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Uncanny Enemy Accuracy


Celticmarine10

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Hey Everyone, 

I know its been brought up before but wanted to add my voice to the discussion on enemy fire control accuracy. Really enjoying this so far just more often then not feeling fed up with my own accuracy. Several times had turrets destroyed and ship flooding within the opening 10 seconds of the battle starting, and mostly running through levels feeling as if I'm wasting my time. I'm struggling to land shells even in the vicinity after 30 mins in battle while as I mentioned very often the first and second shots from the enemy fleet is straddling. I've tried to max out my accuracy as often as possible to no avail. 

Also I may be performing the real time tactics wrong but anytime running a fast class - TB or BC, weaving at 32 knots doesn't seem to be affecting the enemy ships at all. Shells just following easily.

That naval academy mission TB vs BB was infuriating I tell ya. Took me about 10 tries but eventually 1 TB managed to paddle its way home.

Currently stuck on BC vs BB - not every level has had what I said above but this one has. Goodness knows my how gunnery officers passed their eye exams. 

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There are some things you can do to increase your over all accuracy. Easiest and often mentioned is to set you speed from flank to full (cruise speed), then you of couse want the good main / rear tower.

Also you need to keep an eye on pitch and roll of your ship in the desginer, big values here give you an overall decresed accuracy. I often find that puting on secundarys / casement guns will increse roll alot those render all guns less effective.

If you take damaging fire from long range you can also increase your deck armor for better protection from plunging fire.

I found BC to be very effective: put on 4-5 double barraled turrets of the same main guns (bigger tend to be more accurate), around 80 mm deck amor, get to around 35 kn top speed. Skip all secondarys. Then pumble the bbs from medium range with HE.

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Ive noticed the same issue. On some of the later missions the enemy can fire on you the moment you load in. And can reliably land long range hits by the second salvo. Last one I ran by the time I had the enemy zeroed in, my 14 inch guns were firing at 11% accuracy, as opposed to the enemies 95% with 18 inch guns. Couple that with the wonky penetartion at the moment and missions can be down to just rerolling till the enemy gets ships that dont have sniper cannons with 24 inches of armor. 

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Without knowing the setup of the enemy ships, makes it difficult to determine, especially if they have RADAR or not, which makes a huge difference.  Especially with weather and sea conditions.

That said take the following into account:

1.  Going FLANK speed hurts you way more than helps you.  Costs you 25% accuracy and puts at best a -7.5% malus on the enemy.  Target speed penalty is RELATIVE to the firing platform.  So if both you and the enemy are headed EAST and you are going 32/32 knots and he is going 24/32 knots, you take a ~ -28% to accuracy while they get a +22% to accuracy.

2.  Spotting matters, the longer one is spotted, the quicker and longer one has been "locked".

3.  Going light on armour is rarely a good thing, getting 2 more knots of speed or 2 tons more of armour, pick armour everytime.  (Unless it is the chase mission)  If you are armoured up against 20" guns, 14"'s don't really hurt at all.

4. Since every mission is a "new" enemy, sometimes you plain get unlucky and you are going against a perfect counter, not your day, at least you can try again.

5.  Try getting your bow or stern into the waves (in general wind direction) this helps quite a bit out with the "roll" issue.

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Hi i have had similar experiences and have watched youtubers (who are rule the waves players) doing so too. I dont know whether i just have bum luck or that the computer gets buffs to accuracy but i have found at range often that even when i have good hit percentage, say at 35-45%, with 8 12 to 18" guns i miss consistently but the enemy with 11% accuracy gets a hit almost every salvo. Now i thought this was just me being salty BUT i watched some youtubers such as Tortuga and in particular Benjamin Magnus (alpha gameplay episode 4) and it seems to show the same thing. 

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With respect if you consider large guns being guns which are not secondary then my observation still stands. I can only go by what the percentages show, and it seems to me the enemy accuracy is uncanny when they score a hit every salvo with sometimes a single percentage and i miss consistently with high percentages. I believe i have seen video evidence of this. 

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16 minutes ago, Niomedes said:

Larger guns regularily have higher accuracys on all distances than smaller guns.

If you are talking about the difference between primary and secondary then yes of course. But with primary guns it varies depending on range bracket  i am not at home at the moment but when i get in from work i will post screens. Your answer still does not address my original point. You contend that it is working as intended. I do not.

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4 minutes ago, Captain_Sir_Loughton_Peto said:

If you are talking about the difference between primary and secondary then yes of course. But with primary guns it varies depending on range bracket  i am not at home at the moment but when i get in from work i will post screens. Your answer still does not address my original point. You contend that it is working as intended. I do not.

Well, the devs said that larger guns are suppsoed to be more effective on longer ranges, and that's what they do. So, they're working as intended.

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@Nick Thomadis i would love to hear your opinion on this topic. I have watched my ships and ships in videos consistently miss even when shown to have high percentage chance (30-45%) over long periods of time. In magnuses video his ships pounded away for over an hour missing constantly when the enemy with sometimes single didget chances hits consistently.

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One of the things that the AI will effectively do is properly align its bearing in relation to your ship and periodically maneuver slightly. This is not a cheat but a skill that player must also possess, to hit consistently.. Many players, from what I have seen in some videos, move in maximum speed, turn around at maximum rate and play in multi speed. Those actions, especially the multispeed play, which does not let you maneuver effectively and reduce AI aiming, will usually put player in disadvantage versus the AI.

Anyhow,, the upcoming patch will address all important gameplay inconsistencies, and hopefully players will get more expected results from their gunners. 

