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Nick Thomadis

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On 10/30/2019 at 4:33 PM, G777GUN said:

Well it was just what they had for the time period. Everything was well... crappy. Plenty new ideas still being integrated and such for the time period.  Heck even the link for that big gun it, says it was "too ambitious". Heck that gun was only tech development.

About the armour. Still Iron was better than nothing if thats your only choice.
Still Iron can deflect incoming shells if the angle is just right but against a gun head on at point blank. Oh crap.

yeah they dident really have anything better

 

the major problem is that 18 inch guns in game from 1930 penetrate less Iron armor than a 12 inch gun in real life

 

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5 hours ago, Christian said:

yeah they dident really have anything better

 

the major problem is that 18 inch guns in game from 1930 penetrate less Iron armor than a 12 inch gun in real life

 

Ah. Well I hope in future you can change the weapons for the year they were created and per country.

I mean I dont normally go by the games standards as I said earlier it will just be basic data until (in short) the game improves. In game you have some very unrealistic guns like triple 15 inch guns in a British style round turret. Or Yamato style triple 17 inch turret that can be fitted to a HMS deadnaught hull in Destroy a full fleet mission. Even if the gun is a tad bit smaller I dont think this will fit on HMS dreadnaught.

73524500_10157897274681155_8711223360337

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_12-45_mk10.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_18-40_mk1.php

 I wouldnt mind the British single 18 inch gun in game. Despite its drawbacks. Designed in 1915 with development most likely from the from guns of the time period. I bet this gun does far better than any other gun for the time.



TO ALL PLAYERS THE GAME IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT

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In the Convoy defense mission you can build a pair of pocket battleships which can tear through the BC with AP while being largely immune to return fire if you turn bow in. You bring 18 11-inch guns to that fight, and they have no problem punching right through the enemy's armour. Which admittedly is down to the fact that the BC sails broadside to you, but it is good to see that you can punish such mistakes.

AP balance works in some missions, which should be kept in mind during further changes.

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I just spam torpedoes on some missions. Lately I am just testing different design ideas for when Campaighn comes out. My brother wants me to get him the game but will wait till they develop the game a bit further.

I feel somewhat envious though. If my predictions are right. Each country will be able to develop tech from history and even the ones that were on the drawing board. Yikes.
 

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HE shells ingame seem to act as though they were made of their weight in explosives.

1000kg shell acts more like a high capacity 1000kg bomb than a 1000kg explosive shell.

Truth be told, explosive shells of major caliber guns did not have 'that' much explosives in them.

The biggest change is the fusing, a massive AP shell goes right through DD's, whereas a giant HE shell would detonate the second it taps sheet metal.

A 15 inch AP shell might have 20kg of explosives within it.

A 15 inch HE shell would have around 60 kilograms. 

A lot of bang, sure, but nowhere near enough to seriously break belt or deck armor apart. 

A battleship firing exclusively HE at another, would be almost guaranteed to lose a battle, unless it is something absurd like an early dreadnought being hit by 18 inch HE shells.

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Oh yeah formations need to be looked at as well, since DD's will try and cut through the battle and cause major problems with your ships going all over the place putting yourself at a major disadvantage.

Plus the in-game AI needs to be better as well when controlling ships too. Think formations confuse the AI too much either the ships should drop back if they want to turn or steam ahead forward (slowing the mains ships down to a reasonable speed) and then turn to prevent the battle line from getting all muddled up.

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2 hours ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

HE shells ingame seem to act as though they were made of their weight in explosives.

1000kg shell acts more like a high capacity 1000kg bomb than a 1000kg explosive shell.

Truth be told, explosive shells of major caliber guns did not have 'that' much explosives in them.

The biggest change is the fusing, a massive AP shell goes right through DD's, whereas a giant HE shell would detonate the second it taps sheet metal.

A 15 inch AP shell might have 20kg of explosives within it.

A 15 inch HE shell would have around 60 kilograms. 

A lot of bang, sure, but nowhere near enough to seriously break belt or deck armor apart. 

