Don’t change torps

[Lobokai]

They’re pretty random, that’s for sure. But on the Pred-Dreadnaught conflict mission I had the 3 TB sink the CA ally and my BB “mixed tech” with their first run... reran it as firepower armored cruisers to win. 

Id like to see the damage model honed first 

[AnonymousPepper]

It's pretty much RNG as to whether the torpedoes hit the correct spots. Damage has to be distributed, because apparently just blowing a through-and-through hole half the ship's length through the center is just fine.

I imagine this will change, but for now, damaged sections don't appear to transmit damage to adjacent ones very well if at all. Torps are very good at blowing up the spots they hit, they just don't damage anywhere else unless the ship has bad bulkheads and/or flood protections.

It may also be a bit of RNG on the enemy battleship design? I don't know if it's set in stone or procedurally generated, but it's possible it generated with max bulkheads, which would suck if so.

[Lobokai]

Enemy BBs are ridiculously strong in armor right now. So again, I’m thinking torps might be fine. I’d like to see “AI” ships and the damage models get reworked before torps. Seems right now, like they could be working well for a balance in gameplay and realism.  

Edited November 7, 2019 by Lobokai
I redundantly repeated myself, that’s what I did

[ThatZenoGuy]

IIRC belt armor reduces torpedo damage ingame...Which...Isn't how it is supposed to work.

Apart from the fact that a direct torpedo hit might split even the largest of belt armors, belts weren't that deep in the water.

[AnonymousPepper]

8 hours ago, Lobokai said:

Enemy BBs are ridiculously strong in armor right now. So again, I’m thinking torps might be fine. I’d like to see “AI” ships and the damage models get reworked before torps. Seems right now, like they could be working well for a balance in gameplay and realism.  

Yeah, that's about the sum of it. A damage model rework, which we need badly for other reasons anyway, is all torps need, I think.

[WafflesToo]

11 hours ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

IIRC belt armor reduces torpedo damage ingame...Which...Isn't how it is supposed to work.

Apart from the fact that a direct torpedo hit might split even the largest of belt armors, belts weren't that deep in the water.

If true, then that would explain a LOT of what we're witnessing right now.

URGH!  If we only had access to a true, "Sandbox" mission where we control force composition on both sides it would be so easy to test for this phenomenon instead of just guessing.  Hopefully we get that in a future update.

Edited November 7, 2019 by WafflesToo

[NuclearNadal]

4 hours ago, WafflesToo said:

If true, then that would explain a LOT of what we're witnessing right now.

URGH!  If we only had access to a true, "Sandbox" mission where we control force composition on both sides it would be so easy to test for this phenomenon instead of just guessing.  Hopefully we get that in a future update.

Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+A at the same time to bring up the cheat menu. Select "Ship Give All Parts/Techs" and the one below it (Unlock all parts I think). 

 

It won't allow you to have a true sandbox but it gives you all the tech and all the ship hulls currently in game in any of the missions that are thus far in the game. Suggest you go through each mission with the cheat menu to test against various opponents. 

 

EDIT: Grammar 

Edited November 7, 2019 by NuclearNadal

[killjoy1941]

On 11/5/2019 at 6:10 PM, Lobokai said:

Meh. How I spend time when I have 5 minutes here and there to burn. To me, forums are buffets... if a thread doesn’t look appetizing, don’t put it on your plate  

agreed on your balance and atmosphere points.  

I wasn't trying to interrupt the fun of historical debate, but make a point about the game design which wasn't being made. Please continue in your entertainment. 😉

[Mycophobia]

On 11/6/2019 at 7:29 PM, AnonymousPepper said:

It's pretty much RNG as to whether the torpedoes hit the correct spots. Damage has to be distributed, because apparently just blowing a through-and-through hole half the ship's length through the center is just fine.

I imagine this will change, but for now, damaged sections don't appear to transmit damage to adjacent ones very well if at all. Torps are very good at blowing up the spots they hit, they just don't damage anywhere else unless the ship has bad bulkheads and/or flood protections.

It may also be a bit of RNG on the enemy battleship design? I don't know if it's set in stone or procedurally generated, but it's possible it generated with max bulkheads, which would suck if so.

Torpedo hit and the bulkhead damage seems to at least be location based, with a bit of randomness, which is good in the sense that you can try to aim for the undamaged parts. Bad in the sense that you can end up with repeated hit in the same general location keep re-flooding the same bulkhead. 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Yeah, the way how compartments work is a little silly.

In theory you could hit a ship ingame in the middle with infinite torpedoes and it would not die.

In reality this would split the ship in half, destroy every engine room forever, and it'll sink.

[disc]

Yes, indeed torpedoes seem to deal too little damage to structure. For example, the cruiser Helena was sunk by three torpedoes. In terms of simple flooding effect none of them appears to have been a killing blow, but the third hit essentially destroyed all girder strength amidships and the ship split in half.

It is important to note that guns were not considered a "killing" weapon as we might think. In the age of sail, it was not very common to sink a ship outright with guns. Even with the advent of technologically advanced guns in the latter years of the 19th century, it was thought unlikely that any one shell could sink a warship. Instead, a cumulative effect of many hits would be needed to kill. That Russian ships were sunk quickly by naval gunfire alone during the Russo-Japanese War came as a surprise. This was readily explained, as it were, because many flammable items were carried on deck for the long voyage from the West.

