>>>Combat Feedback<<<

[Shaun]

So Lyddite is working beautifully, but I feel it doesn't have enough of a disadvantage. I've been using cruisers but I'm rarely receiving ammo explosions myself. Perhaps the chance of detonation should be increased given just how unstable Lyddite is, especially when picrates form in the shell.

[CajunNavy]

Hi Guys,

I have finished all the academy and what a ton of fun! 🤩  You really are doing a superb job.  I love almost everything I have seen and greatly appreciate your hard work. I know it will only get better the more time you have to work on it.

The only dislike I have (not a criticism at all, just a dislike!!!) is with the auto flagship change.  I mentioned it in another post, and I fully recognize the logic in doing it that way. You may not be able to change it because of allied divisions or transports, and that is fine. I understand and can live with it if I have to.

I mention it again, not to belabor the point, but to share some unintended problems with not having the player change flagships.

One example is when I had a perfect crossing of the T. My flagship, first in line, lost an engine.  The second in line had already received some minor damage reducing it's speed, so the program changed the flag to the third ship in the battle line.  This caused the first two ships to drastically begin to change course, ruining my crossing of the T.  The enemy was coming straight at me, so my battle line speed was not too important to me at that time.

Another time the program changed the flag to a ship with a disabled rudder. Not exactly the situation I would have picked. LOL 😉

There are others but I think you understand my point and, like I said, you might not be able to change it.  I would like it changed, but if not, I can always chalk flagship issues up to the fog of war.

Thank you again for your continuing awesome work!

CajunNavy

[Niomedes]

3 minutes ago, CajunNavy said:

Hi Guys,

I have finished all the academy and what a ton of fun! 🤩  You really are doing a superb job.  I love almost everything I have seen and greatly appreciate your hard work. I know it will only get better the more time you have to work on it.

The only dislike I have (not a criticism at all, just a dislike!!!) is with the auto flagship change.  I mentioned it in another post, and I fully recognize the logic in doing it that way. You may not be able to change it because of allied divisions or transports, and that is fine. I understand and can live with it if I have to.

I mention it again, not to belabor the point, but to share some unintended problems with not having the player change flagships.

One example is when I had a perfect crossing of the T. My flagship, first in line, lost an engine.  The second in line had already received some minor damage reducing it's speed, so the program changed the flag to the third ship in the battle line.  This caused the first two ships to drastically begin to change course, ruining my crossing of the T.  The enemy was coming straight at me, so my battle line speed was not too important to me at that time.

Another time the program changed the flag to a ship with a disabled rudder. Not exactly the situation I would have picked. LOL 😉

There are others but I think you understand my point and, like I said, you might not be able to change it.  I would like it changed, but if not, I can always chalk flagship issues up to the fog of war.

Thank you again for your continuing awesome work!

CajunNavy

How did you do destroyers vs. Torpedo boats ?

[CajunNavy]

1 hour ago, Niomedes said:

How did you do destroyers vs. Torpedo boats ?

I think this is the single hardest scenario in the academy.  Thanks to you, I got through that Fleet action! And it was tough. LOL

The problem with Destroyers vs. Torpedo boats is the time limit.  I kept fighting the same battle over and over till I got lucky.  I used 5 destroyers optimized for gunfire.  I put 5 - 5" guns and one set of torpedoes per ship.  I armored the ships as best as I could, keeping their speed at 25kt.  I finally learned to fight at a distance between the two fleets and have the BB fight the two CA's.  After a few TB's were disabled or destroyed, I closed the range and aggressively fired torpedoes.  The only ship left was my BB. LOL! But she got the last two TB's. The CA's were banged about but I stopped firing at them to concentrate on the TB after a while.

I think without doubt this is the hardest scenario I had to fight. I am trying it again. And again. 😉

CajunNavy

 

[Orion Shadow]

I have noticed that the destroyers in fleet battles collide with each other with no damage done. There should be flooding and structural damage. I don't mind seeing vessels collide with each other in the heat of battle. This had happened numerous times historically.

