>>>Alpha-3 General Feedback v65<<<

[RAMJB]

20 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Your not wrong.  But most of the time when a DD takes a single heavy cruiser or larger HE shell they are massively messed up which is definitely not the case here in game.  

 

Not my experience again. A single 6'' in the hull of a destroyer, in my experience, is almost a guaranteed flooding and engine damage. both combined will slow it down enough to make it pretty much fodder for subsequent fire. Three or four such hits, the vessel is pretty much a mission kill. A single 8'' shell will rip its guts all across the place. Once more - it won't kill it outright, but it'll pretty much turn it into a limping wreck.

Contrary to your perception, I do think that small guns are the ideal antiDD weapon. Yes, individually they have a lower hit chance. So low it might seem laughable. It's not so laughable when you remember that no matter how low a roll you have to throw, if you're giving A LOT of rolls, eventually you'll get one right. Once you get that one right, the rest is a downhill struggle for the DD, for just one hit from anything of 6'' or more is highly likely to mess it so badly it won't be able to run properly anymore. And if it can't run, it's main defense against getting further hit, speed, vanishes. Queue the firestorm. Rest is done.

Now if you tell me that 4'' guns, for instance, won't disable a DD outright, you're right. A 4'' hit will do limited damage. Again, get lucky enough it'll cause a flooding, damage a funnel, do something to make the rest of the job easier. But 4'' guns were considered insuficient as a credible defense against destroyers already by the early 1910s. To the point that wholly new classes of battleships and battlecruisers were launched in the UK to upgrade their secondaries from 4'' to 6'', with no other change on the classes themselves. And in 1910 destroyers didn't displace more than 1k-ish tons (some bigger ones here and there but averages where what they were). If a 4'' gun was considered insuficient for the job against a 1k tonner, go figure against later destroyer classes which were much bigger.
5'' was so-so. On the verge of being useful, on the verge of being too anemic. Later advances in explosive fillers made them close the gap, but still given the DD displacement growth with time, against a proper DD you wanted something 6'' or bigger as a rule of thumb.

Now the question would be inevitably "then why should I bother putting guns of 3-4'' on my designs?". Again, volume of fire. If a DD is *THAT* close as for that battery to be relevant you really want to throw even the kitchen sink at it, no matter it won't do much on a single hit. The way to disable DDs is to stack hits on them until their lose their only asset: Speed. Once that's done, that DD is going to be a mission kill in really short notice. A 3'' hit may not gett it on the first hit (it's going to need pretty much a straight hit on the proper place) but anything helps when the enemy is so close. The first time I ran the "predreadnought vs DDs" scenario (on the previous alpha) I wont it solely based on my 3'' guns volume of fire being the main asset to get some hits to slow individual enemies down - then the 6'' battery and the main battery would have much higher chances to connect. Either one hitting was enough to make the DD turn tails immediately. Again, against those ships you want mission kills, because they're not just going to go down under the waves based on the fact that you had hit them a couple times with a 4, 5 or 6'' guns. Disabling a ship does not mean necessarily sinking it outright, specially when we're talking about those tincans which I'll have to mention again, were much harder to sink than what people seem to give them credit for.

Anyway: Collectivelly small guns are a mass of rifles firing at a much higher volume of fire than the main battery. Low hit chances but much higher ammount of chances to hit. Throw enough sh*t to something, at least some will stick. Initially it will seem underwhelming, but again, it's a matter of volume of fire and progressive deterioration of the capabilities of the ship. Just one hit in the proper place (and a DD doesn't has much to be hit) and the machinery will be out and flooding will ensue, making the subsequent volume of fire much more prone to hit - it escalates really quickly from there.

You probably won't sink the DD outright with secondaries, barring the lucky twinkee of a magazine hit. Nor you should expect to (multiple instances of this in history. Acasta for instance lasted more than one hour dancing in front of two german battleships before going down). But any proper solid hit with a gun of 6'' caliber will be pretty much a mission kill for the DD - which is what your secondaries are intended to provide you with - those guns weren't mounted on big ships to sink DDs. They were mounted there to disuade them to come close enough to be a major problem, and to turn them into a heapin' hulk of rubble if they didn't.

I'll insist once more: a DD, smaller than a BB or not, wasn't an easy ship to sink. I'm not sure why the expectative here from so many is that they just vanished the second they're hit by a 5'' gun. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[Marder]

Folks, I'm curious. Been playing matches on the custom battles editor for quite some time now. I've punched God knows how many really big holes into CAs, CLs, and DDs using designs that have no business punching down. (Wanted to see lighter 1920 ships get brutalized by radar-equipped BBs witth 18" guns is what I mean).