But the Royal Navy, for example, did not believe they could easily land a knockout blow with a few first hits. Naval exercises often assigned a "time-to-kill" to neutralize an enemy dreadnought (for example, about thirty minutes of firing at a certain range). The sudden destruction of the battlecruisers at Jutland came as a surprise. Though this might be seen as proof of the knock-out power of a single hit, the British high command (probably correctly) attributed the detonations to very poor magazine practices, with charges poorly stowed in all sorts of dangerous and unofficial areas. The official blame on thin deck and turret armor was basically a cover-up to avoid morale effects. Thus the conception of guns being a slow-but-steady weapon did not change even post-war.

The WWII loss of Hood loss within a few salvoes was shocking. It was more commonly thought that battleships would be sunk in the way of the Bismarck, with a pouring-on of gunfire leading to total disablement before torpedoes or slow flooding sank the vessel.

Torpedoes and mines, in contrast, were a one-and-done deal. Even one could (and did) sink a WWI dreadnought: see HMS Audacious. Before WWI, only the Americans had tried to incorporate torpedo belts on battleships. Pre-dreadnoughts were generally even worse, having very bad watertightness and subdivision. The vast majority of ships in those times were fueled with coal, which required big bunkers too difficult to truly waterproof.

Tactics to a great degree depended upon torpedo range, because of this huge risk. One of the major reasons the Royal Navy invented the idea of fire control was to get out of torpedo range, so that during daylight, guns could outrange new long-running torpedoes. Though any one torpedo could do huge damage, they were fairly slow and had long travel times, so it was hard to get daytime hits (even including browning shots). This was the reason for extra stowage, not individual ineffectiveness.

American destroyers carried between 4 and 8 reload torpedoes from the Farragut class to the Fletcher class (except for the Porters, as I recall), per Friedman's US Destroyers, the authoritative text on the subject. These would not be reloaded during direct combat, but it was the intention that they would be reloaded during long lulls in the fighting. Jutland was very much in mind, where the British had expended all their torpedoes at once and had no reloads for actions later in the day. Underwater torpedo tubes usually had a few reloads per tube (about 2-4, to my knowledge), but there were few tubes to begin with. Above-water rotating launchers did not carry more than one reload per tube -- I cannot think of a single exception -- though Japanese cruisers with fixed topside launchers carried up to two reloads per tube. Too many reloads would add too much topweight.

Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to coordinate different divisions at a distance from one another. Misidentification was rampant in battle. Even with the advent of radio, it was incredibly difficult to form an accurate picture of the tactical situation. This was the appeal of line-ahead formation -- little could go wrong, and it was easier to determine who was on your side. The game's idea of many perfectly plotted ships under the control of the admiral is pure fantasy for any navy without radar-integrated CIC rooms. Torpedo-carrying ships therefore could not execute the highly complex large-scale maneuvers we see in game until some time into WWII, except perhaps through pre-arranged set piece attacks.

I don't have a great answer for how torpedoes might be changed in this game. They don't do enough damage, but the hit rate is unrealistically high -- it was hard to get a good firing position, and the enemy would often be alert for torpedo attacks in the day. The battle simulator is just too divorced from reality for a purely historical fix, I think. Perhaps the best solution would be to moderately increase torpedo power, especially structural damage, and slightly decrease available reloads for above-water tubes.

I think duds would be pretty infuriating.

Edited November 10, 2019 by disc

[Mycophobia]

Quote

I don't have a great answer for how torpedoes might be changed in this game. They don't do enough damage, but the hit rate is unrealistically high -- it was hard to get a good firing position, and the enemy would often be alert for torpedo attacks in the day. The battle simulator is just too divorced from reality for a purely historical fix, I think.

I don't agree that this necessarily needs to be the case. Its not that the game is systemically incapable of simulating certain aspect of reality with any degree of accuracy. Rather, the current game is also deficient in other areas of realism, therefore enforcing realism on only one part of the game will cause imbalance.

Before modification of torpedo damage itself, what should be done Is another look at the damage system overall, which may have chain reaction on both the durability of smaller ships and effect of torpedo on ship in of itself. If smaller ships can be more effectively stopped from reaching an easy firing position, I don't see any issue with moving torpedo damage to be closer to reality. 

Torpedo warfare in game needs to be changed, because DDs doing loop after loop within 2-3km of enemy ship and scoring volley after volley of torpedo hits to slowly wittle down a BB that cant hit them except relying on high caliber "secondaries" or its main battery is neither realistic nor enjoyable. Whether current the torpedo themselves needs any actual change will depend on what other changes are being done. 

I agree duds is likely a bad idea, but if we end up still seeing extreme ease of landing torpedo hits, torpedo reliability may be a way to balance that (Though in that case it will be much more appropriate to make torpedo hits harder to achieve)

Signaling and coordination is another issue entirely, and probably an important choice the game have to make down the line. However, even if player is given ability to issue directional order to each destroyer squadron, I am of the mind the degree of micromanagement plus the fact that we don't actually decide the exact angle of launch of torpedo attack should, to an extent, make it difficult to execute overwhelmingly effective torpedo attack, especially against enemy with effective screening and secondary fire.