>>>Combat Feedback<<<

[madham82]

3 hours ago, IronKaputt said:

You're against doing it manually or agains the whole idea of counterflooding?
Trading some additional flood points for angles, lowering the whole ship, so we'll have something like this

 

instead of shells flying through the roof? Or am I missing something?

That's what I meant of course, not "Your ship won't explode if you sink her in advance".
 

Against doing it manually. The idea should represented in the Float percentage (i.e. too much flooding on one side, can't counter flood enough to offset, your Float percentage drops and you sink). Your bulkhead number and anti-flood selections should determine the effectiveness of the counter flooding. The question is, how is the game simulating it right now. It seems to be very simplistic, but there could be more going on behind the scenes. The next issue comes down to damage modelling. We don't seem to have a detailed enough model yet for a more detailed counter flooding system. However I think restricting the guns firing could be done easy. That would make a lot of us happier. 

I couldn't see your 1st pic, but I know where you are going. I think it is doable we if we put some restrictions in on gun firing and list. 

Your 2nd part, wasn't sure if you understood the point. They are not modeling fire spreading to the magazine yet. So flooding the magazine isn't needed. Now once that is done, definitely. 

[IronKaputt]

17 hours ago, madham82 said:

I couldn't see your 1st pic, but I know where you are going. I think it is doable we if we put some restrictions in on gun firing and list. 

First pic is Seydlitz after-Jutland sub remodel. Appropriate example of "stabilized, bul low on flood points" situation I presume.

I hope we'll have gun elevation mechanics - more difficult then just max range of corse, but very appealing (great for potential carriers add-on).

[gamerfromspace]

Tactical map is a must

[DougToss]

3 hours ago, gamerfromspace said:

Tactical map is a must

Absolutely. Jutland, Distant Guns and RTW all have maps, and it is a must for command and control when fleet sizes and ranges increase. 

[Xenol]

Attempting the 'Destroy a Full Fleet' mission today has almost driven me to insanity. 

I first tried an accuracy based battleship platform. Maxed out stereo range finders, max radar, RDF, 16in twins... yet the enemy were able to detect and begin laying accurate fire on me before I had even spotted them!? Even once I had spotted them I needed to zoom over to actually see, since the markers did not appear unless I was close enough to them. I was down to about 50% structural (with similar damage on a single enemy BB) before they turned tail and ran, weathering my smattering of shots until the timer ran down. 

Next I tried tanking, with incredibly thick armour and more slightly smaller guns. Still no good, once again down to around 50% struc when I was swarmed by torpedo boats. Sadly the crews of my 2ndary guns were evidently blind since apparently 21 5in guns were incapable of taking down a single TB. 

Finally I just made as many small torpedo boats as possible... initially things seemed good taking down a fair number of their ships, but then the lack of map really began to play havoc, with divisions disappearing into the distance while I attended to units in the thick of it. There seems to be a bug where TBs get stuck just randomly going in circles which was fantastically helpful.

 

Overall my main takeaways are:

• either enemy long range accuracy needs nerfing, or the players spotting abilites need to be improved 
• Close range accuracy is absolutely appalling 
• TACTICAL MAP IS NEEDED!!!!!
• The AI regarding ships in the division needs a real look at, the way the flagship rank will change between ships in a division depending on damage seems good on paper, but ends up in utter chaos with ships pirouetting all over the place
• The torpedo warning should be repeated in the top right or something so that you know they're inbound if you're busy observing the fall of shot away from your ship.

 

Honestly I'm going to pin my hopes/predictions for the future of this game on what goes on in the next update. The seeming push to get the campaign out is admirable but seems to be putting the cart before the horse if the very basic gameplay function isn't enjoyable - because frankly playing some of these missions has not been an enjoyable experience for me, in either the design or combat stages. 

[DougToss]

1 hour ago, Xenol said:

1. either enemy long range accuracy needs nerfing, or the players spotting abilites need to be improved 
2. Close range accuracy is absolutely appalling
3.  TACTICAL MAP IS NEEDED!!!!!

At the risk of sounding edgy, I think a lot of WOWS and WT players hopped on early in the testing process because they saw that they could build cool ships. Hence all the talk on earlier feedback pages about "balance", "nerf" and "meta". That could be good, it's always nice to build a player base. I would love if they all bought this title and grew the community. 

However, their feedback has, in my opinion, often set back the gunnery, propulsion and maneuverability models. It's important that any member of the community be able to share their opinions, and for an early-access game, the more eyes-on testing the better. The issue is without a theoretical framework to interpret their data and provide analysis, they are relying on previous games they have played, rather than the literature. They don't really get that WOWS is a third-person shooter where the player is a ship or that WT is bumper cars at sea. Again, folks have different tastes and there is a market for those games, they're both very successful.

Having said that, that's not inline with the stated purpose of the game. The word "realistic" appears 13 times in the description of combat alone! They knew what they were signing up for!

