>>>Alpha-3 General Feedback [HotFix v66]<<<

[Mindfield]

Firing Test 1: 

I cant sink the CL anymore.

If I play safe and keep distance, I ran out of time because the BB hits nothing.

If I play agressive the CL sinks me every single time now.

Something is wrong.

[RedParadize]

The accuracy buff and mechanics change is quite nice.

In big ship vs big ship, secondaries are now definitively worth their mass. Before this patch I was playing Pre-Dreadnough era with the all big guns logic, not anymore! Post 1910 secondaries are still quite good, but not as much as before. The main problem is the roll penalty you get form adding them, its huge. Considering a Battleship have few thousand tons of belt armor on  each sides its a bit extreme to get massive base accuracy penalty for a few extra tons off center.

As for smaller ship, it became really bloody at close range. I think its fair, at 2km it should be pretty deadly. But DDs battle should happen further away, specially in late game. Now we do not have late game DD hulls and bridge, DDs vs DDs have to get very close to each other to even see each other, so that may change in the future.

But one thing worry me, a DD can now relatively easily own a CA with just its gun. I do not think its due to small caliber buff. Turret still behave strangely during maneuver, they turn away from target in sharp turns. AI do pretty intensive maneuver, for DDs and CA it often it result in them not firing for a long period.


I do not want to include needless detail, so I will cut this short and simply list things that I think need some improvement:

1-Roll penalty is too high.

2-Belt and deck armor weight should be added to Roll penalty

3-Sharp turn make the turret turn away from target.
(it should still be able to make them lose target however)
4-Penality when firing against DD is too high. Aiming penalty should be tied more closely to ship size.
(to target signature maybe? that too need to get better balanced)
5-AI handling of DDs need to be tweaked so that they stay more far, specially in late era.
(Atm all ship turn around their target, regardless of the other foe in the area)

Now I am of the opinion that this patch may have overshot a bit, but its hard to judge unless the problem mentioned get addressed. I think once these are fixed accuracy could be nerfed a bit as these change will make small caliber even better.

Edited December 19, 2019 by RedParadize

[Hellstrike]

1 hour ago, RAMJB said:

Those were direct penetrations into the magazines that blew them up (or barbette penetrations that caused flash fires which pretty much ended in the same way).

So, on historical terms, barring a direct critical magazine hit with subsequent magazine detonations (main ammo explosion), the results described avobe are completely out of whack.

But magazine hits happened in real life and happen in the game. You can actually simulate that pretty well in the "protect your Convoy" mission where you can sink the BC by detonating its magazines due to its thin armour. And that's not the only kind of engagement deciding hit. A good/unfortunate torpedo hit was capable of sinking a capital ship in minutes, just look at HMS Barham. Or render it incapable of serious resistance (Bismarck, HMS Prince of Wales).

I agree that sometimes ships sink too fast in this game right now, but there were plenty of cases where circumstances led to ships sinking very quickly, or at least being a mission kill. And it should be possible to achieve such results if, for example, an enemy is insufficiency armoured or has poor flooding protection.

 

[RAMJB]

22 minutes ago, Hellstrike said:

But magazine hits happened in real life and happen in the game.

Nobody is complaining because ships sink very fast after an ammo detonation....

But several of us are complaining that without those kind of critical hits at all ships sinks FAR too easily now. Pointing a fundamental problem with the damage model.

Edited December 19, 2019 by RAMJB

[arkhangelsk]

Well, I've just played it. The ships felt like cardboard compared to the last alpha - once the armor gets penetrated, the "health" goes down extremely rapidly. My "Iowa" was rapidly flattened by an enemy Yamato though I had 18 inch guns to his 16.

I'll be blunt - is there a method to revert to just "plain-old" Alpha 3 without this hotfix?

[akd]

There needs to be some allowance for minor flooding that is not repairable, such that cumulative gunfire damage can lead to sinking.  I am seeing single mid-caliber shells (10-12”) cause flooding on par with a torpedo hit to early BBs, but if the ship does not sink, I have also seen this sort of flooding completely repaired and all buoyancy subsequently restored and the ship is back to square one.

