RAMJB

Those times will be fun. Remember that "all or nothing" was an armor layout specifically designed to fight battles at long ranges (beyond 20km) where main battery hits have a good probability of happen, but where smaller guns (cruiser sized or less) have a very low or nonexistant chance to hit. Also AoN didn't preclude designs from adding plating armor beyond the citadel. Or more. Some nominal "all or nothing" historical designs actually had large chunks of armor on spots nominally not to be armored according to the concept. Yet the average player will expect that once that armor model is in place they can go with 0 armor on the extremities of the ships (and elsewhere not on the citadel). And do so. And there'll be consequences for that for players who use that layout without understanding it's purpose and realities and put their battleship 10km away from the nearest opposition, only to have their ship's large unprotected areas ruined by relatively light guns, and their battleship ability to fight subsequently compromised by the ensuing structural damage. So I do expect a lot of yells of terror and forum posts about the "useless" armor model when that happens. People will completely ignore armor on the extremities (based on the wrong idea that those areas should receive 0 armor), and ignore the long range nature of the layout. And the subsequent ammount of end-ship fires and floodings that will stem from that, from hits of guns of all calibers, will cause many an instance of people saying that armor is not worth it and that it needs a buff ;).

Agreed on the first two accounts. Disagree on the third. Whoever discards the secondaries do so based on a completely wrong concept of what "effectiveness" means against destroyers. Somehow the idea that battleship secondaries should (for whatever mystical reason unrelated with reality) deal with DDs with ease at ranges beyond 5km, has become widespread amongst some players. The nature of the scenarios as...well, scenarios do the rest. Some people has completely inordinate expectative of what those batteries could do (and should do here), leading to completely wrong perception of "not being worth them". While I won't discuss the design choices of any player (their game, their way to play it), however I'll challenge the claims that those guns are useless "because lack of accuracy". That is not the case. Those guns are not useless (from my personal experience) - even while their usefulness is not as large as it should be yet. More on that later. But in the meantime, what we have are demands to "balance" those guns to be more accurate to "adress" an issue that does not exist in the way they perceive, that will do nothing to "fix" those guns in the ways that they're really lacking. (Which they do exist) while making the game lose touch with what reality was like. On top of it, it would add yet another problem. See if those secondaries become unhistorically accurate, suddenly the problem will be that destroyers will be nuked with ease at ridiculous ranges, making them "irrelevant" in turn. and then people will complain because the "DDs vs battleship" scenario is too tough. And because, in the campaign once it's here, destroyers won't be worth building. Secondary battery problems exist. But none of them stems from their lack of accuracy at normal ranges. "Fixing" what ain't broken will only break other things that currently aren't. There's ample samples of this kind of thing ruining game developments in the past. I just hope the developers pay attention to the feedback that's based on input coming from reliable sources, not from some players' "need the game to 'feel' right". Personally my two gripes with the current secondaries are that at too short ranges (point blank, 1.5km or closer) the chances to hit should be based on modifiers weighed differently than normal calculations at normal ranges (they arent, and at point blank there are too few hits as a result), and that currently they're not flexible. They fire at whatever the main battery fires too, preventing with one of the most notable benefits of a secondary battery - the ability to deal with multiple threats (From multiple angles) simultaneously. The armor consideration only is important when you talk about big ship vs big ship engagements. Yes, there the armor system hurts because small gun HE has little chance to do much damage against such thicknesses applied to the whole hull instead of to select parts. But secondaries' role to deal with enemy big ships rapidly deminished as standard engagement ranges increased. It's not something that's sorely missed except, maybe, on very early predread-vs-predread encounters. At any rate it's a temporary thing. whatever problems exist with the secondaries currently are completely unrelated with their accuracy, which is the point I've been adressing for so many posts. Secondary accuracy beyond point blank range is currently perfectly fine. The rest of the problems eventually will be gone as the game progresses. The armor model has to change at some point (the one we have just doesn't cut it for a game like this), and obviously at some point in the development the ability to independently target enemies with different batteries will be added. The final nail in the coffin for the argument will be the campaign, where the operational advantages of having good secondary batteries will add to the in-battle advantages of enjoying the presence on one. So the "meta" you mention only exists because of a wrong, yet widespread, assumption from players that those guns should nuke destroyers at unhistorical ranges, and because of a number reasons that stem from this being an early alpha with several things that should be implemented, not implemented yet. So patience. Most of the things that are lacking in this regard are due to come in the future no matter what. In the meantime I do put secondaries on all my designs. Their lack of flexibility hurt, but what doesn't hurt is a dozen guns firing at lightning fast rate of fire when dealing with hard to hit fast enemies at close range :).

Name it then. And provide author's name, and the page with the relevant info, please.