Generally they don't understand naval warfare, and though members of this community have worked hard to provide the literature and post things like gunnery table and horsepower/tonnage graphs, they don't much care. The post and view counts in the Historical and Maritime Discussions section are downright disheartening. 

The result is that the rapidity, lethality, and accuracy of fire is creeping ever upwards away from sources and into the unknown where "feel" dictates "balance". Worse, their complaints about combat being "too slow" or "boring" were taken seriously, and many of those players have moved on anyways. So we have changes made to suit for an audience after they have left and gone back to anime ship waifus and arcade games.

Setting expectations is a good way to reel them back in and keep them. Time acceleration and good mission design go a long way, much further than 50kn capital ships, a gunnery model that produces an insane amount of hits, fiery magazine explosions and flash fires in nearly every engagement, and scenarios designed to throw as many ships at the player as quickly as possible so that they are never bored. All of those change make it more difficult to fight battles as intended and are making providing feedback difficult because the baseline is very far from any sources we can read for info. Give them the tools to be entertained within the realistic model, rather than breaking the model in the hopes of entertaining them. You need to have faith in your audience.

If you look at the comments section of RPS' The Flare Path, Wargamer, and other grog websites, there is a potentially dedicated audience for this game that is sitting on the fence. More than that, this is a community that would fall over themselves to do research and testing for the project pro bono, and I know that because many of them are here. Guys on subsim are still posting about Jutland. Jutland! They made Wolfpack and U-Boat happen, and have been a huge aid to those devs in the early-access process, but there is not so much as a single post about UA:D over on subsim, and as far as I know the devs have not reached out to them. Silent Hunter 5 is a complex game and so is IL2:BOS. Both have the option to have training wheels, but treat them as such, rather than changing the game to have the training wheels on all the time. Worth noting is that a decade after Silent Hunter 5 came out there is a dedicated community still playing, and those are the most serious about realism. They're still playing the game, and made  a popular mod that still gets updates. 

Look how long players had to wait for a game like this. There are still people buying, playing and improving Fighting Steel. RTW was a surprise hit, for sure. By staying true to its intended design it satisfied the hardcore base and drew in new players without compromising any of the things the naval enthusiasts love. People who never played SAI and never would played RTW, even though combat didn't change and if anything got more realistic. Many of those fans have stayed on for RTW 2 and have developed an interest in naval history and ship design.

By all means, give them a sandbox to have fun designing ships in, but make those ships operate under real conditions. This is the Kerbal Space Program route - room for creativity, with great UI, and good tutorials and wiki - under realistic conditions. If you want to run a space program with spacecraft and missions as close to a real life as possible you can, if you don't understand spaceflight or just want to have fun in a sandbox you can too, but either way the sandbox is rooted in punishingly accurate and detailed reality. 

Realistic games get crossover players from the more arcade ones, who are specifically drawn to them as a step up. DCS and IL2:BOS have seen their playerbases grow from crossover players (mainly from WT) and they are absolutely, incredibly, punishingly grounded in reality. More than that, they have done a very good job soliciting suggestions from the community, and even research. You read that right,  "Developer Assistance: A place for the developers to request helpful information from the community and to make suggestions and proposals for the game".

I'm not ranting about "dumbing the game down for casuals", I'm saying that a game design that sticks true to a vision will find an audience. Unless you add capture the flag and team death match, you probably won't keep a number of the arcade naval game players for very long. However, you will keep some if you create a good naval sim, and you will also create a following that is very involved with the development of the title. 

tl;dr. 

Building an accesible game around reality is easier than trying to balance reality to make the game accessable. 

People can wrap their heads around gunnery if it is explained to them, you don't have to cripple the model to suit them. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by DougToss

[Xenol]

12 hours ago, DougToss said:

tl;dr. 

Building an accesible game around reality is easier than trying to balance reality to make the game accessable. 

People can wrap their heads around gunnery if it is explained to them, you don't have to cripple the model to suit them. 

I'm sorry but if I utilise all of the in-game information to make the most accurate ship possible and the AI still outperforms me in accuracy, then that is a problem with the game not me. Players shouldn't need to read swathes of literature on advanced ballistics to be able to achieve at least parity with the enemy... If I have max radar and rangefinders, RDF, top-tier towers, the most stable hull available, the most accurate form of gun available, perfect balance, optimised cruise speed, etc then I SHOULD NOT be receiving more accurate gunfire from vessels with INFERIOR EQUIPMENT beyond my observation range.

Having never played WoW or WT (at least not the naval part) I cannot comment on how they perform as comparison. I know from reputation how arcady that is, and I'm not advocating for that at all, but when the odds seem so stacked against the player, I don't think asking for a certain amount of balancing is unreasonable or 'dumbing it down'.

