>>>Combat Feedback<<<

[G777GUN]

55 minutes ago, akd said:

“Salvaging” crew from abandoned / sunk ships would be an excellent ancillary role for destroyers.

Good idea.
I ran over my crew.
By accident.  Poor souls

Short story:

Somehow the enemy AI ship decided that DESPITE burning and half sunk could have impecable accuracy despite my guns still having problems hitting the bloomin target at 500 meters. I pulled up alongside... fired torpedoes... waiting for the impact... BOOM.... Detonates my rear magazine and ship sinks.

Then the Battleship behind the that blew up went over the lifeboats at 40mph+ and some of those boats dissapeared into the hull and were never seen again. It was the mission where you must chase down two enemy battleships.

Wouldnt mind if they put in exploding lifeboats animation in the game. Heck why not crew morale aswell.

[TAKTCOM]

I'm glad for Mother Russia, but why do I need twenty minutes to sink ship with 0 structure?

[G777GUN]

USE TORPEDEZEZEZ PEOPLE. Force them to sink for now. I always fir torpedoes to ALL my ships. Even if they are just 15 inch they will still cause flooding.

[Illya von Einzbern]

I would still go with the multiple options to incapacitate ships. Raging fires that literally covers 80% of the ship for x amount of time. Crew as HP, after x amount of dead crew the ship will be considered combat ineffective. Having to literally demolish the whole structural integrity to atoms is not a way to go.
If the crew can't contain the fire = abandon ship.
If the crew is reduced skeleton crew = consider abandoning / scuttling / surrender.

these 0% ships that will not die are annoying ammo sponges and massive waste of ammo

[Agathos]

Some more feedback on current combat state:

• still guns sometimes do not fire for no apparent reason or refuse to broadside, i currently try to finish DD vs TDs which is the least fun and most frustrating mission so far, and both my DDs and my BBs often simply refuse to fire on a perfectly locked on and tracked target
• torpedos also often do not fire for no apparent reason, i have ships refusing to release torpedoes on targets that are basicly immobile, most notible with bow or aft mounted underwater tubes, but also happens with all other tubes, again in torps i feel the AI is cheating in some way, as i have very hard time to make any torpedo work in a usefullway due to the current fire/release mechanics

Both things are extremely frustrating, they are not happening so often in the straight forward missions where you use a dreadnough or super dreadnought, but more in those battles where you get a fleet of smaller and/or less ranged vessels. If i maneuver and position properly it is extremely disappointing when i can not get my guns to fire. And more important the game gives me no feedback why that happens.

[Balu0]

Some feedback:

 - would be great if we got the ability to set reverse speed on ships (to avoid collision or torps)

 - would be nice to be able to select ammo type per gun type (on the right side display at the reload icon)

 - would be nice to be able to designate target by gun type

 - love the feature of the hit history icons on the top, but would be nice if we have a target selected it would only show the numbers for that target, and show all if no target selected (mouse over tooltip could show detailed info for the last hit of that type , time/source/target/range/pen chance at that moment/hit chance at that moment/damage)

 - if the lead ship gets damaged in a formation chaos ensures currently. Either the lead role should not change, or the damaged ship should be simply dropped out from the group

 - small guns feel weak (both accuracy and damage), they didn't do much was unarmored targets even with HE loaded

 - would love to see CVs, aircrafts and AAA added in the future

 - would love to see proper collision damage modelled

 - would love to see ships braking apart in case of huge damage

 

 

[Cairo1]

I Have not ready any Previous posts, My reason for this is to not reinforce suggestions already made.

Combat Critiques: 

Overall feelings, I am certainly enjoying myself, though at times it dose feel arbitrary, and a little repetitive. I feel like those cargo ships should have surrendered after taking a volume of fire, a mechanic involving crew morale i think would be one suggestion.

While this may be something more useful in a campaign, i feel there should be crew to save from abandoned ships, possibly with launches sailing to ships that are rescuing men perhaps an abandon ship button to save an experienced crew. I also think crew should be broken down in to respective general tasks proficiency with secondaries, and loading, or damage control.