No. No I'm not pushing "my" agenda. I'm pushing the game's self proclaimed one: accurate portrayal of naval decisions and battles during the big gun era. If the game was trying to be anything different I wouldn't be here, to begin with. So no, I'm not pushing "my" agenda - I'm pushing the intended game's goal. There's no such thing as a "meta" in a single player game. The "balance" you demand and are looking for is the same one that caused the most common ship being the destroyer, the 2nd most common being the cruiser and the least common (and by a far and large margin), the battleship: Cost/effectivity. In any campaign where you try to build only battleships you're not going to achieve much. You'll only have a handful of ship, in so few numbers as to make your task to protect your nation as the CiC of the navy, a completely impossible one. Even worse - your limited numbers of very expensive to build, very expensive to operate, and limited to certain ports only (only those with big enough piers to accomodate them, and big enough drydocks to maintain and repair them) big ships will be exceedingly vulnerable to things as destroyer attacks and submarine attacks. Whole areas of your litoral (and foreign enemy one) will be out of your practical reach because battleships have pretty hefty drafts - you'd need lighter ships to protect/attack those kind of areas. You won't be able to properly protect your merchant navy's interests against concerted submarine campaigns, or enemy commerce raider sorties, because you won't have enough ships to cover for all the ship lanes for their protection needs, while keeping enough to defend your nation proper at the same time. Etc. That's why "big gun metas" are not going to happen. Outright cost, cost effectiveness, demands for numbers, and pretty much basic and essential principles of naval doctrine that demand a fleet with enough numbers of all classes as to be both flexible enough, and large enough to cover for the national needs without costing an unsustainable fortune. And if you happen to build big gun ships without secondaries, they will completely be lacking in the AAA department and be overwhelmed when in battle. Because, if you spend all your big gun ammunition on destroyers you're not spending it on the enemy big gun ships. IF you spend them on the big ships, you're not shooting at the destroyers. Either is going to have a free hand on you, because you don't have a secondary battery to deal with one threat while your main one is dealing with the other. Whatever is left alone is going to have a field day on you. And either way you'll run out ammo in short notice (100 to 133 rounds per gun don't last an eternity). And then you'll lose your big ship because you won't have anything to fire. Not to mention, right now we have pretty much omni-magazines. Whatever shell we pick, we fire. At some point or another loadouts will be a thing. You'll choose how many HE rounds out of your limited complement you'll be able to pack for each gun, and how many of AP. Good luck finding a compromise that lets you fight off battleships while protecting yourself against destroyers, if you don't use secondaries. Because you might very well end up not only running out of ammo ... but also running out of the proper ammo for the target that happens to pop up. You don't need to bring "balans" into the battle factors and hit chances to neither pursue nor achieve that goal. It's integrated into the nature of the game itself. Historical nations had far more numbers of small ships than battleships for very good reasons. And every battleship ever built had a very large complement of secondary battery guns, also for very good reasons. If the game replicates the important factors that guided the needs of fleets of the time, players will also have them here...or end up failing at their task. so the balance you claim to seek for depends actually on portraying things as they were. Not as how they "should feel like" based on spurious made up ideas, and not on how things actually were.

you know, I actually went into the game and went into the trouble of designing a 1935 warship and pitted it against 5 destroyers. I collected screenshots and samples that proved that at ranges under 7km, in a warship with 9x9'' and 16x5'' guns, the secondaries were adding effectively an extra 30% of chances to hit under 6km, an extra 60% chances to hit under 5km, and under 4km (with the paltry battery of 2'' guns getting hits too) effectively doubling the number of hits I was expected to score (and getting hits accordingly). Of course the lion's share of the damage was done by the 9'' battery, but the 5'' one scored quite a lot of hits too (something that is claimed is not the case), and I wouldn't have felt bad at all in a scenario where my main guns were targetted at an enemy cruiser while I left the job of close range protection for my secondaries. I was getting ready to post the screenshots up to back up those statements...but know what?. Why bother taking the time to do so. If the argument is "I want to see in the screen what it *feels* right to ME" and not "I want to see in the screen what it really was it like", then I just don't care about it. Because if that's your standard, then whatever information I bring won't be worth crap. Because whatever it proves, it doesn't matter. What it matters is how YOU Feel about the topic regardless of how accurate it is. See, "Games that are about it feels right" are what have led to thing as WOWS. Nothing wrong with that. If that's what you enjoy, fast paced action with no consideration with respect for how the real thing was, by any means, go play it. But stop trying to push your personal agenda on the rare, few, and precious games that try to base themselves around the idea of how things WERE, not whatever random thing you think "should feel like". Because that's not the premise of games that are marketed under the premise of giving an accurate portrayal of how real things worked. There, in that niche where this game supposedly belongs, games are about "it feels like it was in reality". Not "it feels like someone who has never enjoyed a naval simulation wants to be it like". Balans is for WOWS. Not for here. And if the only reason this whole thing is going on is because it is based on the highly uninformed "opinions" of people who aren't familiar with the topic at all, no ammount of information brought here will change those opinions. For what they're looking for is not what this game is supposed to be (and hopefully, gosh, I really hope so, never turns out to be). Please quote definite sources for that statement. Book, author and page, if you please. Also please include at which dates, and using which fire control equipment in particular, if you're so kind. A proper list of estimated % of hits achieved by US battleships with their 5'' secondaries against japanese ships (specially destroyers) in the night engagement of Guadalcanal would be also be enlightening, if you please. Oh, but It does. In what respects to the capabilities historical designs and guns provided for, it certainly does. That you want it to be different doesn't mean the game, in that particular regard (and without being perfect as again, point blank engagements render too few hits), should be different. History didn't care about balans. A game intended to portray historical naval combat should not either. There are already enough "world of..." and "war thunders" in the market for you to pick from if what you look for is "balance". Please be as kind as not to ruin the precious few that are targetted at a different kind of audience that wants something different. That audience also exists (as things like DCS shows and proves) As for the number of hits you achieved, I refer back to Ardent-Acasta vs Scharnhorst-Gneisenau. Do you know how many hits those destroyers took in total during the whole engagement?. Do you know the total expenditure of ammunition by the german ships?. Why do you think they lasted as long as they did in front of such superior firepower?. because the idea that each other shell was connecting even at the close ranges involved in the engagement...let me tell you...is wrong.

Neither. Both are highly unbalanced designs that aren't efficient at all. One has a completely ridiculous ammount of secondaries (on triple turrets, which suffer from much lower rate of fire as when compared with twin mounts. They pretty much kill the idea of individual volume of fire - you'd be outputting the same rounds per minute out with a lesser numerous battery of twin mounts). The other has no secondaries at all. Both are designs that deserve no consideration to build. As for the rest, you have a long list of reasons why secondaries were there. If you want to debate them be my guest. The card you're playing is that a single hit of a massive main battery will KO a small destroyer in just one hit. Not that it'll achieve more hits. And not that it'll achieve the desired result (mission killing the destroyer, NOT necessarily sinking it) faster than a proper secondary battery. Besides the list I provided mentions several not only in-battle considerations why the secondary guns were critical. Again, if you want to waste your 100 rounds per gun on destroyers, be my guest. I'm sure that if then a cruiser comes around he'll also be thankful you have absolutely no weapons left to fire at them. The shipyard will be also thankful given how many times you'll be putting your ship on their installations for (rather expensive for guns that size) barrel relining, or outright barrel swaps. Probably the latter one won't be really important in a campaign. But your lack of a heavy AAA battery will certainly be, from a certain point in said campaign. You asked why you wanted secondaries on a capital ship. Well, you got the answers. Now I'll be the last guy around telling you how you MUST design your ships. This is a single player game so up to you how you want to deal with the challenges it brings ;). But no, reducing the challenge when it was a very real one in real life too just because of your personal perception of how things should be, rather of how things actually were, should not be an option in a game that tries to replicate real life naval warfare of the big gun era :).

