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


Nick Thomadis

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22 hours ago, RedParadize said:

@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

 

22 hours ago, RAMJB said:

On the opposite… 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...

@RedParadize is 100% right, that concepts "changed on the fly [and] during construction", or once concepts were to be found flawed.

Royal Navy used modern engineering principles to produce concepts such as "speed is best armor", the battlecruiser concept.

And built all these ships...

Invincible class x3
Indefatigable class x2
Lion class x2
HMS Queen Mary x1
HMS Tiger x1
Renown class x2
Courageous class x3
Admiral class x4.

nek minnit...

Battle of Jutland...

And the battle to make the concept obsolete.

HMS Hood-  Admiral class (laid down 1916, completed 1920) is one of those ships redesigned during construction, with new 12" armor.

 

PS.

Since the topic has advance too far I will just answer your question as post scriptum. I used "engineering principles" (loosely) in the term best descripted by Wikipedia...

"Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings.[1] The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application."

of the one which was to reduce armor to increase speed, that is all it was. 

Edited by Skeksis
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Me thinks Skesis is confounding two kinds of concepts - engineering concepts and tactical ones. RamJB is referring to the former, while a battlecruiser is a latter concept that still used sound engineering principles. People have predicted that they won't stand up to battleship shells too well. This was accepted and it was promised the battlecruisers will never have to stay very long under battleship fire. The war came. Promises were soon forgotten and they  were sent up against ships with battleship class guns. Further, they violated the warranty by promoting expedited gun procedures. The results were broadly as engineering principles predicted ... boom, boom, boom.

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@Skeksis It is a nice example, can fell the "but Battlecruiser were not made to engage Battleship" comment coming in.

There was flawed concept, that's for sure. However I would put more emphasis on the sheer amount of innovations applied all across each of these ship. Each new ship class incorporating system that were massively different on the previous one. Each innovations that on their own were great, until you place them next to each other. There was so much change being made that two ship of the same class could have hundreds of tons of difference, without anyone being able to explain all the reasons.


 

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6 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

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)?

First, I m not seeing "everyone" insisting on the use of secondaries. I ll be nice and say that I see a lots of valid complaints about the damage model. Which is true, this hotfix made light about some problems with it. It's silly to flood to death a BB's with a few HE shells at long ranges. The old balance wasn't good for testing as I stated:

The "good way" was to slap as many big calliber guns on BB's, use the free weight on armor and enjoy hours long battle at long range spamming HE because of that. It was perhaps more "accurate" in term of battle duration, but the logic in term of ship design was flawed in my opinion. If warships of these era were designed with secondaries in mind, I think it's a good call to buff them (even if it's too much now) in game to at least motivate player to use them. Fun is everyone taste, logic is to the developper alone and I think this hotfix was a good call because of that.

Now on the other hand, what bother me is the overreliance with realism/immersion/historical value, ect. I already said that I m not against "some" spreadsheet to back an argument. What I'm seeing here is a lots of spreadsheet to back one argument. It add nothing to the overall discussion and make it just harder to read and understand. All of these pretty detailed historical statements are (for now) rarely backed with concrete in game events other than "I played one game, this happened in minutes". So much for precision. "Minutes" in what? Normal speed, *2? What year? How many ships? What gun callibers? Armor schemes? 'ect

For exemple: yesterday I made one 1914 battle with 3 BB's 1 CA 2CL et 12 DD's. I designed the BB's with the best gun tech, propulsion and armor improvement for the years. 8*14 inch guns, 10+ 4inch secondaries 14inch belt/turret armor 4.4 deck/turret top, 5 belt extended, 1.5 deck extended. It took me more than 15 minutes at speed one to cripple the first battleship and overall the battle lasted for 2 hours + in game time (I speeded up the game two or three times) While their BB's had "only" 11.2 inch of belt armor, they probably used the same deck/extended as me.

Destroyers could do something against other destroyers with their 3 inch guns, previously they couldn't. I got two occasions to shred one CL and one DD with the secondaries of one of my BB, previously they couldn't. Two DD's and a CL were enough to hound and sink a CA, the engagement took a good 15 minutes and the only damage taken was from a torpedo she fired at one point (It wasn't enough to sink a DD). The AI started to flee after his second BB took a beating. I fired only HE shells, the AI fired mostly AP. I lost no ships to gunfire. 8 DD, one CA and one CL to torpedoes. And the only damage to my BB's was two torpedoes which damaged one engine and caused some minor flooding.

For now the real danger to the player in battles are torpedoes and to an extent large calliber AP shells at close range. The AI can't use shell switching properly, this result in most of the "fair" engagement (as in the same numbers of ships/type) being one sided if no mistakes are made.

To conclude: can we think more in game terms? I don't see anything changing with just book quote, historical value and "Oh I prefer that I will not test/talk about this." Remember, we still don't have the crew value in game. How will they affect ships behavior? If accuracy is "too good" now, will it be influenced by crew quality later? What about damage control, ect. Even if we nerf accuracy/buff sturdiness now, we will not have something close to reality.

 

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3 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Royal Navy used modern engineering principles to produce concepts such as "speed is best armor", the battlecruiser concept.

 

May I be so bold as to please ask you exactly how, from an engineering point of view, those ships didn't work as intended?

Please keep in mind that in the list of roles to cover in their doctrine, taking capital ship caliber hits was not in the list. Simply stated, those ships weren't designed to take the hits that blew them. So you can't blame the engineering end of things on the loss of Invincible, Queen Mary and Indefatigable on "things that didn't work as intended". Those ships weren't intended to take those hits to begin with.