A battleship firing exclusively HE at another, would be almost guaranteed to lose a battle, unless it is something absurd like an early dreadnought being hit by 18 inch HE shells.

There might be something there indeed.

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There were also 15 inch HE shells with up to 102 kg (224 lb) of Lyddite. Which is five times the weight of the AP bursting charge.

And AP bursting charges varied by up to 20% depending on the nation. The German ones were around 18 kg, the Italian ones 22kg (380/381 mm shells)

 

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2 hours ago, Hellstrike said:

There were also 15 inch HE shells with up to 102 kg (224 lb) of Lyddite. Which is five times the weight of the AP bursting charge.

And AP bursting charges varied by up to 20% depending on the nation. The German ones were around 18 kg, the Italian ones 22kg (380/381 mm shells)

 

Unfortunatly there isnt much cited showing HE to be effective in history. I think HE was mainly used just used against weak targets or to mess up ships. at close range.

But mind though its HE it doesnt mean  that it wont be able to blast through armour (or even belt armour depeding on a few bits of data, what it made of, how thick is the belt and how much can the HE can blast through. Think of the KV-2 (the russian derp tank), that thing killed Tigers in History using basically HE power.

But most of the time in history everyone was just using AP since it was destructive enough even against lightly armoured or no armour targets. Because fragments, breaking stuff, killing people and causing flooding

Come to think of it this entire segment gives you an idea of just effective HE was:

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_15-42_mk1.php

"Outfits for all battleships and Renown were originally limited to APC. The Renown class later carried 60 APC and 60 CPC, then 72 APC, 24 CPC and 24 HE and at the end of the war carried carried 84 APC and 36 CPC per gun. The Courageous class were originally designed for 80 rounds per gun but this was increased to 120 rounds following the Falklands battle, where ammunition expenditure was very heavy. The Courageous class initially carried 72 APC, 24 CPC and 24 HE but all HE was replaced by mid-1917 and the immediate post-war outfit was 36 APC and 84 CPC per gun. The Royal Sovereign class may have carried 104 rounds per gun as commissioned. In the 1920s, 6 shrapnel rounds per gun were added to most battleships while the outfit for Renown was changed to 96 APC, 24 CPC and 6 shrapnel rounds per gun plus a total of 70 practice rounds. As completed, Hood had an outfit of 289 CPC, 672 APC, 30 shrapnel (stored only in the bow shell rooms) and 82 practice rounds. After her 1929-1931 refit, she carried 160 CPC (TNT burster), 640 APC (Shellite burster), 48 shrapnel and 96 practice rounds. The three follow-on "Admiral" class battlecruisers would have had their outfits reduced to 110 rounds per gun for "A" and "B" turrets and to 100 rounds for "X" and "Y" turrets due to changes in arrangement of the magazines and shell rooms - see the Mount / Turret Notes below for additional information. In the latter years of World War II, surviving ships replaced five APC rounds per gun with HE unless they were assigned to bombardment missions, in which case the proportion of HE was greatly increased. Outfits for monitors during World War I was 10 CPC and 90 HE per gun while during World War II it was 30 to 60 APC or CPC and the balance HE. Monitors usually carried 8 practice shells per gun. HMS Vanguard when commissioned carried 95 APC, 5 HE and 9 practice shells per gun."

  In short HE does not look effective if they didnt bother carrying much of it. It had reasons to be on a ship but not much use out of it.

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13 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Oh yeah formations need to be looked at as well, since DD's will try and cut through the battle and cause major problems with your ships going all over the place putting yourself at a major disadvantage.

Plus the in-game AI needs to be better as well when controlling ships too. Think formations confuse the AI too much either the ships should drop back if they want to turn or steam ahead forward (slowing the mains ships down to a reasonable speed) and then turn to prevent the battle line from getting all muddled up.

Yes, I've said the same thing in several places (apparently I have a habit of repeating myself, lol).