Depends a lot on the range involved. If it's point blank, I agree. I already commented on that too: at point blank range the to hit modifier penalties because of ship size and speed should be MUCH lesser than at any longer range for destroyers. At anything beyond point blank - I'll be frank and please don't take it as offensive or rude because it's not intended to be that way at all: whatever you expect is irrelevant ;). What matters is what's historically relevant - and as mentioned in this thread we have shining examples of a couple destroyers dancing in front of two full fledged capital ships, which took 58 minutes (Ardent) and almost an hour and a half (Acasta) of their total and indivisible attention to be sunk by secondary batteries guided by the same fire control equipment that had put 280mm shells on HMS Glorious from 27000 yards of range So I think the problem here is that people have far too high expectatives placed on those guns, not that they aren't accurate or damaging enough

I return the question. Why using secondary battery then? What it should be good at? I've already mentioned it in this tread several times. at least one of them (the one that applies to this discussion): Volume of fire. Instead of firing 6-12 (the most usual number of rifles on capital ship main batteries) shells each 45 seconds or so. If you have, say, 16 secondary guns firing at, say 12 rounds per minute ( a perfectly reasonable proposition for a 5'' twin mount), you'll be outputting 96 shells per side out per minute on average (and that's counting just one secondary joint battery - it wasn't rare to have a backup tertiary that doubled as AAA on designs not using DP mounts such as the german or italian battleships). While individual chances of each shell to hit won't be nearly as high as with the main battery, you get a lot more "rolls of the dice" to achieve those low probability impacts if you put out a lot of rounds downrange than if you put out maybe a dozen that, even if more accurate individually, in the grand scope of things still are shooting at very low % to hit anyway. Even if the individual hits are much less damaging too, you don't need a lot of them to mission kill the target. I mentioned it before, I reiterate it now: secondary batteries weren't designed as "DD assassins". In fact the origin of secondary batteries had nothing to do with destroyers at all, but that's besides the point. What they were there for was: 1- Dealing with small fast combatants through the volume of fire mentioned avobe. Objective being to either act as deterrent for enemy light forces to not come close enough to be a real torpedo threat, to force them to engage in avoidance maneouvers in case they came in for the attack anyway and to neutralize the threat in the end (note "neutralizing" doesn't necessarily equal "sinking" - and most of the time it didn't). 2- Provide a means to deal with low-chance-of-hit targets (such as the avobe mentioned light fast torpedo forces) with ammunition that was a) far more numerous (there were a lot more rounds per gun in for secondary battery gun than for a main battery gun). b) far cheaper and expendable (self explanatory: a 5'' shell doesn't cost the same as a 16'' one - and if you waste one firing at a DD nobody cares) c) far less mission critical (if you run out of secondary rounds, which is quite hard given their sheer number even with the higher rate of fire you still are a massive threat to anything that comes close to your big guns. Run out of main ammo, not even enemy cruisers will respect you anymore). d) far more conductive to long term ship operative status (with main guns that needed a relining, depending on the gun, nation and design, after as little as 100 shots, up to as much as 300, you don't want to be wasting your main gun's liner life on 1200 tons of tincan, when you can use much smaller guns with far easier to deal with worn out barrels). 3- the original reason for the quick-firing secondary battery of the predreadnought era still was valid until the battleship stopped being the queen of the seas. Secondary battery hits firing at high rates of fire at close ranges could truly ruin even the most heavily protected's enemy warship structure at rearrange it in literally no time. Not to mention hit unprotected stuff such as deck torpedo tubes (common in some cruisers and present in even some battleships), aerials (messing up the radio comms of the target in the middle of a battle), exposed rangefinding equipment, radar antennas, etc. It could cause fires. It would never be a real threat for an enemy warship's survability, but it'd make it's life more miserable than if that battery wasn't there. So it was also used for that. 4- and that's just for the DP mounts but even designs that didn't have DP secondaries, they had a DP tertiary (for instance the Bismarck's 105mm guns were both for anti surface and AAA even while more focused on the latter): obviously those guns, either secondary or tertiary, could double for heavy AAA duty. That's why you wanted a secondary battery for. None of those demand any kind of high accuracy, all of them are vital (some critical) roles for a big gun warship to cover.

Exactly what's the rationale that makes you think small guns should have equal, or even similar, accuracy than bigger guns?. Especially when you're not rating gun accuracy - you're rating mount accuracy. Whole different matter where far more things than the guns themselves are involved. Aso, what's the rationale that makes you think secondary guns should "excel in terms of accuracy" at all? (other than obviously point blank range). Why do you expect a side-mounted light 5'' secondary mount controlled either locally or through a secondary fire control center (in the most modern instances of warships) using secondary rangefinders (if any), and which is far more prone to suffer from the effects of ship's rolling (And overall) motion, to be anywhere as accurate as a big main battery turret firing through central fire control to solutions calculated from direct inputs from massive rangefinders, and mounted at a central position where the rolling motion affects the least?. Also, are you aware that light projectiles are notably more propense to dispersion at shorter ranges than much heavier projectiles, as a direct result of the heavier projectile having an inherent advantage in inertia?. Put it in other way - take a piece of paper, wrap it into a ball, throw it. Take a much heavier lead ball, throw it so it leaves your hand with similar velocity. Which of both do you think you'll be able to throw accurately at a specific point you are aiming at which is 10m away from you?. Taking this in account, can you understand why lighter guns firing lighter projectiles (which to begin with have shorter natural ranges than bigger ones) tend to lose precision with range at a much faster rate than heavier guns firing heavier ones?. Light secondaries, considerations about turret traverse and gun elevation speed apart (which would be only important in engagements held at the most closest of ranges possible) excelled in one thing, and one thing alone when compared to large main guns: Sheer volume of fire. Their way to score hits wasn't through high accuracy, was from throwing out such a wall of fire that inevitably some of it would hit the enemy. The closer, the better. You somehow seem to expect otherwise. Why?.

