>>>"Alpha-1 v.60+" General Feedback<<< [LATEST UPDATE: v61, 10/10/2019]

[Niomedes]

11 minutes ago, Schwieger said:

Re: penetration -

Is there a reason it seems the battlecruiser hullforms are overall less durable than their battleship counterparts? I've built battlecruisers with equivalent or only slightly less armour than their battleship cousins, as per the style of Imperial Germany, and it seems that they still are far less resistant to damage. As far as I know, BC hulls weren't inherently less durable, just built with less overall armour. 

In addition to what Nick said:
Histocially speaking, Battle cruisers were meant to be a cheap and fast in-between version of the battleship and the cruiser which would bring battleship guns into the fight, but be much faster than battleships. This would allow the battlecruiser to venture onto the seas as soon as war was decleared and immediatly hunt down any enemy cruisers, which wouldn't stand a chance against battleship guns. Thereafter, the battlecruiser would either raid hostile trade lanes or be able to fullfill a multitude of missions for the battlefleet, including scouting, skirmishing with the hostile battle line, attacking the hostile screen or even joining the allied main battle line during battle, even though that would be more of a last resort due to the Battlecruiser's lack of armor.

As such, Battlecruisers aren't supposed to have the same armor as a battleship, so it makes perfect sense that their hull types would be less resilient.

[Schwieger]

28 minutes ago, Niomedes said:

In addition to what Nick said:
Histocially speaking, Battle cruisers were meant to be a cheap and fast in-between version of the battleship and the cruiser which would bring battleship guns into the fight, but be much faster than battleships. This would allow the battlecruiser to venture onto the seas as soon as war was decleared and immediatly hunt down any enemy cruisers, which wouldn't stand a chance against battleship guns. Thereafter, the battlecruiser would either raid hostile trade lanes or be able to fullfill a multitude of missions for the battlefleet, including scouting, skirmishing with the hostile battle line, attacking the hostile screen or even joining the allied main battle line during battle, even though that would be more of a last resort due to the Battlecruiser's lack of armor.

As such, Battlecruisers aren't supposed to have the same armor as a battleship, so it makes perfect sense that their hull types would be less resilient.

The hull type is independent of the actual armour thickness - it's just the overall base resilience of the boat. Because of this, I don't think that the resistance stat should really be all that different between the base BB and BC hulls - the hull form and stability should be the primary distinguishing factors with all the requisite differences to emphasize the BC's speed focus being what sets them apart. Ideally a battlecruiser that emphasizes speed and armour at the expense of other attributes (much like the German boats) should be able to show for it.

[Niomedes]

2 minutes ago, Schwieger said:

The hull type is independent of the actual armour thickness - it's just the overall base resilience of the boat. Because of this, I don't think that the resistance stat should really be all that different between the base BB and BC hulls - the hull form and stability should be the primary distinguishing factors with all the requisite differences to emphasize the BC's speed focus being what sets them apart. Ideally a battlecruiser that emphasizes speed and armour at the expense of other attributes (much like the German boats) should be able to show for it.

The german Battlecruiser concept was something entirely different. Their Battlecruisers weren't really battle cruisers, but rather a development of the heavy cruiser which emphasized survivability even more, and allowed them to partake in the line of battle. if you want to simulate them, you should pick one of the Heavy cruiser/Armored cruiser hulls. Their resistance is higher than that of the battlecruiser hulls, they can only fit lighter weapons and their speed is obviously still cruiser-like. They are far better suited to simulating german battlecruisers than the Battlecruiser hulls.

[Schwieger]

13 minutes ago, Niomedes said:

The german Battlecruiser concept was something entirely different. Their Battlecruisers weren't really battle cruisers, but rather a development of the heavy cruiser which emphasized survivability even more, and allowed them to partake in the line of battle. if you want to simulate them, you should pick one of the Heavy cruiser/Armored cruiser hulls. Their resistance is higher than that of the battlecruiser hulls, they can only fit lighter weapons and their speed is obviously still cruiser-like. They are far better suited to simulating german battlecruisers than the Battlecruiser hulls.