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18 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

One of the things that the AI will effectively do is properly align its bearing in relation to your ship and periodically maneuver slightly. This is not a cheat but a skill that player must also possess, to hit consistently.. Many players, from what I have seen in some videos, move in maximum speed, turn around at maximum rate and play in multi speed. Those actions, especially the multispeed play, which does not let you maneuver effectively and reduce AI aiming, will usually put player in disadvantage versus the AI.

Anyhow,, the upcoming patch will address all important gameplay inconsistencies, and hopefully players will get more expected results from their gunners. 

Thanks for the reply Nick. And thankyou for this amazing game. Honestly its like you had a window into my brain and saw what i want from a perfect game. So excited to see how it changes and develops!

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And here I’ve been finding the opposite of most everyone else I’ve been finding it’s the AI who are wildly inaccurate and I’m landing proportional more salvos. But then again I’m playing at 5x speed and know how to do the wiggle.

Edit: Also if you have radar and your enemies don’t and you can out run them keep them just outside their visual range.

Edited by Absolute0CA
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@Fess21The "Wiggle" is timing your movements so your mostly on a straight heading when you're firing and yet are turning back and forth besides. Admittedly its hard to be perfect at this but it greatly helps avoiding enemy shots while maintaining your own accuracy. For maximum dodging watch for the main battery muzzle flashes and then turn oposite of the heading you were on, or any direction if you were going straight.

Edited by Absolute0CA
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I agree with the AI having no inherent advantage.  I think there are a couple of design issues that make this feel like a problem when it is not inherent to AI abilities:

  • Spotting is not relative and many scenarios pit you in a small number of ships against a more numerous enemy.  If even a single enemy ship of any type spots you, every enemy ship in range instantly opens fire.  This can lead to you accumulating hits much faster than you can deal with your current single target, which in turn degrades your accuracy.  Devs have mentioned that ships that don’t see the target themselves will in the future have an accuracy malus, bu this doesn’t adequately address the problem for a number of reasons:
    • This is mostly nonsense.  Ships were not sent forward to act as remote gunnery directors for other ships. The only examples I can think of this occurring are with shore bombardments, which is a much simpler gunnery problem.  Ships in this era should need to see their target to engage with a few exceptions:
      • Second Generation Fire Control Radar (early radar was search only)
      • Very advanced fire control computers and complex fire control rooms could allow for a ship within a division sailing together to control fire for other ships in the division, and / or incorporate their data in its own solution.  This is mostly predicated on ships within a division knowing their exact relative distances and bearings to each other.
      • dedicated aerial spotters with radios, probably only able to correct fire for a single ship at a time
    • Even with an accuracy malus, it will still feel off when a mostly unseen fleet is all firing on your ship unseen.
    • IMO, spotting should be relative and should take cues from the Combat Mission series:
      • When a ship is selected, you see only enemy ships it can see itself (with exceptions above).  When no ship is selected, you see all enemies that any ship in your fleet can currently see.
  • Differences in towers between ships of a broad class can lead to significant differences in spotting range, which gives the AI an absolute advantage if your are on the disadvantaged end rather than the marginal boost you would expect where if one ship can see and fire on another it should in very short order be able to see and fire in return, but there might be significant differences in the technology carried to deliver accurate fire.  Save for radar, primary means of spotting was Mark I eyeball with the assistance of binoculars.  The distance at which ships can see and target each other should be governed primarily by conditions.
Edited by akd
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13 hours ago, Absolute0CA said:

@Fess21The "Wiggle" is timing your movements so your mostly on a straight heading when you're firing and yet are turning back and forth besides. Admittedly its hard to be perfect at this but it greatly helps avoiding enemy shots while maintaining your own accuracy. For maximum dodging watch for the main battery muzzle flashes and then turn oposite of the heading you were on, or any direction if you were going straight.

Is this like kiting and dodging in wows? I've noticed kiting with BC's seems to be the way to go.

I never knew bigger guns were more accurate too be honest, thought there were other mechanics behind the scenes that determined a guns accuracy (so making secondaries less sporadic i guess and aiming more of the superstructure and deck).

I just had a crash were miss zao from the chinese empire almost rekt the entire italian fleet and got away but i guess the game didn't like the fact i was about delete a smoll cl too hard.

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2 hours ago, Absolute0CA said:

The biggest gun is more accurate is a lie. Check the specs some lower sized guns but higher tech ones are better.

I don't know from my experience of playing the game so far, big guns tend to hit more often in bigger ships.

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  • 5 months later...

On most of the higher missions I often have enough tech / funds to build a almost-full 18in gun BB with maxed-out gunnery buffs in Shipyard.

It's rather variable whether there's high or low accuracy, but even without performing the 'wiggle', my ships can, at long range, usually plow a lot of AP into them by about the 5th salvo. As I usually play at 5x speed for the sake of convenience, the long 18in reload doesn't bother me. Also since the 18in are so large I just pop in as many of the next highest calibre guns, and I'm not certain, but I THINK they're getting slightly less accuracy than the 18 inchers, although I almost always engage at long range, so there might be just raw gun range involved there too.

There was only one mission, the one where you escort 2x TR against 3x CA, where my guns shot so bad they only hit the target about 3x throughout the entire mission.

I have no idea what it was (and since the 2nd objective was to have 100% of TR survive I won anyway), but in no other battle did I ever get that bad accuracy.

To be fair the enemy CA's didn't have that great accuracy either, but by armor was not enough to stop their barrage, and my pre-dreadnought went down after about an hour's worth of fighting.

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