However at extremely close range secondary battery just do not deliver the firepower that they are capable of. I didn't specifically adress this with a quote. But you can see in my previous answer that the first thing I said was: Basically I'm agreeing with you on that account. At point blank range naval gunnery wasn't conducted through elaborate plotting and salvo spotting. Guns were directly aimed at the target. Whatever bonuses destroyers deserve because of small size and high speed because they make sense in the way fire was conducted beyond point blank, shouldn't be applied with the same ferocity at point blank (they still should exist, but not to the same extreme extent). Hit chances at such short ranges are way too low currently in game as a result of severe hit penalty modifiers that make sense beyond point range being applied with the same severety where they don't make sense, that's something I've agreed upon in that message, and in several other posts in other threads ;). Also, that doesn't only apply to small guns nor against DDs only - big guns suffer from the same problem, and against all targets that are very close. It's just that the small gun-vs-DD scenario is the one where the problem is most visible and noticeable because the hit chance penalties applied to represent the difficulty of conducting normal plot-and-spot firing against small size and high speed ships as destroyers being so extremely high and applied the same way at a target 15km away than at a target only 1km away. Which shouldn't be the case. So basically the first thing I said in my post is to agree with precisely what you're telling me I didn't adress ;). As for "triggering DDs to fire torpedoes at something other than your battleship by putting your own DDs in the way"... well, again, this is something that happened in reality, and the main reason torpedo boat and destroyer flotilla torpedo attacks usually weren't called on enemy battlelines if enemy light forces were screening the approach. You'd wait for them to be out enough of position as to make them unable to intercept the force before they could release. Otherwise ordering such an attack usually wasn't done unless the situation was desperate. Because as an admiral you can order such a charge inferring that your destroyers will "save their torpedoes" for the big guys. But when those destroyers are engaged in a fight to the death with the enemy screening forces, they'll be quite more worried about getting rid of those in any way they can than on saving any torpedoes for the battleships at the cost of their very own skin and ship. Besides, saving a torpedo is worthless if you don't reach the point where you should launch it. If the choice is between saving the torpedo but losing the ship, or not saving the torpedo - the answer is obvious. Accordingly I don't think there was a single case of light forces fighting it out where torpedos were held back at all. And I don't see why they should in this game either ;). Basically what you perceive as an "exploit" I perceive, based on historical accounts, as the expected outcome of a flotilla being ordered to charge an enemy big warship which is screened by a sizeable force of protecting destroyers that are fast enough to intercept them before reaching the release point ;).

I've almost never seen a DD killed by anything other than a main-battery or torpedo hit I do. One of the scenarios, not sure which one. The one you have to design a ship and you're given two destroyers to go with it to fight off a force of a couple BBs, CAs and a large force of destroyers. My BB eventually spent a lot of of main guns ammo fighting the large warship force, when it was time to deal with the DDs I ran out. All I had left was my second battery (mix of 6'' and 3'' secondaries). I gutted enough of them with those weapons to win the me the scenario. Of course took a lot of random maneouvering to throw off possible incoming torpedos. I even ate a couple of them. Some DDs came extremely close (under 2km) and my guns were still missing like mad (it's from there that my opinion about point blank range hit %s are botched - but only at those very close ranges). But as I described in previous posts here's where the "volume of fire" part entered the equation. Even with very low hit chances, my guns where vomiting so many shells some of them had to find their mark - and some did. 3''s were mostly for spraying them with pepper fire - even then some hits got floodings, some damage to the funnel, generally useful stuff to degrade their effectivity. But each time I got a hit with the 6'', it was just the prelude for a very swift end for the DD, as 6'' hits caused major damage including severe floodings that slowed the targets so much that subsequent fire was far more accurate. I actually didn't even bother finishing most of them, as soon as I saw my target was essentially mission killed I switched to the nearest threat. Once all of them were crippled enough, that's when I began finishing them one by one keeping the fire up on each one until it sank before moving on to the next one. Some of them even awarded me the sink a while after I had switched fire off from them because uncontained fires or progressive flooding. By giving away your secondary battery and "not bothering with small gun batteries" you're making a severe mistake - but I'll let you learn that lesson on your own, the same some historical navies had to back in the day :). I do agree however that independent targetting for different batteries is a must have. It should be possible to designate a target for the main battery and a different one for the secondary. That'll come in the future no doubt, the same as the ability to aim guns at one target while dropping torpedoes at a different one (something that cant be done either right now). Yes, it's possible to assign different targets to ships in the same division. Control-click will give firing orders exclusive to the ship you have active in a given moment, instead than doing so for the whole division. Took me a while to figure that out too :).

There were two Scharnhorst involved. Gneisenau was also there. So double the ammount of guns involved ;). Of course HMS Ardent also was around there and she also attracted some fire (she lasted precisely 58 minutes since first fired at until sunk) Acasta lasted more than a full hour before being sunk against both ships, at several points being engaged by both simultaneously. And that was against pretty angry enemies too (Scharnhorst did take a fish from her which didn't really enhance the mood of the germans engaging her). As you can see what you're experiencing in game doesn't look too far fetched considering how things looked like in real life ;).

