Abuse_Claws

Yeah, that's definitely a fair autoresolve My BC had 14" of main belt armor and 16" guns with 35kn top speed and regular crew The American CA has 0-11" armor and 8" guns with 32.3kn top speed and cadets crew So unless the Americans managed to somehow torpedo the sonar-equipped BC with an escort of 3 sonar-equipped DDs... What happened? Autoresolve is basically unusable at this point, which makes unskippable battles like this a real pain. I don't want to spend like 20 minutes chasing a single CA for a great great reward of like 100VPs Edit: I managed to catch the repaired Miami with another BC of the same class and 1 DD escort. These are the results: (2nd screenshot). I didn't employ any sophisticated tactics or anything, just fired at Miami until it sank. No magic. Is it so hard, mr AI autoresolve? Edit 2: wait, I just realized this isn't "same class BC", this is Santa Clara herself. What? I didn't build new ships since then. It's October 1942 now, so Santa Clara is supposed to be at the ocean floor for like 4 months already

A few more attempts in, the AI just gave up. As in I pressed the "autodesign" button, watched the AI try some really ridiculous stuff while the text said "Building 3%... 5%..." all the way to 99% after which the building process just stopped and I ended up with an empty hull

I made 4 more attempts (won't upload the screenshots as my file size limit is reduced significantly already) with mostly the same problems as mentioned before. And the same problems are quite common in the AI ships in the campaign, as far as I can tell. To reiterate (in no particular order): Weight offset! The AI usually seems to disregard it completely, commonly producing ships with 30+% weight offset, and most of the time there is actually space to move stuff back (or, more rarely, front) to reduce that offset without removing more than a couple of secondaries Engine efficiency. This I can't tell from the campaign, but judging by my 10 attempts to get a functioning BC, 7/10 AI designs had below 100% engine efficiency, with two of them being in the red zone (45% and 65%) The priority of secondary guns is IMO too high. The AI places them where they get in the way of main guns, where the citadel has to be much longer just to fit a couple of extra secondaries or just where the secondaries themselves have a bad firing arc. And the AI does not (even in the late years) hesitate to use half a dosen different secondary calibers with seemingly no regard for caliber unification The main gun layout is often just bad with one or more turrets having a terrible firing arc to the point that just deleting that turret would've probably made the ship better because of options to get a more compact citadel, better armor and equipment or even bigger guns using the spare tonnage The AI doesn't seem to have a consideration for limiting the citadel size, often prioritizing putting extra unnecessary (IMO at least) bells and whistles on the ship over having a nice compact citadel * The armor sometimes seems at the very least insufficient, however maybe that's just me I would love to see those problems fixed, as that would make AI-designed ships for much more challenging opponents

Patient #6 Severe case of weight offset overdose and lack of engine efficiency Also weird secondary placement disrupts the firing arc of the X turret And what in the world is going on with a flight deck in the middle of the ship? Are the secondary guns there really that important that it's OK to extend the citadel by a good quarter? Why is the funnel not in the secondary tower's slot? It would even help with the weight offset, there is just no reason to place it where the AI did!

My 5th try. At this point I'm just trying to study the AI designer and have some fun along the way. Weight offset and engine efficiency are not great once more, but I'm more interested in the highlighted turret. What is this firing arc? How is there no "Some guns have poor firing arc" warning on this design? I get it for way less terrible gun placement all the time! Edit: the main belt armor of 20" seems like an odd choice for a BC, but I like it!

Again! And by "again" I mean that engine efficiency and weight offset are terrible again. Also, what the hell is this gun layout? Why is the would-be-X turret not on a barbette? To save the precious precious firing arc of that secondary turret?

Let's try again! Engine efficiency and even weight offset A-OK this time. The wonky rear-mounted secondaries that disrupt the main guns' firing arc are not ideal The armament of just 6 11" guns for a 1940 BC... Well, not great, but whatever The citadel being WAAAY longer than it needs to be is bad, but sure. Oh, but the armor... This is light cruiser grade armor, and even then it's not good.

So I tried again. 100% weight offset and 65% engine efficiency. Ouch.

I wanted to try a certain BC concept, so I decided to setup a BC duel in Custom Battle. Usually I never use autodesign, since designing ships is hands-down my favourite part of the game, but today I decided to give the AI a go (edit: in designing the enemy ship, if that's relevant somehow) The results were... Underwhelming. The first ship came out overweight (yet the launch button was active!), with a big weight offset and not the best gun layout in the world.

