA? Iron? Or does it mean that I actually do have 11 inches of armor, but they are just flat out "just as good" as 22 inches of iron, or RHA? When making real world inspired Vessels, this is an interesting question. Say I want to make that new shiny Fuso (it had up to 12 inches of armor). Does that mean to have realistic protection I have to enter 6 inches of armor (for 12 inches of "true" protection?). Or do I set it to 12 inches (which according to the game are 22 inches of unknown material.) and live with that? I guess the more pertinent question would be, what are the armor buffs being compared to? Iron Armor? Or RHA? Is this even an interesting question?
  3. Maybe it's worth rethinking structural damage. Something that is structurally damaged is really vague: is it literally missing, or just bent out of shape? Is it fixable? HMS Queen Mary lost maybe 30% structural integrity when she was blown in half. I would bet Yorktown lost less than 10% in hull mass to damage. (I Put a TL;DR in the back of this post, sorry for Wall of Text) I've thought about it and one way to get a better (hopefully) arrangement of stats is to introduce fightability and remove structural integrity as a battle stat. Instead, add catastrophic structural failures (for example, from magazine explosions), and make structural integrity something that affects repair cost and speed in the dockyard: a ship may thus be able to limp back to harbour, but still have to be scrapped because it costs more to rebuild than create a wholly new ship. Fightability as a stat could work the following way: Fightability means the ability of the ships crew to make their vessel perform its task. Each Compartment has its own base value, and certain compartments improve the Fightability of others. For example if a barbette is destroyed, the turrets fightability goes with it because ammo cannot be supplied anymore, or drastically reduces it at least. Shooting out engines will reduce the value for the entire ship as power is lost, lights go out and turret traverse drives and loading equipment seizes. The stat also decreases every time a compartment is hit. Bulkheads get smashed, passageways blocked by smoke, fire or debris, lines of communication are severed, ventilation, water or electricity lines get blown to bits. For example, if the compartment below a turret barbette is destroyed, communication to that turret can be severed, and all stats for that turret revert to it. It also may not respond to targeting information anymore, because either nobody can get into the turret, or it may respond very slowly and have difficulty finding the target because somebody has to physically climb down from the conning tower to the turret to instruct its crew. If a Compartment is not hit for a certain time, and not busy otherwise (for example, the guns seize firing) the crew will try to clean up their workspace and increase fightability stat again. This is inversely proportional to damage, so the worse the damage is, the less the crew can do to recover performance. Lowered Fightability affects stats either globally or locally. In case of a barbette hit, loading speed may be reduced or single guns in a turret may seize firing altogether. In case of an engine hit, some equipment may momentarily or permanently seize functioning as power is lost. Hits should decrease fightability in hit compartments for a short time depending on how bad the hit was, for example a ricochet off a turret may lower the stat by 50% for a minute as gun crew reels from the impact but recover completely afterwards. A penetrating hit to the conning tower will instead reduce its performance to 0% until the survivors have gathered their wits, assessed the damage, and taken up control of their vessel again. So, basically timed buffs/debuffs. Fires should affect compartments next to and above them, because of smoke. This means that fires do more than just damage things (is this the case right now? It seems to be.), but also affect a ships performance in general. Fightability of 0% basically means an irrecoverably damaged compartment: even if the structural integrity is intact, equipment is so badly damaged that it doesn't matter anymore. This also means that if flooding hits occur in this compartment, damage control is greatly hampered. TL;DR: Ditch Structural Damage stat from Battles and make it affect Repair only Add catastrophic structural failures (On Magazine explosions, torpedo hits, etc. Bows falling off, Ships splitting in two.) Replace Structural Damage with Fightability. Fightability represents how well a compartment can be used by the crew to perform their Duty Damage decreases Fightability of a Compartment: Things get broken, surviving in the space may become difficult or impossible. Fightability reduction affects performance of Compartment: for example, individual guns on turrets stopping to work, or whole parts of the battery seizing up, etc. Fightability automatically recovers to a degree when crew is allowed to repair. The worse the damage, the less recovery. Damage should affect Fightability logically (for example Compartments above burning compartments should lose fightability because of smoke, etc.) Morale of Crew could greatly affect Fightability, as this is both a HARD stat, as in what is and isn't too damaged to repair, as well as a SOFT stat based on the compartments occupants PERCEPTION of how bad the situation is. The better trained and the higher the morale of the crew, the more likely they are to overestimate Fightability, as opposed to underestimate it. Damage control, Communication and Control are affected by Fightability: Communications going through a 0% Fight compartment seize, things attached are on their own (For example Gun Turrets). Damage control beyond such compartments can slow down drastically because of difficulty getting through smashed compartments. I am not sure if this an actually good Idea, but on first and second thought it seemed to offer some advantages. Would this be more logical/consistent?