Memory might fail me, but I remember reading somewhere that Bismarck had only one operational weapon left by the time the scuttling order was issued. A 20mm mount. It's known it was the only operational weapon left...because it was still firing at that moment even while by that time Bismarck was nothing but sinking rubble subjected to the most brutal short range focus fire of naval warfare history any vessel ever sustained. In WW1 there was a similar case when SMS Blücher was slowed down during the Dogger Bank engagement, and ganged up against by the british forces. Reportedly there were guns still firing up to the very moment she capsized. Point being - when there's no only other option left, yes, crews would fight until the bitter end even when all hope is gone. As far as surrendering the in battle ship goes, I think the last ever instance of that happened in Tsushima. At least in what regards to warships captured after a battle, I can't remember any posterior instance. Degradation of ship capability through damage is implemented. There are severe accuracy penalties coming from structural damage and flooding. Top speed also goes down from structural damage alone (the precise ammount per damage depends a bit on how you designed your ship). PErsonally I think some kind of penalty to Rate of Fire should also be involved after certain tresholds of damage - but other than that the effect is already there.

Not my experience again. A single 6'' in the hull of a destroyer, in my experience, is almost a guaranteed flooding and engine damage. both combined will slow it down enough to make it pretty much fodder for subsequent fire. Three or four such hits, the vessel is pretty much a mission kill. A single 8'' shell will rip its guts all across the place. Once more - it won't kill it outright, but it'll pretty much turn it into a limping wreck. Contrary to your perception, I do think that small guns are the ideal antiDD weapon. Yes, individually they have a lower hit chance. So low it might seem laughable. It's not so laughable when you remember that no matter how low a roll you have to throw, if you're giving A LOT of rolls, eventually you'll get one right. Once you get that one right, the rest is a downhill struggle for the DD, for just one hit from anything of 6'' or more is highly likely to mess it so badly it won't be able to run properly anymore. And if it can't run, it's main defense against getting further hit, speed, vanishes. Queue the firestorm. Rest is done. Now if you tell me that 4'' guns, for instance, won't disable a DD outright, you're right. A 4'' hit will do limited damage. Again, get lucky enough it'll cause a flooding, damage a funnel, do something to make the rest of the job easier. But 4'' guns were considered insuficient as a credible defense against destroyers already by the early 1910s. To the point that wholly new classes of battleships and battlecruisers were launched in the UK to upgrade their secondaries from 4'' to 6'', with no other change on the classes themselves. And in 1910 destroyers didn't displace more than 1k-ish tons (some bigger ones here and there but averages where what they were). If a 4'' gun was considered insuficient for the job against a 1k tonner, go figure against later destroyer classes which were much bigger. 5'' was so-so. On the verge of being useful, on the verge of being too anemic. Later advances in explosive fillers made them close the gap, but still given the DD displacement growth with time, against a proper DD you wanted something 6'' or bigger as a rule of thumb. Now the question would be inevitably "then why should I bother putting guns of 3-4'' on my designs?". Again, volume of fire. If a DD is *THAT* close as for that battery to be relevant you really want to throw even the kitchen sink at it, no matter it won't do much on a single hit. The way to disable DDs is to stack hits on them until their lose their only asset: Speed. Once that's done, that DD is going to be a mission kill in really short notice. A 3'' hit may not gett it on the first hit (it's going to need pretty much a straight hit on the proper place) but anything helps when the enemy is so close. The first time I ran the "predreadnought vs DDs" scenario (on the previous alpha) I wont it solely based on my 3'' guns volume of fire being the main asset to get some hits to slow individual enemies down - then the 6'' battery and the main battery would have much higher chances to connect. Either one hitting was enough to make the DD turn tails immediately. Again, against those ships you want mission kills, because they're not just going to go down under the waves based on the fact that you had hit them a couple times with a 4, 5 or 6'' guns. Disabling a ship does not mean necessarily sinking it outright, specially when we're talking about those tincans which I'll have to mention again, were much harder to sink than what people seem to give them credit for. Anyway: Collectivelly small guns are a mass of rifles firing at a much higher volume of fire than the main battery. Low hit chances but much higher ammount of chances to hit. Throw enough sh*t to something, at least some will stick. Initially it will seem underwhelming, but again, it's a matter of volume of fire and progressive deterioration of the capabilities of the ship. Just one hit in the proper place (and a DD doesn't has much to be hit) and the machinery will be out and flooding will ensue, making the subsequent volume of fire much more prone to hit - it escalates really quickly from there. You probably won't sink the DD outright with secondaries, barring the lucky twinkee of a magazine hit. Nor you should expect to (multiple instances of this in history. Acasta for instance lasted more than one hour dancing in front of two german battleships before going down). But any proper solid hit with a gun of 6'' caliber will be pretty much a mission kill for the DD - which is what your secondaries are intended to provide you with - those guns weren't mounted on big ships to sink DDs. They were mounted there to disuade them to come close enough to be a major problem, and to turn them into a heapin' hulk of rubble if they didn't. I'll insist once more: a DD, smaller than a BB or not, wasn't an easy ship to sink. I'm not sure why the expectative here from so many is that they just vanished the second they're hit by a 5'' gun. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Small boats are really hard to kill now days. They weren't easy to kill at any time. In fact some historical destroyer designs survived absolutely brutal degrees of damage. Take a look at what picket DDs in the US navy received in the way of kamikaze attacks during the last couple years of the war and you'll understand up to which point sinking one of those tincans wasn't easy. And I'm sure the japanese pilots who crashed their planes against those ships only to see them survive (completely trashed, ruined and in such a state as to make them not worth repairing) would've wanted to see a patch to change it had they lived through it ;). Just kidding , but you get the idea :). They were quite easy to disable though. A good hit on the machinery and a DD was for all practical purposes a mission kill. This happens in there too. A good hit on the hull of a DD generally screws it so much as to make it a sitting duck for the remainder of the battle. A couple good follow up shoots to really screw it over, and you can work on other targets for the remainder of the battle. Now, actually sinking it is a completely different matter. But so it was with real ships. I think people are getting the whole wrong idea out of the missions. I know they demand you to "Kill x ammount of ships", and that if you don't meet that goal the scenario is a loss. It focuses too much on linking the idea of "success" to the idea of "sinking". Of course sinking the enemy was a success. most of the time rendering it incapable of fighting was more than enough, without the need of actually sinking it. I think the objective system for those scenarios should work in very different lines because right now it's plain to see it's giving the wrong idea about what a "naval victory" was at the time. But I don't know up to which point that kind of work is really necessary. Once the campaign is working in the future, the idea of "winning" or "losing" a given engagement will be completely revamped on it's own. 2nd. AI cheats. In some missions AI uses more funds on the ships than you could possibly muster. I'm not sure the missions explicit at any time that the force you're fighting against is working with the same or less funds than you are. At all. In fact some scenarios are so lopsided numbers wise that's clearcut to see that the AI has more resources. That's not cheating, that's scenario design ,and it's perfectly good scenario design too. Again, think campaign. When you're commanding the french fleet and you find yourself fighting the british (for instance) there will be little room to complain the AI is cheating "because they have more funds". Some navies are bigger than others, and the smaller ones have to make do with less resources to cover for the same basic needs. And even bigger navies are compromised by their needs to keep large numbers at play at a given moment - even if their budgets are much higher, they still aren't limitless, and they'll usually have a need for much large forces to cover for a far larger area. Hence economy of design is an extremely valuable tool in a designer's toolbox for both small and large navies: teaching the player through forcing him to design ships as effective and cost efficient as possible is one of the things I think the scenario system does very well. If you think you're going to jump into the campaign and begin pumping out 90k ton versions of the Yamato left and right...think again. Won't be the case. Ships gadgets and armor thicknes are trivial as long as the AI ships can't be 20% more heavier and bulkier than players. I completely disagree with this. Higher techs enable much more efficient designs - generally in weight, but also in some cases, in overall cost. In fact making the right tech selection in the pre-design screen is the key to win some of those scenarios - and on top of that most of the times the "more funds" option is the LEAST desirable one, showing that more absolute resources doesn't mean a better shot at winning them. Think what the scenario entails, what will you need to win it, and then choose the correct box to make a design adequate for the job at hand. You'll be surprised.

