>>>Combat Feedback<<<

[Pedroig]

@Squatter, just some unasked for advice, if you don’t like/appreciate someone’s points, either ignore it and move on or simply state it wasn’t helpful and drive on.  Trying to point out errors/misunderstandings is going to help nothing and can appear petty to some. 
 

Keep enjoying the game and throwing out suggestions  

[akd]

29 minutes ago, Ikahime said:

It looked like the other 4 inch gun, mounted on the regular deck (not sure what that's called) was shooting through the funnels as well, but This could be my imagination.

Ah, could it have been mounted in the elevated, circular platform between funnels on the late enhanced destroyer funnel?  This also has unrestricted firing arcs under specific conditions:

1. If no secondary tower is mounted, it can fire straight to the rear.

2. If the bridge tower is mounted up on the forecastle, it can fire straight to the front.

I've also reported this, but if you find any other conditions in which the firing arc is not properly restricted by structures, you should report it.  You can see the arc in green when you hover over the mounted gun in the designer.  Areas where the gun / turret can't rotate at all are shown in red, but  gaps in the arc due to structures are simply clear.

[Niomedes]

1 hour ago, Maachlan said:

Sometimes it seems like it's possible to out run the rotation speed of your turrets. If an enemy ship is dead in the water and you're passing it at high speeds your guns can't rotate fast enough to keep on target.

That's intended behavior. Your gun's rotation speed is limited according to their size, weight and the gun rotation modifocation you selected. 

[Grims]

After playing around with combat in the Naval Academy a bunch - aside from the often mentioned stuff like torpedoes being really underwhelming - is it just me or are secondaries useless at the moment?

There seems to be a big problem with accuracy scaling with distance for smaller guns.

The most glaring 2 examples of this were in the 'Destroyers vs Torpedo boats' and 'Modern Battleship' scenarios. In the first, I had the torpedo boats close to 0.1km-0.2km, and I was still getting ~5% hit chance on my secondaries. You'd see them fire at essentially point blank in naval terms and splash all around the target as if they were purposefully trying to miss. Even in the 1890s light guns were fairly accurate within 2km, let alone within 0.2km.

As for the modern battleship, I figured I'd equip it with more than 20 secondaries a side (mostly 5" as they claimed to have decent accuracy at 5km) and I was hoping that they'd keep the destroyers at bay. However, over a whole hour of combat kiting away from them at about 5km and letting them fire endlessly as I sank the BBs and CAs with the main battery, in the end they'd achieved a grand total of scratching the paint of a single destroyer. Eventually I gave up and sank them one by one with the main battery in a couple of salvos each - and this from supposedly the most 'modern' secondary battery in the game at the moment.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Grims

[CajunNavy]

11 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The automatic switch of the lead ship in the division happens when the lead ship becomes severely damaged and loses much speed. If it kept leading the division, the other ships would stall behind and become ineffective. You can detach this ship, if you want.

Nick Thomadis,

Thank you very much for the kind reply.  I understand the logic in doing it automatically. In the big picture, it is but a tiny thing.😉

I was requesting it because of what happened to me in a recent game.  My flagship was changed to the middle ship of the division, which resulted in me having two collide, as I thought I issued orders to the flagship (lead ship), but it was no longer the flagship, a different ship was.  Then, in the thick of combat, the new flagship was switched back to the original flagship!  This was very confusing to me, it had my ships doing all kinds of bizarre maneuvers and it gave the enemy some really easy pickings.  Had I been able to manually change flagships, I could have done it in an orderly fashion and retained my battleline.  

Thanks again for the reply.  Ya'll are doing a superb job!

CajunNavy

[Wakelessrex]

I think most of the major concerns have been discussed and it also seems that Nick has directly addressed or will address most of them. Let me go over some of the less mentioned ones I think are important and add a few quality of life suggestions.

Torpedo's during this period from my understanding were very much a gamble as to there ability to detonate. I don't know if its true (I have not researched this topic extensively, though it makes sense to me) that the vast majority of pre ww2 torpedo's were duds. If that's true would it not warrant at least a chance mechanic of having a dud in a given output.