Now doctrinally there were based on a flawed concept. And let's not talk about things like the Spurious, Outrageous and Curious. That can happen. Ill-conceived weapons from the doctrinary standpoint have existed across history, both on navies, armies and air forces. But that should be perfectly demonstrated by the game by teaching you the lesson that if you bring big ships to a big gun battle, they better have protection less they vanish under heavy gunfire. Being destroyed due to being designed on wrong tactical grounds is one thing and I expect the game to fully embrace that idea.

But being destroyed because a ship's system "didn't work as intended" is a whole different one, and that's what we're talking about here.

So I reiterate my question: how, and in which manner, didn't those ships work as intended from an engineering point of view?.

Edited by RAMJB
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First, I m not seeing "everyone" insisting on the use of secondaries.

Well, do you remember that little flamewar over at Alpha 2 over secondaries? The one that almost certainly led to this desperate "band aid hardfix"?

Quote

The "good way" was to slap as many big calliber guns on BB's, use the free weight on armor and enjoy hours long battle at long range spamming HE because of that

Oh, I do that too. If weight allows me, I'll put some torpedoes on it because they might be helpful in opening holes on the enemy ship, but otherwise I go with all big gun layouts. RamJB IIRC insists secondaries are a bit useful, and maybe they are, but so far those little woodpeckers haven't been worth sticking on for me. And I'm happy. If nothing else, it takes less time to throw the ship together.

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If warships of these era were designed with secondaries in mind, I think it's a good call to buff them (even if it's too much now) in game to at least motivate player to use them. Fun is everyone taste,

With respect, here is the inconsistency. Since you are putting realism at a low priority, logically what warships of these eras did is also a low priority. What's left is the game, and ultimately no game can make it so that every option it provides is equally viable. There will be winning combinations and losing combinations, and that some options are just useless does not make for a poor game.

Besides, aren't the ships we were building the ultimate expression of the All-Big Gun concept? Maybe the truth is that the designers were wrong all along - overall it is better to just have all big guns and use the saved weight to put some armor or a few more rounds per main gun (you can expend those on pesky destroyers :) ). If you think about how long it took just to break out of the mixed battery concept, this is not superficially implausible. At least it is not more implausible than the accuracy roller coaster I quoted in the previous post.

Quote

All of these pretty detailed historical statements are (for now) rarely backed with concrete in game events other than "I played one game, this happened in minutes". So much for precision. "Minutes" in what? Normal speed, *2? What year? How many ships? What gun calibers? Armor schemes? 'etc

Well, for my part, time prevents me from playtesting as thoroughly as some of the others, and really if no one has as yet complained about the squishy ships, I would have bit my tongue. But since it has already started I might as well add my concurring experience to the fire.

For the record, the first time I was sunk before I could even fight back. OK, I confess. I used too much rudder trying to open my gun arcs and the ship overswung, and the enemy disabled me while I was trying to recover, but that must still only be a matter of a few game minutes. Oh that was traumatic... Now, from a gameplay perspective and ignoring realism, how much fun is it to have the battle decided just because you made one mistake?

Second time (it is the Naval Academy one between the "Iowa" and the Yamato". I was 76100 tons (you know, when the size of the hull jumps) and he was 88000 or 88500 tons. I put 9 18 guns plus 5x2 23-inch torpedo tubes. He had, as you know, 17 inch guns and 29.5 knot speed. I had like 10" of Krupp IV deck armor and maximum bulkheads, Citadel IV scheme, speed 31.5, best stereoscopic rangefinder, best radar. He fired first, I fired second. 7 game minutes later I noticed he has put himself on retreat course with a large chunk of health gone, and I myself had lost over half my health (no vitals destroyed) - it is really painful watching the bar drop by 5 and 10 percent chunks with each hit. After that I chased him at 24.5 knots (he was running at about 17 I think) and closed him for 2 game hours before I got to "stab" him with point blank fire and finally took his life (that part did not improve from previous versions).

Does that help?

Quote

Destroyers could do something against other destroyers with their 3 inch guns, previously they couldn't. I got two occasions to shred one CL and one DD with the secondaries of one of my BB, previously they couldn't. 

Frankly, focusing on gameplay I'm more interested in whether I can use my destroyers to do something against other destroyers, and though it is a pain as it turned out you can. Even in Alpha-2. I actually won Destroyers vs Torpedo Boats back then even though the guns were really s*itty in that scenario. (OK, so it was after I tried all kinds of cruisers to see if they'll work better but ultimately I won with destroyers and no cheats). So, you can kill destroyers then and you can kill destroyers now, big deal. Is there really a desperate need to gain the ability to defeat them with one particular type of gun?

Similarly (in fact even more so), you used to be able to kill CLs and DDs with your BB and you can kill them now. In broad terms there was no improvement.

Quote

Two DD's and a CL were enough to hound and sink a CA,

In broad terms, is that the balance we want? It depends on what kind of CAs, DDs and CLs they were, but still, 3 little ships sunk a CA? If Graf Spee vs 3 little ships is any example, the CA should have won (and the disparity between Graf Spee and those three cruisers were probably less than a CA versus 2 destroyers and a CL). Whether on realism grounds or gameplay grounds, this one makes my eyebrow arch.

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I've not seen it mentioned which makes me wonder if anyone's noticed it.

Is it just my impression, or have the penetration values of guns suddenly gone insanely HIGH with this change?

