Strait Raider

To replicate broken formation problem: Launch Old vs New Destroyers with 4 destroyers. Detach the destroyers into individuals, then select them all and have them join the same group. The group icon disappears from the bottom of the screen and ships can no longer be detached. The second issue is ships seem to be somewhat frequently getting stuck in a constant turn in one spot, regardless of orders given to the ship. If the ship is a formation leader, the entire formation will break down as a result. Otherwise, the ship just gets left behind. Attempting to manually override the rudder does not fix. The ships are not on AI control and are undamaged. The ships will change course temporarily if they detect they will collide with friendly ships, but otherwise seem to be stuck this way until the end of the battle.

In the designer, mirror mode does not mirror the rotation of objects, which is inconvenient when placing things like secondaries or side-mounted torpedoes. Now, list of minor fitment issues noted today: Everything below applies to France unless otherwise labelled... Foremost mounts on the Light Secondary Tower VI have arcs too limited forward Foremost mounts on the Angled Funnel Complex III to VI are by default placed with no viable arcs. When placed correctly, they have too much forward arc (firing through tower). Super Battleship I Hull (France), the seconary mounts immediately rear of the built-in barbette have *very* limited forward arcs for no visible reason. The next set of mounts behind these are also too limited in forward arc, even when nothing is placed in front of them. Lowest mounts on the Light Modern Towers are a little too limited in forward arc (barely worth mentioning). Second-level "Square-shaped" secondary mounts on towers have their rotation canted out instead of being at 90 degrees to the ship like the ones below them. No apparent reason for this. All mounts on Modern Tower II are too limited in forward arc. Those which are in the same positions on Modern Towers III and IV share this. Most of the upper-tower mounts on the Light Modern Towers will have clipping issues even with the smallest available guns (at least in the French style). (German Battleships) Uber Funnels II and III mount a bit too far back into Advanced Tower with Funnel and clip into it. Advanced Tower with Funnel and Modern Tower I and II (German Battleships) have limited arcs on top-most secondary mounts.

I've noticed a minor issue with the fitment of the Angled Funnel Complexes. This is most visible on the Modern Tower (Enhanced), where either valid placement of the funnels will clip through parts of the tower rigging. On the other valid towers (Light Modern Tower III+), the funnels will also either slightly clip forward into the tower or at least be extremely uncomfortably close. Mega Funnels appear appropriate so the issue seems to be with the funnels rather than the towers. I think the attachment point on the angled funnels is too far to the rear. The funnels can be manually placed farther back using ctrl, and they look appropriate, but the design will become invalid after deselecting due to "Floor".

This issue becomes evident whenever enemy ships (or friendlies, or mixes of both) are in close proximity. When you are firing at a ship, you will almost always have a better chance of scoring hits on *a different ship* than the one you are targetting. This is observable any time two ships are close together, and can be quite exploitable. For example, if the enemy is approaching your battleship with a light cruiser and destroyers which pass in close formation, targetting the light cruiser has a good chance of landing kills on the destroyers which would otherwise be nearly impossible to hit with your guns at range. In some missions this will manifest as unexpected kills on destroyers that you can't even see. In ALL situations, if two enemy ships pass close to each other it is highly beneficial to target one of them to drastically increase your chances of hitting the other one. This is most noticable at close ranges against destroyers where you can go from ~1% or less hit probabilities to 50% of your shells hitting the target when ships align. Obviously shooting at two targets in close proximity is going to score you more hits, but you can observe in game that the hit probability goes up far more than makes any sort of sense, and it certainly makes no sense that the ship you are *not* targetting would take many more hits than the one you are shooting at. Here's what seems to be happening when you fire at another ship. The game decides which shells are going to hit based on the %hit chance modifiers, then draws trajectories for hits and misses. Fast and small (or not so small!) ships can build up impenetrable force fields with these modifiers. However, once the trajectory is drawn, any other ships in the beaten zone don't get to benefit from their own probability force field, and so have a fully random chance of being hit based on the dispersion of misses around the target ship. The issue is that when to-hit penalties are high (basically any time destroyers are being shot at), the odds of being randomly hit by a miss become much, much higher than the artificially low hit chance on the target. This is why the non-targetted ship gets whalloped while the ship you are aiming at is fine. This ALSO causes an issue with friendly fire. Since there are no checks for FF, if one of your ships is too close to an enemy, your other ships can go from not being able to hit the enemy to murdering your allied ship with high accuracy. I can't really think of a good way to fix this as it is a result of the core targetting mechanics. Reducing or capping some of the to-hit modifiers would make it less obvious, but impact balance heavily. Reducing the size of ship hitboxes might help a little. A real fix seems like it would take more fundamental changes to the way shots are calculated though.