[Nick Thomadis]

On 10/11/2019 at 5:42 PM, Squatter said:

- There's something amiss with the way divisions reorganise when a ship is disabled - often a whole division more or less comes to a halt or confused when the lead ship is damaged and pulls out of the line. Such a hit can essentially wreck a whole division of torpedo boats or DDs. Perhaps the damaged ship should auto detach from the division and have AI concentrate on it manoeuvring to avoid the oncoming ships left in the division? Obviously this can be done manually when it happens, but anything that reduces the need for micromanagement is a positive.

It is pending to improve further.

On 10/11/2019 at 5:42 PM, Squatter said:

- It would be good if divisions could have several torpedo settings, ie target all ships/target cruisers and up/target only capital ships. Currently requires a lot of micro to avoid firing torps at unwanted targets, ie DDs or TPs.

Torpedo aiming shall be checked to become further more effective.

On 10/11/2019 at 5:42 PM, Squatter said:

- Perhaps there should there be an 'auto torpedo evade' option whereby the AI will manoeuvre player ships which spot incoming torpedoes. I believe Distant Guns/Jutland from Storm Eagle employed this feature. Again, manually having to do this increases micromanagement. Fine when you are controlling a few vessels, less so when fleets are involved. Or perhaps ships that spot incoming torpedoes should display a 'torpedoes spotted' alarm signal on screen to draw the player's attention?

Already, ships belonging to a division or under a follow/screen orde, auto-evade r. The lead ship of the division that is commanded by player... must play, must be in control of the player.

On 10/11/2019 at 5:42 PM, Squatter said:

- It's impossible at a glance to see which weapons are disabled on a friendly ship. Obviously they are coloured red on the ship diagram, but doesn't help when you've got 20 guns or so on a battleship. Perhaps where the weapons are listed by calibre and hit chance in the bottom right of the HUD, the number of functional vs damaged weapons could be displayed?

Pending to be improved further in UI.

On 10/11/2019 at 5:42 PM, Squatter said:

- AI should form battle lines more consistently with its larger ships. Would add greatly to immersion.

Pending to be fixed in next update.

[Nick Thomadis]

On 10/12/2019 at 1:17 AM, Grims said:

here 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.

In next update, the penetration fixes, will improve the effectiveness of secondaries. In order to improve your general accuracy, try to set the speed to "cruising" mode in the slider to gain a bonus. If your ship travels always in maximum engine power, due to vibrations and range rate differences, the aiming deteriorates. 

21 hours 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) Citadel size adjustment is a pending improvement
2) We have armor thickness and quality. Quality increases the effect by the indicated percentage. For example the composite 10 inches armor +100% quality is equal to 20 inches of iron plate armor.

3) Yes

On 10/12/2019 at 2:23 AM, CajunNavy said:

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

Correct, it is something that we have to improve further.

On 10/12/2019 at 6:30 AM, Wakelessrex said:

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? 

We will make all commands to be on division level, for consistency.

Zooming in further, not sure what more we can see. It would look like we view in microscope level and not very handy for the control experience of player, since the zoom in/out margin would be longer.

Regarding rudder, we will check what we can do.

12 hours ago, Snegurochka_ said:

#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.

 

12 hours ago, Snegurochka_ said:

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.

Pending to be improved with penetration rebalance. As a side note, completely destroyed sections do not receive themselves damage but spread flooding, fire to adjacent sections.

[Nick Thomadis]

4 hours ago, Shaun said:

So Lyddite is working beautifully, but I feel it doesn't have enough of a disadvantage. I've been using cruisers but I'm rarely receiving ammo explosions myself. Perhaps the chance of detonation should be increased given just how unstable Lyddite is, especially when picrates form in the shell.

Will be addressed with incoming penetration rebalance.

4 hours ago, CajunNavy said:

The only dislike I have (not a criticism at all, just a dislike!!!) is with the auto flagship change.  I mentioned it in another post, and I fully recognize the logic in doing it that way. You may not be able to change it because of allied divisions or transports, and that is fine. I understand and can live with it if I have to.

As said in other threads, there is room to improve this game mechanic, but without it, we know it would be worse, since the slower speed would stall all other ships behind it, and player would have to detach the faster ships manually, while the AI would have to learn to do all this as a human.