That can work, though does mean some of the academy missions can't be completed with that type of battlecruiser, lol

[Entropy Avatar]

1 hour ago, Schwieger said:

The hull type is independent of the actual armour thickness - it's just the overall base resilience of the boat. Because of this, I don't think that the resistance stat should really be all that different between the base BB and BC hulls - the hull form and stability should be the primary distinguishing factors

It seems like you are OK with hull form affecting stability, but why wouldn't the hull form all affect overall toughness? Maybe a wider ship has the space to place another bulkhead between the armor and the machinery. Arranging critical components in a longer line makes it harder to armor the citadel to the same extent, but also harder to put subdivision around it all, I would think.

[Celtic]

On 10/8/2019 at 2:56 PM, Skeksis said:

You talking about a “custom battle editor” that sets up both sides, I bet dev’s already have some sort of editor for testing and games of this genre usually have one on release, it should be just a matter of time before they make it available.

The explicitely said they're not including one a few posts above mine and that the only form of "sandbox" gameplay will be via the campaign

 

[Niomedes]

9 minutes ago, Celtic said:

The explicitely said they're not including one a few posts above mine and that the only form of "sandbox" gameplay will be via the campaign

Well, actually:

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The first functional Custom Battle Editor is planned for the next patches. We will provide more details later.

 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Niomedes

[Celtic]

That may be a post after mine - I haven't caught up to the end of the thread. See below:  

 

  On 10/5/2019 at 8:44 PM, Betoe said:

I think that it would be great to have a sandbox mode. The naval academy is very guided and a sandbox mode with no limits would be great.

The campaign will offer the sandbox mode you desire. Campaign will be available as soon as possible, when we finish some needed features that are essential for making the campaign interesting.

[Niomedes]

23 minutes ago, Celtic said:

That may be a post after mine - I haven't caught up to the end of the thread. See below:  

 

  On 10/5/2019 at 8:44 PM, Betoe said:

I think that it would be great to have a sandbox mode. The naval academy is very guided and a sandbox mode with no limits would be great.

The campaign will offer the sandbox mode you desire. Campaign will be available as soon as possible, when we finish some needed features that are essential for making the campaign interesting.

That's old news. We're going to get a Custom Battle editor/skirmish mode within the next couple of updates now:

Edited October 11, 2019 by Niomedes

[Martenzo]

Gun Basics 2

The enemy battleship in this scenario seemed really difficult to sink by structure damage within the allotted time limit. I've run through the scenario five or six times by now, and have yet to succeed either because the clock runs out or because the enemy ship on 5-15% structure health manages to set enough fires to for a surprise victory over my ship. With 50-70% structure left on my ship, as the enemy's 9" main guns and secondaries are completely incapable of penetrating anything on my ship other than the funnels. Even with 13" guns getting easy penetrations for around 400-600 damage per hit at point-blank range, the enemy ship just seems to stop taking significant amounts of structure damage around the 20% structure threshold. Worse, the secondary guns remained a threat, capable of sinking my own ship by causing uncontrollable fires.

Undefended Convoy Attack

Again, I discovered that the enemy ships are extremely difficult to push to 0% structure despite being reduced to around 20-30% structure in only a few solid 8" shell hits. I'm fairly certain some of those transports survived more than 20 hits from a mix of 8" HE and AP shells (and yes, HE dealt far more damage with each hit than AP in this instance), plus however many 4" secondary gun hits they took in that time, before finally sinking. I might accept that kind of stubborn resilience from well-built light cruisers or maybe destroyers, but not from civilian transports; their resilience definitely needs some tweaking.

Other Thoughts and Oddities

The armor thickness of the Conning Tower has no impact on the tonnage of the actual Tower components, and therefore no impact on Fore/Aft pitch and weighting, which doesn't seem quite right.

For many higher-tech dreadnought and battlecruiser hulls where more than four centerline main gun turrets could make sense at maximum displacement, the large size and node-constrained placement of the advanced Towers generally prevents making dreadnoughts or battlecruisers with more than three or four centerline main guns unless you make a significant compromise on gun caliber. Especially odd, since some relevant tech choices mention how up to seven centerline turrets is an advantage they provide, even though that advantage can never be fully taken advantage of: to get more than four turrets placed on those hulls. It was particularly notable with Battlecruiser III in Destroy a Full Fleet, where I couldn't even get enough room for a forward-superfiring layout with 15" guns (similar to HMS Hood) because of how far forward I was forced to place the Tower.

[Niomedes]

5 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

A Custom Battle editor will be offered. Removing any limits would not only break the system (because our auto-designer is programmed to act smartly for designing the AI ships, and without limits it would just create ugly looking ships with spammed assets) but teach the player wrongly about how everything works.