But I've noticed in a lot of times, ships that have been absolutely devastated such that you wouldn't expect it's crew to carry fighting, still somehow do. Is this right? I just find it rather odd that in most cases, even when the ship is listing heavily for example after suffering extreme wounds, that various guns, mounts, and turrets which somehow survived are still able to fire (albeit not effectively) and continue engaging. I would have imagined at that point, fighting would be farthest from the mind of the crew, that or the significant battle damage received would have hampered them enough that it won't seem like they're carrying on fighting as if nothing happened to the rest of the ship.

Is this kind of granularity not modeled in yet? Would it be? I know at least one title, CMO, directly applies battle damage to unit AI's abilities by simulating its effect on the OODA loop. 

In my mind, there's always two battles going on in these kinds of things - one outside the ship, and one inside. Being able to capture the former would be useful, I think.

 

 

[captinjoehenry]

46 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

 

Not my experience again. A single 6'' in the hull of a destroyer, in my experience, is almost a guaranteed flooding and engine damage. both combined will slow it down enough to make it pretty much fodder for subsequent fire. Three or four such hits, the vessel is pretty much a mission kill. A single 8'' shell will rip its guts all across the place. Once more - it won't kill it outright, but it'll pretty much turn it into a limping wreck.

Contrary to your perception, I do think that small guns are the ideal antiDD weapon. Yes, individually they have a lower hit chance. So low it might seem laughable. It's not so laughable when you remember that no matter how low a roll you have to throw, if you're giving A LOT of rolls, eventually you'll get one right. Once you get that one right, the rest is a downhill struggle for the DD, for just one hit from anything of 6'' or more is highly likely to mess it so badly it won't be able to run properly anymore. And if it can't run, it's main defense against getting further hit, speed, vanishes. Queue the firestorm. Rest is done.

Now if you tell me that 4'' guns, for instance, won't disable a DD outright, you're right. A 4'' hit will do limited damage. Again, get lucky enough it'll cause a flooding, damage a funnel, do something to make the rest of the job easier. But 4'' guns were considered insuficient as a credible defense against destroyers already by the early 1910s. To the point that wholly new classes of battleships and battlecruisers were launched in the UK to upgrade their secondaries from 4'' to 6'', with no other change on the classes themselves. And in 1910 destroyers didn't displace more than 1k-ish tons (some bigger ones here and there but averages where what they were). If a 4'' gun was considered insuficient for the job against a 1k tonner, go figure against later destroyer classes which were much bigger.
5'' was so-so. On the verge of being useful, on the verge of being too anemic. Later advances in explosive fillers made them close the gap, but still given the DD displacement growth with time, against a proper DD you wanted something 6'' or bigger as a rule of thumb.

Now the question would be inevitably "then why should I bother putting guns of 3-4'' on my designs?". Again, volume of fire. If a DD is *THAT* close as for that battery to be relevant you really want to throw even the kitchen sink at it, no matter it won't do much on a single hit. The way to disable DDs is to stack hits on them until their lose their only asset: Speed. Once that's done, that DD is going to be a mission kill in really short notice. A 3'' hit may not gett it on the first hit (it's going to need pretty much a straight hit on the proper place) but anything helps when the enemy is so close. The first time I ran the "predreadnought vs DDs" scenario (on the previous alpha) I wont it solely based on my 3'' guns volume of fire being the main asset to get some hits to slow individual enemies down - then the 6'' battery and the main battery would have much higher chances to connect. Either one hitting was enough to make the DD turn tails immediately. Again, against those ships you want mission kills, because they're not just going to go down under the waves based on the fact that you had hit them a couple times with a 4, 5 or 6'' guns. Disabling a ship does not mean necessarily sinking it outright, specially when we're talking about those tincans which I'll have to mention again, were much harder to sink than what people seem to give them credit for.

Anyway: Collectivelly small guns are a mass of rifles firing at a much higher volume of fire than the main battery. Low hit chances but much higher ammount of chances to hit. Throw enough sh*t to something, at least some will stick. Initially it will seem underwhelming, but again, it's a matter of volume of fire and progressive deterioration of the capabilities of the ship. Just one hit in the proper place (and a DD doesn't has much to be hit) and the machinery will be out and flooding will ensue, making the subsequent volume of fire much more prone to hit - it escalates really quickly from there.

You probably won't sink the DD outright with secondaries, barring the lucky twinkee of a magazine hit. Nor you should expect to (multiple instances of this in history. Acasta for instance lasted more than one hour dancing in front of two german battleships before going down). But any proper solid hit with a gun of 6'' caliber will be pretty much a mission kill for the DD - which is what your secondaries are intended to provide you with - those guns weren't mounted on big ships to sink DDs. They were mounted there to disuade them to come close enough to be a major problem, and to turn them into a heapin' hulk of rubble if they didn't.