It irritates me to the point that the first thing I do if I have multiple ships is break them into single units. Not sure what the whole "flagship" bonus and implications of that are, but if that's a relevant thing then it's all the more useful if formations can get addressed. Naval units spent huge amounts of time perfecting manoeuvring as divisions/squadrons, much of the ship handling skills being learned in DDs as their captains were of lower rank.

Watching what mine get up to if I leave them in formation would have me court martial the lot of them, assuming they survived the battle or weren't cut in half by the capital ship they're supposedly screening. 🤣

If we were to go for gold, it would be good if the AI would use available extra power to maintain the set cruise speed as they turn. This again was a common practice, with extra turns being called for to counter the loss of speed turning inevitably brought. Not such a big deal if simply going from A to B, but a different matter if learning to steam in formation at relatively low separation distances that members of a DD group would often do. I do it myself with my BB/BC, either increasing throttle to gain some speed before turning, or opening the throttle as I put the rudder over. The more powerful ships can accelerate initially from the typical maximum gunnery benefit cruise speed even with 15-20 degrees of rudder put on as it takes a bit for the rudder to bite.

 

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17 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

Yes, I've said the same thing in several places (apparently I have a habit of repeating myself, lol).

It irritates me to the point that the first thing I do if I have multiple ships is break them into single units. Not sure what the whole "flagship" bonus and implications of that are, but if that's a relevant thing then it's all the more useful if formations can get addressed. Naval units spent huge amounts of time perfecting manoeuvring as divisions/squadrons, much of the ship handling skills being learned in DDs as their captains were of lower rank.

Watching what mine get up to if I leave them in formation would have me court martial the lot of them, assuming they survived the battle or weren't cut in half by the capital ship they're supposedly screening. 🤣

If we were to go for gold, it would be good if the AI would use available extra power to maintain the set cruise speed as they turn. This again was a common practice, with extra turns being called for to counter the loss of speed turning inevitably brought. Not such a big deal if simply going from A to B, but a different matter if learning to steam in formation at relatively low separation distances that members of a DD group would often do. I do it myself with my BB/BC, either increasing throttle to gain some speed before turning, or opening the throttle as I put the rudder over. The more powerful ships can accelerate initially from the typical maximum gunnery benefit cruise speed even with 15-20 degrees of rudder put on as it takes a bit for the rudder to bite.

 

On my ship (USS Texas CGN-39) we never (to my knowledge) automatically changed throttle setting when making a turn. We did not care what speed we were making, the only thing that mattered was our position relative to the carrier (usually the Nimitz, but sometimes the Ike). 90,000+ ton carriers slow down far more in any given turn than a 11,000 ton CGN. Also they turn at a far slower rate. We never for example made a right standard turn to X degrees, we simply kept station (within reason). Kind of like a dog on a leash. We went were they went as fast as they went. Actual speed was based on a RPM meter. It was about 8" in diameter with 0 to 300 RPM covering the dial. Accuracy was not its main forte! We never made small changes to try to match every tiny change station, but rather larger changes to keep our spot. Trying to make micro speed adjustments to huge steam plants is a losing game.

If we were not part of a fleet then we made no throttle changes at all for turns. At sea it really doesn't matter if you are doing 18 knots for a few minutes as opposed to a continuous 20.

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Okay. I get why they made the ships turn round ingame, mainly because they slow down the fleet but shouldnt they just make the okay ships overtake the damaged ship?
 

Quote

Accuracy was not its main forte! We never made small changes to try to match every tiny change station, but rather larger changes to keep our spot. Trying to make micro speed adjustments to huge steam plants is a losing game.


Makes sense. Especially in different weather conditions where maintaining a ideal speed is near impossible. I think a lot of navies as like that.


Hmmmm. Can I ask... Since you are basically the shield for the aircraft carrier what where to happen if your ship took too much damage or had an engine failure. Like lets say an actual conflict, what would be the course of action.
Abandon ship and sink it (if not already sinking). Or if anything happened to the carrier... would you just do the same thing and abandon the carrier, take on whatever survivors and sink it. If ofcourse you cant get the ships back?

