How does the AI build that?

[brucesim2003]

So, a custom battle, 1917 Germany vs Russia. I build a ship 35k tons. 8x 14" guns, 14x 6" casemates, 21 knots. It is built to take a hammering, though it only has standard bulkheads. Best towers available.

The AI design is 27900 tons. 14x 13", sundry 5" and 4", 32 knots. Armour is slightly thicker than mine, though of lower quality. Many bulkheads.

What I want to know, is how the heck does the AI build such a design on such a limited displacement? 7k tons lighter, and a full 11 knots faster? It took him time, but he did get up to that speed. My armour seems to be completely ineffective. I can't even hit him. Literally. My main guns didn't hit him once. Secondaries him him twice, one being a ricochet.

[RAMJB]

Never seen anything like that. Maybe a fluke with the designer?. 32 knots in such a big ship with that limited displacement and weapons (and specially if armor was as thick as you mention) it should not be possible. certainly not in 1917.

Did you take a screenshot of the offender?. Would help quite a lot in finding out what the heck went wrong, and how the AI managed to do that.

[RedParadize]

I am not sure what you are complaining about, my design a always better than AI ones. Even in the scenarios.

can you show us your design? Maybe we can help.

Edited December 15, 2019 by RedParadize

[RAMJB]

Well having a 28000 ton enemy moving at 32 knots with 14x13'' guns and proper armor should not be possible in 1917. Heck, I'm not sure it'd be possible with all the late techs and that displacement...

I wish he had a screenshot. Just like this it's impossible to say.

[brucesim2003]

Sorry, no SS. That ship just ate my semi-Bayern for lunch.

[brucesim2003]

So I re-did the battle. Of course the AI ship is different. Somewhat more plausible, but not really viable imo.

Funny enough I couldn't quite make my ship the exact same - it came out 430 tons overweight. Had to thin the turret tops and reduce the range - I tend to build my ships 'campaign ready', so I don't give the ships shortest range. Stopping the bad habits from forming.

Anyway, here is mine

 

And the AI

Note with less hit chance, he is hitting me 2-1.

Edited December 15, 2019 by brucesim2003

[arkhangelsk]

I think we need an option that allows us, whether in Naval Academy or in Custom Battles, to see the enemy ship design. Sure, it can be after the battle, but they should show us the design in the same detail as the Design Screen - if the AI actually made a good design we want to learn from it.

(Later, in the campaign, they can let us see all the designs, after the campaign is over, of course).

[RAMJB]

That last one is not a fluke. It's perfectly buildable for the player. 20 knots top speed is not a lot of speed, it's armor is middling at best, and while the main battery is a monstrosity, secondary is very much on the light side.

I tried to replicate that thing myself using the same tower structures, weapons, top speed, and an estimation of the armor (max 10.7 both in turret faces, belt and CT, minimum on deck, deck tower, extended belt, extended deck), with a very reasonable selection of components, on a 26200 ton hull, and came up 2k tons underweight. Probably the AI has somewhat better components and/or extra armor in between the min and the max.

At any rate it's a perfectly valid design the player can also build.

Oh and he's hitting more because he has 15 guns. Lower individual per hit basis but more guns at play can very well translate into a higher global chance to hit. It's one of the advantages of lots of guns in a single ship (and one of the disadvantages of ships with very few guns. Historically the lower practical limit for a main gun battery to have effective gunnery was considered to be 6 guns.)

 

[brucesim2003]

Oh I realise that ship is buildable in game. But irl? Not so much.

What sort of armour did you give it?

Is the hit percentage per gun or per broadside?

[RAMJB]

41 minutes ago, brucesim2003 said:

Oh I realise that ship is buildable in game. But irl? Not so much.

Why not?. Machinery doesn't weigh a lot. only 20 knots and 25000 hp don't need a lot of space or weight. Armor is middling at best, so not especially weighed down in that department. Secondary battery is more akin to a 1909 warship than a 1917 one (4'' guns don't weigh that much compared with 6'' ones, nor do their shells). Compartimentalization is poor (only few bulkheads).

Consider this, the Japanese Fuso class (laid down 1912, completed 1915) had 6 turrets with 12 guns total, MUCH higher speed, 6'' secondary battery and more armor. It displaced 29500 tons standard when completed. 

I don't see how a ship designed 5 years later, with a much lesser speed, weaker secondaries, and less total armor can't put 15 guns in 5 turrets at around 26500 tons. We don't know it's range either.

The only thing that's really oversized on that warship is the main battery, but given the paltry stats elsewhere, I can't see how this wasn't buildable IRL. Now was it a good idea?. Heck no. That screams "glass cannon" louder than HMS Agincourt while being even slower. But buildable?. Perfectly fine in my book.


Armor was 10.7'' in belt, turret face, conning tower. 1.5'' in deck, turret top, deck extended, belt extended. All I had to base my armor on was the minimum and maximum thicknesses in your screenshots so I went with the maximum for the areas that require max protection and the minimum for the rest. Probably the ship in the screenshot has more armor: I came 2000tons underweight, so probably the ship's ends are better armored than 1.5''. Would make sense. Armor was Krupp II (based on the armor bonus percentage in the screenshot).


In-game hit chances come on a per-gun basis in the right low screen. On the left screen (Where the calculations are shown) on the bottom you'll see both the per gun hit chance and the total hit chances of a salvo (chance of hit of "n" guns - "n" being the number of guns firing at a given time).

Edited December 15, 2019 by RAMJB

[brucesim2003]

4 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Now was it a good idea?. Heck no. That screams "glass cannon" louder than HMS Agincourt.

This is what I meant by buildable. Yes, it is physically possible to build. But just because it can, doesn't mean you should.

The fact that it seems to outfight the type of ship that WAS built means something isn't right about how the game treats it. It seems that number of guns is given a bit too much emphasis.

[RAMJB]

1 minute ago, brucesim2003 said:

But just because it can, doesn't mean you should.

ohhh....come on...there are just SO many instances of that kind of thing happening in real history as to be a valid reason why the AI shouldn't too ;).