I'll insist once more: a DD, smaller than a BB or not, wasn't an easy ship to sink. I'm not sure why the expectative here from so many is that they just vanished the second they're hit by a 5'' gun. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

Your entirely right.  I'm more complaining about the amount of hits 60 5" secondaries end up scoring at combat ranges.  Between 5 and 10 km.  Each hit the 5" hits does pretty good and notable damage.  But unless the DDs come into point blank range even a massive secondary battery of 20 triple 5" turrets struggles to even hit the DDs in the first place.  Super Heavy High TNT 5" shells though do pretty good damage for what they are.  Knocking engines and steering and causing flooding as such.  It just feels odd that when you have about 30 5" rifles blazing away at a DD and scoring so few hits.  Espicially when you gave the Scharnhorst as an example which has 28 secondary barrels total and the BB I made in game has 30 5" barrels per broadside.

[RAMJB]

Memory might fail me, but I remember reading somewhere that Bismarck had only one operational weapon left by the time the scuttling order was issued. A 20mm mount. It's known it was the only operational weapon left...because it was still firing at that moment even while by that time Bismarck was nothing but sinking rubble subjected to the most brutal short range focus fire of naval warfare history any vessel ever sustained.

In WW1 there was a similar case when SMS Blücher was slowed down during the Dogger Bank engagement, and ganged up against by the british forces. Reportedly there were guns still firing up to the very moment she capsized.

Point being - when there's no only other option left, yes, crews would fight until the bitter end even when all hope is gone. As far as surrendering the in battle ship goes, I think the last ever instance of that happened in Tsushima. At least in what regards to warships captured after a battle, I can't remember any posterior instance.


Degradation of ship capability through damage is implemented. There are severe accuracy penalties coming from structural damage and flooding. Top speed also goes down from structural damage alone (the precise ammount per damage depends a bit on how you designed your ship). PErsonally I think some kind of penalty to Rate of Fire should also be involved after certain tresholds of damage - but other than that the effect is already there.
 

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

11 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Your entirely right.  I'm more complaining about the amount of hits 60 5" secondaries end up scoring at combat ranges.  Between 5 and 10 km.  Each hit the 5" hits does pretty good and notable damage.  But unless the DDs come into point blank range even a massive secondary battery of 20 triple 5" turrets struggles to even hit the DDs in the first place.  Super Heavy High TNT 5" shells though do pretty good damage for what they are.  Knocking engines and steering and causing flooding as such.  It just feels odd that when you have about 30 5" rifles blazing away at a DD and scoring so few hits.  Espicially when you gave the Scharnhorst as an example which has 28 secondary barrels total and the BB I made in game has 30 5" barrels per broadside.

There were two Scharnhorst involved. Gneisenau was also there. So double the ammount of guns involved ;). Of course HMS Ardent also was around there and she also attracted some fire (she lasted precisely 58 minutes since first fired at until sunk)

Acasta lasted more than a full hour before being sunk against both ships, at several points being engaged by both simultaneously. And that was against pretty angry enemies too (Scharnhorst did take a fish from her which didn't really enhance the mood of the germans engaging her). 

As you can see what you're experiencing in game doesn't look too far fetched considering how things looked like in real life ;).

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[Cptbarney]

Ok, so i just played the last mission heavy duty and have decided to give my input so far.

Despite the low hit chances guns seem to hit consistently i guess at range, although does take awhile, no where near as accurate.

Secondaries seem to be more accurate but will need to play more to make sure.

Werid graphical black line bugs in the ship builder when viewing from certain angles (z-fighting?) and also the same for the barrels (either chamfer problems and/or z-fighting again or lighting issues).

Decals seem a bit flat, but thats understandable since modelling that would take ages and would cause fps drops im guessing.

Speaking of which game does lag more but thats probs cus im playing the last mission.

Also devlog just springs up in front of me with a ton of angreh red lines, but i assume thats a known issue.

Torpedoes even with anti-top 3 and anti-flood 2 aren't as effective as i thought they would be but then one of my torpedeos did hit a ship for 1,9k so eh idk.

Thats all just from one battle as well lol.

[Cptbarney]

Either way i like what i've seen so far, very nice turret models and cool effects, plus ship hulls. (i hope to get a job in this industry at somepoint lol).

Also the CA's look very interesting and loving the new save and re-name ship design feature.

Despite the issues from above, i still have a very good feeling about this game.

Cheerio!