Further customization for guns and turrets is currently considered for next patch prioritization.

 

 

[JANXOL]

5 hours ago, Niomedes said:

The german Battlecruiser concept was something entirely different. Their Battlecruisers weren't really battle cruisers, but rather a development of the heavy cruiser which emphasized survivability even more, and allowed them to partake in the line of battle. if you want to simulate them, you should pick one of the Heavy cruiser/Armored cruiser hulls. Their resistance is higher than that of the battlecruiser hulls, they can only fit lighter weapons and their speed is obviously still cruiser-like. They are far better suited to simulating german battlecruisers than the Battlecruiser hulls.

That is not correct to my knowledge. Especially since "battlecruiser" idea is older than "heavy cruiser" which only came into being because of the naval treaties (and is descendant from light cruisers, rather than ACs). The German Battlecruisers were indeed different than British ones in that they were heavier armored and carried smaller guns, but note that these "smaller" were still battleship-grade caliber (11 and 12 inch).

Regarding the battlecruiser's resistance in game, i think it would make sense for them to be *slightly* less resistant because of their hullform, and it would also make sense for the armor to weigh more than the same armor thickness on a dreadnought (because battlecruisers tend to be longer and thinner (sleeker) and hence the belt would be longer, at least when not using AoN). Otherwise I see no reason why the hull would be inherently weaker than a dreadnought hull.

[Niomedes]

32 minutes ago, JANXOL said:

That is not correct to my knowledge. Especially since "battlecruiser" idea is older than "heavy cruiser" which only came into being because of the naval treaties (and is descendant from light cruisers, rather than ACs). The German Battlecruisers were indeed different than British ones in that they were heavier armored and carried smaller guns, but note that these "smaller" were still battleship-grade caliber (11 and 12 inch).

Regarding the battlecruiser's resistance in game, i think it would make sense for them to be *slightly* less resistant because of their hullform, and it would also make sense for the armor to weigh more than the same armor thickness on a dreadnought (because battlecruisers tend to be longer and thinner (sleeker) and hence the belt would be longer, at least when not using AoN). Otherwise I see no reason why the hull would be inherently weaker than a dreadnought hull.

 

[Niomedes]

Well, you are right in that the actual battlecruiser concept developed in beitain is older than the Heavy cruiser concept, which only came about to replace armored cruisers in the first place. Heavy cruisers however first appeared in the royal navy in 1915, the later treaties only served to regulate their properties, as they did with most ship typds. The german equivalents however, are reversed in this regard. 

The german battlecruisers were a developement of essentially larger Heavy cruisers with even more armor, comparable speed and larger guns. Germany developed their Heavy cruisers together with their 'kleine Kreuzer', which don't even have a british equivalent, to patrol their colonial empire. The 11 and 12 inch guns their battlecruisers used were also used by some older german battleships still in service, but in general not really battle line weapons anymore

[Schwieger]

4 hours ago, Niomedes said:

Well, you are right in that the actual battlecruiser concept developed in beitain is older than the Heavy cruiser concept, which only came about to replace armored cruisers in the first place. Heavy cruisers however first appeared in the royal navy in 1915, the later treaties only served to regulate their properties, as they did with most ship typds. The german equivalents however, are reversed in this regard. 

The german battlecruisers were a developement of essentially larger Heavy cruisers with even more armor, comparable speed and larger guns. Germany developed their Heavy cruisers together with their 'kleine Kreuzer', which don't even have a british equivalent, to patrol their colonial empire. The 11 and 12 inch guns their battlecruisers used were also used by some older german battleships still in service, but in general not really battle line weapons anymore

I will play around with the ship editor a bit more, but I've actually been thinking about this off and on today. I'm not so sure that it's entirely fair to say that, because the Germans began with a different line of thinking, their warships should not be seen as battlecruisers. The British might have come up with the concept, but I think it's entirely appropriate to call a vessel with similar displacement to - but greater speed than - a battleship a battlecruiser given the context of the Great War... It's obviously not a cruiser as it's far too large. It isn't a battleship as its main armament isn't equivalent. 

With this in mind, I am not sure that there is a way to reflect German battlecruiser doctrine 100%, as the BCs in game are a class distinct from the CAs. To build analogs to Moltke, Seydlitz, von Der Tann, etc, we should, by all right, be able to use the BC hullform and get results that mirror history. We cannot do that now, and I imagine that the game's AI and probably the way things are recognized would give wonky results from trying to treat them as such.