Shells should do more damage. Not so much as to speed up game play, but to mirror how ships have taken damage historically. during Tsushima though the Japanese took few losses ship wise, many sustained fair damage, Nishin had 3 of her 8'' guns knocked out in combat and Mikasa though being hit repeatedly sustained only moderate damage. this was largely because of ineffective AP shell, the Japanese shells however did quite the opposite with a single AP shell detonating and destroying Borodino. My suggestion coming from this anecdote is that Damages should certainly be on a roulette wheel of possibilities, but a magazine hit should blast a ship in half instantly now and then.

The ability to Transfer Flag to another ship. ships fall out of line now and then due to damage, but the flag ship as of now dose not change, that is something that i would like to see.

Stronger physical spotting distance, What i mean by this is thicker blacker smog coming from ships, that can be spotted by the player to at least have a hope of giving chase to a fleeing enemy.

-Moral involving surrender and loss of ability in battle, or bonuses when an enemy is sunk.

-Crew to train and preserve by saving them.

-more cataclysmic damage on a high RNG

-moving Flag to another ship

-THICK BLACK SMOG that dose not disappear with ship sprites

[Steeltrap]

12 hours ago, Cairo1 said:

While this may be something more useful in a campaign, i feel there should be crew to save from abandoned ships, possibly with launches sailing to ships that are rescuing men perhaps an abandon ship button to save an experienced crew. I also think crew should be broken down in to respective general tasks proficiency with secondaries, and loading, or damage control.

Shells should do more damage. Not so much as to speed up game play, but to mirror how ships have taken damage historically. during Tsushima though the Japanese took few losses ship wise, many sustained fair damage, Nishin had 3 of her 8'' guns knocked out in combat and Mikasa though being hit repeatedly sustained only moderate damage. this was largely because of ineffective AP shell, the Japanese shells however did quite the opposite with a single AP shell detonating and destroying Borodino. My suggestion coming from this anecdote is that Damages should certainly be on a roulette wheel of possibilities, but a magazine hit should blast a ship in half instantly now and then.

The ability to Transfer Flag to another ship. ships fall out of line now and then due to damage, but the flag ship as of now dose not change, that is something that i would like to see.

-Moral involving surrender and loss of ability in battle, or bonuses when an enemy is sunk.

-Crew to train and preserve by saving them.

-more cataclysmic damage on a high RNG

-moving Flag to another ship

Hi there, thought I'd share my experience so far, although I'm certainly nowhere as experienced as some.

Devs have said the whole issue of crew experience etc is certainly coming. Regarding saving crews, it's an interesting idea but I suspect they'll make it somewhat abstract. If you win the battle, you can potentially rescue certain numbers of crew, perhaps modified by the nature of how their ship sank (magazine explosion being the worst), the weather, and how much time elapsed since they sank. Realistically no skipper is going to stop their ship while combat is still occurring.

The damage changed somewhat with the last patch. I've seen FAR more examples of ammo explosions doing large damage if secondary ammo or totally destroying the ship in one hit if primary anno. If anything I think it's got a bit over the top, although in part that might be because perhaps the AI isn't building ships with the newer mechanics in mind, so it might be carrying extra ammo and not building citadels on capital ships, for example. I've even blown up a CL with a 2" gun mounted on my pre-dreadnought. It's almost always through the belt/deck extended frontally or from astern, hits that a citadel is designed to stop hitting magazines.

The whole issue of formations is somewhat broken IMO. I find them so bad that the first thing I do is remove all of them, making every ship an individual unit. Yes it's a pain to micromanage them all, but I find it less annoying than watching my ships do stupid crap no naval officer would ever do when steaming in formation, lol.

Morale is a bit of a two edged sword. I'm not convinced it wouldn't potentially become a massive pain. I DO agree it ought to operate for non-combatant ships like transports, but the reality is that in that period of warfare ships largely never surrendered. Don't know if you're familiar with them, but if you read about the related battles from WW1 of Coronel and the subsequent Falkland Islands you'll see what I mean.

Be interesting to see how they develop these aspects.

Cheers

Edited November 1, 2019 by Steeltrap
Fixed typo

[Lobokai]

I’ve had formations working pretty well and I think the 8’s and 5’s seem reasonably effective.  So I’m clearly in a minority. 