[Fishyfish]

1 hour ago, RAMJB said:

...Point being - when there's no only other option left, yes, crews would fight until the bitter end even when all hope is gone. As far as surrendering the in battle ship goes, I think the last ever instance of that happened in Tsushima. At least in what regards to warships captured after a battle, I can't remember any...
 

Correct, Tsushima was the last known naval engagement where in warships of one side surrendered to the enemy on the high seas. Though, in that very battle the Russian flagship Knyaz Suvorov carrying Admiral Rozhestvensky, head of the Second Pacific squadron was reduced to what onlookers described as "an island volcano in eruption." Despite this she too continued to fire every serviceable weapon untill finaly being finished off by Japanese torpedo boats. She took with her all but 20 wounded officers, including the Admiral, who had been evacuated earlier on in the battle. 

[Skeksis]

As to the arg's posting, Dev’s should consider a customization tab of settings to suit a wider audience.

Such as a slider to adjust small calibre accuracy, more accuracies to suit the 'sporting' gamer and less accuracies to suit the 'historical enthusiast'. I’m sure there would be a few more options to add as the game progresses.

‘UnLock” in custom battles seems to support a need for user preferences and customizations on a more of an overall scale.

 

PS, for me I’m on the side of the sporting gamer, I want my secondaries to smash close ranging DDs.

Edited December 11, 2019 by Skeksis

[Blothorn]

19 hours ago, Accipiter said:

has anything been done about that????

after playing this new update for 5+ hours now, i'm really not seeing anyting different at all in that area. ships with lots of red compartiments are still as overly tanky as before, DD and TB can still tank way too many hits in addition of being way too hard to hit, just like before.

so like, what??? is this in the patchnotes by accident and planned for a future update? i'm confused. what have you done? i really DO NOT see any difference from last version regarding this.

It still takes a lot of hits to sink a ship, but I normally see pretty steady progress. Last update I remember putting dozens of shots into ships without their damage meters budging at all (despite gaudy floating damage texts), I think from damage to already-destroyed compartments being ignored for total structural damage. I'm now seeing, I think, that individual compartments are harder to kill so when a ship is near destruction there are more still-living compartments to be damaged. Although it now seems really hard to knock out turrets--even full penetrations from main-caliber guns don't do the job.

15 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Not my experience. Standard scenario 4 1400ton DDs vs 1935 tech BB armed with 9x14'' guns , 6x2 6'' in twin turrets, assortment of 3 inch guns for close range combat.

Hitting them was a nightmare (result of the penalties I spoke about before), but each time any of them got hit by the 6'' guns they duly took notice. Of course it also depends on the placement of the hits, if you're hitting their superstructure the damage is not that much. But damn, they didn't like being hit on the hull. At all.

Of course, every time one of them took a 14'' it was like fireworks - so in order to sink them in short notice nothing like a hit of the main guns. But the 6'' did their job. The job being: keeping them at check and damaging them enough for my main battery to shoot them into the moon. Which is the role of the secondary battery of a main battleship: fend off destroyers. Fending off does not equal disintegrating, means damaging them enough so they stop attacking/stop being a threat. Of course given enough time the 6'' battery would've killed them. But why wait when you have massive guns to make the job faster...

I've almost never seen a DD killed by anything other than a main-battery or torpedo hit, and have mostly abandoned secondaries in consequence. (The fact that destroyers are extremely difficult to hit and secondary guns have poor accuracy doesn't help.) That said, I think secondaries would be much more useful if they could target ships independently of the main battery--I'd tolerate the long TTK of secondaries if I didn't have to stop shooting the enemy capital ships while they did their work.

On a related note, is it possible to manually assign separate targets for ships in a division? Whenever I manually target all ships change target so distribution of fire only seems possible by getting really lucky with automatic target selection. This also compounds with the inability to target secondaries independently--in order to deal with destroyers I need to either split up groups or shift the entire division's fire to a single destroyer.

[RAMJB]

I've almost never seen a DD killed by anything other than a main-battery or torpedo hit

 

I do. One of the scenarios, not sure which one. The one you have to design a ship and you're given two destroyers to go with it to fight off a force of a couple BBs, CAs and a large force of destroyers. My BB eventually spent a lot of of main guns ammo fighting the large warship force, when it was time to deal with the DDs I ran out. All I had left was my second battery (mix of 6'' and 3'' secondaries). I gutted enough of them with those weapons to win the me the scenario. Of course took a lot of random maneouvering to throw off possible incoming torpedos. I even ate a couple of them. Some DDs came extremely close (under 2km) and my guns were still missing like mad (it's from there that my opinion about point blank range hit %s are botched - but only at those very close ranges).