Just food for thought, though. I'll definitely do some more testing tonight to see what I think. 

8 hours ago, Entropy Avatar said:

It seems like you are OK with hull form affecting stability, but why wouldn't the hull form all affect overall toughness? Maybe a wider ship has the space to place another bulkhead between the armor and the machinery. Arranging critical components in a longer line makes it harder to armor the citadel to the same extent, but also harder to put subdivision around it all, I would think.

Hull form is a stat independent of resistance, which informed my opinion. It effects things like speed, acceleration, etc, which is why I think it's more relevant to a battlecruiser given their focus on speed. I don't inherently disagree with your observation, it's more that I think overall durability should be more dependent on the armour you place on the hull itself, as I don't think that, if given two hulls devoid of armour, the battlecruiser hull would be significantly less resilient than a battleship hull. 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Schwieger

[CajunNavy]

21 hours ago, Niomedes said:

I placed the secondaries indipendantly of hard points, this is just one of the standard dreadbought hulls, the IV I think. The mission is designed in such a way that you're always going to be spotted before you spot them if you go with battleships. As such, you best option is to drive straight at the origin of the shots and hope that you're not getting killed before you get there. A speed of 25 knots minimum is required to get into range fast enough to achieve that. That's why I used two large funnels, oil and induced boilers. You should always go with 100% funnel capacity if you can, but it's especially crucial here to prevent your ships from becoming sitting ducks.

Niomedes,

Yes, I was finally able to do it! LOL  Thank you very much for your advice.  I helped a ton.

CajunNavy

[Noders]

I've spent a solid chunk playing so far and honestly I'm loving it, WIP to be sure but the naval academy is pretty solid, i was wondering though it would be possible to make a plain old linear tutorial mission, it's just for me when i dropped into that first screen it was a little daunting with all that information, and i get that you can only really learn by experimenting, but ie  i had no idea that gun's in uniform was a mechanic in the game, its in the game under the help book, which is really cool but I only opened it by accident, idk maybe its just me, but maybe something more linear might ease some of the learning curve.

[CajunNavy]

Hi Guys,

I just finished another awesome battle.  Thank you all so very much!!

I have a quick question and a major shout-out.  My question is the info in the ship's log.  It gives something like "88:31 - BB 13'' shell" etc. etc."  Is the 88:31 the amount of time into the game? For example, one hour twenty eight minutes and 31 seconds since the start of the game.

Also, I found the weather report in the barometer.  EXCELLENT!!! Thank you all for working so hard on a fantastic game experience!

CajunNavy

[VonVolks]

Love the game so far.

I think its a BAD idea to lock the Naval Academy forcing people to complete in order to progress.

All that will do is make people play missions they dont want to play or get stuck on missions they cant do and give up playing all together..... LEAVE IT OPEN!

[Christian]

On 10/11/2019 at 1:21 PM, Schwieger said:

Is there a reason it seems the battlecruiser hullforms are overall less durable than their battleship counterparts? I've built battlecruisers with equivalent or only slightly less armour than their battleship cousins, as per the style of Imperial Germany, and it seems that they still are far less resistant to damage. As far as I know, BC hulls weren't inherently less durable, just built with less overall armour. 

generally speaking the thinner armor and lack of heavy extended belt and deck armor on battlecruisers also meant that the support for said armor was somewhat weaker in general

(which should scale with armor thickness but it would probably make sense to keep them less resistant in general for balance)

also in an effort to save weight to increase speed the ships also werent as resilient

generally dreadnoughts were also fatter which allowed them to have better structural stability and better stability

 

though im not an expert on BC risistance compared to BBs so i wont comment much further on that just my 2 cents

[Schwieger]

1 hour ago, Christian said:

generally speaking the thinner armor and lack of heavy extended belt and deck armor on battlecruisers also meant that the support for said armor was somewhat weaker in general

(which should scale with armor thickness but it would probably make sense to keep them less resistant in general for balance)

also in an effort to save weight to increase speed the ships also werent as resilient

generally dreadnoughts were also fatter which allowed them to have better structural stability and better stability

 

though im not an expert on BC risistance compared to BBs so i wont comment much further on that just my 2 cents

A lot of this was addressed above, I think, with reference to the various German battlecruisers which were extremely durable and capable of standing in the line of battle at the expense of heavy armament. My suggestion was to make the BC hull equivalent to BBs in resistance, superior in hull form, and inferior in stability and perhaps floatability. You're absolutely correct in that heavier armour would imply a need for a heavier and study frame to support it. The issue with the current set up is even with equivalent armour the BC is still noticeably less resilient, which should not be the case if the boat was built from the ground up to emphasize speed + protection instead of speed + firepower. These are both schools of battlecruiser thought and I think it would be appropriate for them both to be executable within the framework of the game. 