Only formation issues have been with armored cruisers for me. 

[Steeltrap]

I had 2" guns mounted around the main tower of my BB detonate a CL at ~3km (can't remember range exactly), so that was pretty unexpected lol.

It may be that the reason I and others complain about secondaries is perhaps the main guns are simply OBVIOUS when they hit and obliterate smaller targets not far away while secondary/casemate guns will often blaze away and achieve diddly. Watching the 5 casemate mounted 4"mk 3 guns on one side fire at a DD sailing parallel at the same speed as my BB at 200m range and not hitting once with perhaps 15 shots in total suggests an issue to me.

Don't know if main guns ought to get larger penalties for "size of target" than secondary/casemate ones, or casemates need a "point blank" bonus, or what the deal ought to be.

It's not an exaggeration, however, for me to say that more and more I'm hardly bothering with casemate guns (they also screw with the "roll" value of the ship, making ALL guns less accurate) and more or less sticking as many main guns and armour on a hull as I can manage. Those seem to do far better than designs more typical of the times.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Steeltrap

[Lobokai]

For me, I'd like combat to be realistic first and fun second... especially since many of the academy scenarios are 1-3 shis v 1-3 ships, the randomness of naval gunnery may seem more unbalancing that it will in 10 v 10 type battles.  The occasional "crit" then will be absorbed and reacted to, where now it can feel crippling to the mission.  I don't mind some light fudging of the accuracy for playability... just don't let my crew store unprotected cordite on the deck and we'll be good.

As far as people asking for deck fires to be able to eventually consume a ship if not contained... please no, this was not something that happened.  I know of no single cruiser or larger ship lost in combat due to deck fires (other than carriers).  IF there is one or two that I'm not thinking of, they're anomalies and not a thing worth putting into this game.  These are metal boats sitting in rather large concentrations of water... fire fighting and magazine flooding was a thing after all

[sarrumac]

9 hours ago, Lobokai said:

I’ve had formations working pretty well and I think the 8’s and 5’s seem reasonably effective.  So I’m clearly in a minority. 

Only formation issues have been with armored cruisers for me. 

I tend to agree, secondaries do work pretty well.

[WafflesToo]

2 hours ago, Lobokai said:

As far as people asking for deck fires to be able to eventually consume a ship if not contained... please no, this was not something that happened.  I know of no single cruiser or larger ship lost in combat due to deck fires (other than carriers).  IF there is one or two that I'm not thinking of, they're anomalies and not a thing worth putting into this game.  These are metal boats sitting in rather large concentrations of water... fire fighting and magazine flooding was a thing after all

Just glancing over the records, it looks like the vast majority were lost to torpedos / mines and capsizing from flooding.  Magazine explosions come in second.  Fire should still be a factor though; just not a fatal one.  There are more than a few instances where crews were forced away from their stations by fire (or more accurately; smoke from the fire).

[sarrumac]

Remarks about HE and damage.

-they still are comparatively too effective Vs AP

--they have illogical effects: they will more easily than AP be able too destroy the machine room.

-I tend to believe that superstructure damage du to HE sould be limited to what can be actually destroyed, a steaming pile of burned steel can still float.

-fires that declares themselves in machine room or near ammo stores would be susceptible to provoke catastrophic failures: machines stopping, detonnation and so on.

[Hellstrike]

34 minutes ago, WafflesToo said:

Fire should still be a factor though; just not a fatal one.  There are more than a few instances where crews were forced away from their stations by fire (or more accurately; smoke from the fire).

Fire reaching the magazines would destroy a ship. This nearly happened on SMS Seydlitz, where that fate was avoided due to someone flooding the magazines.

 

33 minutes ago, sarrumac said:

I tend to believe that superstructure damage du to HE sould be limited to what can be actually destroyed, a steaming pile of burned steel can still float.

Floating is not the point of a warship. The hull still floating would be meaningless if the crew had to abandon ship due to the fire or if the gun barrels and fire control was damaged. For example, Bismarck lost her ability to effectivly fight back once her fire control was destroyed since it was not located in the citadel.