[sarrumac]

Keep accuracy more realistic please. 

A good reference for Jutland: https://web.archive.org/web/20051214235741/http://webpages.charter.net/abacus/news/jutland/18/CHAPTER 18.htm

[Skeksis]

8 hours ago, gunnyfreak said:

We already do have a speed up time option, which, to be fair, is the reason I feel ok advocating for battles that's probably too slow to be played entirely in real time.

Yes, play at normal game speed and the hit chance is in perspective, speed up and every action is out of perspective.  

Edited December 19, 2019 by Skeksis

[Tousansons]

5 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

Well, I've just played it. The ships felt like cardboard compared to the last alpha - once the armor gets penetrated, the "health" goes down extremely rapidly. My "Iowa" was rapidly flattened by an enemy Yamato though I had 18 inch guns to his 16.

I'll be blunt - is there a method to revert to just "plain-old" Alpha 3 without this hotfix?

Why not adapt to this patch and participate to the discussion? You might not like some of the changes (although your one exemple is lacking and probably need further testing) but reverting to an older patch will just make you play with the old problems too. This is clearly not intended in an Alpha testing.

Finally using this patch of busted accuracy for the purpose of finding where and why the damage model need improvements (and oh boy it need improvements) seems more appropriate than "need realistik accuracy. Fix plz, here's this extensive wikipedia sheet for proof!$!"

I'm certain we need a working game with a fun gameplay before making it more realistic and accurate.

[captinjoehenry]

5 minutes ago, Tousansons said:

Why not adapt to this patch and participate to the discussion? You might not like some of the changes (although your one exemple is lacking and probably need further testing) but reverting to an older patch will just make you play with the old problems too. This is clearly not intended in an Alpha testing.

Finally using this patch of busted accuracy for the purpose of finding where and why the damage model need improvements (and oh boy it need improvements) seems more appropriate than "need realistik accuracy. Fix plz, here's this extensive wikipedia sheet for proof!$!"

I'm certain we need a working game with a fun gameplay before making it more realistic and accurate.

I do agree but personally I think when it comes to 1940 and big BBs slugging it out are about right.  Ships might be a bit too squishy but taking a whole bunch of 18inch AP penetrations to the citedal probably should kill a BB rather quickly.  And when it comes to super BBs they are still tough but can actually die to BB shells that cannot pen the main belt which I am a bit so so on.  On the one hand having a butt load of BB shells hitting any ship should mess it up but failing to punch into the citadel or turrets or even the secondaries does make me think that maybe non penetrating hits are too lethal?  As having all of your main protected areas remain unpenetrated should leave a ship more alive than dead.

As for the accuracy it feels good and right historically for 1940 with top of the line fire control but for lower tech ships it's probably quite a lot out of line of how it should be.

Edited December 19, 2019 by captinjoehenry

[RAMJB]

29 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Ships might be a bit too squishy but taking a whole bunch of 18inch AP penetrations to the citedal probably should kill a BB rather quickly. 

 

I'm terribly sorry to bring this up again, but barring direct penetrations to the magazine, where does this statement come from?. What source?. Based on which studies said source uses on it's own?. Which reports back it up?. What exactly is the estimated number of shells equivalent to "a whole bunch" as presented in the relevant reports and sources that would "quick a BB rather quickly"?. Two?. Three? a Dozen? two dozens?. And what's the estimate of "rather quickly" in minutes?. 5? 10? half an hour?.

Edited December 19, 2019 by RAMJB

[captinjoehenry]

3 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

 

I'm terribly sorry to bring this up again, but barring direct penetrations to the magazine, where does this statement come from?. Which studies are the base of it?. Which reports back it up?. What exactly is the estimated number of shells equivalent to "a whole bunch"?.two?. three? a dozen? two dozens?.