I would say that this idea is better suited for a mod/DLC, or at least players should have an option to disable this content. With the tech tree being gradually expanded (modern armor comes to mind for example) and some branches being already too long (20" mark 5 guns are basically unobtanium unless you focus on big guns during the entire game, and since gun barrels were added turret mechanisms seem to be overloaded as well) I wonder if the campaign should be extended to 1960 or even further. And with that it might be time to go nuclear! Nuclear propulsion for ships and submarines (hell, maybe even auxiliary reactors for super battleships), nuclear large-caliber shells and torps (for naval bombardment or maybe even to try and yeet an enemy battleship out of existence). Might also include stuff like "Radiation protection" to Internal Protection tech branch, "On-board Atomic Clock" to Control Towers etc

As a developer myself (not a game developer though), I would assume the existence of individual dud chance for a couple of reasons: What exactly is a salvo from the code standpoint? Launchers can (and often are, if you take into consideration underwater ones) be fired individually, which would make a 'salvo' kind of a redundant entity in the code. What purpose would it serve? Trajectory, collisions and detections have to be (and from what I see, actually are, like if a torp veers off from a salvo towards you, you can detect it and not the rest of the salvo that goes away from you) calculated individually. Given that there seems to be a "torpedo dud chance" value in the game (as we can see from +-5% Dud Chance tech modifiers), rolling the RNG dice for every torp (rng.next() / rng.MAX < dudChance) seems easier than trying to implement a salvo roll, that would have to produce not just a yes/no result, but a "how many and which torps from this salvo are duds?". Although getting a straight answer from the devs would certainly be nice Yeeeeessss. Felt that yesterday, when Austrian (terribly-)armored cruisers ate 1-2 dozen 14" hits each before going down. For one thing, where in reality ships often gradually succumbed to damage and sank in the end, in UAD the anti-flood systems are some kind of magic which turns 3% floatability into 32% in a matter of minutes, just yeeting the water to /dev/null apparently and patching the hull with band-aids. Same with structural integrity: IRL ocean waves would often over time finish off a crippled ship, but in UAD a ship with 0.5% structural integrity left can stay afloat indefinitely and even keep firing at you (ah yes, main caliber recoil certainly doesn't damage the already-wrecked hull) until you manually kill it. And just plain and simple small ships have too much resistance IMO. One option is making resistance and flooding chance tied to the actual armor thickness. I think a heavy cruiser with 5" main belt armor should take more damage and flooding from a main belt hit than if it had 10" main belt armor. So far that seems not to be the case.

100% agree on that. I just think it's the problem with destroyers being way too tanky rather than with torp damage, because on bigger targets (BBs and BCs) at least for me torps generally work as expected: 4-6 torp hits reliably sink a contemporary capital ship. Sometimes ships survive way more punishment than they should (like a DD eating 3 torps at once and somehow surviving that), sometimes they go down from just a single lucky hit to the magazine(my poor BB Espana, you are gone, but not forgotten) - just like in real life. For example, let's take USS Sealion's track record: with 21" torps it took 2 or 3 hits to sink Kongo - an outdated basically BC, just 1 to obliterate (via ammo detonation) DD Urakaze and later 6 (!!!) to sink a lowly transport Mamiya, with the first 4 hits not sinking the ship and therefore Sealion being forced to shoot 3 more torps for 2 hits to finally put the thing down. I too wish it did, as I think it's an important aspect of naval warfare. However, as trained crewmembers are a valuable resource in UAD, I don't think making it so that ships that would've been scuttled IRL are outright destroyed would be fair. So far I'm just waiting for scuttling ships to be implemented and putting extra torp salvoes on my targets Well, if we assume (and I see no reason not to) that every torpedo has an equal and independent dud chance, from @o Barão's screenshots we have a Bernoulli trial sample with n = 44, k = 5. With 95% confidence we can place the dud chance between 3.8% and 24.6% with the actual prediction being around 11% (which as I understand is roughly historically accurate for 1940s) If I understand correctly, you had explosives and torpedo propulsion research both capped, so unless they used a smaller torp size than you (which would be negligent of them, as you specifically mentioned you used 21" torps), I see no way their dud chance could've been lower than yours, unless there's an actual bug in UAD I say, it's a fair enough test for a forum discussion, though obviously not extensive enough by any scientific standards