Or fight until the very last bullet is used?

 

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4 hours ago, G777GUN said:

Okay. I get why they made the ships turn round ingame, mainly because they slow down the fleet but shouldnt they just make the okay ships overtake the damaged ship?

The really should just fall out of line by turning to the side so the rest of the line can pass, there's a reason why its called falling out of line and not turning out of line. The damaged ship keeps orientation to the line if at all possible as to disrupt the battle line as little as possible.

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6 minutes ago, Absolute0CA said:

The really should just fall out of line by turning to the side so the rest of the line can pass, there's a reason why its called falling out of line and not turning out of line. The damaged ship keeps orientation to the line if at all possible as to disrupt the battle line as little as possible.

When a ship get its speed reduced the last thing I want is for that ship to block the rest of the line, which happens ingame quite a lot because its turns a full 180 in an attempt to sail to  t the back of the line. When using a line of pre-dreadnoughts the ships are already slow and they are more of a pain when this happens.

Took a bit of time but here be images:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iz_AUbpGz8Z5kXq5KYNaTZoqveQky6g7

Here is my suggstion to the DEVs.

Instead of making the ships attempt to go to the rear of the line just  make it so the damaged ship just detaches from the line. For now. The player can then decide what to do with the damaged ship.

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10 minutes ago, G777GUN said:

When a ship get its speed reduced the last thing I want is for that ship to block the rest of the line,

I agree and i didn't mean a 180 degree turn I meant turn about 30 degrees so it takesitself out of the path of the rest of the fleet while detaching.

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23 minutes ago, Absolute0CA said:

I agree and i didn't mean a 180 degree turn I meant turn about 30 degrees so it takesitself out of the path of the rest of the fleet while detaching.

30 degrees is acceptable. Its just enough to let ships past. Problem is the way the game works right now is it would be easier just to make the ships detach from the line. I completely agree that the ships should not detach from the line but right now its the short term solution because easier for the game developers to do. An auto detach feature when ships are too damaged.

Right now how the ships work is pretty standard movements. In the future they will most likely make ship movements more complex. However making a ship a ship wait while the line goes foward and wait to get to the rear of the line to follow the very last ship might be a stretch for now. Depends if the DEVs can do it.

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14 hours ago, G777GUN said:

Okay. I get why they made the ships turn round ingame, mainly because they slow down the fleet but shouldnt they just make the okay ships overtake the damaged ship?
 


Makes sense. Especially in different weather conditions where maintaining a ideal speed is near impossible. I think a lot of navies as like that.


Hmmmm. Can I ask... Since you are basically the shield for the aircraft carrier what where to happen if your ship took too much damage or had an engine failure. Like lets say an actual conflict, what would be the course of action.
Abandon ship and sink it (if not already sinking). Or if anything happened to the carrier... would you just do the same thing and abandon the carrier, take on whatever survivors and sink it. If ofcourse you cant get the ships back?

Or fight until the very last bullet is used?

 

The South Carolina class CGNs (CGN38,39,40&41) were designed to protect the carrier for 21 minutes in a maximum conventional WW III scenario. At that point our magazines would be empty. The purpose of that 21 minutes was to give the carrier time to launch an ALPHA strike (everything that is flyable and can carry munitions loaded up and in the air). Under no circumstances ever would we abandon our carrier to her fate. She was ours, if we could not protect our carrier then we had no reason to exist!  Average age of the crew was very early 20s, we were invincible, nothing could stop us and we were ready to make a grand gesture if required.

As far as breakdowns went there would be none. Seriously, we all knew that something breaking down could cost our lives if war broke out (this was the height of the cold war). It was still Rickover's Nuclear Navy. We did planned maintenance 24/7. We were Navy Nukes, products of the toughest schooling the US military has ever had. The extra credit question on my Nuclear Power School Physics final was "Prove E=MC2, show your work"! 45 of us entered that school as part of Section 1 (the rocks) and 17 of us graduated. Since we had tested out prior to joining and had been given the direct order "Go to this school, pass this school" there was no acceptable reason to flunk out. Failures received UCMJ and were punished. We could make over 26 knots at 107% Rx power on only 1 of our 2 Rxs (ask me how I know!) We could be at 100% power, scram a RX, cross connect steam plants, maintain 26 knots, perform a Rx start up (BANK ROD WITHDRAWALS, BABY!) and be back to both plants at 100% in under 18 minutes! We we trained within an inch of our lives, we were Gods!