Quote

By all means, give them a sandbox to have fun designing ships in, but make those ships operate under real conditions. This is the Kerbal Space Program route - room for creativity, with great UI, and good tutorials and wiki - under realistic conditions. If you want to run a space program with spacecraft and missions as close to a real life as possible you can, if you don't understand spaceflight or just want to have fun in a sandbox you can too, but either way the sandbox is rooted in punishingly accurate and detailed reality. 

I agree with this exactly and believe this aligns with that I've been saying all along on the construction threads. I'm not asking the game mechanics to be changed to make stupid designs 'work', all I want is the freedom to do stupid designs. Rather than lock the ability to do certain configurations, strongly advise the player against it. 

 

At the end of the day I'm not trying to just piss all over this game. It's better than the opposition by a country mile, and has so much potential.

The problem is, it seems to be suffering a kind of identity crisis.  It wants to be nearly as serious as RTW but markets itself as something much more mainstream. At the practically AAA pricepoint you cannot do this and not expect a lot of unhappy customers. As it happens I straddle the market, WoW is too arcady, rooted in fantasy and honestly banal - RTW was too indepth and overcomplicated. I don't want the game to be dumbed down, but I want expanded freedom to be original and not to feel that the odds are stacked against me with no explanation for where I am going wrong.

rant over

[Whomst'd've]

2 hours ago, Xenol said:

I'm sorry but if I utilise all of the in-game information to make the most accurate ship possible and the AI still outperforms me in accuracy, then that is a problem with the game not me. Players shouldn't need to read swathes of literature on advanced ballistics to be able to achieve at least parity with the enemy... If I have max radar and rangefinders, RDF, top-tier towers, the most stable hull available, the most accurate form of gun available, perfect balance, optimised cruise speed, etc then I SHOULD NOT be receiving more accurate gunfire from vessels with INFERIOR EQUIPMENT beyond my observation range.

Having never played WoW or WT (at least not the naval part) I cannot comment on how they perform as comparison. I know from reputation how arcady that is, and I'm not advocating for that at all, but when the odds seem so stacked against the player, I don't think asking for a certain amount of balancing is unreasonable or 'dumbing it down'.

I agree with this exactly and believe this aligns with that I've been saying all along on the construction threads. I'm not asking the game mechanics to be changed to make stupid designs 'work', all I want is the freedom to do stupid designs. Rather than lock the ability to do certain configurations, strongly advise the player against it. 

 

At the end of the day I'm not trying to just piss all over this game. It's better than the opposition by a country mile, and has so much potential.

The problem is, it seems to be suffering a kind of identity crisis.  It wants to be nearly as serious as RTW but markets itself as something much more mainstream. At the practically AAA pricepoint you cannot do this and not expect a lot of unhappy customers. As it happens I straddle the market, WoW is too arcady, rooted in fantasy and honestly banal - RTW was too indepth and overcomplicated. I don't want the game to be dumbed down, but I want expanded freedom to be original and not to feel that the odds are stacked against me with no explanation for where I am going wrong.

rant over

It does seem weird that while using max equipment and still being unable to achieve hits is odd, cant say it has happened to myself. I found however that accuracy does depend on a lot in speed in a rather unrealistic fashion. When developing my battlecruisers I found that sticking to realistic armours and speed I would get rather normal slugging matches, but if I dropped everything for speed I was borderline untouchable. Maybe the AI you have encountered have a much greater speed difference leading to a drop in your accuracy?

Edited May 27, 2020 by Whomst'd've

[Xenol]

25 minutes ago, Whomst'd've said:

It does seem weird that while using max equipment and still being unable to achieve hits is odd, cant say it has happened to myself. I found however that accuracy does depend on a lot in speed in a rather unrealistic fashion. When developing my battlecruisers I found that sticking to realistic armours and speed I would get rather normal slugging matches, but if I dropped everything for speed I was borderline untouchable. Maybe the AI you have encountered have a much greater speed difference leading to a drop in your accuracy?

I was getting hits, and the number of hits I was scoring felt fair to me, the problem was that the enemy were getting more and started scoring hits before me when I was supposed to have a technical advantage. As for speed, they probably had a speed advantage on me, although realistically if the enemy is maintaining a steady course their speed should be practically irrelevant. 

[DougToss]

@Xenol I apologize if I came across as attacking you, now that you've explained where you're coming from I understand. In fact, I largely agree with you. I spend so much time making a case for the gunnery and fire control systems to be accurate, I don't often stop to think about if they work at present. There seems to be some evidence that they are not working as intended. 

It would be nice to have more nuts and bolts information from the devs on how ballistics are being simulated and how fire control works. Right now, I'm having a hard time achieving Royal Navy firing tables with fire control equipment and guns as close to the ships conducting tests as I can reasonably create. I believe this method of simulating firing tables could be a very valuable tool to @Nick Thomadis as well as anyone else who wants to take a crack at crunching numbers. 

I know we don't have towed or stationary targets (though I think we should, accessible in the designer.) but I am finding it difficult to achieve these hit rates and the AI seems to exceed them. 