[sarrumac]

46 minutes ago, Hellstrike said:

Fire reaching the magazines would destroy a ship. This nearly happened on SMS Seydlitz, where that fate was avoided due to someone flooding the magazines.

 

Floating is not the point of a warship. The hull still floating would be meaningless if the crew had to abandon ship due to the fire or if the gun barrels and fire control was damaged. For example, Bismarck lost her ability to effectivly fight back once her fire control was destroyed since it was not located in the citadel.

Yes, that's my point. But that's not what sunk her. 

[WafflesToo]

1 hour ago, Hellstrike said:

Fire reaching the magazines would destroy a ship. This nearly happened on SMS Seydlitz, where that fate was avoided due to someone flooding the magazines.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. I only know of one capital ship in all of history that was actually destroyed by a non-flash fire reaching the magazine and that was USS Maine.  On every other instance that I know of the magazine was flooded once it started being threatened by fire.  This of course would still have the effect of disabling the gun serviced by that magazine of course.

[Cairo1]

5 hours ago, Lobokai said:

I know of no single cruiser or larger ship lost in combat due to deck fires

Gunboat Akagi's furious fight with the Chinese Armored cruiser Lai Yuen. There is a song about the battle, 赤城の奮戦 or Akagi's Struggle. It was a pretty cool 1v1 between a 600 ton gun boat, and a 2900 armored cruiser. The fires set did not sink the ship, but completely destroyed Lai Yuen's superstructure. 

I agree Fire alone should not be able to destroy a ship, but i do believe it should damage or destroy components, including turrets. It would also be nice to see turrets be able to take damage destroying single guns in the turret, and having the other function.

[khang36]

Largely speaking fire should should only be causing structure damage and greatly effect the performance of the ship (spotting, accuracy, ect) untill they are put out.

The only way i can realistically see a ship being lost to fire is if the entire ship is lit a blaze and all combat station were rendered inoperable.

[Cairo1]

I disagree, I think perhaps the ability of fire damage should be linked to armor type, as that in a way represents overall construction developments. Lai Yuen had her entire superstructure and her above water line components utterly gutted by fire destroying her command facilities, and both steering houses, and crippling both of her '' guns and her 15cm guns. This was all from a single fire started early in the battle that Chinese damage control could not handle. (corruption buying less hose material so the hoses could not even get to the fire) Certainly Akagis gun fire contributed to the ability to deal damage control, and that the turrets were open barrettes did not help protect from fire, but this is an excellent case of what a single fire CAN do, but not always do.

I think Linking Damage control or relating fire susceptibility to armor type is not a bad idea to represent improvements made to the concepts of prevent modern damage from spreading.

[G777GUN]

Great photos of battledamage. Amzing how accurate the japanese were. You can see in one photo that there is a ship that lost both its gun barrels on one of its turrets.

 

[Steeltrap]

One of the things about Tsushima, I think being the first major 'modern' all metal warship fleets with significant guns, was the degree to which ships burned was something of a surprise. I believe the Japanese also had a different bursting charge type that accentuated this.

It really comes down to combat effectiveness v sinking. I know the USN during WW2 quickly commented that the most immediate threat following flooding was loss of stability, and they rapidly stressed this throughout their training. Counterflooding to the degree that was possible for the ship became the greater priority to controlling the flooding. Obviously you have more time to control the flooding if you haven't capsized, lol, but taking on a significant list often had subsidiary effects on things such as lubrication of vital machinery elements etc.

[I've mentioned it before, but "Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic: 1939-43" released in 1992 (!!!) had by far the greatest ship damage modelling ever done on computer, as crazy as that sounds, because it combined all the elements we're discussing - flooding, counterflooding, pumping capacity, damage control crew limitations, fire fighting, repair, magazine flooding - all available to control on all your ships. I would absolutely pay $200 to have that game modernized with better AI and graphics but otherwise pretty much be a 2020 copy]

The posts between this one and my previous contain excellent discussions of the topic all done in a friendly way.

As an aside, one reason I love getting in Alpha testing of these sorts of games are the people you get to interact with often are interested in the topic, knowledgeable and want to get the 'best' outcome. The trick is seeing how well we can agree on what that is.