1 hour ago, Orion Shadow said:

I have noticed that the destroyers in fleet battles collide with each other with no damage done. There should be flooding and structural damage. I don't mind seeing vessels collide with each other in the heat of battle. This had happened numerous times historically.

In future updates, ramming will do damage. We need first to optimize the evasion logic.

[CajunNavy]

56 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

As said in other threads, there is room to improve this game mechanic, but without it, we know it would be worse, since the slower speed would stall all other ships behind it, and player would have to detach the faster ships manually, while the AI would have to learn to do all this as a human.

Thank you for the reply Nick.  I know you guys are working on it.  Also, I recognize you're obviously correct.  I WOULD be worse without this game mechanic! LOL I can get along just fine.

Thanks again for the reply.  Ya'll have a remarkable achievement already.  I love this game. Thank you!

CajunNavy

[IronAndBlood9]

I don't know if this has already been brought up, but my only suggestion so far would be to allow multiple simultaneous targets. IE: Using main guns against enemy BB's and CA's, while smaller guns holding off DD's. Maybe Ctrl+Right Click to target with secondaries/casemates? In larger fleet engagements where you have a BB and some DD's it's not such a big deal. But in the scenarios where you only have 1 ship, like the modern ship vs the 2 BB's, 4? CA/CL's, 6DD's it's a big headache to have to re-range that battleship after targeting that overly aggressive DD with my secondaries in between the main gun salvos. Other than that, I'm really enjoying this and can't wait to see the campaign!

[Pedroig]

On 10/11/2019 at 5:17 PM, Grims said:

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.

In the 1890’s a 4% hit rate was the highest achieved in The Spanish American War with no engagement happening beyond 3,000 yards. Most of those hits were by 8” or smaller, only one 12”+ shell was recorded to hit in the entire war. 
 

WWI hit rate climbed to 4% at 14,000 yards was common in heavy seas. 
 

WWII with optical central fire control and fire control calculators 15% at 15,000 yards. 
 

WWII with fire control radar was 25% at 24,000 yards. Over the horizon with a spotter was 12%, without 0%.
 

The overall hit rate is already too high, the effects of being hit by Big Guns is way too minisicule.  (2-4 hits by a 12” gun would sink/blow apart most CA’s in WWI) Medium guns are a tad underpowered.  (6-8” hits on CL’s and smaller should be death well within 20 hits) Small guns are about right from all accounts of DD’s being hit 200+ times by 2-5” guns and still returning to port. 

[Christian]

2 hours ago, Pedroig said:

In the 1890’s a 4% hit rate was the highest achieved in The Spanish American War with no engagement happening beyond 3,000 yards. Most of those hits were by 8” or smaller, only one 12”+ shell was recorded to hit in the entire war. 
 

WWI hit rate climbed to 4% at 14,000 yards was common in heavy seas. 
 

WWII with optical central fire control and fire control calculators 15% at 15,000 yards. 
 

WWII with fire control radar was 25% at 24,000 yards. Over the horizon with a spotter was 12%, without 0%.
 

The overall hit rate is already too high, the effects of being hit by Big Guns is way too minisicule.  (2-4 hits by a 12” gun would sink/blow apart most CA’s in WWI) Medium guns are a tad underpowered.  (6-8” hits on CL’s and smaller should be death well within 20 hits) Small guns are about right from all accounts of DD’s being hit 200+ times by 2-5” guns and still returning to port. 

hmm interesting

 

il try gather some data from naval battles to asses the general damage caused by shells it might be interesting to dig into

 

but considering british 12 inch guns had 12kg bursting charges

yes this is most likely correct especially considering the general smaller sizes of ships

 

il post an update once i find some sources for general damage and how many shells were required to sink stuff in ww1/pre ww1 engagements

 

 

[Pedroig]

Garzke, Padfield, Friedman are all good starts for hard source (books) material. 

[Pedroig]

Back to Combat Feedback:

Please start ALL missions at either HALF or CRUISE (Full) speed instead of FLANK (Top) speed.  Flank was only used in extreme circumstances and/or evasive maneuvers.  Full speed was typical combat speed.