This next suggestion may be me just being ignorant but I couldn't find a way to manually adjust individual ships fire type within a division. Say the lead ship as HE and the second ship as AP. It seems to adjust the entire division. I possible it would be kool to have this ability.

Zoom, I personally would love the ability to zoom in further on ships. Currently I cant zoom in that far even on a BB let alone a DD and I do LOVE the ship models so much the ability to zoom in further on them would be greatly appreciated.

Finally I like that I can manually adjust the rudder on my ships using the UI but it often using the layout lacks precision, is it possible to have the ability to keybind the rudder controls for fine tuning? 

[Pedroig]

25% is a pretty accepted "dud rate" for WWII torpedoes, that's without the Mk 14's horrendous dud rate due to the Mark 6 exploder issues putting it up over 60% dud/fail category.  (Instances of a Mark 14 hitting the ship which fired it due to some of the other issues happened at least twice confirmed and is suspected in the sinking of three others)  On 30 Oct 1939, U-56 fired three torpedoes at HMS Nelson, all three were duds, oh yeah some guy named Winston Churchill was aboard the ship at the time.  

[Wakelessrex]

11 minutes ago, Pedroig said:

25% is a pretty accepted "dud rate" for WWII torpedoes, that's without the Mk 14's horrendous dud rate due to the Mark 6 exploder issues putting it up over 60% dud/fail category.  (Instances of a Mark 14 hitting the ship which fired it due to some of the other issues happened at least twice confirmed and is suspected in the sinking of three others)  On 30 Oct 1939, U-56 fired three torpedoes at HMS Nelson, all three were duds, oh yeah some guy named Winston Churchill was aboard the ship at the time.  

And I assume those torpedo's are markedly advanced compared to pre dreadnought and dreadnought era torps? suggesting an even higher dud rate?

[Mhtsos]

I don't know if this issue is mentioned somewhere, but I saw the following:

When the target is destroyed by the first turret guns, the second turret guns engage another target within milliseconds with the same accuracy, despite it being some km away. 

Also the extreme angles that torpedos can detonate, if I am not mistaken the pistol could only detonate the head only when the torpedo hit the hull within limited angle.

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Mhtsos

[TBRSIM]

4 hours ago, Wakelessrex said:

And I assume those torpedo's are markedly advanced compared to pre dreadnought and dreadnought era torps? suggesting an even higher dud rate?

Not necessarily. WWII saw torpedoes introduced that were significantly faster than previous ones. So even with impact fuzes the added kinetic energy of the higher impact velocity could be too much, i.e. the fuzing system was destroyed be impact (especially steeper angle impacts) before ignition. Steeper angle impacts also became more the norm due to modern hullforms adding more variability in the vertical plane. In addition the magnetuc fuze idea also pushed fuze development into a different direction and the kinetic/impact part of the fuze lost space (and engineering man-hours) to the magnetic part, meaning newer torpedoes often had less reliable impact fuzes than older ones.

[imeoin01]

So far I'm enjoying the game, but there are a few difficulties I'm having.

1: How do you use torpedoes effectively. When using torpedo boats against the battleship, it always seems to dodge them and when I try to get closer to it, the battleship always damages my boats and even destroy the torpedo tubes.

2: How do you sink ships fast. There have been situations where I need to sink multiple ships and it takes me ages to sink one and chances are I won't have enough time to sink the others.

3: How do you build ships without them getting overweight. There was a situation where I tried to design a battleship with plenty of guns on it, but it ends up being overweight. However when I click the random design, its able to make a version with even more guns that I tried to make and it wasn't overweight.

The system does seem a nit complicated and I find it would be handy to have  some basic tips on how to do certain things in the naval assignment rather then leave it to guess work or luck. There will be a situation where the program designs a great ship and I complete a mission. But when I try the mission again I would fail loads of times and I wouldn't know how I won the last time. I wouldn't call it learning to get better. Its more like you got lucky the first time, but you will keep on failing.