Like Iron Man said in the Avengers "if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."  If the birds left on a Alpha strike they would know before they got there if they had a carrier to come back to. If they did not, then what did they have to lose?

By the way, thanks, I haven't thought about this stuff in along time...

 

Edited by PFWiz
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19 hours ago, PFWiz said:

On my ship (USS Texas CGN-39) we never (to my knowledge) automatically changed throttle setting when making a turn. We did not care what speed we were making, the only thing that mattered was our position relative to the carrier (usually the Nimitz, but sometimes the Ike). 90,000+ ton carriers slow down far more in any given turn than a 11,000 ton CGN. Also they turn at a far slower rate. We never for example made a right standard turn to X degrees, we simply kept station (within reason). Kind of like a dog on a leash. We went were they went as fast as they went. Actual speed was based on a RPM meter. It was about 8" in diameter with 0 to 300 RPM covering the dial. Accuracy was not its main forte! We never made small changes to try to match every tiny change station, but rather larger changes to keep our spot. Trying to make micro speed adjustments to huge steam plants is a losing game.

If we were not part of a fleet then we made no throttle changes at all for turns. At sea it really doesn't matter if you are doing 18 knots for a few minutes as opposed to a continuous 20.

I didn't expect the escorts would do that given, as you said, the CV on which you're stationed is going to lose far more speed.

I also suspect it's partly a product of more modern times, too, as station keeping with radars etc in a formation around a CV I could imagine being a bit different from doing so in poor visibility in a DD div or even when line ahead of cruisers.

I was reading something by a RN DD commander from WW2 years back (damned if I can remember who it was) and he was discussing how it could be a bit tense trying to keep station on your fellow DD in bad weather/visibility at about 1 cable distance. Of course it could be they did that simply to hone their ship handling skills, too.

Thanks for the info on a bit of your own experiences, really interesting stuff.

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I’m going to open this up by saying that the game has much, much promise and in general everything works beautifully and looks amazing. If I don’t comment on it, assume I like it, and that’s a hella long list. UAD scratches an itch that’s been nagging me ever since the PS2 era and the end of the Naval Ops series. 

Now, onto the bad. 

First off, ship pathfinding is, in a word, tragic. I always go with as few ships as possible not because it’s the best method by numbers, but because I truly have not seen worse ship pathfinding since PTO IV. Ships get caught on each other and sail in circles, go anywhere except towards the enemy, and get shredded for it. And god help you with the automatic flagship switching. Oh, you were about to get a perfect torpedo run on that dread? Too bad, your lead boat just got nudged by a stray 9mm round from some random enemy midshipman and the cook dropped a pot of spaghetti. It’s no longer the flagship and now everybody is running around like headless chickens. GG, no re, your boats are all dead. The fleet pathfinding AI is the most glaring issue, along with the accompanying issues with flagship switching (for the love of god let us toggle whether it does that!), and needs some serious work. Luckily I have no doubt y’all will do a great job on it given time. 

Next, almost as glaring. Small caliber guns and short range accuracy in general but especially with said guns are so, so bad. You can load a ship up with all the secondaries you want, but even against little guys, they hit about once a week. Meanwhile, your 457s blap them out of existence without breaking a sweat. It’s like the gunners on every gun 8in and under have been replaced by Orkz (and that includes when you use them as main guns on cruisers and destroyers). So much dakka, so little hitting literally anything, especially the flies they’re supposed to be swatting. I’ve started just omitting the dang things and relying on pure main battery firepower. 