Starting at Flank is simply silly and really limiting on options.  (Not too mention, average gamer/player inherently doesn't want to slow down and thus takes a penalty they should have to OPT to take instead of defaulted to take.)

[Nick Thomadis]

10 minutes ago, Pedroig said:

Back to Combat Feedback:

Please start ALL missions at either HALF or CRUISE (Full) speed instead of FLANK (Top) speed.  Flank was only used in extreme circumstances and/or evasive maneuvers.  Full speed was typical combat speed.

Starting at Flank is simply silly and really limiting on options.  (Not too mention, average gamer/player inherently doesn't want to slow down and thus takes a penalty they should have to OPT to take instead of defaulted to take.)

Ship initial speed in battles is at about 60% of engine power. I suppose you mean the speed slider to not be set at maximum speed. Not sure if most players would like this option, we need more feedback on this.

[Pedroig]

Correct, ship initial speed and the slider need to be set to the same setting. Accelerating out of cruise by default is really penalizing quite a few people. Quick glance through the YouTube maybe 1:5 ever mess with the slider and take up to a -25% to hit penalty.  
 

Flank speed was an order given only in the most dire of circumstance. 80% flank has been common “military max speed” for normal combat operation, 60% tends to be the sweet spot for fuel efficiency. 

[Skeksis]

Don’t lose sight that this is a PC game, nothing real here but gameplay.

With academy missions starting off in the middle of combat, so should the fleet be at full speed, or as some have put it, starting off under the condition of “extreme circumstances”. 😊

If players want to reduce to half speed, make it harder for themselves , then the option is already there!

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by Skeksis

[Pedroig]

Full speed would be fine, Flank speed is not. Being shot at is not “extreme circumstances”. Avoiding bombers or torpedoes would be, but only for a short amount of time. 
The basic idea is that you need to be able to vary your bearing and speed in multiple directions, and if going flank you can only slow down, which is predictable, and predictable in combat gets you dead. 

[Skeksis]

22 minutes ago, Pedroig said:

Full speed would be fine, Flank speed is not. Being shot at is not “extreme circumstances”. Avoiding bombers or torpedoes would be, but only for a short amount of time. 
The basic idea is that you need to be able to vary your bearing and speed in multiple directions, and if going flank you can only slow down, which is predictable, and predictable in combat gets you dead. 

We’ve both explained a “personal strategy”, the game can do this already, nothing broken here.   

[Pedroig]

I don’t think you understand. Going to flank speed PENALIZES your ship(s) much more than maneuvering them does. I’m not saying one should or should not go to flank, but the game should not default to the second worst option for a speed setting. 
it has nothing to do with personal strategy, or even the historical and current military tactics/standing orders, it is about fixing a “tutorial process” which is ass backwards by defaulting to something that, if you want to obtain a decent hit rate” “teaches” you to do something that is tanking your accuracy. 

[HMS Rubberduck]

I've had a few instances where enemy ships at 1% seem to be nearly immortal, shrugging off repeated impacts for several minutes, and a case today where two ships were happily fighting on at 0% structural health. Both on the "Modern Battleship" mission. 

Also it would be nice to be able to assign guns to a secondary role, i.e. such as auto-targetting nearest enemy, or torpedo carrying boats. At present its almost pointless investing in the weight of secondary guns in a BB.

[Christian]

 

just a thing that i was reminded of and thought i would post an idea/suggestion

 

it might be an idea to add Emergency power in some form

this means you can squeeze 1-3 knots extra speed out of the ship for a short period of time (lets say 30-20 minutes) but after the time period the ships top speed would be permanently reduced by TWICE the amount it was increased by during the engine overcharge 

a suicide rush with engines where the engines die completely after a time period but the ship gains a 15-20% speed boost for a short period of time could also be an idea 

if the engines are hit during this period it has a high likely hood to blow up the boilers in the ship leading to the ship exploding and loosing all engine power

engine also have a chance to explode on their own when forced over limits to produce extra speed thus have a chance to explode 