But as I described in previous posts here's where the "volume of fire" part entered the equation. Even with very low hit chances, my guns where vomiting so many shells some of them had to find their mark - and some did. 3''s were mostly for spraying them with pepper fire - even then some hits got floodings, some damage to the funnel, generally useful stuff to degrade their effectivity. But each time I got a hit with the 6'', it was just the prelude for a very swift end for the DD, as 6'' hits caused major damage including severe floodings that slowed the targets so much that subsequent fire was far more accurate.
I actually didn't even bother finishing most of them, as soon as I saw my target was essentially mission killed I switched to the nearest threat. Once all of them were crippled enough, that's when I began finishing them one by one keeping the fire up on each one until it sank before moving on to the next one. Some of them even awarded me the sink a while after I had switched fire off from them because uncontained fires or progressive flooding.

By giving away your secondary battery and "not bothering with small gun batteries" you're making a severe mistake - but I'll let you learn that lesson on your own,  the same some historical navies had to back in the day :).

I do agree however that independent targetting for different batteries is a must have. It should be possible to designate a target for the main battery and a different one for the secondary. That'll come in the future no doubt, the same as the ability to aim guns at one target while dropping torpedoes at a different one (something that cant be done either right now).


Yes, it's possible to assign different targets to ships in the same division. Control-click will give firing orders exclusive to the ship you have active in a given moment, instead than doing so for the whole division. Took me a while to figure that out too :).

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[Antipater]

Thanks for the update, the new hulls, the custom battles - and an AI, that will retreat when ships are damaged and outgunned and not run into pure annihilation like in so many other games. Great game so far.

But the "accuracy-model" still isn't very convincing on short battle distance - at least in my opinion. I had a fight 1 CL vs 2 DD, 1915 tech. My CL was equipped with 76-152mm guns, the DDs with something around 120mm. In a late phase the fighting distance had shrunk to 400m. Hovering the cursor over the nearest DD the indicated probability of a hit was 1-2%, but for a spot in the water next to the DD 50-60%. Do I get it right: If I ordered my guns to shot at a spot of water 400m away, 1 in 2 grenades would hit the spot or the area nearby? But the moment the DD crosses only 1 in 50 will hit the target? This gives the ship some kind of "bullet proof" magic... It would be great if you could rethink the influence of all these negatives like "small target", speed, cloudy weather in point blank distance.

[Teckelmaster]

OK, i tried a few of the academy missions again, i had them 23/23. uncheated! And i did most of (even the unliked) them several times uncheated! I think i was pretty good in this game!

But now, i find some of them to be even worse than before. I want my progress back, i do not want to redo them. I want the old version back as well. I liked it much more before, especially the access to dev menu. I want that back! Honestly, some missions are so frustrating, but i cannot have them unchecked. I did them before, why punish me like that.

Please give us access to at least unlock all parts and ship give all tech. Let me rephrase. I want that back.

I want Alpha 2 back, i find the new stuff so useless compared to what i lost, i seriously regret that patch at the moment.

Sorry, but for me it is a decrease of fun and replayability.

To everyone who is gonna start arguing with me against my sight on things:

No, i currently lost my will to play a game, i seriously loved the way it was.

Do not tell me im a dirty cheater and a whiner. I have a family, a job and a lot of grown up ppl stress. I want fun in my sparetime and under no circumstances will i play something that feels like work, which many of the academy missions currently do.

Teckelmaster out

[TAKTCOM]

1 hour ago, Blothorn said:

I've almost never seen a DD killed by anything other than a main-battery or torpedo hit...

Just check DD vs TB mission and you will see changes.

[RedParadize]

@TAKTCOM This is a poor exemple. All the gun in that scenario are of small caliber. And there is the tower accuracy buff difference.

[Skeksis]

32 minutes ago, Teckelmaster said:

OK, i tried a few of the academy missions again, i had them 23/23. uncheated! And i did most of (even the unliked) them several times uncheated! I think i was pretty good in this game!

But now, i find some of them to be even worse than before. I want my progress back, i do not want to redo them. I want the old version back as well. I liked it much more before, especially the access to dev menu. I want that back! Honestly, some missions are so frustrating, but i cannot have them unchecked. I did them before, why punish me like that.

Please give us access to at least unlock all parts and ship give all tech. Let me rephrase. I want that back.

I want Alpha 2 back, i find the new stuff so useless compared to what i lost, i seriously regret that patch at the moment.

Sorry, but for me it is a decrease of fun and replayability.

To everyone who is gonna start arguing with me against my sight on things:

No, i currently lost my will to play a game, i seriously loved the way it was.