I do not have any of those numbers mostly due to not really knowing where to look for them.  My opinion more comes from guess work to be frank.  But taking 10+ high caliber shells into the citadel and explode in there is going to mess up and destroy all sorts of important combat needed systems which I would think would kill a ship fairly quickly.  Sadly I don't have any sources to back this up so I could well be wrong as I'm simply going off of the power of the explosives within high caliber BB shells going off inside of the area of the ship that holds all of the ships most important parts.  Which I would guess would rather quickly render a ship non combat capable.

[RAMJB]

35 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

My opinion more comes from guess work to be frank

Thanks. And I mean it. Too many people would try to go all "scapegoat mode" at this point. Thanks for your frankness and sincerity.

Now I didn't make those questions just to get that answer out from you. They are actually important. Specifically in the timeframe that most people feel is "accurately portrayed", namely, 1940.

We do have several BB surface battles in 1941-42. Denmark Straits. Bismarck's final battle. The night engagements off Guadalcanal: one encounter where BBs were present in only one side, another where BBs were present on both side.

The night encounters are a bit off the analysis here accuracy wise - they were fought at night and at extremely short ranges (literally so short that at one point of the first battle of guadalcanal Hiei couldn't shoot at a chargin US destroyer because it was so close her guns couldn't depress enough to shoot at it). But they can be used for extrapolating the kind of damage necessary to sink a WW1 vintage battlecruiser.

But the big instances here should be Denmark Strait and Bismarck's final battle. Bismarck opened up on Hood at 5.55am. Scored hits only on the 5th salvo, at an estimated range of 16.5km. That was considered as "excellent gunnery" and was coming from the most modern battleship in the world at the time - translates into 1 (maybe 2) hits out of 40 shells fired - or into a 2.5, or 5% hit ratio depending on how many shells actually hit.

Go into the game, get yourself a 1940 battleship, put it 16.5km off an enemy battleship and see the impact calculations. The "excellent accuracy from a state of the art battleship" of a ship that's still revered for the accuracy of it's gunfire....is dwarfed to nothingness in this game.


As for the damage effects go - Bismarck was engaged by two heavy cruisers and two battleships in her final battle. Those four ships spent the following ammount of ammunition:

 

380 of 40.6 cm from Rodney
339 of 35.6 cm from King George V
527 of 20.3 cm from Norfolk
254 of 20.3 cm from Dorsetshire
716 of 15.2 cm from Rodney
660 of 13.3 cm from King George V


Now, we do not have reliable accounts of the true ammounts of hits Bismarck sustained. But taking in account that the bulk of the firing happened at distances well below 10km (and at ranges as short as 2500m), to a ship that was dead in the water for most of the engagement, we can assume they were A LOT.

Bismarck stood that pounding for 74 minutes since the first registered hit until she went under the waves. Including at least two direct impacts into her citadel (reportedly scored by Rodney, lots of theories about how that happened given that Rodney's guns were not supposed to be able to go into the machinery of that ship from the range she fired at). In fact those would be hits on the "Main citadel" - barbettes and turrets were also considered "critical equipment" and part of the citadel, and Bismarck got all four blown up by direct hits, so actually there were more than just two citadel hits.

Try to repeat that scenario in this game. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Bismarck is an extreme instance because of how sturdy that ship was, who much attention was paid at make it survivable (Specially at the short ranges involved in that action), and because Bismarck was for all intents and purposes a soft kill after only 20 minutes, which is what took the british force to reduce her to a mostly silenced status.

But it still lasted 74 minutes before going down. Of the most brutal gunning down in naval history. Not even with the highest protective settings in the game you'll get a ship to survive 10 minutes of a pounding like that - and likely they will be MUCH less than 10 minutes.

Bottom point is that battleships were VERY HARD to kill with gunnery (unless some exceptional circunstance as a magazine detonation was involved). Exceedingly hard, in fact. They are not in the game, and not by a long shot.