More or less like that. But with thinner "deck", and more area taken by the "belts". You can spot the many problems with this implementation. Though I don't know about the underwater areas, they might be somewhat less armored. It's obvious to see that belt is homogeneous all over the hull at least avobe the waterline. The extended belt sharing that property is what causes the infuriating (for most) high rate of ricochets on highly angled ships. This was just not possible in viable battleships once they began being large past a certain size - to armor all the hull like that the ammount of armor weight you'd need would be of such magnitude as to mean the ship wouldn't be a ship but rather an underwater reef if it ever was dared to float. There was a rather thin (thinner in some designs than others) main belt with max thickness. That would reach 2-5 feet over the waterline at best (it wasn't rare for battleships to be overloaded with refits and extra equipment as to force their main belt completely underwater!). Anything over that was, by force, armored by medium armor in early designs, little more than splinter protection in AON ones. In fact when it came down to the design process of warships of the era there usually was a highly contentious process of deciding the belt thickness and height variables. Going for too thick a belt usually would mean a smaller area covered (otherwise the weight demands were unnaceptable). Opposite, trying to cover too much area would mean a thinner overall belt. There are some extremes of both in ships that actually existed. The Royal Navy sailors had a joke that went that the only thing harder for a shell than to penetrate nelson class main amored belt, for instance, was for the shell to actually hit it in the first place. Obviously that class made too an extreme compromise for thickness to the point that the actual area covered wasn't that much. Also, the deck placement is completely incorrect. The main armored deck usually was placed at the same level of the top of the armored belt. It was usual to have several armored decks, one or more being given splinter armor thicknesses (some designs more than others). At any rate the main armored deck still was the thickest one, and was placed rather low in the hull. In AoN designs it'd join the upper limit ot the belt. In Turtleback designs the extremes of the deck would be sloped down to join the main belt lower end under the waterline (in both cases forming an internal armored "Box" - the citadel). In most warships of the era if you tried to put any worthwhile thicknesses of armor on the top deck (the weather deck), not only you'd leave the sides of your "armored citadel" protected by large areas of intermediate (or worse) armor, thus leaving it wide open for enemy gunfire, the design also would be so topheavy as to be dangerously unstable. Ships were armored like that in the very early age of the ironclads. But as soon as technology evolved and sizes increased it was impossible to protect such large areas and the different types of layouts began to happen. Hence - this implementation must be an interim placeholder. There's no way the game can claim to represent correct age of dreadnought naval combat with this kind of modelling ;).