The 4" Mk4 secondary gun now has a penetration of 16.8" at 1km, and 13.1" at 2.5km. This is on a BC-1 hull you can use in the "Armed convoy attack" mission where the enemy has 2 pre-dreadnought BBs.

To put this in perspective, the 13.5" main guns so common across the RN fleet at Jutland as it was used for BBs and also BC is listed as having 17.3" at 0m and 12.2" at 9.1km. (see http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_135-45_mk5.php ).

So my 4" secondaries have a pen value comparable with a 13.5" BB/BC main armament out to 2.5km. 

So what about the 12" mark 3 on my BC?  1km = 46.9"     5km = 34.1"     10km = 27.5"

Let's check the Iowa 16"/50 mk 7.               0m = 32.6"    4.8km = 29.4"    9.1km = 26.2"  (see http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php )

No wonder people are seeing things getting filled with holes.

I don't know about you, but these number comparisons suggest to me there's still plenty of work to be done on the armour, weapons and pen mechanics interactions.

Edited by Steeltrap
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2 hours ago, Tousansons said:

All of these pretty detailed historical statements are (for now) rarely backed with concrete in game events other than "I played one game, this happened in minutes". So much for precision. "Minutes" in what? Normal speed, *2? What year? How many ships? What gun callibers? Armor schemes? 'ect

You can check my standard of use of time compression in the videos I've already posted. If you don't want to suffer from a severe case of hearing and psychological trauma due to my accent (which is fully understandable XD), I'll sum it up for you:

I rarely time compress AT ALL - until the battle is decided (enemy fleeing due to damage, enemy reduced to a many vs 1 situation, etc).


For more accurate portrayal yesterday I tried to record a video for the channel where I repeated the attempt I made a couple days ago to get a 1BB and 2 DDs vs 1BB and 2DDs going. Last time it...let's say...didn't go as planned when the AI dropped a 103.000 tons monster on my 35000 ton ship. Made for a quite funny clip but not one that I could use for any kind of insightful advice on tactics or any kind of historical similarity. For obvious reasons. So I tried to re-run the thing and hope for a better setup.

I indeed was more lucky this time and the AI brought along a 45.000 ton ship to fight off my 8x15'' 35000 tonner. From ranges of 18 down to 15km and in 10 minutes flat, the enemy ship was reduced to 12% flotation, which is when he turned tails and began running. I stopped the recording at that moment. There was no way I could keep up with the commentary without pointing out that such a result was an absolutely ridiculous thing. And it was, to the point of making the whole video pointless other than to point out a severe flawed damage model. It was happening on screen, I couldn't act as if nothing "strange" was going on, or as if all things the game was showing were all fine and A-OK.

I had to adress the elephant on the room, or just ditch the video.

As I don't want to do that kind of coverage with a game that's in early alpha testing phase, I made no video instead. Simply stated, at this stage there's no point in showing footage only to prove that something's wrong. That's unfair to the game and the developers as things going wild during a testing phase is something that's the be expected. On the other hand that puts me in the position of...having nothing to upload. But I guess that's my own problem, though.


 

2 hours ago, Tousansons said:

Destroyers could do something against other destroyers with their 3 inch guns, previously they couldn't.


That's because 3'' guns were woefully inadequate at the time of dealing with destroyers. I've mentioned it many times in the past, but I have no problems mentioning it again: The design motivation of the Iron Duke class was to step up the secondary battery from 4'' caliber of the previous class to 6'' caliber that became standard afterwards because already in 1908 there were serious misgivings about the ability of 4'' guns to present a credible defense against the destroyers of the time (which displaced less than 1000 tons).

If 4'' guns weren't deemed enough to be enough to deal with DDs, go figure 3'' ones. So, while previously "destroyers couldn't do anything against other destroyers with their 3'' guns" that just means that previously things were working as they should. While now, they are not.

 

 

2 hours ago, Tousansons said:

To conclude: can we think more in game terms? 


I'm one who has already pointed that the game is in very early stages and that's missing many features that synergize with many other features already here. For instance, the ability to manually choose secondary targets (which you currently can't do), or the lack of "supression under fire". Things that will be here, but aren't yet.

But there's no features that I think are missing that explain how ships can nuke each other so easily now, or that gives me any kind of expectative that when introduced they'll normalize the situation. Simply stated: Gun accuracy at most ranges is too high, and shell-caused flooding hits is exceedingly high aswell.

The end result are 45000 tonners being shut down in 10 minutes by 15'' gunfire. That's not because of "missing game terms". That's because the damage model isn't right.

Edited by RAMJB
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I really need to point out something about historical accuracy. A game may be perfectly accurate on the technical side and still completely fail to depict reality on the global scale. What is more important?

 

1 hour ago, RAMJB said:

If 4'' guns weren't deemed enough to be enough to deal with DDs, go figure 3'' ones. So, while previously "destroyers couldn't do anything against other destroyers with their 3'' guns" that just means that previously things were working as they should. While now, they are not.

Source please.

Edit:
About ship sinking too quickly. Note that its always AI ship that die too quickly, never yours. Auto generate ship a couple of times and you will quickly notice that it rarely add much deck armor. In any case, never enough to stop a 15 inch shell at 20km. Now any penetration on main deck ( I think extended too) may result in catastrophic damage. That is not historically unheard of. I am of the opinion that deck pen is too high. Simply because no real ship ever had as much deck armor as mine.