Then the dud rate is genuinely puzzling. IDK, I don't have nearly as many duds, maybe just lucky Well, that's an interesting topic. The game does not simulate (in this regard) weather conditions or enemy pursuit ("Straggle" missions do happen sometimes, but definitely not all the time) which would force the ship to be scuttled, as it often happened in real life. But there are also examples of more lucky ships: SMS Seydlitz managed to get home safely even though anyone in their right mind would probably have scuttled this wreck right away. In game we get "heavy damage", which takes months of expensive repairs to remove making it almost easier to build a new one. And if you get a Straggle mission while limping home, you can just surrender right away. I say it's a more fair representation of ships that would be scuttled IRL than straight up destruction, which would claim not just the ship, but also the crew, which might be really valuable, if it's a couple thousands of veteran sailors. But nevertheless the DDs I mentioned certainly weren't ripped to shreds even by the 24" torps. Crippled - yes, sometimes broken in half (and I don't know whether in some of those cases there were also ammo explosions contributing to the scale of damage), but nothing drastic enough to say a 24" torp will absolutely surely kill a DD every single time. If weather conditions, enemy aircraft and pursuing forces were of no concern (like it basically is in UAD), some of those ships may have been towed to their bases and possibly even repaired later (certainly not reasonable, but technically possible), and most of the crews certainly were rescued even with all those aforementioned concerns in play

Aaand yet another issue (seemingly?) So I have noticed that training level for all my ships except two (two BBs were somehow spared by this stupidity plague) just plunged to Cadets Including the ships that just annihilated a US doomstack of 8 BBs and like 3 dozen smaller ships Including the 'museum' 1890 CL that I have on "defend" role for literally decades (since mothballing doesn't work anymore and I don't want to scrap it, as it did some amazing work in its time) What's even more weird, I still have 4,623 men in the crew pool... And their training level is 'Cadets' as well. What??? Isn't Cadets basically "untrained" in this game? Why are those men considered my crew pool if they are not trained? Edit: I have re-read the tooltips in-game and I understand now that this might not be a bug, as I did reduce the crew training funds drastically in the last few months. But I still don't understand how veterans turn into cadets in a matter of months

Maybe someone can explain this one to me, but I think it might be a bug of some kind. So for my stats (Ally Dmg) I understand that the average thickness of armor penetrated by my shells was 8.5", and when adjusted for armor quality and hit angle it rises to 13.4", which makes sense. What certainly doesn't is that for the AI (Enemy Dmg), the average thickness of armor (15.8") was somehow "effectively" reduced to 1.2" (effective indeed!). Maybe I'm reading it wrong? Here,

66% fore weight offset seems like a bit of an overkill And it's not like stuff can't be moved further back easily Such design flaws make enemy ships pretty much toothless, which is kind of sad

A question to the OP: while I understand that your torpedo tech was maxed out, what was the status of your explosives research? IIRC, torpedo dud chance is increased by torpedo size and decreased by researching Torpedo Contact Exploder tech within Explosives research. So if you are using large torps with outdated exploders, you are kind of creating a dud-machine Also, I think you might be overestimating the amount of damage that torpedoes should do. For example, I've looked at a few US destroyers that were sunk by 24-inch 'Long Lance' (Type 93) torps. Here are the results: USS Benham - 2250 tons (full displacement, which as far as I understand UAD uses) - got hit by 1 torpedo. Was it torn apart? Yes, the bow was ripped off from bridge forward. Was it sunk? No, it stayed afloat and was later scuttled USS Barton - 2474t - 2 torps - torn apart: yes, in half - sunk: yes USS Blue - 2325t - 1 torp - torn apart: no - sunk: no (scuttled) USS Strong - 2500t - 1 torp, rammed and detonation of depth charges - torn apart: yes - sunk: yes USS Gwin - 2395t - 1 torp - torn apart: no - sunk: no (scuttled) USS Chevalier - 2500t - 1 torp and rammed - torn apart: yes, bow ripped off from bridge forward - sunk: no (scuttled, including the torn-off bow, which was found still afloat and had to be scuttled separately) USS Cooper - 3515t - 1 torp - torn apart: yes, in half - sunk: yes So even 24'' torps do not reliably sink or tear apart even destroyers. It may depend on whether or not destroyer's own munitions, boilers and engines explode, weather conditions and extra damage (i haven't included some destroyers that were hit by large-caliber shells as well as torps) In my experience so far in UAD 1.09+ (Spanish campaign 1890-1925) torpedoes are a pretty reliable way of sinking even capital ships. My tactic is rather simple: Find a separated enemy ship. The more ships the enemy has, the more chances they have to sink my incoming destroyers/TBs Approach it preferably from the bow at flank speed. That way the enemy has minimal time to respond to the threat (as the relative approach speed is maximized) and also for most designs that puts your destroyer in a blind spot for most of the targets secondaries (and main guns have really low odds of hitting such a fast target) Deploy smoke as late as possible to save as much smoke as possible for the retreat. Wait for the point where you are close enough for enemy to have a real chance of hitting you and deploy smoke only for ships the enemy is actually firing at, as first shots almost always go wide. Ideally I prefer to have 2 pairs of destroyers on one target, both pairs moving in a tight ahead formation. The idea is to flank the victim from both sides, making any attempts to turn futile Torps are disabled until the destroyer is almost (to give the tubes time to rotate on target) side-to-side with the victim, like 200m from it, to reliably achieve multiple hits on different sections of the target (preferably the destroyers should have at least two launchers not next to each other to get a proper spread) If any destroyers are damaged in the attack, immediately detach them from the formation and turn them away so that they do not hinder other destroyers' movement Usually such an attack ends with 1-2 of my destroyers lightly damaged and the enemy ship *very* dead (usually the target begins to sink after eating just one spread of torps, the second spread is to sink it quickly to prevent it from firing at my retreating destroyers and the last 2 destroyers are mostly just backup in case lead destroyers are hit or they somehow miss or there are a lot of duds) Edit: the reason for such short distance of attack is that AI is exceptionally good at spotting and dodging torps. Maybe I'm just bad at it, but I seem to have more issues with doing the same