As for my questions about the citadel hits and why is that somehow relevant to the discussion: Bismarck took, as mentioned, two hits into the machinery areas. They caused mayhem and had Bismarck been at full speed, it'd probably would've caused her to lose most of it because of machinery damage - but they didn't cause any kind of critical survability damage, or hasten the demise of the ship in any meaningful way.  The citadel was not a "black box" that if hit would blow the ship up (unless those hits happened exactly on the magazines). It was an area of equipment of the outmost importance for the battleworthiness of the ship. Machinery. Engineering areas. Barbettes. Turrets. And yes, magazines. A battleship could sustain severe damage into the citadel without necessarily compromising the ability of the ship to stay afloat - as long as none of those hits would blow the magazines up, that is. Hits in the citadel would cause a drastic decrease in battleworthiness of the battleship, but were not necessarily "lethal" on their own.

What sunk battleships was the same that sunk everything else: flooding either killing the flotability of the ship, or destabilizing it so much as to capsize it. And currently in the game is FAR too easy to deal that kind of terminal damage with gunfire. And accordingly, and mixed with the exceedingly generous gunnery hit estimations, ships last a fraction of what they did in real engagements.


Again, thanks for your frankness in your answer :).

Edited December 19, 2019 by RAMJB

[captinjoehenry]

16 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

 

• But the big instances here should be Denmark Strait and Bismarck's final battle. Bismarck opened up on Hood at 5.55am. Scored hits only on the 5th salvo, at an estimated range of 16.5km. That was considered as "excellent gunnery" and was coming from the most modern battleship in the world at the time - translates into 1 (maybe 2) hits out of 40 shells fired - or into a 2.5, or 5% hit ratio depending on how many shells actually hit.

 

• Bismarck stood that pounding for 74 minutes since the first registered hit until she went under the waves. Including at least two direct impacts into her citadel (reportedly scored by Rodney, lots of theories about how that happened given that Rodney's guns were not supposed to be able to go into the machinery of that ship from the range she fired at). In fact those would be hits on the "Main citadel" - barbettes and turrets were also considered "critical equipment" and part of the citadel, and Bismarck got all four blown up by direct hits, so actually there were more than just two citadel hits.

For your first point I'm honestly not sure.  I guess the game might more be showing theoretical accuracy instead of actual accuracy?  Frankly though I'm not really sure.  I know that I like the gameplay where you can actually design ships around long range fire where various real world designs were intended for even if it wasn't actually possible.

As for the Bismark and the bounding it took I don't really have any great experience of that.  I mainly mess around with end game super BBs with 12 18 inch cannons and an ass ton of armor.  And in that case my BBs have no problems what so ever punching clear through enemy ships armor and have a far larger destructive power than the 16 and 15 inch guns that were used vs the Bismark.  So I can't really give a good comparison other than the fact that 18 inch super heavy shells can rather easily punch through most armor and then deliver a much bigger explosive inside.

So I guess the best way to put it is the Bismark is the best example we have but with the bigger guns we have in game like the 18" don't seem to have any vs ship damage other than the light DDs and escort carriers so I'm unsure how well or if 18" guns can be compared to the 16 and 15 inch ones used vs the Bismark

As for the ship sinking due to structural damage I think that's supposed to represent the situation where the Bismark was rendered effectively unable to fight in any way.  The guns being silenced and the ship being unable to move which you said happened like 30~ minutes in?  Sinking more involves the flooding situation which gun fire VS BBs is not that good at.  So I think this game abstracts a ship being rendered effectively dead but not sunk as 0% structural damage and just skips the need to actually flood it out to sink it.

Edited December 19, 2019 by captinjoehenry

[RAMJB]

I'm not fully ok with the "structural parameter" to judge if a ship has been sunk. Right now I can accept it as a representation of an "abandon ship" order that would make sense after a certain portion of the ship had been reduced to twisted metal. But I'm still not overly comfortable with it.

I disagree that "the flooding situation which gunfire vs BBs is not that good at". On the opposite - I think it's greatly overdone and that ships take far too much flooding damage out of shell hits. Compounded with the pretty generious hit ratios the game throws, the result is a tremendously short lifespan for any battleship to which things began going south. It just doesn't look right at all considering the ammount of punishment ships were able to take and survive in naval engagements.