[Maachlan]

17 hours ago, Niomedes said:

That's intended behavior. Your gun's rotation speed is limited according to their size, weight and the gun rotation modifocation you selected. 

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like that was unintended, I was just offering a potential reason his guns may have stopped firing.

[Niomedes]

3 hours ago, imeoin01 said:

So far I'm enjoying the game, but there are a few difficulties I'm having.

1: How do you use torpedoes effectively. When using torpedo boats against the battleship, it always seems to dodge them and when I try to get closer to it, the battleship always damages my boats and even destroy the torpedo tubes.

2: How do you sink ships fast. There have been situations where I need to sink multiple ships and it takes me ages to sink one and chances are I won't have enough time to sink the others.

3: How do you build ships without them getting overweight. There was a situation where I tried to design a battleship with plenty of guns on it, but it ends up being overweight. However when I click the random design, its able to make a version with even more guns that I tried to make and it wasn't overweight.

The system does seem a nit complicated and I find it would be handy to have  some basic tips on how to do certain things in the naval assignment rather then leave it to guess work or luck. There will be a situation where the program designs a great ship and I complete a mission. But when I try the mission again I would fail loads of times and I wouldn't know how I won the last time. I wouldn't call it learning to get better. Its more like you got lucky the first time, but you will keep on failing.

1: You can set the torpedo firing rate to save or manually control torpedo launches. You can also use electric motors to decrease detection chance. All of this will make hits easier.

2: Larger calibre weapons, better fire controls, heavier shells and a wise selection of targets and ammunition.  Close the distance to get higher hit chance if you absolutely have to.

3: Use oil instead of coal, more advanced armor than the steel plate, more advanced engine types, reduce engine size by adjusting for a lower speed, reduce armor thickness, and maybe add less guns ? I.e., simply reduce the number of heavy components on your ship I guess.

The system really isn't complicated at all, and actually rather intuitive if you spend some time reading trough the tooltips on the components. It might take some time to get used to it, but you'll get the hang of it eventually.

[Niomedes]

1 hour ago, Maachlan said:

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like that was unintended, I was just offering a potential reason his guns may have stopped firing.

Oh, well, damn. Didn't see that. Sorry.

[MajorDamage®]

19 minutes ago, Niomedes said:

2: Larger calibre weapons, better fire controls, heavier shells and a wise selection of targets and ammunition.  Close the distance to get higher hit chance if you absolutely have to.

I have a litle issue tho with this, in the one BB vs 3 TB's mission. 

Now i do equip the better towers, 6 inch secondarys, better ammo and sutch, but i always run out of time, last try i did i was scraping hulls with the TB's, as i thought being point blank would help with accuracy yet the gunners seem to prefer aming at the moon for some reason, the vast majority of the main gun's fire was short or completly off, what am i missing besides the points above? 🤔

[Haveatya]

Secondary gun accuracy is seriously killing my enjoyment for some scenarios. I find it impossible to believe advanced secondary batteries (5s-8s specifically) fail to hit anything at every range in any circumstance. I have 5 destroyers fail to kill any torpedo boats while track fire at 1-2km. The TBs just launch torpedoes and eventually blow up destroyers or never get touched and just wait for cruisers or battleships to sink my destroyers from 5+km. I have seen the larger secondaries on my BB and BC fire consistently for minutes at 5-7km and fail to hit anything while my main battery eventually kills everything off. I don't think I saw more than a handful of 8" shells land on any target in the final scenario.

[Niomedes]

32 minutes ago, MajorDamage® said:

I have a litle issue tho with this, in the one BB vs 3 TB's mission. 

Now i do equip the better towers, 6 inch secondarys, better ammo and sutch, but i always run out of time, last try i did i was scraping hulls with the TB's, as i thought being point blank would help with accuracy yet the gunners seem to prefer aming at the moon for some reason, the vast majority of the main gun's fire was short or completly off, what am i missing besides the points above? 🤔

Do you use Triples or doubles ? And closing distance to stay right next to them does decrease accuracy.