You spin me right round, baby, right round... But seriously, this poor transport is Tokyo drifting waaay too hard ru

I seem to have found the solution for Building Ships hang in RP3 for pre-RP3 saves You need to open the save file, scroll to the very end and change to That did it for me, at least for now

Not neccessarily a bug, but a gameplay issue of sorts. Playing as Spain 1890-1902 so far (might drop the campaign due to building ships hang, as this is a pre-RP3 save). I've already fought two wars against Austria-Hungary, and a third is right around the corner judging by tension. And I have no clue what I'm fighting for! I don't need their ships, they don't have (available) provinces, all I get for 20000 vs 600 VP score is like 200 million, which is absolutely not worth a few years of fighting. I can't force a long-time peace deal, can't install a puppet government, can't force them into a Washington-style naval treaty, nothing. They've just become an annoyance at this point.

Another apparent bug: the AI somehow designed a ship with 14kn max speed, yet as player (unless something changed lately) I'm only able to design ships with 16kn max speed or higher

This might be a bug with ship naming. As far as I can guess the AI now reuses names of old ships (which is great), but also puts auto-generated DD/TB names into the pool? Edit: sunk the CL Krokodil T-14 as well. I wonder if I'll see a BB Krokodil T-14 one day Edit (2): Also, can someone please explain to me why Convoy battles end when the last of the escorts is sunk even if I have the transports in range and am in the process of sinking them? If they automatically are considered sunk, that is not shown anywhere in the UI (in the end battle screen only the transports I did actually sink during the battle appear as sunk). If they are not, why are they considered to have escaped even when I see them and am actively firing at them? Right now I usually try to leave one of the escort ships crippled until the end of battle, then come back for it, which is honestly a pain in the ass

Great work on the update! The changes are really nice, however I ran into a few issues (don't know yet if they exist in 22.10 update, but the patch notes did not mention them.) 1) When in battle with low fuel (supply port waaaay too far), the max speed of ships changes depending on whether they are in a division or not For example, a battlecruiser with normally 27.5kn max speed goes down to 18kn when alone and all the way to 8kn when in formation with 2 other battlecruisers (same class and also capable of doing 18kn when separated from the div) 2) AI seems to be *extremely* reluctant to scrap old ships. To the point where in 1926 I am the only nation with BCs (and without TBs) and haven't fought a single dreadnought-era ship (except maybe destroyers). According to the log, the AI designs new ships, builds them, discards old designs and yet only ships I actually encounter in battle are pre-dreadnoughts. 3) Even after the AI hoards 500+ ships, I can barely find any enemy ships on the map. And when I scroll the map searching for them, I find this (screenshot). And the rest of them in Balboa. All other US ports are virtually undefended (a stray destroyer here and there and that's it), there are very few US task forces on the map, all the US ships are just chilling in Panama for no apparent reason PS: the campaign was played from 1890 all the way to 1926 before the saves got reset with the 22.10 update