I think the problem of your estimation is indeed skewed by your design choices ;). 18'' guns with SH ammunition will be the end-it-all-game of all end-it-all-games in campaign mode, and there's not a single instance of something like that ever used (Yamato's 18'' rounds were rather lightweight for their caliber). I'm sure that 2.5 ton shells would make a number on virtually anything they touched - but that's not the point of the overall arch the game covers.

The problem that others of us are trying to point out is that when using more or less historical design practices (which will be the major part of the game's campaign when released), ships just don't last what they should - and they don't do so by a wide stretch. Again, the Bismarck comparison is a tremendously extreme instance of the kinds of punishment big warships could stand, and maybe a too extreme one to the point of being skewed - but we do have the reports of the battle damage survived by other units in other engagements, and it's equally tremendous (one only has to go through a list of the kind of punishment the german BCs or HMS Warspite went through during Jutland only to survive to get an idea).

The point remains that, on more or less historical ship sizes and weapons, ships sink too fast. Particularily so battleships. And this is a problem for the game's intentions, specifically those involving any future implementation of the campaign.

Edited December 19, 2019 by RAMJB

[captinjoehenry]

14 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

I'm not fully ok with the "structural parameter" to judge if a ship has been sunk. Right now I can accept it as a representation of an "abandon ship" order that would make sense after a certain portion of the ship had been reduced to twisted metal. But I'm still not overly comfortable with it.

I disagree that "the flooding situation which gunfire vs BBs is not that good at". On the opposite - I think it's greatly overdone and that ships take far too much flooding damage out of shell hits. Compounded with the pretty generious hit ratios the game throws, the result is a tremendously short lifespan for any battleship to which things began going south. It just doesn't look right at all considering the ammount of punishment ships were able to take and survive in naval engagements.

I think the problem of your estimation is indeed skewed by your design choices ;). 18'' guns with SH ammunition will be the end-it-all-game of all end-it-all-games in campaign mode, and there's not a single instance of something like that ever used (Yamato's 18'' rounds were rather lightweight for their caliber). I'm sure that 2.5 ton shells would make a number on virtually anything they touched - but that's not the point of the overall arch the game covers.

The problem that others of us are trying to point out is that when using more or less historical design practices (which will be the major part of the game's campaign when released), ships just don't last what they should - and they don't do so by a wide stretch. Again, the Bismarck comparison is a tremendously extreme instance of the kinds of punishment big warships could stand, and maybe a too extreme one to the point of being skewed - but we do have the reports of the battle damage survived by other units in other engagements, and it's equally tremendous (one only has to go through a list of the kind of punishment the german BCs or HMS Warspite went through during Jutland only to survive to get an idea).

The point remains that, on more or less historical ship sizes and weapons, ships sink too fast. Particularily so battleships. And this is a problem for the game's intentions, specifically those involving any future implementation of the campaign.

Honestly I don't disagree with you.  But at the same time getting the last 5%~ of a ship down in the past took an ungodly amount of time.  Which means in the last version ships were super tanky as I feel is more proper but they got FAR too tanky once they were nearly dead making it excessively hard to do that last tiny smidge of damage to actually knock out the ship.  As in most of the compartments of the ship last patch were totally destroyed but the ship wouldn't die as your shells would just hit the already dead parts of the ships.

So basically I guess what would be more ideal would be the old system for the vast majority of a ships structural HP and the new system for the last bit.  As while admittedly in real life ships could be floating wrecks for a long time before being sunk it does get to a point of just being a bit silly that your mass salvos of 9~ BB shells smashing into the enemy doesn't actually damage them any further.

[Hellstrike]

At range, actually destoying heavily armoured ships seems diffucult. In the last mission, I had two battleships rain down 18-inch super-heavy ship on the "100000 ton monster" at ranges between 25k and 30k. I couldn't get closer because the BB kept sailing away from me. I had utterly wrecked the upper row of hull compartments, but couldn't score any effective hits to put her down or even just damage the engines and close in. HE, which deleted the CA escort with two hits each, was even less effective against the BB.