Edited by RedParadize
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Quick one off the library shelf:

John Robert's "Battlecruisers" published by Caxton editions:

Reference to the 3'' (british 12 pounder) being labelled inadequate for anti-DD work already in 1906. Page 96:

(Talking about secondary battery proposals for HMS Invincible):

"The Committee on Designs initially favoured an ATB armament of 4in guns but the development of a new high velocity 12pdr gun of improved accuracy caused a modification of this view on the basis that more such guns could be mounted and they offered a higher rate of fire. However in 1906 firing trials against the old destroyer Skate with 3pdr, 12pdr, and 4in guns led to a reversal of this decision as the latter calibre was shown to be the only one of the three tried that stood a good chance a stopping a  destroyer before she got close enough to deliver a torpedo attack"

Please also note too, that "Stopping a destroyer" does not equal "Sinking a destroyer". Also, please note that Skate displaced 350 tons only. And 3in guns were thought as not being enough to deal with it. Now think of what that exactly entails for the 3'' caliber as a viable weapon to damage ships roughly three times that size  (what was already common by WW1). Also please note that secondary batteries of battleships of the time ammounted for a lot of guns. Destroyers had guns in the single digits, usually no more than a couple, and generally of smaller caliber than battleship secondaries. They could kill other destroyers but it wasn't an easy job for them by far.


Reference to the 4in gun being labelled as no longer adequate for anti-DD work in 1910 while discussing the Lion class secondaries: Page 97:

"by 1910 the increased range and power of the torpedo meant that torpedo attack by destroyers in  daylight action was a much more likely possibility. In addition, the size of destroyers had increased and the need to stop these  vessels at much greter range soon led to demands for an increase in the power and range of the ATB armament."


What follows is a long paragraph that I refuse to just go ahead and write on it's whole. The short version would be that at the time of the design of the Iron Duke and the Tiger classes 4in weapons were no longer trusted as enough to stop destroyer attacks, that a general consensus was agreed that something bigger was needed ("something bigger" means 6in guns, because the british lacked a 5'' weapon at the time) and that the german widespread use of secondary guns of 5.9in of caliber in their ships sealed the change. The upcoming Iron Dukes and Tiger were accordingly redesigned to incorporate 6in secondary guns instead of the 4in that had been standard in the RN until that point.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited by RAMJB
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I have commented many times on the damage model in the past, and I had taken a bunch of screenshots yesterday to make the same points. For some reason, however, those shots don't include any of the combat interface (I've not seen any option about disabling the interface with screenshots, so no idea why it is).

Were I to sum up what I found, it's this:

1. by far the most important survival factor is the number of bulkheads.

2. CLASS of ship and displacement appear irrelevant from what I can see in terms of altering the importance of bulkheads.

3. For any ship of CL or greater, the extended armour zones are crucial as there appear to be no effective transverse bulkheads at bow and stern. Ships of all classes will be nuked by penetration to those areas setting off magazine explosions, even when it's a 4" shell hitting a old style CA. It is, frankly, crazily out of hand in the earlier tech era ships (which is where I have generally been mucking around). HE shells work even better for this than AP because the HE doesn't ricochet yet somehow can blow up the magazine. Yet we know pre-dreadnought BBs of 1890-1900 could have bow and stern transverse bulkheads of as much as 16" of basic iron plate.

While we'd expect point one to be true, the other two are IMO rather disastrously incorrect.

Before this update, it was quite possible to find a merchant ship far more difficult to kill than a pre-dreadnought BB simply by virtue of the bulkhead status. As I said, my screenshots don't have the details I made sure I thought I was gathering, but I also made some notes.

TR Kita, Maximum Bulkheads, 15,500t disp, 12.5kts speed, -9.9% target size modifier.

In the space of 55 seconds I hit it with 2x13", 15x7" and 16x4". That left it with fires and flooding, with Structure 57% and Float 79%. I shifted fire.

2 minutes later almost all the fires were out and flooding stopped. Structure 54% (-3) and Float 90% (+11). 5 minutes later, no fires or flooding and no changes.

In other words, that barrage of fire was insufficient to kill it.

TR Furutaka, Max Bulkheads,  15,500t disp,  12.5kts, +3.7% target size modifier. (note the 13.6% difference in target modifiers between ships of same displacement and speed; interesting)

In 51 seconds I hit it with 6x13", 8x7" and 7x4". Fires and flooding, Structure 74%, Float 57% and engines 2 and 3 damaged.

5:53 later it had Structure 73% (-1), Float 36% (-21) with no fires or flooding and both engines repaired.

Again, it was able to recover from that barrage of fire.

In those 5:53, however, I finished off a pre-dreadnought BB and sank 3 other transports. They BB was minimum bulkheads while the transports were 1 each of minimum, few and standard.

The capacity to stem damage is so heavily skewed to the number of bulkheads none of the other factors that ought to be relevant count (displacement and crew numbers for a start).

I put the following in the "combat feedback" thread 5 days ago:

I have sunk pre-dreadnought BBs with far fewer hits than I have transports FFS and it appears entirely to be due to the bulkheads 'number'. Anything with 'many' or 'maximum' is going to be a real damage sponge and PITA to sink. Anything with 'minimum' or 'few' is going to be pretty easy. Now it could be the devs are just playing around with the values to see the effects, but if I were to make suggestions they would include:

1. Ship classes ought to have both a minimum and maximum bulkhead condition, OR their bulkheads ought to have an automatic level of effectiveness that differ even without the player choosing to include improved bulkheads in their designs. No BB can EVER be easier to sink than a merchant ship, period, no matter what their bulkhead 'number' is shown as. My own preference would be the min/max value approach, so you can't have transports with max or BBs lower than 'standard' (or perhaps 'few'?) and then their quality can be chosen as per now.