  4. Another couple of attempts where not having the most advanced tower did me in. I tried building a budget Battlecruiser, going up against Destroyers and Light Cruisers, 1911 vintage. I spotted the Destroyers only after they had already launched their torpedoes (at 6 kilometers range.). The Chinese BC at that year is a smaller dreadnought hull, and I used the dreadnought-like tower (lowest tech one). The ship had a length of 158 meters, so I eyeballed the tower height from that number. The spotting top is at 26 meters (ish) height above the water, with the bridge of the destroyer (without mast) about 5 meters above the water as a ballpark. So by the numbers: c = f * ( √a + √b ) (f=√2R, R being mean radius of Earth. a and b are the heights of the observation points and c is distance to horizon between both points.) Which gives for the observation point heights a distance of 25 kilometers. Weather was fair, so maybe drop it to 18 kilometers because of the haze. But this was 1911, so there are thick smoke plumes coming from the stacks, and they were making pretty amazing glass for optics at that time already. Long story short, my BC was sinking after firing only one salvo, from eight torpedo hits, by two destroyers who only turned visible at the same time the torpedoes were spotted. Two more destroyers remained invisible and probably also had torpedoes in the water. Is this really necessary? I could have had my own destroyers way ahead of the formation, but their spotting range was also lower than the enemies, and at less than 5 kilometers they would have been overwhelmed going 2 against potentially 6 (4 DD and the 2 CL). All structures already have a spotting distance attached: in case of the BCs tower, 3500 tower spotting (is that meters? what does the value mean?). If that is meters to horizon, it is almost 14k meters short of the actual distance to horizon from the spotting top as represented in game. Even from the deck, the distance would be over 7k meters. So, what do the numbers really mean, and why do it this way? It harbours so much potential for frustration, and breaks suspension of disbelief every time ships teleport in and out of existence (essentially.). This is about the only gripe I have with the game. I don't need a campaign, I don't need more complicated armour simulation or officers altering stats. Only ships stopping to teleport out of sight by the decision of an arbitrarily assembled table would be great.
  5. Edit: (Today some more Battles, and I still don't understand the gameplay value of this mechanic, especially in the light of my inability to suspend my disbelief. Two Battleships (1915 Vintage), and consistently the enemy outspotted me (I didn't pick max Tech to see what happens.). Dreadnoughts, unable to spot other Dreadnoughts at 8 kilometers (!!!) Range. While the opposite side, of same tech level, with ships of same weight class can somehow see 12.5 kilometers. This is what I mean with inability to suspend disbelief: the mechanic is at worst frustrating and unfair (If on the receiving end) or tedious and boring (if on the giving end), and at best gives a reason to play some rock paper scissors with towers and ships. IE, building a spot-only-cruiser with one gun, max speed, max towers and max armor (I have to test to see if this works). And all the while, I can see that both ships have the same height of masts, two funnels, rangefinders at the same height, similar guns with similar optics and yet one always has a romulan cloaking device that says "if distance < X = turn invisible", which is annoying. In campaign, catching out a battleship with another battleship that has a slightly better tower or smaller hull size will have the advantage, and a battleship faced with torpedo slinging destroyers outside view range has even more fun.) Today I did some testing, and here's a picture with ships set for year 1915. The ships spotted each other at 8.2 kilometers distance, +/- maybe 200 meters. Ranges for battleships were around that range every time, no matter the weather. At Jutland, the cruisers shot at each other from distances as far as 14 kilometers, and spotted each other further out. And assuming the height of my battleships spotting top is about the height of that on HMS Dreadnought (about 25 ish meters, I think, from drawings I could find.), it should see the top of the chinese BCs Deck at 26 kilometers distance (assuming it is about 3 meters above the waterline), and the waterline at 19 kilometers, more than twice the distance the ships spotted each other in game. I am beginning to understand that this spotting mechanic is there as a kind of fog of war. I think it's not working. I had another battle today where I skirted a couple hundreds of meters outside the spotting range of an enemy ship, and spent an entire 4 hours ingame time battle without having one shell fired at my own battleship. Only the spotting cruiser occasionally got shot when it accidentially slipped into view range, which was corrected with a quick course change. Is it at all possible to make some adjustments to this? Screenshot below is first shots right after spotting each other, at about 8.5 kilometers distance.