However, the accuracy was ridiculously high throughout the engagement, averaging out around 45% at 27 km.

[RedParadize]

@RAMJB About how fast battleship sink. Bismark is the most documented case for sure. In some case battleship sank much quicker. The Pre-dreadnought Borodino sunk pretty quickly. I would say that its extremely contextual, Bismark was fired at a unfavorable angle. (wreckage exploration was very revealing)  For Borodino it is was fire getting in armory. Now, I think one can argue that we do not have enough sample to figure out how much it take to sink a Battleship. One good hit might do, 700 might not.

There is one thing that make UA:D truly different from reality trough. Generally speaking, warship were out of combat way before they sank. The enemy would usually stop firing at a ship when convinced it was gonna sink (or not a treat anymore).

At the moment it does not happen in UA:D because:

-Damage in general affect accuracy, but not rate of fire or ability to shoot.
-Water damage is either catastrophic or fully containable. Damaged section do not let water get from one compartment to another.
-Fire rarely spread and almost never result in catastrophic damage.

Therefore it make more sense to shoot at a target until its dead.

[arkhangelsk]

3 hours ago, Tousansons said:

Why not adapt to this patch and participate to the discussion? You might not like some of the changes (although your one exemple is lacking and probably need further testing) but reverting to an older patch will just make you play with the old problems too. This is clearly not intended in an Alpha testing.

Finally using this patch of busted accuracy for the purpose of finding where and why the damage model need improvements (and oh boy it need improvements) seems more appropriate than "need realistik accuracy. Fix plz, here's this extensive wikipedia sheet for proof!$!"

I'm certain we need a working game with a fun gameplay before making it more realistic and accurate.

Might as well, but it was important to note how bad the First Impressions were. Besides, I don't think I'm the first person complaining about squishy ships in the new hotfix.

Second impressions. Well, at least I got the victory this time so I'm feeling better. I defer to RamJB on the realism stuff. As far as the feel goes, I am losing too much health per non critical hit and the "real battle" was over in 7 minutes. In other words, make one maneuvering error or get an unlucky hit and you are F-ed. Realism aside, I'm not sure this is even fun.

Meanwhile, what do you think my feelings are when I check out the enemy ship's Mark 5 guns (got wiped too fast the last time to check) and see these accuracies for 2500m?

17" gun: 66%, 5" gun: 89%. 4" gun: 60%. 2" gun: 99%

Guys, if you let people see numbers, they better at least look superficially plausible. Do you think this qualifies? This is blatantly trying to give you an artificial incentive to use the two inchers, and even if I force myself to accept the 89% of the 5 inch gun as the result of "being able to correct quickly" how do you explain the 4" gun?

I've been told even World of Warships or World of Tanks tries to avoid using the obvious, catalog stats as balancing factors... you are supposed to balance with the little stats like the modifiers you see rolling all over the left gunnery display, but stuff on the catalog card.

And no, as it turns out, making the ships squishier did not solve the problem that likely is the annoyance of many players - the enemy ship's health stuck at a certain percentage. It seems the game gives you points for hitting the destroyed areas again but ironically does not take off structural points - the destroyed compartments become de facto undestructible objects protecting the other parts. I would think the structure will still be weakened by the hits, and from a "fun" perspective seeing the bar get stuck is not very fun. I suggest going back to the old damage model, except to allow hits to destroyed portions to count as structural damage.

I am more on the RamJB side. Let's get this thing realistic. Realistic has intrinsic value and people can learn to accept a lot of things as fun. Fun is much less objective, a lot more subjective and there are other games doing it. But really... just let me rant a little bit.