Do not tell me im a dirty cheater and a whiner. I have a family, a job and a lot of grown up ppl stress. I want fun in my sparetime and under no circumstances will i play something that feels like work, which many of the academy missions currently do.

Teckelmaster out

I have to admit I’m in two minds about this.

First we are testing scenarios through academy missions and if Dev’s make changes then we need to redo them to suss out bugs and frustrations.

On the other hand, we are playing a game too and losing progression is frustrating in itself. And that frustration has been amplified with the ease of using cheat mode and now the removal of it.

I agree, I want to blast away and take the shortcut but the historical enthusiast are against us and Dev’s seems to be shoring up their stance in the same direction.

You/we aren’t whining, its all feedback anyway. 

[RedParadize]

Here is the accuracy of guns at 2500m and 5000m Basically the range secondary battery should exel:
                        2500m     5000m
2"(mk5)           86%          2.9%
3"(mk5)           75%          9.6%
4"(mk5)           59%           10%
5"(mk5)           45%           10%
6"(mk5)           44%           12%
7"(mk5)           55%           16%
8"(mk4)           51%           15%
9"(mk5)           90%           32%
10"(mk5)         79%           29%
11"(mk5)         81%           32%
12"(mk5)         78%           31%
13"(mk5)         77%           32%
14"(mk4)         77%           29%
15"(mk4)         79%           36%
16"(mk3)         70%           31%
17"(mk3)         72%           32%
18"(mk3)         77%           37%

As you can see small caliber, and therefore secondary, do not exel significantly in term of accuracy. They only weight and cost less. Now that does not take into consideration fire rate, damage or DPS. Against DDs hit chance and damage is much lower than stats suggest. so there is that...

Edited December 11, 2019 by RedParadize

[RAMJB]

Exactly what's the rationale that makes you think small guns should have equal, or even similar, accuracy than bigger guns?. Especially when you're not rating gun accuracy -  you're rating mount accuracy. Whole different matter where far more things than the guns themselves are involved.

Aso, what's the rationale that makes you think secondary guns should "excel in terms of accuracy" at all? (other than obviously point blank range). Why do you expect a side-mounted light 5'' secondary mount controlled either locally or through a secondary fire control center (in the most modern instances of warships) using secondary rangefinders (if any), and which is far more prone to suffer from the effects of ship's rolling (And overall) motion, to be anywhere as accurate as a big main battery turret firing through central fire control to solutions calculated from direct inputs from massive rangefinders, and mounted at a central position where the rolling motion affects the least?.

Also, are you aware that light projectiles are notably more propense to dispersion at shorter ranges than much heavier projectiles, as a direct result of the heavier projectile having an inherent advantage in inertia?. Put it in other way - take a piece of paper, wrap it into a ball, throw it. Take a much heavier lead ball, throw it so it leaves your hand with similar velocity. Which of both do you think you'll be able to throw accurately at a specific point you are aiming at which is 10m away from you?. Taking this in account, can you understand why lighter guns firing lighter projectiles (which to begin with have shorter natural ranges than bigger ones) tend to lose precision with range at a much faster rate than heavier guns firing heavier ones?.


Light secondaries, considerations about turret traverse and gun elevation speed apart (which would be only important in engagements held at the most closest of ranges possible)  excelled in one thing, and one thing alone when compared to large main guns: Sheer volume of fire. Their way to score hits wasn't through high accuracy, was from throwing out such a wall of fire that inevitably some of it would hit the enemy. The closer, the better. You somehow seem to expect otherwise. Why?. 

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[RedParadize]

I return the question. Why using secondary battery then? What it should be good at?

[Mooncatt]

well so far I think the majority of the changes are deffo for the better! you guys have donea great job! there are some issues for me that still (and probably will be addressed) exist. I really think the ship i.d process is still woefully too slow. by the time ive almost sunk a ship it still hasn't been identified. I think this process needs to be increased by 50%.

secondly HE shells are still the "go to" shell of choice, in honesty I really haven't noticed a difference in performance compared to the AP shells. but what I have noticed due to the extra info given on enemy ships (once I.D) I now know when AP "might" be a better choice...…. having said that HE at least for me is still king

there are extreme limitations of certain tower placement and barbette placement on modern BC. like ive mentioned in other posts. instead of restrictive snap points make them zonal instead, this gives much more freedom.

I also found the new missions (ive completed 2 of the new ones only so far) very easy. but im still loving the game and the new stuff. keep it up devs, you've got a great great game in the making!!! im for one glad im here to see how the game keeps progressing and improving. im sending links to all my gaming mates all the time to attract as much attention as I can!