[Christian]

5 minutes ago, Schwieger said:

A lot of this was addressed above, I think, with reference to the various German battlecruisers which were extremely durable and capable of standing in the line of battle at the expense of heavy armament. My suggestion was to make the BC hull equivalent to BBs in resistance, superior in hull form, and inferior in stability and perhaps floatability. You're absolutely correct in that heavier armour would imply a need for a heavier and study frame to support it. The issue with the current set up is even with equivalent armour the BC is still noticeably less resilient, which should not be the case if the boat was built from the ground up to emphasize speed + protection instead of speed + firepower. These are both schools of battlecruiser thought and I think it would be appropriate for them both to be executable within the framework of the game. 

main problem i would see in the BC hull getting more risistance is there is 0 reason to then take the BB hull over slight stability gains

its cheaper to have higher speed while at the same time having similair risistance

 

the wider battleships in my view would also have higher stability as they are thicker and have more structural parts to keep them together where as battlecruisers need to be longer and less wide

comparing something like the USS Tennessee to something like the lexington battlecruisers the Tennessee would have significantly better structural integrity than the lexington as its fatter and thus has its weight spread out more evenly so to say and in general has more internal bulkheads on either side of the ship and generally has more mass between the belt armor and the citadel and center of the ship than the lexington

where on the lexington the compartments are spread more aft and in front (its ALOT longer than the Tennessee but also alot less wide) so hits to the middle of the ship would in general do more damage to the important bits if that makes sense

 

for ships like the german seydlitz and other risistant battlecruisers the germans (in the campaign) could get battlecruiser hulls which were more risistant but having some other tradeoff

problem is again the dreadnought hull might just be replaced by the BC hull because the BC hull offers faster speed for the same tonnage in engines 

 

there would need to be some balancing done there else people could just build slow battlecruisers with high amounts of armor and essentially cheat the system and make a fast battleship in 1915 which would make no sense 

[Jay Gatsby]

I think that this game should aim to be as realistic as possible, there are too many unrealistic arcade aspects, such as the long reload times of the guns, reduced accuracy/range by using enhanced/automatic reload, single gun turrets that are more accurate and have faster reload than triple turrets etc.etc., this game has the potential to become a great game and the realism is the way, this is my suggestion and I believe many people think the same thing, I hope the developers will follow this suggestion, thanks.

Edited October 12, 2019 by Jay Gatsby

[Christian]

21 minutes ago, Jay Gatsby said:

I think that this game should aim to be as realistic as possible, there are too many unrealistic arcade aspects, such as the long reload times of the guns, reduced accuracy/range by using enhanced/automatic reload, single gun turrets that are more accurate and have faster reload than triple turrets etc.etc., this game has the potential to become a great game and the realism is the way, this is my suggestion and I believe many people think the same thing, I hope the developers will follow this suggestion, thanks.

technically speaking single gun turrets do have better accuracy characteristics than double gun turrets 

the blasts from the other barrel interferes ever so slightly with the other barrel

single barrel this cant happen

 

though you need 3 turrets to get a proper grouping salvo where as with twins you need 2 turrets and with triples you only need one

 

single gun turrets are the least space efficient for firepower and for getting the ability to get proper groupings

[Jay Gatsby]

25 minutes ago, Christian said:

technically speaking single gun turrets do have better accuracy characteristics than double gun turrets 

the blasts from the other barrel interferes ever so slightly with the other barrel

single barrel this cant happen

 

though you need 3 turrets to get a proper grouping salvo where as with twins you need 2 turrets and with triples you only need one

 

single gun turrets are the least space efficient for firepower and for getting the ability to get proper groupings

Single gun turrets have the same accuracy as multiple gun turrets because the multiple gun turrets have a delayed firing mechanism for each gun to ensure that the recoil of each gun does not interfere with the other.

Edited October 12, 2019 by Jay Gatsby