What was so "unfun" about the old balance anyway? Why does everyone insist on being able to use secondaries (since RamJB has explained the realism part and they rejected it, it must not be realism)?
From a gameplay perspective, the important thing is that the game gives you useful counters. Can you defend your battleship against destroyers? Yes! Who cares if you have to use your main armament to do it - at the present stage of game development you get to designate only one target anyway and since the campaign isn't in yet there is plenty of ammunition. Just kill them with your main guns - it's more satisfying anyway to imagine that thing blowing up than being kind of pelted down.
Are the destroyers at least somewhat useful against battleships? Yes - sure you'll need a bunch of them but they can torpedo the battleship. In that sense the game is reasonably balanced. Do we really need to insist on a particular method of defeat so desperately we need to enter such obvious implausibilities as the gun stats up there?

[akd]

 

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

@RAMJB About how fast battleship sink. Bismark is the most documented case for sure. In some case battleship sank much quicker. The Pre-dreadnought Borodino sunk pretty quickly. I would say that its extremely contextual, Bismark was fired at a unfavorable angle. (wreckage exploration was very revealing)  For Borodino it is was fire getting in armory. Now, I think one can argue that we do not have enough sample to figure out how much it take to sink a Battleship. One good hit might do, 700 might not.

You could probably generalize safely to say that "one good hit" would not do unless that hit:

1. Detonated a main magazine or initiated a chain of events that directly led to main magazine detonation.

2. Caused sudden, large buoyancy loss on one side of the ship causing it to capsize (typically only the result of torpedo or mine strike).

Edited December 20, 2019 by akd

[RAMJB]

and #2 only holds true if the hit ship has woeful antitorpedo protection. Just one torpedo won't sink a ship with a proper purpose-designed Torpedo Defense System (and yes I'm excluding Cavour from that category alltogether, the italian WW1 rebuilds simply didn't have the space to make the Pugliese system work as intended, and it showed, because it didn't. So it was a purpose designed TDS indeed, but it was not a "proper" TDS)

Edited December 20, 2019 by RAMJB

[RedParadize]

@akd I would agree on that. But we could also add to this minor hit causing a chains of event leading up to catastrophic ending. History is full of unforeseen consequence.

@RAMJB History show us that system do not always live up to their expectation. Real life RNG is pretty nasty.

Here is few example of DDs bullet dodge ability:

Edited December 20, 2019 by RedParadize

[RAMJB]

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

History show us that system do not always live up to their expectation. Real life RNG is pretty nasty.

Not on sound, technology already put to the test of battle, or subjected to extensive material testing. We're not talking advanced electronics here, we're talking solid engineering that had passed the most essential validation tests, be it with repeated and intensive tests or directly subjected to the test of battle.

In what regards to TDS system the fundaments of the "conventional" TDS were already integral to the first generations of dreadnoughts, and once past that stage and after intensive (and I mean, really really *really* intensive) testing the more evolved layered TDS principle was born.

That TDS model, under many different shapes and forms, all conforming to the same basic essential principles, proved it's worth several times during WW2. Same as many other principles based on solid, well established, foundations that had been exhaustively tested and tried.

There are no exceptions to that rule. The only systems that "didn't live up to their expectations" where those thought as "innovative" (if not revolutionary) that had either a) not properly tested in practice (in live fire tests) or b) had been built defective because poor shipbuilding practices.

The italian TDS was one of those cases. The Pugliese system originated in an engineering idea that looked good on paper, that wasn't properly put to the test (because of the italian poor finances during the interwar years) and which only claim to be "workable" was it's integration in two experimental ships (Brennero and Tarvisio) that never suffered from any kind of underwater damage during their careers. It was an innovation for the sake of innovation - there was nothing inherently wrong with a layered system that was already known by the time Pugliese came up with his idea. The italians went with it anyway because...italian. No matter the alternative was a sound and proven system that had been adopted by every other navy in the world, they went with an unproven design, with an insufficient testing to guarantee it's true effectiveness.

And then came the second part. The Pugliese system demanded a very wide hull to provide for the (Rather extensive) depth the system needed to properly function. It was however slapped onto WW1 battleships hulls undergoing conversion, without taking in account that their hulls were nowhere near beamy enough to leave enough space for the TDS system to work as intended.