2. Ability to perform damage control ought to be a function of crew numbers. At present this doesn't seem to be the case, and you can see merchant ships with fires all over the place and flotation down to 10% start to recover if you stop firing at them. Apart from sheer size and armour reasons, BBs were also the hardest to sink because they had the most specialist damage control crews on top of crew generally that could be diverted if important enough. Yet this doesn't seem to apply so far.

I suspect the whole issue of bulkheads, compartmentalisation, various citadel armour schemes and their consequences plus means of damage and means of damage control are all works in progress. They must be, as clearly they're rather crude and insufficiently detailed at present and thus produce some clearly unreasonable results.

Edited by Steeltrap
Fixed typo
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4 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I've not seen it mentioned which makes me wonder if anyone's noticed it.

Is it just my impression, or have the penetration values of guns suddenly gone insanely HIGH with this change?

The 4" Mk4 secondary gun now has a penetration of 16.8" at 1km, and 13.1" at 2.5km. This is on a BC-1 hull you can use in the "Armed convoy attack" mission where the enemy has 2 pre-dreadnought BBs.

To put this in perspective, the 13.5" main guns so common across the RN fleet at Jutland as it was used for BBs and also BC is listed as having 17.3" at 0m and 12.2" at 9.1km. (see http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_135-45_mk5.php ).

So my 4" secondaries have a pen value comparable with a 13.5" BB/BC main armament out to 2.5km. 

So what about the 12" mark 3 on my BC?  1km = 46.9"     5km = 34.1"     10km = 27.5"

Let's check the Iowa 16"/50 mk 7.               0m = 32.6"    4.8km = 29.4"    9.1km = 26.2"  (see http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php )

No wonder people are seeing things getting filled with holes.

I don't know about you, but these number comparisons suggest to me there's still plenty of work to be done on the armour, weapons and pen mechanics interactions.

I think the game penetrations are for wrought iron, so basically divide by 2 to get good modern steel. The 4" seems a bit high, because that's basically 100mm and the penetration of say the D-10 is only about 160mm using WWII ammo at 1km, but not absurdly, manifestly, blatantly impossible I guess. I suspect it's the current mania to boost the little guns no matter what.

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1 hour ago, Steeltrap said:

I have commented many times on the damage model in the past, and I had taken a bunch of screenshots yesterday to make the same points. For some reason, however, those shots don't include any of the combat interface (I've not seen any option about disabling the interface with screenshots, so no idea why it is).

Were I to sum up what I found, it's this:

1. by far the most important survival factor is the number of bulkheads.

2. CLASS of ship and displacement appear irrelevant from what I can see in terms of altering the importance of bulkheads.

3. For any ship of CL or greater, the extended armour zones are crucial as there appear to be no effective transverse bulkheads at bow and stern. Ships of all classes will be nuked by penetration to those areas setting off magazine explosions, even when it's a 4" shell hitting a old style CA. It is, frankly, crazily out of hand in the earlier tech era ships (which is where I have generally been mucking around). HE shells work even better for this than AP because the HE doesn't ricochet yet somehow can blow up the magazine. Yet we know pre-dreadnought BBs of 1890-1900 could have bow and stern transverse bulkheads of as much as 16" of basic iron plate.

While we'd expect point one to be true, the other two are IMO rather disastrously incorrect.

Before this update, it was quite possible to find a merchant ship far more difficult to kill than a pre-dreadnought BB simply by virtue of the bulkhead status. As I said, my screenshots don't have the details I made sure I thought I was gathering, but I also made some notes.

TR Kita, Maximum Bulkheads, 15,500t disp, 12.5kts speed, -9.9% target size modifier.

In the space of 55 seconds I hit it with 2x13", 15x7" and 16x4". That left it with fires and flooding, with Structure 57% and Float 79%. I shifted fire.

2 minutes later almost all the fires were out and flooding stopped. Structure 54% (-3) and Float 90% (+11). 5 minutes later, no fires or flooding and no changes.

In other words, that barrage of fire was insufficient to kill it.

TR Furutaka, Max Bulkheads,  15,500t disp,  12.5kts, +3.7% target size modifier. (note the 13.6% difference in target modifiers between ships of same displacement and speed; interesting)

In 51 seconds I hit it with 6x13", 8x7" and 7x4". Fires and flooding, Structure 74%, Float 57% and engines 2 and 3 damaged.

5:53 later it had Structure 73% (-1), Float 36% (-21) with no fires or flooding and both engines repaired.

Again, it was able to recover from that barrage of fire.

In those 5:53, however, I finished off a pre-dreadnought BB and sank 3 other transports. They BB was minimum bulkheads while the transports were 1 each of minimum, few and standard.

The capacity to stem damage is so heavily skewed to the number of bulkheads none of the other factors that ought to be relevant count (displacement and crew numbers for a start).