1- Agree but I think the issue here is not small caliber accuracy. It's the tremendous hit modifier penalties DDs have because of small size and speed. Which are quite logic for long range engagements, but not for point blank ranges. Yet they are weighed the same no matter the range. 2- Never have had that problem in any of my games yet. 3- never found that one either. I've had guns stop firing on sharp turns at very strong rudder inputs, always assumed it was related to the ship's heel angle while turning. Not about traverse at all. 4- Doctrinary principle. Game uses salvo firing, and in salvo firing you wait until your whole salvo is ready. Maybe a "fire at will" option might be implemented to let all guns let loose at whatever they wish, albeit on a hit penalty, might be handy here, because it wasn't uncommon to see something like that on confused short range engagement (thinking mainly guadalcanal engagements and Jutland's night encounters here). 5- never saw something like that. Some more things: My conclusion is that 5" secondary are marginally useful on BB and BC. They can kill DD, but not before its too late. In term of balance I am fine with that part, Battleship should struggle against DD when unescorted. Secondary guns weren't envisioned to "Kill DDs". They were intended to fend them off, while adding quick firing weapons to riddle enemy big ships superstructures with holes. Of course their role included killing them if possible, but it wasn't not the main goal. The main goal was to keep DDs away and to force them to act at ranges where their torpedoes could be avoided. THey were more of a deterrent and supression tool, than a killer tool. And that part never changed. It was the same in WW1 as it was in WW2, even with the big improvements in FCS that happened across the way. - Scharnhorst's array of secondary and main guns wasn't able to fend of the determined attack from a destroyer before it had made good an un-avoidable torpedo launch. Acasta went down after sustaining numerous secondary hits and after a prolonged engagement only where she was staying and fighting, not once trying to flee. -Hipper's experience with Glowworm was also representative. Hipper had with her 12 4'' battery, one of the largest secondary batteries on a heavy cruiser. It did hit Glowworm repeatedly but couldn't sink it before it had lodged herself against the hull of the heavy cruiser. - Bismarck's night action against Vian's destroyers is considered, in general, a good show of german performance because the battleship's secondary battery threat was enough to protect the battleship from the concerted attack of the destroyer force - even if not one of Vian's destroyers was sunk. Of course that was a night action with moved seas (and bismarck wasn't the most stable gun platform ever at that stage given the damage to her rudders) which added to the difficulty of achieving hits, but the action was a german success nonetheless. Bismarck didn't sink any of the enemy destroyers, but avoided being hit in return. The second being the main goal of the secondary battery of a battleship, the result is considered a very good show of the german split secondary battery. All of these (And more) it gives a good picture of what a secondary battery was designed to do. Even battleships with the largest secondary arrays in the world at the time (mixed caliber 6'' and 4'' battery, while most treaty nations were trying to push for a single DP battery) had problems with destroyers. And in game you shouldn't expect much more. Even while I'll agree that at short enough (point blank) ranges the hit chance is really, really, really too low due to the hit penalties DDs moving at full speed enjoy. Yet somehow you're expecting secondaries to be a lot more effective here. Why?. On the bright side, the DD got focused on and easily dodged all incoming torpedo. That's mostly a exploit, DD should launch their torpedo at battleship, not other DD. What's your source about it?. In every naval engagement where destroyers used torpedoes, those torpedoes were used on whatever target was close by and the highest threat at the time. From Jutland to the night battles of the Solomons, there's plenty of instances of DD-on-DD torpedo drops, more than often with devastating results for whatever was hit. If what you want is for your DDs to save their torps for big ships, you can actively force them to - just use the "off" selection in their contextual menu. But don't expect the AI not to use those torpedoes on your small ships - because if given a chance they would in the real world too, without a doubt. And here they do it aswell. On the negative side the DD stay too far from each other and could barely hit and damage each other. I ended up taking control myself. Under 2.5 km DDs start hitting each other and doing some damage. Mine being all guns and armor it was a easy win. even in a 1v4 While agreeing again that at point blank range DD gunnery should be better (Again, result of the hit penalty modifiers which really should'nt weigh that much so close in), theres once more plenty of instances of DD vs DD actions, in fact much more than BBvsBB, in the dreadnought era and all of them show exceedingly low per-shot hit ratios and very long engagement times: Those kind of battles were usually decided by sheer volume of fire over time, and the results were usually a couple DDs sunk for the losing side at best. Not the anihilation of the "Loser" force by the "winning" one. And it makes sense - destroyers are exceedingly lively platforms, which move a lot, and usually don't enjoy the kind of FCS refinements, much less the heavy stabilizing gear that made firing from bigger platforms less problematic. Aiming at a small ship moving at high speed beyond anything but point blank while your ship is pitching and rolling like mad even on the slightest of the waves isn't the most easy thing to do - and getting hits is even more complicated. Again, plenty of engagements to pick from. From the desperate destroyer flotillas engagements during Jutland (specially during the german attempt to relieve Wiesbaden) to night Solomon campaign destroyer engagements there are lots of good instances of DD vs DD fighting - all of them shared a common denominator and that was that even at the rather short ranges involved, hit ratios were tremendously low. It also showed that victory or defeat didn't mean a crushing one for the respective sides: once the action was over the "loser" had not been anihilated and sunk. Rather it had retired, maybe leaving a ship or two sinking behind. Sometimes not even that.

HE hits on the rear end of fleeing ships inevitably end with the fleeing guy without a rudder and with the rear 2-3 compartments completely flooded. So it is a thing indeed.

The problem is not lack of transverse bulkheads. The problem is that you're armoring your hull with the equivalent value of your belt armor. Which is, like, not believable at all. Belts covered a limited area on the waterline, above and below it. Avobe that you'd get an upper belt, much lesser in thickness, or barely more than some splinter plate (in AoN designs). Ships ends are the same. You get equivalent protection on the whole hull at that place as you put in your "extended belt". Which again, wouldn't be the case at all. The result is that at extreme angles ricochets happen all the time. As they should against thicknesses like those at angles like those. I'm pretty sure the whole armor model is just a placeholder. Adding transverse bulkhead values won't change anything until proper armor distributions are modelled and in place, so don't sweat it too much. For now if an enemy is stupid enough to give you a direct shot to his nose or rear, open up with HE and massacre his end compartments. Something that is modelled and in place is the progressive loss of fighting capacity through cumulative damage. If the enemy is stupid enough to cut his firepower by a half and give me his nose, he's going to end with a bloody one. An on fire one too. And by the time he recapacitates he'll be so damaged that his chances to hit me back are going to be much less. I know it's not the way you'd deal with a situation like that historically (AP through the nose hurt a lot), but the limitation by now is the armor model, which, again, I'm sure is a placeholder (there's no way the game can be released as a believable naval combat game with the current one) :).

I'm not saying it's a desirable thing, but makes sense. The AI does that when it considers the ship is so damaged that it's lost most of its battle worth (because of cumulative damage that's pretty much destroying it's chances to hit back and win the engagement)/has been so damaged as to be in serious risk of being lost for no real gain. Of course in a 1v1 the behavior is a pain in the butt, but it makes sense. And for fleet vs fleet engagement, even more. If they're faster then they've disengaged. Yes, the combat is over. Not every naval engagement ended with one side losing all their ships. And in order to win engagements it wasn't needed either. If that happens, score the game as a win, move to the next one ;). I'd like the behavior to be somewhat different for 1v1s though. That they just turn tails is not exactly the most realistic way to break contact you'd have in such a scenario, it pretty much kills the chances (with the far less guns being able to fire back) to score some hits that might either persuade the chaser, or get a couple lucky hits to slow him down enough to make the escape good. A less dramatic "I'm out of here" angle would work for that, a 60º angle towards the enemy instead of the current 90º, for instance. As it is right now, the second the enemy turns tails, I just switch to HE - once a proper hit happens on the tail of the runner guy his rudder is gone, probably he'll have some serious flooding on his poop, and that's a chase cut short, while whatever's firing back at me is not enough in volume by far, and is firing with very low chances to hit (because of cumulative damage penalties). Too easy.