This worked, thank you Ink.

Just had this happen five minutes ago. Computer bluescreened while playing and on restart still says the game is running under my account.

I hopped back in to see the new missions and changes and immediately encountered some pretty significant fitment issues with towers on destroyers which I don't remember being an issue before. Specifically I am using the Near Jutland scenario as an example. Destroyer IV, Below 2020 tons, neither of the available towers (Advanced VI and V) will fit. Destroyer III, Advanced Tower IV (the only one available for this mission) will not fit if the ship is larger than 1750 tons. Destroyer II, neither of the available towers will fit if the ship is above 1300 tons. Destroyer I, neither of the available towers will fit if the ship is above 900 tons.

Destroyers need loving too! A few things for the to-do list... - The destroyer hulls are in sore need of an update, the ones in-game look very outdated even for WW1 ships. The Destroyer III and IV (and probably II) should be handsome ships with raked bows, longer forecastles, and ideally some nationally distinct variants - the large-forcastled British DDs, no-forecastled American DDs, short-forecastled German DDs, and high-bow pacific DDs of Japan. - To go along with this, they need small barbette options to allow the superfiring guns present on most WW2 destroyers, as well as larger modern bridges with mounting points for smaller-caliber secondary/AA armaments. - Add WW2 "Destroyer Leader" hull of 3,500 to 4,500 tonnes to allow large destroyer leaders like the Mogador, Tashkent, and Akitzuki classes as well as fantasy designs. - Add modern "Escort Destroyer" hull of 1000-1500 tonnes displacement, but having modern layout and improved characteristics - would also allow for creation of the 1940s German "torpedo boats" Type 24 to Type 39. - Add option for 6" gun turrets to destroyers (single gun turrets only), 5.5 double and 5.9 inch single turrets were used in WW2, and it gives an interesting choice of single 6" turret vs double 5" turret. Destroyers fought far more battles than any other ship class and deserve the attention!

Now what I came here for: Mission Suggestion! The Deadly Destroyer Loosely based on the exploits of HMCS Haida in April to June 1944, where over the course of 3 engagements she sunk two Elbing-Class Torpedo Boats (More small destroyers really, 1750 tonnes each loaded), disabled a third, and combined with her sister ship to sink a Zerstorer 1936A (mob) in the Battle of Ushant. "Take our powerful modern destroyers and conduct a sweep of the enemy coast. Engage and destroy the enemy as you find them. The enemy's destroyers are large and fast, but focused on heavy torpedo armament for destroying capital ships. Show them the power of purpose-built gunboats." Enemy fleet - 4x large Torpedo boats (or small destroyers) AND/OR 3x large destoryers and 1 large torpedo boat/small destroyer Tech level: 1940 with all the goodies. Conditions: Night-time (All Haida's engagements happened at night) Suggested budget (at current balance settings): $20,000,000 if facing one battlegroup (makes 2 Tribal Class clones or 1 Uber-Destroyer), or $40,000,000 if facing both groups of ships. The only small-ship vs small-ship mission we have is Destroyer vs Torpedo boats, and it is an escort mission with old technology against a smaller class of ship. This mission would pit destroyer vs destroyer in a brutal knife-fight.

I actually found Meet the US Super Battleship to be probably the most annoying mission in the game. 18" radar-controlled guns would do a great job of taking down enemy ships to ~50% health fairly quickly from ~33km, but they just would not kill at range. The issue seems to be the combination of the AI probably running Barbettes IV + Citadel V, which basically negates any ammo detonation chance. Coupled with the guns at range being unable to penetrate deeper than the top layer of compartments and the damage seemed to max out at around half health. At best I could kill 1 ship at range, even running extra ammo, super-heavy 18" shells and 5 triple turrets for more ammo storage I still could not kill more than one ship as past ~50% health the penetrations would just stop doing damage. Then, I decided to throw all logic to the wind, and make what I'd politely term a yoloship. Strong horizontal protection, torpedoes for backup, maximum survivability modules. Won handily on the first round as charging nose-in makes you basically invulnerable. Getting close was required to get torpedo hits or horizontal gun penetrations which could damage more compartments and cause floodings.