Onto the third and final issue I have: torpedoes. The trails are almost invisible for you, first off. I don’t think I’ve once actually seen an enemy torp, and I have to look pretty hard to see my own. But much more pressing: the AI is almost comically good at torpedobeats. It’s extremely difficult - far more luck than skill - to land one from beyond shouting distance, regardless of upgrades, in my experience. Combine that with the pathfinding issues and I’ve just never found torp comps to be worth it. 

Understand, I adore everything else. But these three things really hurt my enjoyment in combat thus far.  So uh. That’s my feedback. Great core, great almost everything, but a couple glaring issues. 

 

Edit: Actually, in hindsight, one more issue. Armor seems wayyy too good in general. I’ve noted you almost have to use 16s and up in the Modern Battleship mission, because everything else just bounces even at point blank range. Tried to bring a Bismarck expy to one and very nearly lost due to the 15s’ sheer inability to pen anything. And even 16s bounce quite a bit. 

Edited by AnonymousPepper
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Is it normal that 6 inch batteries on larger ships will not get an aiming lock after firing for 45 minutes at the same target? I noticed that sometimes, secondaries refused to lock on at longer ranges, but never the main guns.

 

I built a turret farm in the "defend your convoy" mission on the Armoured Cruiser V hull, but despite blazing away for 45 minutes and sailing within 200 meters of the enemy BC, I didn't get a target lock on either of my cruisers. The aiming progress hovered between 85 and 98% for most of the time. Neither getting close nor sailing in a straight line for 15 minutes helped.

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6 minutes ago, Hellstrike said:

Is it normal that 6 inch batteries on larger ships will not get an aiming lock after firing for 45 minutes at the same target? I noticed that sometimes, secondaries refused to lock on at longer ranges, but never the main guns.

 

I built a turret farm in the "defend your convoy" mission on the Armoured Cruiser V hull, but despite blazing away for 45 minutes and sailing within 200 meters of the enemy BC, I didn't get a target lock on either of my cruisers. The aiming progress hovered between 85 and 98% for most of the time. Neither getting close nor sailing in a straight line for 15 minutes helped.

Its a bug that can be fixed by switching targets for a while. 

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3 hours ago, AnonymousPepper said:

I’m going to open this up by saying that the game has much, much promise and in general everything works beautifully and looks amazing. If I don’t comment on it, assume I like it, and that’s a hella long list. UAD scratches an itch that’s been nagging me ever since the PS2 era and the end of the Naval Ops series. 

Now, onto the bad. 

1. First off, ship pathfinding is, in a word, tragic. 

2. Next, almost as glaring. Small caliber guns and short range accuracy in general but especially with said guns are so, so bad. You can load a ship up with all the secondaries you want, but even against little guys, they hit about once a week. Meanwhile, your 457s blap them out of existence without breaking a sweat.

3. Onto the third and final issue I have: torpedoes. The trails are almost invisible for you, first off. I don’t think I’ve once actually seen an enemy torp, and I have to look pretty hard to see my own. But much more pressing: the AI is almost comically good at torpedobeats. It’s extremely difficult - far more luck than skill - to land one from beyond shouting distance, regardless of upgrades, in my experience. Combine that with the pathfinding issues and I’ve just never found torp comps to be worth it. 

4. Armor seems wayyy too good in general. I’ve noted you almost have to use 16s and up in the Modern Battleship mission, because everything else just bounces even at point blank range. Tried to bring a Bismarck expy to one and very nearly lost due to the 15s’ sheer inability to pen anything. And even 16s bounce quite a bit. 

Understand, I adore everything else. But these three things really hurt my enjoyment in combat thus far.  So uh. That’s my feedback. Great core, great almost everything, but a couple glaring issues. 

Hi, I played with the format of yours for my own ease of responding.