Now there are various ways sims have modelled gunnery. RTW uses simple tables with technology and battle conditions applying a modifier. Those modifiers can be pretty complex, so you can see the effect of 7" casemate guns under local control in rough seas, without the game working much harder than running the baseline 7" accuracy at a given range through the modifiers for technology, crew proficiency, local control, casemates, and applying the casemate penalty in rough seas. 

John Tiller does more math, but essentially starts from the same place:

The resolution of fire from primary and secondary armament follows the same basic resolution.  This resolution consists of two parts: if the shot hits the target ship and if so, then what the damage to the target ship is.

The probability that a given shot will hit the target ship is based on the following calculation: Hit Prob = Basic-Hit-Prob * Norm-Size * Norm-Range^2 * Norm-Speed

where:

     Basic-Hit-Prob is the basic hit probability for the side of the firing ship.  This value is part of the Parameter Data values and can be found in the Parameter Data Dialog.

 Norm-Size is the normalized size of the target ship.  This value equals Sqrt (size) / 100.0 where ‘size’ is the size of the target ship in tons and ‘Sqrt’ is the square-root function.

 Norm-Range is the normalized range to the target ship.  This value is equal to 15000 / range where ‘range’ is the range in yards.  This value is squared in the hit probability equation. 

    Norm-Speed is the normalized speed of the target ship.  This value is equal to 25 / (speed + 5) where ‘speed’ is the speed of the target ship in knots.  Note: The minimum value of speed used in this calculation is 5 knots.  This results in normalized speed values that range from near zero for fast ships to 2.5 as a maximum value.

Example. Suppose one ship fires on another at a range of 20,000 yards, where the target ship is 10,000 tons and is traveling at 25 knots.  Suppose the basic hit probability of the firing ship is 2%.  The normalized size of the target ship is equal to Sqrt (10000) / 100 = 100 / 100 = 1.0.  The normalized range is equal to 15000 / 20000 = 0.75.  The normalized speed of the target ship is equal to 25 / (25 + 5) = 25 / 30 = 0.83.

Finally, the hit probability equals Hit Prob = 0.02 * 1.0 * 0.75^2 * 0.83 = 0.0093375 Or less than 1%.

As with Kerbal Space Program, I don't think players should be forced to learn this if they don't want to. They should be able to achieve accuracy within historically acceptable margins just by using the guns and fire control systems reasonably. The tutorial and tool tips should tell them to plop down some rangefinders and a mast, they needn't worry about fully understanding how Dreyer tables work, they little pixel crewmen are doing the calculations for them.  So if they have rangefinders and fire control systems, they should be hitting. 

Finally, is the AI hitting more frequently because they are designing better ships, or because the calculations are applied differently to players and AI? Using auto-generated ships would be a good way to test this theory.

32 minutes ago, Xenol said:

I was getting hits, and the number of hits I was scoring felt fair to me, the problem was that the enemy were getting more and started scoring hits before me when I was supposed to have a technical advantage. As for speed, they probably had a speed advantage on me, although realistically if the enemy is maintaining a steady course their speed should be practically irrelevant. 

You're absolutely right. Speed has no impact on gunnery, only change in rate of speed. 

“The range rate
Successful gunnery required that the position of the target be projected ahead, ultimately to the moment at which a shell might be expected to hit. To do that, the shooter had to calculate the rates at which the range and bearing of the target changed; they were usually called the range and bearing rates. Calculation was difficult because neither was constant, and because each depended on the other. Alternatively, one might think in terms of the vector (magnitude and direction) pointing from shooter to target. The change in this vector was another vector which might be called the rate vector. It could be expressed as two components, one along the line of fire and one across it. The rate along was usually called the range rate. The rate across was usually called deflection. Its magnitude was the bearing rate multiplied by the range.”

Excerpt From: Norman Friedman. “Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era.” Apple Books.

The calculations are the same at 10kn as at 50. If the AI ship was maneuvering by changing speed and direction, causing your fire to be off because of change in the range rate, they should also have been unable to hit you.  

Edited May 27, 2020 by DougToss

[Xenol]

Sorry if I came across as a bit agressive old chap, think wires were a bit crossed.

2 hours ago, DougToss said:

Finally, is the AI hitting more frequently because they are designing better ships, or because the calculations are applied differently to players and AI? Using auto-generated ships would be a good way to test this theory.

Worth a shot a guess. It's possible my designs were unoptimised in some way, but the game gave me no indication. In my previous example the enemy ship in question had 15in triples which should be both less accurate and have a shorter range than the 16in doubles I had equipped. From memory the only part of my fire control which wasn't optimal was the rear tower, since (for some bizarre reason) the built in barbette was too small to accept my 16in guns. 

On an unrelated note, funny coincidence that drachinifel would release a video on range-finding today. 

[roachbeef]

As a BC fan, getting blown up early due to a magazine detonation (deck pen feels way higher than it should be in the 20k-30k yard band) and reloading with the exact same design while changing nothing is half the fun. Real life naval engagements were often dependent heavily on luck. I think an in-battle save system and resetting of random seeds upon load would alleviate concerns about RNG. 