I put the following in the "combat feedback" thread 5 days ago:

I have sunk pre-dreadnought BBs with far fewer hits than I have transports FFS and it appears entirely to be due to the bulkheads 'number'. Anything with 'many' or 'maximum' is going to be a real damage sponge and PITA to sink. Anything with 'minimum' or 'few' is going to be pretty easy. Now it could be the devs are just playing around with the values to see the effects, but if I were to make suggestions they would include:

1. Ship classes ought to have both a minimum and maximum bulkhead condition, OR their bulkheads ought to have an automatic level of effectiveness that differ even without the player choosing to include improved bulkheads in their designs. No BB can EVER be easier to sink than a merchant ship, period, no matter what their bulkhead 'number' is shown as. My own preference would be the min/max value approach, so you can't have transports with max or BBs lower than 'standard' (or perhaps 'few'?) and then their quality can be chosen as per now.

2. Ability to perform damage control ought to be a function of crew numbers. At present this doesn't seem to be the case, and you can see merchant ships with fires all over the place and flotation down to 10% start to recover if you stop firing at them. Apart from sheer size and armour reasons, BBs were also the hardest to sink because they had the most specialist damage control crews on top of crew generally that could be diverted if important enough. Yet this doesn't seem to apply so far.

I suspect the whole issue of bulkheads, compartmentalisation, various citadel armour schemes and their consequences plus means of damage and means of damage control are all works in progress. They must be, as clearly they're rather crude and insufficiently detailed at present and thus produce some clearly unreasonable results.

I'll respectfully dissent on your 1. I'm guessing in real life you won't see many transports with better internal compartmentalization than a warship, but this is a game and there is no fundamental reason you can't choose (at the cost of efficiency of course) to make a very durable transport. As long as the toughest battleship you can make is still tougher than the toughest transport, I don't see what the problem is.

At least from a gameplay perspective, in the campaign mode where you might have to protect the transports, you might appreciate the advantages of tough transports. They can always balance it out by having them carry less, so you need to make more of them to cart your troops or your vitally needed supplies. Or maybe you just don't get to pick what you escort.

If I'm not mistaken, the Transports weren't really an area we are supposed to touch at the moment anyway. It's not selectable in Custom Battles, and the only way you could even see them in your build screen is to engage the now disabled Cheat functions.

I don't even find it that unbelievable that a lot of real life warships have the equivalent of Minimum or Few bulkheads in the game. First they were in a naval arms race and appearances were important. Then they became Treaty warships and everything became a matter of squeezing things under fixed displacement. I won't be shocked if between braggable guns/speed/armor and invisible things like bulkheads, they chose the former.

2 seems reasonable but since we don't have crew implemented yet, it's too soon to complain about it, IMO.

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1 hour ago, arkhangelsk said:

I'll respectfully dissent on your 1. I'm guessing in real life you won't see many transports with better internal compartmentalization than a warship, but this is a game and there is no fundamental reason you can't choose (at the cost of efficiency of course) to make a very durable transport. As long as the toughest battleship you can make is still tougher than the toughest transport, I don't see what the problem is.

At least from a gameplay perspective, in the campaign mode where you might have to protect the transports, you might appreciate the advantages of tough transports. They can always balance it out by having them carry less, so you need to make more of them to cart your troops or your vitally needed supplies. Or maybe you just don't get to pick what you escort.

If I'm not mistaken, the Transports weren't really an area we are supposed to touch at the moment anyway. It's not selectable in Custom Battles, and the only way you could even see them in your build screen is to engage the now disabled Cheat functions.

I don't even find it that unbelievable that a lot of real life warships have the equivalent of Minimum or Few bulkheads in the game. First they were in a naval arms race and appearances were important. Then they became Treaty warships and everything became a matter of squeezing things under fixed displacement. I won't be shocked if between braggable guns/speed/armor and invisible things like bulkheads, they chose the former.

2 seems reasonable but since we don't have crew implemented yet, it's too soon to complain about it, IMO.


I disagree with your opinion on merchants. Historically (and nowadays too) there was a significant different between commercial construction and military construction. Merchant ships weren't built to the same standard as warships, for very understandable cost/efficiency reasons. Steel quality wasn't the same, structural integrity wasn't the same. They were designed with cargo capacity and fuel efficiency in mind, not taking any kind of steps towards improving battle damage absorption.

In fact the differentiation can be seen in the WW2 crash programs that produced things as the british CVLs or the escort carriers. Commercial yards were used for the former using standard merchant construction practices to maximize hulls at minimal cost (and as a result the ships were nowhere near as tough as fleet carriers, nor were expected to be). The later were little more than merchant hulls, either converted or purposefully built, geared towards mass production with little other consideration in mind (in the american case; the british paid quite a lot of attention towards fire safety on their CVEs, that's why they were much slower to come online, as they would convert even transferred ships to their principles, much to the dismay of the americans).

This applied not only to merchant shipping. Military geared transports (LTSs, fleet oilers, transports owned by the navy) were built to commercial standards. Maybe with slightly extra care for resistance against damage, but never anything close to a warship standard. Those also were dedicated military vessels, which represent only a minimal fraction of what would be used by a military in wartime. Because navies don't build anything beyond what represents a reasonable logistical sealift capacity for sustaining it's own logistical needs on peacetimes.

In case of a war the merchant marine gets pressed into service and put directly under military control to ensure national supply, and then to give the navy any supplementary sealifting capacity they needed over what they had in peacetime.

And all those ships pressed into service weren't built by the navy - they were built by private contractors to the request of private merchant shipping companies who would then go and operate them to earn money as transport companies. The merchant marine was made up of ships built by private investment, designed for their own priorities in shipbuilding, not yours. Which won't put any kind of stock on how well those ships can handle taking battleship shells. So you should have no say in how those ships are designed. 