Can't remember where, but I did say that HE weapons should never sink a properly armoured capital ship. I still maintain that is correct.

That's not to say sufficient accumulation of hits can't greatly degrade a major warship's capacity to be combat effective, however.

HE does seem still to be vastly too potent. I've been playing around with the improved AP performance v HE and it still seems largely to be the case that HE is the superior choice against ANY target with a few minor exceptions. That ought not be the case, so clearly a WiP for the Devs to address.

As for fire damage and spreading etc, I think it ought to be tied to the availability of damage control crews (obviously more available with more crew), the degree of compartmentalisation (which to some degree the game does model with improved bulkhead tech), and indeed the nature and thickness of the armour involved as a constraint on the number of compartments affected from the initial explosion (see below on this one).

Most importantly, I think, is it also ought to be tied to how the damage was delivered. HE shells bursting on a deck, or even penetrating the upper deck then exploding, will have their effects mitigated by subsequent armoured decks/bulkheads. That was, after all, the idea behind multiple armoured decks, to set shells' fuses off then contain the explosion and splinters. Even with that, angle of striking is a thing, too. Reading the accounts of the infamous Battle off Samar, the DDs/DEs survivors spoke of BB calibre guns going right through the hull and exploding in the sea on the other side; one survivor famously said "It was like a puppy getting hit by a truck". Ouch, graphic

To sum up my rambling, I think HE shells ought NOT be able to start fires through compartments multiple decks DOWN on a target unless the shell is large and the armour negligible, such as a 14" shell striking a transport.

What ought NOT be happening is obliterating BBs and CAs with large calibre HE rounds while the AP goes 'boing, ping, donk".

Cheers all.

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by Steeltrap
minor additions/amendments

[Cairo1]

25 minutes ago, Steeltrap said:

One of the things about Tsushima, I think being the first major 'modern' all metal warship fleets with significant guns, was the degree to which ships burned was something of a surprise. I believe the Japanese also had a different bursting charge type that accentuated this.

That would be Shimose Powder a development of picric acid that is related to lyddite. it had a higher explosive yield then other explosives of the period and burned hotter and faster then European picric acids at the time. Russian accounts of Tsushima include an anecdote about several inch thick steel plate erupting into flame and being blast through by Japanese HE shells. whether this is due to the power of Shimose powder, or the low quality of steel used i don't know.

You can actually examine parts blasted off of Russian ships from Tsushima aboard Museum ship Mikasa today. There are a number of really cool artificts in there as well as models of every ship used in the "modern" japanes navy, from Kotetsu(1868) to Maya(2018)

Edited November 2, 2019 by Cairo1
more neat info

[Lobokai]

Lai Yuan is an orange and we're talking apples.  Many smaller vessels did suffer from fires, that's why I'm careful to say "cruiser or larger" every time this comes up.  It was a teak wood decked gunboat that was covered in lacquer to improve waterproofing (not even 3k displacement, with 2 8" and 2 6" guns... its considerably smaller than a Fletcher). It was maintained in sub par facilities after it was laid down a half century before UA:D even begins in a navy only featured as a "what if it became a naval power".  The poor thing was a floating tender box... and yet, even then, it did not go down due to the fire and still operated under her own power, was repaired and able to sail 150 miles to port.  Lai Yuan is a worse case scenario, outside the scope of what we are looking at, and even it makes a stronger statement for why fires DON'T need to be any more crippling than they are than for.

[Lobokai]

btw, here's those 2 BC 8"s taking a devil's due on all those escorts in the armored convoy mission... 2 BB, 2 CL, 1 CA, and 6 TRs... basically unharmed when over.  Only serious damage was both my 9"x2 guns were destroyed (1 very early), so it really was the secondaries doing all the work.  Secondaries are fine

Third time playing this through... I've mentioned other runs before... but this time pics

CA and BB sunk on approach, then I turned a lazy loop port after crossing through the line

After finishing the loop, all escorts already gone

One pass and 35 minutes left, everything gone

Edited November 2, 2019 by Lobokai