[baltic1284]

On 5/27/2020 at 12:37 PM, Xenol said:

Sorry if I came across as a bit agressive old chap, think wires were a bit crossed.

Worth a shot a guess. It's possible my designs were unoptimised in some way, but the game gave me no indication. In my previous example the enemy ship in question had 15in triples which should be both less accurate and have a shorter range than the 16in doubles I had equipped. From memory the only part of my fire control which wasn't optimal was the rear tower, since (for some bizarre reason) the built in barbette was too small to accept my 16in guns. 

On an unrelated note, funny coincidence that drachinifel would release a video on range-finding today. 

Yes but a Gunners mate in the US Navy when I was in the US Navy I agree the game is way of charts and what was actual in IRL. The video your talking is the best way to explain how it all works without losing many people in the match alone. But the game is not accurate at all to any fire charts I still have from when I was in the Navy from A School on those guns yes the US Navy still taught  the old WW2 guns like the 8:/55 Mk 12 threw 16 guns the 6"/47Mk 16 guns 16DP guns along with the two 5"51 Mks 7 threw 15 and the 5'38 Mk12 and the 5"54 Mk16 guns. They are US guns but in game they are way more inaccurate than IRL and the way the gun sights are wrong also one wasn't for close and the other farther away. Both where used for the same role just did it differently and one was more accurate at range then the other.

Generally if you send out 4 shells your  as accurate as you can be the 4 shells for ranging and effect. The biggest impact to Gun accuracy was radar as it gave live feed on range speed and direction of the ship. This was done by time in and out and the signal between the two to define direction, simply put if send a signal and it x amount of time less to get the range you have time and the range decreased by y amount you distance covered simple math to find speed which is distance vs time. You only cover so much per distance per knot of speed. Range is measured by signal covered if it takes 6 seconds to send and receive the signal then 3 seconds is the number you need the total , divided by two gives you distance one way, the radar signal goes threw a set atmosphere so fast only so range is time compared to known range as the signal only covers so much terrain per second.

Speed is done by time to a certain point again so much speed per knot can be covered and if the ships travels a certain distance for a given time then speed is can be determined. Atmosphere as in heat and temperature can only be done at your ship as you cant tell to the ship but is usually the same due to area of atmosphere unless a storm is near by. Generally atmosphere is only done as Pressure and temp at your ship wind direction can be determined at your ship and enemy ship by looking for flags and such that can tell you.

Yo plug all tat info in your Range finding computer, they called is different name then, and it gives where the shells will hit and where the guns aim spot and elevation is to get maximum hit chance. By US Navy standards a 9 gun equipped ship needed to have a 60 percent hit ratio to be considered a passing grade during testing and training that is about 3 shells on average hitting a ship of equal size and role. Your lucky in game if 1 or 2 shells for every 6 vollys, which wouldn't even pass any navies grade to be used crew wise.

[baltic1284]

On 5/26/2020 at 5:59 PM, DougToss said:

At the risk of sounding edgy, I think a lot of WOWS and WT players hopped on early in the testing process because they saw that they could build cool ships. Hence all the talk on earlier feedback pages about "balance", "nerf" and "meta". That could be good, it's always nice to build a player base. I would love if they all bought this title and grew the community. 

However, their feedback has, in my opinion, often set back the gunnery, propulsion and maneuverability models. It's important that any member of the community be able to share their opinions, and for an early-access game, the more eyes-on testing the better. The issue is without a theoretical framework to interpret their data and provide analysis, they are relying on previous games they have played, rather than the literature. They don't really get that WOWS is a third-person shooter where the player is a ship or that WT is bumper cars at sea. Again, folks have different tastes and there is a market for those games, they're both very successful.

Having said that, that's not inline with the stated purpose of the game. The word "realistic" appears 13 times in the description of combat alone! They knew what they were signing up for!

Generally they don't understand naval warfare, and though members of this community have worked hard to provide the literature and post things like gunnery table and horsepower/tonnage graphs, they don't much care. The post and view counts in the Historical and Maritime Discussions section are downright disheartening. 

The result is that the rapidity, lethality, and accuracy of fire is creeping ever upwards away from sources and into the unknown where "feel" dictates "balance". Worse, their complaints about combat being "too slow" or "boring" were taken seriously, and many of those players have moved on anyways. So we have changes made to suit for an audience after they have left and gone back to anime ship waifus and arcade games.

Setting expectations is a good way to reel them back in and keep them. Time acceleration and good mission design go a long way, much further than 50kn capital ships, a gunnery model that produces an insane amount of hits, fiery magazine explosions and flash fires in nearly every engagement, and scenarios designed to throw as many ships at the player as quickly as possible so that they are never bored. All of those change make it more difficult to fight battles as intended and are making providing feedback difficult because the baseline is very far from any sources we can read for info. Give them the tools to be entertained within the realistic model, rather than breaking the model in the hopes of entertaining them. You need to have faith in your audience.