 

[RAMJB]

I return the question. Why using secondary battery then? What it should be good at?

I've already mentioned it in this tread several times. at least one of them (the one that applies to this discussion): Volume of fire.


Instead of firing 6-12 (the most usual number of rifles on capital ship main batteries) shells each 45 seconds or so.

If you have, say, 16 secondary guns firing at, say 12 rounds per minute ( a perfectly reasonable proposition for a 5'' twin mount), you'll be outputting 96 shells per side out per minute on average (and that's counting just one secondary joint battery - it wasn't rare to have a backup tertiary that doubled as AAA on designs not using DP mounts such as the german or italian battleships).

While individual chances of each shell to hit won't be nearly as high as with the main battery, you get a lot more "rolls of the dice" to achieve those low probability impacts if you put out a lot of rounds downrange than if you put out maybe a dozen that, even if more accurate individually, in the grand scope of things still are shooting at very low % to hit anyway.
Even if the individual hits are much less damaging too, you don't need a lot of them to mission kill the target. I mentioned it before, I reiterate it now: secondary batteries weren't designed as "DD assassins". In fact the origin of secondary batteries had nothing to do with destroyers at all, but that's besides the point. What they were there for was:


1- Dealing with small fast combatants through the volume of fire mentioned avobe. Objective being to either act as deterrent for enemy light forces to not come close enough to be a real torpedo threat, to force them to engage in avoidance maneouvers in case they came in for the attack anyway and to neutralize the threat in the end (note "neutralizing" doesn't necessarily equal "sinking" - and most of the time it didn't).

2- Provide a means to deal with low-chance-of-hit targets (such as the avobe mentioned light fast torpedo forces) with ammunition that was 

a) far more numerous (there were a lot more rounds per gun in for secondary battery gun than for a main battery gun).

b) far cheaper and expendable (self explanatory: a 5'' shell doesn't cost the same as a 16'' one - and if you waste one firing at a DD nobody cares)

c) far less mission critical (if you run out of secondary rounds, which is quite hard given their sheer number even with the higher rate of fire you still are a massive threat to anything that comes close to your big guns. Run out of main ammo, not even enemy cruisers will respect you anymore).

d) far more conductive to long term ship operative status (with main guns that needed a relining, depending on the gun, nation and design, after as little as 100 shots, up to as much as 300, you don't want to be wasting your main gun's liner life on 1200 tons of tincan, when you can use much smaller guns with far easier to deal with worn out barrels).


3- the original reason for the quick-firing secondary battery of the predreadnought era still was valid until the battleship stopped being the queen of the seas. Secondary battery hits firing at high rates of fire at close ranges could truly ruin even the most heavily protected's enemy warship structure at rearrange it in literally no time. Not to mention hit unprotected stuff such as deck torpedo tubes (common in some cruisers and present in even some battleships), aerials (messing up the radio comms of the target in the middle of a battle), exposed rangefinding equipment, radar antennas, etc. It could cause fires. It would never be a real threat for an enemy warship's survability, but it'd make it's life more miserable than if that battery wasn't there. So it was also used for that.


4- and that's just for the DP mounts but even designs that didn't have DP secondaries, they had a DP tertiary (for instance the Bismarck's 105mm guns were both for anti surface and AAA even while more focused on the latter): obviously those guns, either secondary or tertiary, could double for heavy AAA duty.


That's why you wanted a secondary battery for. None of those demand any kind of high accuracy, all of them are vital (some critical) roles for a big gun warship to cover.

Edited December 11, 2019 by RAMJB

[captinjoehenry]

One other annoying thing I've found is that ammo detonations seem to do less damage now.  I've had a few of them vs enemy BBs penetrating their main belt but it doesn't actually do any real extra damage and any damage it does do seems contained to a single compartment.  I'm sure it works fine otherwise.  But when fighting enemy BBs and seeing: Ammo Detonation and then the enemy taking no real damage it seems a bit silly 

[disc]

30 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Why using secondary battery then? What it should be good at?

I think asking the base question is very reasonable.

 

A great purpose of QF guns was volume of fire, as I think has been well said before. They were not particularly more accurate in and of themselves, but from a gameplay standpoint, it can be irritating to see a hailstorm have little effect. But a volume of fire should have other effects, which we do not yet see.

There is no deterrent, for example. See the advantages of tracer fire and timed bursts in WWII anti-aircraft warfare.

Neither is aim correction quite implemented. If a 4in battery can reload in five seconds, it can more easily correct shot placement. A large rate of deflection and range means the previous main battery salvo may not predict the placement of the next, whereas the QF guns will have faster followup. Thus a high rate of fire is also very important if the target is maneuvering radically or zig-zagging. This became less important with synthetic fire control, though.