1. Yes, I've seen lots of us talking about it. I don't use formations for the reasons you've mentioned.

2. There are some very interesting discussions through the forum on this one in particular. I think the most glaring issue is the "accuracy is a function of maximum range, modified by mark of gun and tower techs such as rangefinders" the game uses. I believe that's the root cause behind the big guns pretty much always having the best chance to hit regardless of range. For much of the time period being covered, however, that wouldn't necessarily be true given RoF is a factor when fire control is local/crude compared with later, more sophisticated central fire control directors. The other factors, such as size of target, also get applied to all the guns equally. While that makes sense on the one hand, on the other it conspires to make secondaries seem like they can hit big ships (to which they do very little, although they certainly can start fires and damage the towers and funnels, something that annoys me no end when it happens to me lol) but not the small ones, yet reality was many of those secondary and tertiary guns were there precisely to engage smaller targets.

The secondary/casemate guns of 5" and greater aren't useless so much as they seem so underwhelming when the big guns can routinely obliterate DDs and CLs that come within about 3.5km. I think that's the most glaring issue, and it's also compounded by some peculiar aspects of the damage model in some cases.

Then again, the little 2" and  3" guns festooned on your towers like Christmas tree lights can be pretty hilarious against anything with very low/no armour. Someone started a thread along the lines of "I win for the most ridiculous death" or similar; check it out, lol.

3. I would like to see the torpedo spotting mechanic altered in a few ways, although I'll add that I don't exactly know how it works now.

IF a torpedo is not within spotting distance of one of your ships then it ought not be rendered. I have a feeling this might be done already, so that's good if true.

On the other hand, if a torpedo is spotted there ought to be a dirty great big warning message splashed on the screen. Warships had people on duty 24 x 7 whose job was to watch for danger. Torpedoes were the most dangerous single threat any warship throughout WW2 could experience, regardless of the size of the warship. As soon as a torpedo was spotted, or indeed even if it was just a case of "it might be a torp but I'm not 100% certain", those lookouts would immediately alert the bridge and whomever else relevant. Lookouts calling out for what proved to be false alarms happened quite a bit earlier in the war with inexperienced crews, but the view was always it's better to react to something that proves to be false than have the lookouts want to be absolutely sure and thus call out when it's about 100m away, lol.

One other thing: unless you are sufficiently close to the enemy launching the torp, I would like the devs to hide the enemy torp reload counter from view. Being able to see if an enemy launched torps and how soon they'll be able to do so again I think is unreasonable. It's entirely too easy to cheese that mechanic if you want to do that; I don't do it because I decided I wanted to have to deal with torpedoes in a way that tested the spotting mechanic.

Ideally I'd like to get a bit funky and initially just identify "a patch of ocean" in which you are alerted there are torps heading in a general direction, as that's more or less what you got until such time as the bridge crew could see them directly. Of course they would react immediately to the perceived threat based on their ship's handling characteristics, but often weren't able to see the precise tracks until they'd already started their initial evasion steps. The individual torps could be rendered once they got within a subset of the initial spotting range.

Not sure of degree to which weather alters torpedo direction, but it ought to.

As to accuracy, I've found my ships aren't bad at hitting the obvious torpedo targets, which is to say CAs and greater. I micromanage them, however, as otherwise they tend to fire them under rather ridiculous circumstances at ridiculous targets. My own ships get hit only when I allow them to get within crazily close ranges with torp carrying enemies.

4. Yes, and there are some excellent discussions of it. I think the consensus is the devs have used reasonably accurate penetration numbers for guns where that info is available, but they've seemingly assumed those numbers are against what the game considers base iron armour. That's why even "modern" guns like what's similar to the USN 16" 50 cal really struggles against the higher Krupp Cement values, as they are applied as a simple multiplier. So the KC giving +70% means an armour value of 10" functions as (10 x 1.7), or 17". My understanding is many of the penetration figures on sites such as the excellent navweaps.com give details as to the which of the penetration standards apply, as various nations used somewhat different test methods (just as they did for armour penetration of guns firing at tanks).

I think we all are having fun with the game, and the basic concepts and methods, let alone the visual rendering (which is fantastic) and general feel, are extremely good fundamentals on which to build.

Thought I'd give a walloftext reply, lol, as I had some time and you've captured most of the highlights so to speak.

Cheers

 

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