Net result - it didn't work. And Cavour went down after a single torpedo hit at Taranto. To complicate matters, the Littorios suffered several torpedo hits during their careers and the reports are decidedly mixed. Some of them praise the system - when it worked. Others damn it completely because of poor construction workmanship meant metallurgic weaknesses on several junctures of the system against the internal bulkhead, causing weaknesses through which the force of torpedo detonations (intended to crush the internal "cylinder of the system") ruptured through, rendering the whole system innefective. Amongst several other things (I mean, the official Supermarina report on Littorio's damage on the night of Taranto, conducted by Admiral Bergamini made a point explaining that Littorio's damage was worse than expected because "it was known the ship was of worse construction than Vittorio Veneto." Yikes).


Long story short, TL:DR; engineering in the 30s and 40s is not what it is today in the age of computerized systems and electronics. Back them systems that were properly tested and thoroughly tried and experimented with didn't just "not live up to expectations" out of the blue, as long as they were properly built.

It was only when "innovative" systems that were lacking in proper thorough testing of effectiveness and reliability were involved, or when construction defects due to poor shipyard practices played a part, that problems happened. German super-high pressure machineries. Italian TDS systems. Japanese "opposite island" carriers. US early war Radar (gave endless trouble during Guadalcanal to the point of confusing an island with an enemy ship at one point). Long etcetera.
 

Edited December 20, 2019 by RAMJB

[RedParadize]

@RAMJB You are making my case for me here. Most warship pre-40s used brand new concept and technology well before they reached maturity. Technology advanced so fast that some ship became obsolete before being launched. Allot of it ended up never being combat tested at all simply because there was not much sea combat some period. As you said yourself. As you said all this happened before modern engineering. There was allot of things that looked good on paper but had to be changed on the fly during construction.

Given that game is from 1890 to 1940. I would argue that design and construction flaw was very common, not exception.

Edited December 20, 2019 by RedParadize

[RAMJB]

On the opposite, I'm making the case that out of a handful of battleships, all the rest were built according to traditional principles and engineering practices that were both sound, and extensively tested by the time they entered service.

German extreme pressure machineries were used on the twins, which a lot of people don't even qualify as battleships. The Bismarcks had standard machinery, and if anything, the design was too conservative (anchored in the WW1-style incremental armor layout). Japanese battleships' only claim for innovation was size. size of ship, size of guns, size of armor - other than that they were pretty much conventional. US battleships might have had initial trouble with radar, but they had pretty good optical systems anyway and were sound and practical in every other way. The "Long etcetera" pretty much covers non-essential systems for the ships. That the british UP AA rocket was a miserable failure didn't compromise the ship in any way at the time of taking hits, for instance.

Essentially what I'm saying is that designers weren't idiots and they designed battleships with a common idea in mind: making them durable. They didn't compromise in innovation for the sake of innovation - they went with solid, tested, exhaustively tried practices when designing their ships. Sometimes to a fault (Bismarck). The italians were an exception with their TDS. But that's one nation (and three ships) out of dozens in the world. 


At any rate I can accept that RNG screws me over now and then and that I can get my otherwise solid and well designed BB shot out with a single hit (be it gunfire, torpedo, whatever) now and then. Key part here: "now and then"

Having BBs being sunk all the time after a few minutes of taking a few heavy hits is not a case of "one hit wonders" or "RNGesus thumbing you down". It's a case of a damage model that needs some serious look into, because currently ,it's not right.

See it's so bad that the video I was recording today I had to ditch. I couldn't make a credible case of why a 45.000 ton warship with perfectly good armor protection got it's whole waterline rip open to massive flooding from 15'' gunfire at a range of 15 km in less than 10 minutes flat of engagement.

The warship wasn't even mine - was the AI's. I can't make a video of a game I'm hyping because it intends to portray immersive naval combat of the age of the big gun battlesyip,  trying to make it look good, when ridiculous stuff like that goes on in the screen. So I ended up uploading nothing today.
 

Edited December 20, 2019 by RAMJB