  6. I think right now all parts already have a signature level attached, which makes it so you can build ships that are visible much further than they themselves can spot. And I think that even a small destroyer being invisible to a battleship beyond 9 kilometers (which happens very regularily, up to heavy cruisers or sometimes battleships if no Radar is involved.) is nothing that is ever going to happen under clear conditions in real life. Maybe there should only be three values, independent of mark or tech level, mast height, superstructure height and hull height. Mast height would be the spotting top, superstructure would be main observation post/rangefinder height and superstructure would be turret on deck height. Ships should only be invisible if they actually have not been spotted by the crew. In game you could add tech for observation equipment (handheld binoculars vs. stabilized spotting scopes or surface search radar or something.) and make environment a bigger factor. For example at Jutland, in the late evening the germans could not fire back because they were shooting away from the setting sun, completely obscuring the enemy ships while they themselves were backlit by the sky. Maybe add 3D fog banks, rain squalls or other weather that affects the battle (Think Battle of Cape Sarych, where Goeben slipped in and out of the fog to control the engagement.) Simple barriers, or volumes with graphical effects on top that cut line of sight, or add an accuracy penalty. Smoke generated by ships would probably work best as an actual screen (affected by the wind or rain, for example.) because you could set up actual smoke barriers to hinder the enemy. With the three height values, as each level of the ship becomes more visible, accuracy in identifying hits and misses increases. (If you can only see the masttops, you probably can't see the splashes of your shells either. If your shells are heavy enough, they might obscure parts of the superstructure when landing in front, increasing accuracy, and you maybe even see hits. Once you see the hull, even better.) That way stealth snipes by torpedoes become more unlikely. The main gist seems to be, though, that instead of becoming invisible, ships should only become harder to hit once spotted. Maybe give us the opportunity to make a small scale test, if at all possible? Even if it is just a seperate, fixed demo without building ships or features removed to see if something other than the WOWS system can be fun. On a sidenote, don't display the enemy ships where they actually are, but where your ships think they are, like transparent ghosts that become more visible or less visible depending on the conditions? Obscuring all information about the enemy ships, especially in campaign would also be good. For example, all you know about a ship should be supplied by Intelligence (which could be wrong), so for example a ship may be identified but have had a refit in the meantime. Ingame it will be shown as the pre-refit, because that's what your crews think it is, until close enough to visually ID difference, or getting hit by a ship that was supposed to be a 12x 6 Inch cruiser that suddenly packs 8x 9 Inch guns; this means also that until otherwise identified, the ship would display range radii and weapons of the pre-refit state that was known. That would make things much more interesting, especially in the campaign. Cheers, Insta
  7. Hi! First time Poster, have been lurking for a while, and bought the game a while ago after looking into it. I am impressed, and am enjoying it greatly. One thing that seems to come up often, both here on the Forum and in my own playing is the weird Situation the current WOWS style on-off spotting mechanic creates, where ships of similar size and capability have one that can spot the other from a significantly greater distance even though realistically, both should be able to spot the other easily (say, two battleships at 10 km distance. In one particular instance I was able to kill two much more powerful BCs with a heavy cruiser, by kiting just outside their view range and needle-stabbing them to death. I compared the height of the ships in the builder afterwards (Hull and Tower combination), and the spotting top and rangefinder of the BCs tower was in fact taller (thus able to see further, physically.) In real life, the difference between seeing the enemy and not appears to be environmental conditions and target size + distance + resolution and accuracy of optics. My Question is the reasoning behind choosing the currently implemented way spotting works. In WOWS it enables players that use their knowledge about the spotting mechanics and capabilities of their ships to work together, so that the enemy is visible but they themselves can stay concealed, and it provides a fog of war to enable movement across the map, and necessitating active reconnaissance to get a picture of the enemy. With this game, especially given how many (and random!) combinations of equipment ships can have, it is hard to know beforehand how far your spotting distance actually is. As campaigns progress, knowledge gained will also get obsolete quickly, if it is possible to learn at all? I am hoping to warm up to the mechanic more if I get why it is the way it is. My experience with strategy and especially naval games is very limited. The last I played was Silent Hunter II and Age of Sail at the turn of the Millenium, and I only dabbled in WOWs for a short time before getting turned off by the grind and competetive, angry edge. Maybe either some players or the devs themselves could provide some insight? Cheers Insta
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