Likewise, continuous aim is easier with a smaller gun, and they are handier. This is of greater importance on a small, lively ship; this is part of why 149mm guns failed to live to expectations on the German Type 36A destroyers.

It is very true that the Royal Navy found 3in and 4in anti-torpedo guns to be too weak. Even the decision to rearm some of the Queen Elizabeth class with 4.5in DP guns was a little difficult, reducing the 6in battery. Certainly the Americans were not confident their 5in guns would be able to stop every destroyer. This is one reason for their early interest in torpedo protection belts; there were also many proposals to arm their dreadnoughts with 6in guns. Likewise, a destroyer squadron would often be led by a light cruiser, so a more powerful gun could be considered if for that reason alone.

I think others have already spoken well about the problems of armor, and how that reduces the value of our small guns right now.

Edited December 11, 2019 by disc
gremmar

[captinjoehenry]

1 minute ago, RAMJB said:

I've already mentioned it in this tread several times. at least one of them: Volume of fire.


Instead of firing 6-12 (the most usual number of rifles on capital ship main batteries) shells each 45 seconds or so.

If you have, say, 16 secondary guns firing at, say 12 rounds per minute ( a perfectly reasonable proposition for a 5'' twin mount), you'll be outputting 172 shells per side out per minute on average (and that's counting just one secondary joint battery - it wasn't rare to have a backup tertiary that doubled as AAA on designs not using DP mounts such as the german or italian battleships).

While individual chances of each shell to hit won't be nearly as high as with the main battery, you get a lot more "rolls of the dice" to achieve those low probability impacts if you put out a lot of rounds downrange than if you put one third of them that even if more accurate individually, in the grand scope of things still are shooting at very low % to hit. Even if the individual hits are much less damaging too, you don't need a lot of them to mission kill the target. I mentioned it before, I reiterate it now: secondary batteries weren't designed as "DD assassins". In fact the origin of secondary batteries had nothing to do with destroyers at all, but that's besides the point. What they were there for was:


1- Dealing with small fast combatants through the volume of fire mentioned avobe. Objective being to either act as deterrent for enemy light forces to come close enough to be a real torpedo threat, or to neutralize the threat in case it chose to come that close (note "neutralizing" doesn't necessarily equal "sinking" - and most of the time it didn't).

2- Provide a means to deal with low-chance-of-hit targets (such as the avobe mentioned light fast torpedo forces) with ammunition that was 

a) far more numerous (there were a lot more rounds per gun in for secondary battery gun than for a main battery gun).

b) far cheaper and expendable (self explanatory: a 5'' shell doesn't cost the same as a 16'' one - and if you waste one firing at a DD nobody cares)

c) far less mission critical (if you run out of secondary rounds, which is quite hard given their sheer number even with the higher rate of fire you still are a massive threat to anything that comes close to your big guns. Run out of main ammo, not even enemy cruisers will respect you anymore).

d) far more conductive to long term ship operative status (with main guns that needed a relining, depending on the gun, nation and design, after as little as 100 shots, up to as much as 300, you don't want to be wasting your main gun's liner life on 1200 tons of tincan, when you can use much smaller guns with far easier to deal with worn out barrels).


3- the original reason for the quick-firing secondary battery of the predreadnought era still was valid until the battleship stopped being the queen of the seas. Secondary battery hits firing at high rates of fire at close ranges could truly ruin even the most heavily protected's enemy warship structure at rearrange it in literally no time. Not to mention hit unprotected stuff such as deck torpedo tubes (common in some cruisers and present in even some battleships), aerials (messing up the radio comms of the target in the middle of a battle), exposed rangefinding equipment, radar antennas, etc. It could cause fires. It would never be a real threat for an enemy warship's survability, but it'd make it's life more miserable than if that battery wasn't there. So it was also used for that.


4- and that's just for the DP mounts but even designs that didn't have DP secondaries, they had a DP tertiary (for instance the Bismarck's 105mm guns were both for anti surface and AAA even while more focused on the latter): obviously those guns, either secondary or tertiary, could double for heavy AAA duty.


That's why you wanted a secondary battery for. None of those demand any kind of high accuracy, all of them are vital (some critical) roles for a big gun warship to cover.

I mean you say that and I agree.  But it's still a problem even having 30 5" guns blazing away every few seconds with fully modern everything and failing to hit.  With 30 rounds flying towards an enemy DD every couple of seconds you'd expect to get a single hit per volley fairly often instead of only rarely as it is now.

[RedParadize]

@RAMJB What do you think is better?

This?


Or that?

Edited December 11, 2019 by RedParadize