If you look at the comments section of RPS' The Flare Path, Wargamer, and other grog websites, there is a potentially dedicated audience for this game that is sitting on the fence. More than that, this is a community that would fall over themselves to do research and testing for the project pro bono, and I know that because many of them are here. Guys on subsim are still posting about Jutland. Jutland! They made Wolfpack and U-Boat happen, and have been a huge aid to those devs in the early-access process, but there is not so much as a single post about UA:D over on subsim, and as far as I know the devs have not reached out to them. Silent Hunter 5 is a complex game and so is IL2:BOS. Both have the option to have training wheels, but treat them as such, rather than changing the game to have the training wheels on all the time. Worth noting is that a decade after Silent Hunter 5 came out there is a dedicated community still playing, and those are the most serious about realism. They're still playing the game, and made  a popular mod that still gets updates. 

Look how long players had to wait for a game like this. There are still people buying, playing and improving Fighting Steel. RTW was a surprise hit, for sure. By staying true to its intended design it satisfied the hardcore base and drew in new players without compromising any of the things the naval enthusiasts love. People who never played SAI and never would played RTW, even though combat didn't change and if anything got more realistic. Many of those fans have stayed on for RTW 2 and have developed an interest in naval history and ship design.

By all means, give them a sandbox to have fun designing ships in, but make those ships operate under real conditions. This is the Kerbal Space Program route - room for creativity, with great UI, and good tutorials and wiki - under realistic conditions. If you want to run a space program with spacecraft and missions as close to a real life as possible you can, if you don't understand spaceflight or just want to have fun in a sandbox you can too, but either way the sandbox is rooted in punishingly accurate and detailed reality. 

Realistic games get crossover players from the more arcade ones, who are specifically drawn to them as a step up. DCS and IL2:BOS have seen their playerbases grow from crossover players (mainly from WT) and they are absolutely, incredibly, punishingly grounded in reality. More than that, they have done a very good job soliciting suggestions from the community, and even research. You read that right,  "Developer Assistance: A place for the developers to request helpful information from the community and to make suggestions and proposals for the game".

I'm not ranting about "dumbing the game down for casuals", I'm saying that a game design that sticks true to a vision will find an audience. Unless you add capture the flag and team death match, you probably won't keep a number of the arcade naval game players for very long. However, you will keep some if you create a good naval sim, and you will also create a following that is very involved with the development of the title. 

tl;dr. 

Building an accesible game around reality is easier than trying to balance reality to make the game accessable. 

People can wrap their heads around gunnery if it is explained to them, you don't have to cripple the model to suit them. 

You do have a point on the WOWS and WT community generally saying bad about what they don't know as in those communities the ones that did where either bullied by mods and the community to the point they walk awayed or where banned by mods for making the game look bad going against what the company wanted you to believe instead of IRL numbrs. WOWS was really known for this as all you have to is look as Russian Cruisers and compare to IRL ones and see the issue there or US British German French and Italian ships to see it also. Generally the Soviet/Russian ships where stat padded to such a point they where always OPed and anything outside Russia was never truly represented properly as it was better than what the Russian/soviets had at times.

WT was just as bad on it except on tanks and planes generally again is a Russian based game so stat padding was present less so on than WOWS but still there there big issues was mod favoritism, if you weren't buddy buddy with theme and defended the game at all costs you where punished for whatever they wanted to with no oversight. If you found proof they where wrong on something you ha to submit 3 different forms from 3 different locations and books and the 4th had to be a Russian source they approved of. So changing anything past what they wanted it to be was impossible and changes generally come against anything outside Russia even though that source is usually wrong. Os ic an see there affect happening but best I can say is prove it if not shut it and let those that know speak be amazed how it will turn out if you let those who know speak instead of you thinking you know. Take current gun accuracy as a point and armor weight was affected by those communities a lot.

[baltic1284]

Here is a video by the user mentioned earlier that has the range finding done in a manner that can be explained better than I can with out losing people in math terms and over whelming facts. 

 

[TAKTCOM]

On 5/22/2020 at 6:17 PM, admiralsnackbar said:

1. Magazines:
a. Is it realistic for ships to use ammo from the magazine of one turret to supply another turret? 

Of course. Most, um, bright example is SMS Blücher. To supply the side turrets, she had 62 meter corridors from turrets to ship's magazine. Another but less impressive example is the Russian cruisers of the Boyan type. During the modernization armament was reinforced with an additional 203 mm cannon, installed without turret or casemates, just on deck. Shells, apparently manually transferred from near 203mm turret .

[IronKaputt]

On 5/27/2020 at 2:59 AM, DougToss said:

IL2:BOS

Speaking of — I think flexible game settings will solve a lot of problems.