There's no way, and I mean it seriously, NO WAY that a merchant ship would have the kind of subdivision and toughness the game gives to ships with top slider choices for bulkheads. Nor nowhere close to the damage control abilities they show in the game. I personally don't have any huge problem with how it is right now because, as many other things - placeholder. But this is nowhere near representative of how merchant ships should be able to take damage in the final release version of the game.

Edited by RAMJB
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1 hour ago, arkhangelsk said:

I think the game penetrations are for wrought iron, so basically divide by 2 to get good modern steel. The 4" seems a bit high, because that's basically 100mm and the penetration of say the D-10 is only about 160mm using WWII ammo at 1km, but not absurdly, manifestly, blatantly impossible I guess. I suspect it's the current mania to boost the little guns no matter what.

My point is that there was a sudden, massive shift.

I find that saved versions of ships that previously had higher effective belt armour than the penetration of my own guns out at usual combat ranges (my own sort of "immunity zone" thinking) are nowhere near managing that after the change.

They used to be able to take hits and resist them. Now it's a case of relying on not being hit, or getting a ricochet, because otherwise those guns that used to bounce will go straight through.

Edited by Steeltrap
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On playing some more in the new patch I do definitely feel that BBs are quite a bit too squishy.  Especially from non penetrating hits.  Also flooding does end up feeling rather excessive for heavy ships from gunfire.  As while I can see a BB shell causing massive flooding on light ships like DDs and CLs from HE waterline hits it doesn't really make any sense for heavy ships.

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1 minute ago, captinjoehenry said:

As while I can see a BB shell causing massive flooding on light ships like DDs and CLs from HE waterline hits it doesn't really make any sense for heavy ships.


It makes some sense in that explosive shells detonating next to a plate of armor won't go through it but can slightly displace it, causing seals to break and leakage to happen. It won't happen all the time but now and then it's not unexpected, and the limited amount of flooding can easily be handled by the damage control parties while whatever leaks have happened get plugged. At least makes sense to some degree.


What doesn't make sense is the scale of the flooding those hits cause, and how frequently they cause them.

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36 minutes ago, RAMJB said:


It makes some sense in that explosive shells detonating next to a plate of armor won't go through it but can slightly displace it, causing seals to break and leakage to happen. It won't happen all the time but now and then it's not unexpected, and the limited amount of flooding can easily be handled by the damage control parties while whatever leaks have happened get plugged. At least makes sense to some degree.


What doesn't make sense is the scale of the flooding those hits cause, and how frequently they cause them.

Totally agree with you.  I only think this massive amount of flooding is appropriate in the case where a BB HE shell hits an effectively unarmored waterline location.  Which would mostly just be on DDs and CLs where they don't have armor.  As I can easily see a high caliber HE shell blasting open a massive hole in an unarmored waterline part of a ship leading to mass flooding.  But when an area has a good amount of armor the impact really should be slim to no flooding.

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6 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Reference to the 3'' (british 12 pounder) being labelled inadequate for anti-DD work already in 1906. Page 96:
(Talking about secondary battery proposals for HMS Invincible):
Reference to the 4in gun being labelled as no longer adequate for anti-DD work in 1910 while discussing the Lion class secondaries: Page 97:

The two reference provided (and the previous mention to the Iron Duke) are talking about 3" and 4" mounted as secondary on large ship inadequacy against DDs. Neither @Tousansons nor myself contested that.

The claim you made was:

8 hours ago, RAMJB said:

If 4'' guns weren't deemed enough to be enough to deal with DDs, go figure 3'' ones. So, while previously "destroyers couldn't do anything against other destroyers with their 3'' guns" that just means that previously things were working as they should. While now, they are not.

That is DDs vs DDs. What I contest is that caliber bellow 4" could not do anything in that type of engagement. There is a big difference in requirement between big ship secondaries and DDs armament. If I may refer to your quote of John Robert's "Battlecruisers":

"...However in 1906 firing trials against the old destroyer Skate with 3pdr, 12pdr, and 4in guns led to a reversal of this decision as the latter calibre was shown to be the only one of the three tried that stood a good chance a stopping a  destroyer before she got close enough to deliver a torpedo attack"

This is not a requirement in DDs vs DDs engagement. Thus not much of a argument in the current discussion. As far as I am aware of all of WW1 DDs were equipped with caliber under 4". I hope I do not need to provide you reference for this, but DDs of the battle of Jutland and Texel action, among many other battle, proved to be capable of providing a effective deterrence when performing their screening duty and also capable of sinking enemy DDs. To make myself clear, I am not discarding the trend toward larger caliber on DDs, range is as useful for them as it is for larger ship. But claiming that they could not do anything to another DDs is historically accurate is over the top by a long shot.

 

Edited by RedParadize
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OK, here's something from DK Brown's The Grand Fleet (the pre-war destroyers chapter). Note the comment on the lower right corner, and remember that 1914 in the game's mind means a 1000-1400 ton destroyer.

(Photo deleted to conserve space)

 

Edited by arkhangelsk
Deletion of old media to conserve quota
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So the changes make some mission extremely difficult, in particular semi-dreadnought one - no matter what you do you end up with inferior ship, and the more numerous large guns are decisive at this point and  you can't hope to have more firepower.

I just had a CL hit in the bow belt extended with 2'' gun and CL exploded in seconds. Now my understanding is that even the BC's that so infamously blown up did not had essential ship parts virtually unprotected? So this kind of damage would seem ridiculous. Unless it could have been forward firing torpedo magazine, but how do I even find out whether ship has torpedo in that position, and how do I find out which parts are protected by main armor and which parts are not?