Currently the capabilities of the advanced Barbettes and particularly the Citadel technologies are overpowered/exploitable. Not so much because of their effects, but because their effects are flat % regardless of your armor levels. With Barbettes IV, Citadel V, Semi-Oil, a good ammo choice, and whatever benefit bulkheads give you it is possible to reach what seems like 100% protection from ammo detonation (might just be so close to 100% that it has never happened). You can now remove all your deck armor for massive weight and cost savings without really compromising your survivability, as vertical shots don't seem to damage anything below the top layer of compartments regardless of their caliber. Maintain strong belt armor and turret armor and you will have a ship that basically can't be killed by gunfire, which has much more free tonnage and cost than its competitors to put into armaments or speed. Basically... no armor is best armor (in many cases) because the enemy will hit a damage threshold where they have saturated the sections of your ship that they can hit and can't cause critical damage due to your protection techs. Nose-in or fleeing battleships seem impossible to kill and I think this (critical % protections) plus the lack of penetration from plunging fire are the causes.

I'll post up since it seems I did this a different way to everyone else. Liddite. All the Liddite. Maximize firepower as much as possible (obviously). Build only one ship to keep the AI from maneuvering too much or too far away. Engage the enemy and then stop your ship. Lock one target and then as Husky says, set max time speed and walk away. The AI will either sit in one place or circle around you and they will die an absolutely horrific death boiling alive in a burning tin can. It worked on my first try after trying several other options, but of course YMMV.

This was one of the harder ones for sure. In the end this was one of a couple of missions I had to use a semi-memey build for, so some advice: Maximize firepower tech, upgrading your offensive capabilities is almost always a much better choice because you can manage your survivability through appropriate range and angles (you are probably already doing this). The most efficient big guns for this mission are probably the 16" guns due to accuracy being much better than anything else over 9". Try Battlecruisers, because battlecruisers are IMO OP under the current system. - Battlecruisers are much cheaper than battleships and much harder to hit, while making it much easier to chase down fleeing ships, which is important in this mission. - Battlecruiser's main drawback is vulnerability, but with the ability to slot citadel V and barbettes IV you are basically immune to serious damage at range or nose-in. When combined with maximum bulkheads it's almost impossible to have your ammo go off (it's a bit exploitative I think currently and needs work). I was able to squeeze out 3 Battlecruisers with 2x3 16" guns each, for the equivalent firepower of two Iowa-class ships, but going 40 knots. Still enough left over to run a solid suite of secondaries. Don't worry too much about armoring up, but keep half-decent horizontal protection for when you close the distance. I did not bring torps Smash the big capital ships at range, although it will be very difficult to secure a kill due to current mechanics. Try to focus one at a time and secure at least one BB or BC kill before they start to run. Once the bigger ships are crippled and likely fleeing you can start closing the distance and dealing with smaller ships. The maneuverability of your battlecruisers will help dodge torps and their speed means you can somewhat take your time. Keep in mind that you don't have to sink all the capital ships - the objective is only 70% of ships, so killing all the small targets can net you the win. I might not have killed either of the battleships in my run, come to think of it.

This morning I cleaned my desk, swept the floor, cleaned the toilet, folded my laundry, and washed the dishes. Thanks to Naval Action, I've become more productive than ever before!

Hey all, We have the excellent sailing music thread for Age of Sail music, but sailing continued strong well into the 20th century, and the music continues to be made to this day! Coming from a fishing family in Nova Scotia, I grew up with a lot of music that I want to share with you all now. Please share your own local music and especially lesser-known sailing songs! ***** Now, it would be remiss not to start this list the Stan Rogers, a man gone before his time, one of the most powerful voices and songwriters I've ever heard. Now you should all have already heard Barret's Privateers, but I'll post it here just in case, because everyone deserves to hear this: The Yankee lay low down with gold, (I wish I was in Sherbrooke now) She was broad, and fat, and loose in stays, but to catch her took the Antelope two whole days The Mary Ellen Carter, a story of a ship lost, and perseverance. And you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow, with smiling bastards lying to ya everywhere you go, Turn to and put out all your strength of arm, and heart, and brain, and like the Mary Ellen Carter, Rise Again! Now, I could probably make a whole thread on Stan Rogers' songs, but I'll move on. Next, The Day the Tall Ships Came by The Irish Rovers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmPTJMHV_Cc Those of us who lined the shores that morning in July, and watched in silent wonder as the ships passed slowly by, could hear them calling to us from beyond the winds of time, and feel the rolling of the decks, and taste the salty brine! Finally, (not that I couldn't do this all day) I'll leave you with Lennie Gallant's Tales of the Phantom Ship, a song about the legendary burning ghost ship of the Northumberland Strait (on which I grew up). The legend is thought to have arisen from the occurrence of St Elmo's Fire on transiting ships. They tell how her bow suddenly drops down, and into the depths of the strait she's bound, and the wind goes wild with wailing, chilling cries.