[admiralsnackbar]

1. Concerning the few people who answered my questions about magazines; Thanks. I wasn't asking because I thought a 'common ammunition counter' was unrealistic. I legitimately didn't know. 

2. Gauging tech balance based on naval academy missions might be a bad idea as it's possible the enemy's ships are simply higher 'tech' than yours even if you optimize as best you can, at least for that particular mission. I've also found missions where the opposite is the case and the fights end very handily in the players favor. 

3. After reading what some of the people in this thread have posted about naval gunnery I do hope the current system is merely a placeholder for a more 'firing solution' based system. The way the current system is set up it seems like all gunnery is 'perfect' and the only variables in question are ones that affect the dispersion of the shells around the target.

A more realistic aiming system might involve the ship making a firing solution that slowly converges to where it 'should' be, depending on the fire control technology and any extraneous variables like maneuvering that make it harder to arrive at the solution. If both ships are constant in direction and speed and a solution has been reached then you get to your best-case-scenario 'hit chance' which is basically just a function of the guns dispersion and the size of the target. 

Gun/ammo techs would reduce the dispersion of the shells, other techs would allow rangefinding/fire control to obtain/correct firing solutions more quickly. 

That said, again, given how some scenarios are hideously easy for players and others nearly impossible -- it's not the fire control system as it exists that is to blame necessarily. 

4. The way the current system works for ships shooting at targets encourages your admiral to basically have every ship focus fire the single easiest target to hit. At a recent Drydock episode with Drachinifel it was mentioned that this wouldn't necessarily have been done historically because one ship's shell splashes can throw off the aim of another ship. Also, ships that aren't under fire get the potential advantage of faster loading and/or better gunnery for psychological reasons. 

5. Also with respect to complaints about taking fire from ships you can't see, While I hate to bring up WOWS this might be one of the more realistic elements of that particular game; the act of firing one's guns probably ought to increase the distance that a ship could be spotted. 

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by admiralsnackbar

[Steeltrap]

On 5/28/2020 at 1:43 AM, Xenol said:

I was getting hits, and the number of hits I was scoring felt fair to me, the problem was that the enemy were getting more and started scoring hits before me when I was supposed to have a technical advantage. As for speed, they probably had a speed advantage on me, although realistically if the enemy is maintaining a steady course their speed should be practically irrelevant. 

In the latest release you have ALL the tools you need to know EXACTLY why they can do this, at least once you can see the enemy.

Just select one, draw its aim to YOUR ship, and you immediately have ALL the firing data, exactly as you would if using your own ship against them.

In which case what were the differences?

Ship size is a, err, big factor because the various levels of radar APPEAR to work by multiplying the 'visual ship size' modifier to extreme degrees. I've seen "target ship size" modifiers in excess of 220%.

It's not automatically true that their 15s will be less accurate than your 16s. It's probably true, but if the 15s are mk5 or 6 vs a lower mk of 16 then not necessarily. The game also has some odd 'favoured' calibres, such as the 9" and 12" being significantly more accurate than the 10", 11" and 13" guns (for no apparent reason). This "favouring" of certain calibres came in a few updates ago without explanation or comment.

Short answer is we can't possibly know what's happening if you don't get screen shots etc. None of which is intended to be discouraging or disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to encourage it because we often get some good exchanges when someone does post such a thing.

I've already commented elsewhere and extensively on the blatant problem with the gunnery model when it comes to speed AND manoeuvre. A ship doing 3 knots can ENTIRELY REMOVE the bonus you get for it going at such a slow speed simply by putting its rudder hard over. That's patently silly, because the rudder will have NO meaningful effect on the difference between where the ship would be with or without that rudder application, and THAT is what SHOULD count for gunnery.

Anyway, be good if you DO capture some screenshots (I tend these days just to do screen snips as they're much smaller and relevant) so we can see all the adjustments.

I think Nick and his colleagues are simply snowed under with a HUGE list of what needs doing. They've focussed on the 'basics', often to a decent degree, but the player base has been using the game enough for the issues to become increasingly obvious. In which case it's a matter of waiting for them to start addressing those things.

I for one am hoping at some time to see them call for specific nominations FROM US about specific areas of the game that we feel need addressing, but they're not going to do that until they've at least finished with what they already have planned. Which is why I don't really play much at present, unless I just want something silly yet fun to do for 35 minutes.

Cheers

[TAKTCOM]

On 5/30/2020 at 10:54 PM, admiralsnackbar said:

1. Concerning the few people who answered my questions about magazines; Thanks.

That was a pretty interesting question. I am currently reading a book about the First World War cruisers so I just had the material right in the hands. 