Now with regards to effective defense against destroyers(resp. torpedo attack) - my understanding is that there was only one, that is to turn stern to face enemy, speed away, which will

1) Reduce your cross-section exposed

2) Increases distance (more torpedoes can run out of propellant)

3) Gives maximum time to detect torpedo and have chance avoiding it by maneuvering

The only negative is that you get less effective spotters.

I think most of here know how did the battle off Samar go, and that typically, destroyers did not tended to be blown out of water by ranged naval gunfire too quickly and charging into them was not the best idea ever. There are of course other examples such as battle for Narvik (first and second) that also make point that at close range they can be killed, and torpedoes can be lethal.

For that matter, I understand that major part of warships design was separation of engine and boiler rooms into multiple separate units, which had drastical impact on survivability. But this is not possible to control any better than number of compartments, so it is for example not immediately clear how many engine rooms there are (I don't see it anywhere in the stats either).

By the way, I would hope we would get ability to save ship desings for custom battle and eventually desing(or chose from saved) all categories of ships.

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I play HotFix 66 and finally completed the mission "DD vs TD".  In a couple of months i tried ten times, if not more. So cheers! But...one problem. My destroyers drowned every TD on map (which I am very happy) and after this  was immediately exterminated by enemy cruisers. All this happened in the first five minutes of the game.  My DD have only  rangefinder lv 1 and I think the cruisers FCS was no better. 

Sniper fire on Tsushima era technology? Guys, in my opinion it's overkill. This  "HotFix" overbuffing guns and it's guns-guns-guns again and again. It’s just that we used to take BIG GUNS, and now all the guns have turned into something terribly dangerous. I suppose I want Alpha-3 NoHotFix66 back.

9 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

Is it just my impression, or have the penetration values of guns suddenly gone insanely HIGH with this change?

I feel more like "guns suddenly gone insane".

 

 

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2 hours ago, RedParadize said:

This is not a requirement in DDs vs DDs engagement. Thus not much of a argument in the current discussion. As far as I am aware of all of WW1 DDs were equipped with caliber under 4".


The study of 1906 was conducted on a 350 ton destroyer. If whole batteries of battleship 3'' secondaries weren't judged enough to stop (let alone sink) a 350 ton destroyer, and that only four years later it was judged that whole batteries of 4'' secondary guns (that could ammount to as much as a dozen) were inadecuate to properly deal with destroyers...

That you're somehow arging that those same weapons, just because they happened to be in destroyers (in much less numbers, DDs had at most 2-3 guns of 3in or 4in caliber), firing from far less stable platforms should be more effective, somehow is...

well. Let's just say it's not really a defendable position. If a weapon caliber is considered not to be adequate when in a battery of maybe 10 per side, how can you defend the idea that 2 or 3 of them in a much less stable hull as a destroyer is suddenly a super effective weapon is beyond me.


Case in point: In the battle of Jutland there were several extremely ferocious encounters between enemy DD flotillas where they got to fight each other at point blank ranges. Particularily cruel was the one around Wiesbaden.

139 destroyers took part in that battle (78 british, 61 german). A grand total of 13 were lost.

British side:

HMS Nomad
HMS Nestor 
Both with crippled machinery because of destroyer gunfire in a prior engagement (notice - they were crippled by destroyed gunfire- they weren't sunk). Destroyed by battleship secondary 150mm guns when the german battlefleet came close to them.

HMS Shark
Disabled by 150mm gunfire from german battlecruisers. Engaged at short range and fire at by a whole flotilla of german destroyers - did not sink. Finally at 7pm hit by a torpedo that did her in.

HMS Ardent
HMS Fortune
Got lost and veered directly into a german battle squadron during the night of the 31st-1st. Both ships were blown out of the water by a hailstorm of 150mm shells at point blank range.

 HMS Turbulent
destroyed by 150mm gunfire from german secondary guns during one of the the night engagements.

HMS Tipperary
HMS Sparrowhawk
collided with each other during the night actions of the battle. To make a long (And eventful) story, that also includes 150mm secondary gunfire, short: both sank from the damage.

 
Total losses on the british side: 8
Losses due to destroyer gunfire: 0


German side:

V-27: Crippled by destroyer gunfire that severed her steam lines. Scuttled by V26 after taking her crew on due to incoming british forces.

V-29: destroyed by torpedo hit, suspected coming from HMS Petard.

S-35: Broke in two after being hit by two 13.5in shells from HMS Iron Duke

V-48: Disabled due to 6in gunfire from HMS Valiant. Attacked by the 12th destroyer flotilla, sunk by gunfire.

V-4: Bows blown up by underwater explosion. Reportedly a mine.

Total losses: 5

Losses due to destroyer gunfire: 2

Losses due to EXCLUSIVE destroyer gunfire:0.

 

 

Now explain that in terms that somehow agree with your estimation of how much more effective DD on DD gunfire was vs BB secondaries on DDs. Because not a single destroyer was sunk from destroyer guns, and the two which were, only happened because those ships had been disabled and immobilized by 6'' gunfire before.

In the biggest naval engagement between surface ships ever seen, where there were multiple fierce engagements between destroyers, a grand total of 0 were sunk by the exclusive means of destroyer gunfire.

Somehow that doesn't match your argument about their effectiveness. Nor does absolutely any favor to a game where DDs of that era can sink other DDs without too much difficulty.


 

Edited by RAMJB
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