It is not a "problem", and yes, it is measured in iron plate penetration. It is not a problem because the game is going to have to deal with the evolving metallurgy advances that happened during the Dreadnought era. A normalization is needed and the compromise of basing penetration values on the lowest common denominator works perfectly well. I know those who have played RTW are used to something different - but I like this system better. In RTW you didn't actually armor your ship with the thicknesses you wanted, you armored it with an "equivalent value". Meaning, if you put "12" in your belt entry, you'll get the equivalent protection to 12'' of the reference armor (which IIRC, was the best one you could unlock with techs). Gun penetration was also measured vs that value. A much simpler presentation for the user but a far less transparent one and one that induced many people to gross mistakes when trying to replicate historical warships ("I can't design this X historical ship within the historical displacement values using the armor values the historical ships used!!!!" well no kidding because when you're putting "12" on your belt the game is translating it into maybe 15'' of REAL armor that's equivalent to 12'' of the best one in the game. You're putting a lot more armor weight on your ship than the historical one did. So which is the value you'd need to equal your belt armor to that of the historical ship you're trying to replicate?. Well, good luck trying to figure it out. Again, very confusing) In the battle tool you'll get info about the real penetration of your main guns at any given moment: they factor in angle of fall, angle of hit, richochet chances, etc. It's plain to see that the effective penetration you get is not the one listed on the gun, but exctly what you'd expect if you reduced the gun penetration by the krupp value of the armor, plus added modifiers for the angle of hit, angle of fall of shell, etc. I've just finally recorded a video for my channel that I'll edit and probably upload by tomorrow. There I talk a little bit about armoring the ship and how I do it, using the reference values of the armor I'm placing, multiplying it by the krupp % protection bonus and comparing them vs the gun penetration values. Maybe that'll help illustrating things out (for anyone who can put up with my horrid english accent, that is). I don't think small guns are undertuned. But I do think you're right about armor being too extensive. right now by the look of things whatever you put into your belt thickness covers the whole side of the main area of the warship. This is just not historical, like at all. Belts covered the waterline, some feet avobe and below. Avobe that there'd be an "upper belt" which thickness would be much lower, or almost nonexistant (in AoN designs). Same with the extended belt - the whole ship's ends are covered in whatever thickness you put in the box. again, not historical as that "belt extension" also was quite limited in area, and restricted to the waterline. I'm sure what we have now is a placeholder armor model that in the future will be revamped with more precise armor layouts like main belt, extended belt, upper belt, etc. Right now is what it is though, and yes, that's not historical and yes, that probably contributes to the idea that smaller guns don't do that much.

Not my experience. Standard scenario 4 1400ton DDs vs 1935 tech BB armed with 9x14'' guns , 6x2 6'' in twin turrets, assortment of 3 inch guns for close range combat. Hitting them was a nightmare (result of the penalties I spoke about before), but each time any of them got hit by the 6'' guns they duly took notice. Of course it also depends on the placement of the hits, if you're hitting their superstructure the damage is not that much. But damn, they didn't like being hit on the hull. At all. Of course, every time one of them took a 14'' it was like fireworks - so in order to sink them in short notice nothing like a hit of the main guns. But the 6'' did their job. The job being: keeping them at check and damaging them enough for my main battery to shoot them into the moon. Which is the role of the secondary battery of a main battleship: fend off destroyers. Fending off does not equal disintegrating, means damaging them enough so they stop attacking/stop being a threat. Of course given enough time the 6'' battery would've killed them. But why wait when you have massive guns to make the job faster...

I have to agree. Just ran a couple fast custom games to check out destroyers and by god hitting those things was a pray to RNGsus each time the guns fired. I'm of course OK with hit chances against fast small vessels to be low at most ranges...but not when down to point blank, there you're not firing by plot-and-correction, there you're actually firing by direct control and lead and I swear at times it looks like the gunners are actively trying to NOT hit the targetted ship. I've just got a 1935 scenario of a single BB vs four destroyers, which came down to almost 4km and it was almost benny-hill-esque to watch. Again, those modifiers make sense for a DD sitting maybe 15km away from your big guns, but when they're pretty much on top of you they just don't. Gotta say however that at least you get the right idea about what it takes to fight a flotilla of small fast craft: sheer volume of secondaries. They won't hit much on a per-shot basis, but if you're firing off a zillion of them something will stick. And a DD doesn't take a 6'' shell lightly. So at least right now the game does one thing right: Teaching you the lesson that if you skimp of secondaries you're asking for trouble. Right now hitting chances against DDs as close as 5km away are ridiculously low, but at medium and long ranges they make sense, and as torpedo technology increases DDs won't need to come *that* close to your ships in order to deliver their surprise packages. Still wrong is wrong - at point blank ranges those negative hit modifiers are just too much to be believable.

Not sure for 15'' guns but for 14'' inchers you don't need the massive barbette. The 2nd biggest will do.

On that end, and being nitpicky (but you know spanish players will make a huge mess out of it because people are that way)...the spanish flag has the correct red and gold colors but the incorrect coat of arms. The flag used is the constitutional one (post-1975), not the early XX century one (different coat of arms), nor the republican three color flag (1931-36/39), nor the nationalist/franquist one (1936-75, back to standard red and gold but with the eagle coat of arms). Though to be safe I'd just use the pre 1931 iteration and be done with it. Given spanish politics and how illiterate people are here, about their own history, and the fact that most people can't get over things that happened 80 years ago well before even their fathers had been born, you'd get people with blisters in their eyes and throwing huge temper tantrums if they saw the republican flag or the franquist one (Depending on who's watching it) and making a COLOSSAL mess out of it. At any rate ... yeah, the spanish flag. Colors are right, the coat of arms, it's not correct XD