[Cyan_PL]

I have observed the following behaviour when firing:
- Guns that cannot engage (typcally out of their firing arc) their designated target just stay idle. They try to track, but that's it. This is most prominent with various secondary guns mounted along the sides. Would it not make more sense to designate a secondary target they could switch to instead?
- Firing lag. This typically happens whenever one designates a new target and is easiest to observe on large, slow-mowing turrets of the same calibre. The turret that gets its bearing first will fire regardless of its sister turrets, which begins the reload cycle for the whole GROUP. The other turrets with guns of the same calibre, which may have moved into position just seconds later, will just sit and wait till the first turret completes its reload. I have recently build a 5x2x16'' battleship, and several times during the battle 8 loaded guns would have to sit and wait for two guns to reload... Is this actual RL behaviour? I know it makes sense to fire the same calibre in unison (for tracking etc), but should the two rather wait for eight instead of the other way around?

Edited June 4, 2020 by Cyan_PL

[LAN]

When a gun is firing a shell, the shell is flying off course from the moment it leaves the barrel and it is so obvious

if the shell goes off course in mid flight would look much more realistic

 

HE shell needs explosion effect:

when a 18inch shell hits a destroyer, it did nuked the destroyer, but i don't see any big boom from the shell that goes with it

 

game optimization issues:

i am using a 3900X with 1070ti, i tried having max amount of ships in custom battle once, the frame rate drops below 30, but i check my CPU and GPU usage it was barely under any load

 

i am just gonna add stuff to my post instead of making new ones:

AI controlling the ships are a mess, i told them to go loose, but all the ships are still tangle together (50vs50), destroyers/cruisers likes to run in circles (literally like they glued their rudder to one side)

Separate firing target for each type of weapon, instead of main and secondary. For example, i have 18inch guns and 9inch side guns,  i want the 18inch to work on enemy BBs and 9inch to work on enemy CLs, but i can't do that right now.

Variety on same class of ship. right now, all the ships are the same for the same type, would be great if there are 5BB, but with 1-2 different designs or variations.

AI designed ship needs to make more sense, i see an AI BB that use 13inch as main gun (which is usless) and it puts 30inch on turret armour, which is ridiculous, and in another battle AI BB with BC armour or vice versa.

We need reverse gear, there is no way to slow down right now..

Edited June 18, 2020 by LAN
update

[madham82]

13 hours ago, LAN said:

When a gun is firing a shell, the shell is flying off course from the moment it leaves the barrel and it is so obvious

if the shell goes off course in mid flight would look much more realistic

 

HE shell needs explosion effect:

when a 18inch shell hits a destroyer, it did nuked the destroyer, but i don't see any big boom from the shell that goes with it

 

game optimization issues:

i am using a 3900X with 1070ti, i tried having max amount of ships in custom battle once, the frame rate drops below 30, but i check my CPU and GPU usage it was barely under any load

 

1. I believe this was mentioned in another thread as something that will be fixed. Someone posted a screen show a 2 shells going 8km past the aim point, with some others were about 2kms short.

2. Agreed, some better visuals for HE to make it clearly look different than AP would be nice. 

3. The game as I understand it is not optimized at this point. For example, my rig runs Elite Dangerous at max settings at 1080p like it does this game at medium settings. 

[shieldy44]

On 5/26/2020 at 4:59 PM, DougToss said:

Generally they don't understand naval warfare, and though members of this community have worked hard to provide the literature and post things like gunnery table and horsepower/tonnage graphs, they don't much care. The post and view counts in the Historical and Maritime Discussions section are downright disheartening. 

I'm going to have to disagree in a big way with that, i can't speak for everyone but its not that i dont much care. For one im a casual player and i have a lot of respect for the members of this community that have that level and depth of understanding. And I fully understand this game is about historical accuracy as much as possible. But they still have to find a balance to make the game accessible to more then just the people that can understand gunnery tables and all the other technical stuff. It is very nice its in there for the people that do understand it. But at the end of the day even if i had the time to try to understand it my brain just works differently. I do not have the ability to do math very well. That stuff looks like greek to me and it is probably pretty basic math. So I guess my point is from at least a laymen and casual player perspective i think they are doing really well to balance things between extreme realism and playabilty for everyone else.

Again from a casual perspective maybe in the end they can make the difficulty adjustable, i heavily rely on the A.I. because im not as technical in my understanding. So maybe that will be the balance either different modes that offer more realism or just making the A.I to help the players that need it better and the ones that dont turn it off and have the full realism they want

Edited June 16, 2020 by shieldy44

[DougToss]

3 hours ago, shieldy44 said:

Again from a casual perspective maybe in the end they can make the difficulty adjustable, i heavily rely on the A.I. because im not as technical in my understanding. So maybe that will be the balance either different modes that offer more realism or just making the A.I to help the players that need it better and the ones that dont turn it off and have the full realism they want

I appreciate your honesty. If anything, I think you're selling yourself a little short as that was a very thoughtful post. 

What UI or AI improvements would let you have fun, with everything "behind the scenes" being rigidly accurate? 

What I mean is, how could the meaning of gunnery tables be communicated to you in a fun and accessible way without you having to do,  or really even understand, the math? 

Would it help if the pointer was colour coded based on the estimated hit rate? 

Something like this?