[Christian]

18 hours ago, Pedroig said:

25% is a pretty accepted "dud rate" for WWII torpedoes, that's without the Mk 14's horrendous dud rate due to the Mark 6 exploder issues putting it up over 60% dud/fail category.  (Instances of a Mark 14 hitting the ship which fired it due to some of the other issues happened at least twice confirmed and is suspected in the sinking of three others)  On 30 Oct 1939, U-56 fired three torpedoes at HMS Nelson, all three were duds, oh yeah some guy named Winston Churchill was aboard the ship at the time.  

im assuming you have a source for this ?

the torpedoes i heard having the highest dud rates were german torpedoes and the american pre 1944 torpedoes

torpedoes such as the japanese submarine airborne and surface torpedoes i have not seen a report of them failing to explode

having gone through alot of damage reports on american cruisers and carriers i cant find any mention of dud torpedoes from the japanese

the wiki article on the german torpedoes mentions the following

Quote

Poor range and speed were not the T2's only problems. Both the contact and magnetic detonators were unreliable, a major flaw that also the United States Navy's standard Mark 14 anti-submarine and anti-ship torpedo had to struggle with. The magnetic influence exploder, designed to allow the torpedo to run under the keel of a ship and detonate, breaking the ship's back, was inconsistent and would often detonate prematurely, or not at all. This led the BdU to order that all G7e/T2 torpedoes be fired only for contact detonation. However, the contact pistol of the T2 also proved to be unreliable; the British battleship HMS Nelson managed to survive almost certain destruction when three torpedoes from U-56 struck on her keel, two broke upon hitting and the other failed to explode

generally speaking the german torpedoes were quite garbage and the high command suffered the same problem the higher ups in USA did aka blaming the operators and not the torpedo for performing like trash

the G7a had a 30% failure rate throughout the war due to deep running premature detonations and so on

the G7e probably had a similar if not higher failure rate

generally i havent heard of non german/american torpedoes having bad reliability

did a bit of digging and the japanese dont have magnetic fuses like the germans and americans (which were known for being horribly unrealiable)

and only had contact fuses

a diagram of the japanese airborne torpedo and an explanation of its fuse is present on page 35 

diagram of torpedo front is on page 34

i cant find anything on the type 93

 

 

having read a bit on torpedoes in general it seems that it was mostly german and american contact exploders which suffered significant problems while all magnetic fuses suffered problems

which leads me to a conclusion the dud rate on torpedoes should be quite low if not close to nothing being at most 5% for torpedoes (if we exclude american and german ones and magnetic detonators)

 

Edited October 12, 2019 by Christian

[terrible]

I have four lain to the current state of the game

1) it would be great if I can control what target the secondaries encourage because currently they engage the same targets as my main gun 

2)torpedoes is a bit under power and can you put in some kind of torpedo alert? since I don't want to pause the game every few seconds to look out for torpedo, maybe increase the speed of detection of the torps with the experience in the campaign?

3) the time limit for the naval academy missions is a bit too short because its quite annoying to see the time run out even though you know you can finish the mission if you have a bit more time

4) in the current state of the game he shells preform much better than ap shells even if i'm within 5 km of enemy ships

[TBRSIM]

There was Tigerfish, which was so bad General Belgrano was sunk by 50+ year old straightrunners...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerfish_(torpedo)

Quote

Early models suffered from poor reliability: only 40% of the Mod 0 ASW model performed as designed. The torpedo depended in large part on the remote-control system, but the weapon tended to dip during launch, severing the control wire. A redesigned version, designated the Tigerfish Mod 1, aimed to rectify some of the original model's faults but failed its initial fleet acceptance trials in 1979 despite some improvements. Lacking any alternative it was nevertheless issued to the fleet (alongside the Mod 0 which also failed its own fresh acceptance trials the same year) in 1980.^[6] When HMS Conqueror sank the ARA General Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands war she used the "point and shoot" 21 inch Mark VIII torpedoes rather than her Tigerfish. The Mark VIII had no homing system but, despite the design being over 50 years old at the time, was far more reliable and carried a greater high-explosive payload. In a test carried out by submarines returning to the UK after the war two of five Mod 1 Tigerfish fired at a target hulk failed to function at all and the remaining three failed to hit the target.

