Why do heavy cruisers not perform salvos?

[Pterry]

After playing the game and the cheat menu for a while, I noticed a drastic issue regarding the heavy cruisers implemented into this game, which is their lack of a salvo function when in groups, and barely a use of their main armament. They seem to only use two guns from one turret when it is multiple Heavy cruisers, and it is like the other guns are decorations. If you look at the first picture, you can see some two shot barrages, but this is coming from about 30 ships, each with six frontal guns (the one I zoomed in on has one turret knocked out, but it still doesn't explain the lack of the third shell in a salvo, or the overall lack of coordinated salvos from the cruisers) . Another thing is that ships seem to give up if there are too many targets.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Pterry
Better explanations

[Steeltrap]

First of all, I immediately break up formations as they are a mess in my opinion. That's another thing devs are working on.

As to your main point, 2 shots normally indicate the ship is conducting 'aiming', which is to say not locked.

There is a bug where guns can get 'stuck' on 'ladder aiming'. If you see a gun with a hit % but then a different, usually high % below that and a +x% after that, it means it's 'ladder aiming'. It will continue to fire a pair of shells from that battery until it reaches the 'locked' status, after which it ought to start firing salvoes from the main battery.

The same is true for all the different batteries and even mounts. A ship with a mix of x3 turrets and x2 turrets of the same calibre will ladder aim the x2 and x3 separately, as the mounts have different hit characteristics.

I've seen this affect the AI ships sometimes, which means, yes, they get stuck not being able to use their total armament effectively.

Apparently the devs are aware and addressing it.

If you see it happen to your own, turning the guns off an on sometimes resolves it, or shifting targets. It's a frustrating but known problem that I think will be fixed with the next update.

Hope that helps.

If it's something else, not sure.

Cheers

Edited November 19, 2019 by Steeltrap

[Nereng]

I suspect that this problem only gets worse the more ships you have. The same thing happened last time I tried the Destroy a Fleet quest with three Battlecruisers. The second one in line couldn't get a lock with it's main guns, but did have a lock with it's secondary 6in guns on the same target! As Steeltrap said, switch target or turn guns off/on momentarily. 

[Steeltrap]

43 minutes ago, Nereng said:

I suspect that this problem only gets worse the more ships you have. 

Interestingly enough that's technically accurate. A problem for ships was how to tell the difference between their shell splashes and those of any other ship firing at the same target.

It's also why I really dislike the fact that a formation defaults to all firing at the one target even when outnumbered, because doctrine was to do exactly the OPPOSITE.

The game ought to include a "multiple ships firing at target" penalty in the gunnery factors.

I wonder if the devs happened to include the problems ships are having with getting a lock as an intended feature when all of them are firing at one target? That would be VERY impressive if they did, and also another example of why I've been saying the less specific info we have the harder it is for us to know if we're looking at a bug or an intended design feature.

[khang36]

You can assign individual ships their own targets. You need to hold down the ctrl key as you assign a target.