 

generally speaking engine overcharge could be held for several hours usually 1-3 hours depending on ship but the ship would suffer a top speed loss of around 20-30% of its top speed this would be a bit op for academy missions (as they are usually shorter than 3 hours)

in the campaign however this means your ships have engine overcharge for that battle and once the battle is over (or the around 3 hour limit is reached) their top speed falls by 20-30% when not in overcharge mode

using overcharge mode for a second time would only increase speed by 10-15% (before said ship ever used overcharge) but the speed will drop by a further 20-30% of the top speed achieved AFTER it has used overcharge (aka its gonna do 60% of its original top speed)

 

running overcharge several times on the same ship without replacing engines could HEAVILY increase the chance of boiler explosions 

 

source for engine overcharge being a thing

Quote

During the battle, Samuel B. Roberts—designed for 23–24 kn (43–44 km/h; 26–28 mph)—reached 28.7 kn (53.2 km/h; 33.0 mph) by raising pressure to 660 pounds per square inch (4,600 kPa) and diverting all available steam to the ship's twin turbines

the engineering crew removed the pressure limiter from her engines 
 

Quote

Another illustration of what emergency power meant was the the 3.5 hour dash of the RMS Carpathia to reach the sinking RMS Titanic. Captain Roston ordered all possible steam diverted to the engines, including most of the steam for heating the ship, collecting passengers to several of the public rooms that remained heated. Carpathia made 15.4 knots on trials in light condition but had never exceeded 14 knots at full load. According to the chief engineer, Carpathia actually ran at 17.2 to 17.5 knots for the final two hours of the dash. The engines were more or less wrecked, with the ship only able to make nine knots to New York City. After emergency repairs in NYC, she was able to limp back to Liverpool for a complete engine rebuild. Sailors who served on her after the epic race to save lives said the ship had developed a persistent starboard side vibration and the engines never quite ran right again. Unfortunately, she was sunk by the U-55 only six years later. However, 218 of the 223 aboard made it into the lifeboats and survived, partly due the additional lifeboats required in the wake of the Titanic tragedy

this is from a yt comment but it seems to be accurate checking with wikipedia which also states as high as 17.5 

i have also seen claims that Ziggy Sprague overcharged an escort carriers engines to escape a japanese submarine reportedly The chief engineer complained about the boilers overheating. Ziggy Sprague told him "piss on them then, those boilers may be the only thing left if we take a torpedo"

[Mindfield]

Just a report how fun this game can be and how effective torpedoes are.

The mission "Armored Convoy Attack" is to sink the TRs.

How about sinking all ships!

I build 4 CL with 16 tubes each firing 21" electric torpedoes.

This is brutal fun.

The 21" torpedoes pack a serious punch, and you fire 64 of them!

Reload is 10 minutes, but after the first wave of torpedoes, the enemy is already crippled.

It takes some time to sink the rest and catch the fleeing TRs, the CL going only 22kn, but it worked.

Best part, I didnt lost a single ship.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Mindfield

[Tycondero]

Also going flank speed for prolonged periods should cause malfunctions to the engines like in RTW? In my YouTube videos some people comment on why build a 32 knots speed BC and only run it at 21 knots. I think the advantage/disadvantage of running flank should be more pronounced and not just affect repair speeds/flooding.

Also the game should communicate these effects on accuracy and/or performance a bit better. I try to use common sense now, but actually didn't know the game gives a buff to accuracy when using cruise speed (which I guess is standard or full speed).

Edited October 15, 2019 by Tycondero

[Niomedes]

8 minutes ago, Tycondero said:

Also going flank speed for prolonged periods should cause malfunctions to the engines like in RTW? In my YouTube videos some people comment on why build a 32 knots speed BC and only run it at 21 knots. I think the advantage/disadvantage of running flank should be more pronounced and not just affect repair speeds/flooding.

Also the game should communicate these effects on accuracy and/or performance a bit better. I try to use common sense now, but actually didn't know the game gives a buff to accuracy when using cruise speed (which I guess is standard or full speed).

It says so when you hover over the speed bar.