 

[Ishtar]

1) How is traverse bulkhead armor modeled? If ships are bow in, these armor plates should be directly facing the enemy and therefore easier to penetrate correct? Can we set the thickness of the citadel ends?

2) Is the stated penetration value in terms of Iron armor? For example, would 20" of penetration versus 10" of final tier Krupp be enough?

3) I'm assuming the armor slider is in terms of actual thickness and not effectiveness, is this correct? 10" of Krupp would be twice as good as Iron etc.

[Christian]

43 minutes ago, TBRSIM said:

There was Tigerfish, which was so bad General Belgrano was sunk by 50+ year old straightrunners...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerfish_(torpedo)

 

hey if they are reliable and work might as well use them over new and unreliable fish

 

[Christian]

10 minutes ago, Ishtar said:

1) How is traverse bulkhead armor modeled? If ships are bow in, these armor plates should be directly facing the enemy and therefore easier to penetrate correct? Can we set the thickness of the citadel ends?

2) Is the stated penetration value in terms of Iron armor? For example, would 20" of penetration versus 10" of final tier Krupp be enough?

3) I'm assuming the armor slider is in terms of actual thickness and not effectiveness, is this correct? 10" of Krupp would be twice as good as Iron etc.

1: would be nice to know since almost all bow on shots seem to result in bounces when they should simply go through the thing bow plating and hit transverse bulkheads

2: seems so as penetration does not seem to change depending on the selected armor (could be wrong though)

3: in battle it says minimum armor thickness to maximum armor thickness (1-10 inches for example) and then says a number from +35 to +100

if it says +100 it seems to mean +100% effectiveness which would indicate that the actual armor thickness is 10 inches but its effectiveness is 200% of actual armor thickness which means krupp IV armor 

 

which in turn means that the armor value you select in the designer is without the added benefits of the armor type so 10 inches of armor is 20 inches of effective armor with krupp IV

 

[Niomedes]

5 hours ago, terrible said:

3) the time limit for the naval academy missions is a bit too short because its quite annoying to see the time run out even though you know you can finish the mission if you have a bit more time

The time limit is part of the challenge, and I never had a problem with it. For many missions, there's even too much time.

[Snegurochka_]

I would like to start this off with the fact that i am a massive fan of your work here! So far from what i have played this is an amazing product and i see alot of good coming from future development of you and your teams skills.

However, i do have 1 fairly large (atleast how i feel it to be) problem with how the combat feels to play.

#I have, in multiple situations now, been experiencing a problem with how structure integrity is modeled. Just now i sat and watched as my modern battleship with 12 18 inch guns fired roughly 300 shells into another less advanced battleship without being able to kill it. all because the last few sections on the rear of the ship were untouched! the constant 800 damage shots i was hitting him with did nothing.

I feel the best course of action for this particular problem is atleast 1 of 3 potential fixes. 1 is simply creating a form of modifier to destroyed hull sections that make them still take to overall structure, albeit at a reduced amount. 2 would be to incorporate some form of system that allows us to target particular sections of the ship (not in detail, simply mid, bow, and stern would be fine) as to help allow a higher chance of hitting certain parts of a ship. and 3rd would be to incorporate a system somewhat like your fire spreading mechanic or Escape from Tarkovs limb damage mechanic. When a destroyed ship section would take damage, rather then said damage being absorbed, the damage would be spread to surrounding sections that were not harmed. I do understand the reasoning in why the mechanic is like it is now, but these situations are frustrating and make the game far less enjoyable.

Other things i would like to see in the game but are not as big of a deal would be more clear torpedo spreads and what not, but as of right now, this one big problem aside, you guys have done a fine job! I hope this problem does get some form of resolution and i look forward to potentially hearing a response