Cancel Barbette Limitation Slot

[dumbadam]

Please remove barbette slot limitation as it creates obstacle without bringing benefits to the design and game experience😐

Edited January 4, 2020 by dumbadam

[RAMJB]

Agreed, this has been suggested many times. To at least make them placeable elsewhere with the use of the shift key, the same way the main turrets are treated.

I'm sure sooner or later it'll happen ;).

[Knobby]

Yes pls and wile you're at it pls do the same for towers.

These are the two single most limiting factors in designing ships and tend to make most designs rather samey.

[Marder]

I assume these limitations are there for the AI to follow, else the auto-gen might not be able to cope or that it would be very difficult to program the AI to utilize fully free-form design possibilities. 

The question I have is, if that really is the case, wouldn't it be possible to allow the player to get around these limitations and just reserve it for the AI instead? 

I figure if that happened, we'll have more freedom to place items freely and beyond just that of barbettes. 

[Latur Husky]

Totally agree, There should bee no limits other than hull balance that impacts accuracy and stuff...

[monbvol]

There is some historical realism in having some limitations.

Mostly in having to deal with how the associated magazine boxes would be laid out in the hull beneath the barbettes or turret ring diameter and needing to keep the hull form and hull weight to certain specifications.

Don't get me wrong I think we do need more freedom in how we place them and it needs to be clearer why we can't setup superfiring turrets on certain designs but certain considerations/limitations about where we can place them should remain.

[Marder]

9 hours ago, monbvol said:

There is some historical realism in having some limitations.

Not to mention physical ones, but I get the concept. As far as this game's concerned we could probably do away with crazy builds akin to that PS2-era game folks here talk about. But that's not without some caveats. While I get that there's precedent in avoiding some craziness for the sake of preserving historical authenticity (e.g. no double-hull monstrosities in 1930 - or ever), having a bit more creative freedom on hand would really benefit this game. 

While there certainly is some freedom in designing ships in this game, at this stage and with the current limitations, that freedom will at some point just be utilized to figure out what designs should work, instead of experimenting on what designs can. 

KSP retains physical restrictions but is exceptionally free-form in its ability to turn concepts into results - successful or not.

The bigger picture here I think is with how Dreadnought's shipyard is designed: Players would simply end up being more keen on figuring out how to force concepts into designs that the game allows, instead of being allowed to see their own ideas through to the end with minimal compromise. Right now that compromise is these limitations, barbette placement notwithstanding. And if internals are a concern, then abstracting it should be an option to consider.

Having to sieve through these restrictions to get the results we want is problematic right now. We're either left with having to compromise, or end up maximizing against the shipyard's limitations instead of maximizing our own abilities to conceptualize and make real the best possible fighting ship we could think of. 

Simple rules lead to complex outcomes, and complex rules lead to simple outcomes. I find these stringent rules are already creating designs too similar to one another (or of a similar archetype) when you observe player's creations here on the forums. Relaxing these limitations would allow for more variety - and more fun.

[arkhangelsk]

3 hours ago, Marder said:

we could probably do away with crazy builds akin to that PS2-era game folks here talk about

Actually, in one way the "PS2-era" game everyone talks about does it better - you have to put the engines in yourself and IIRC the guns explicitly penetrate below the deck, so you have to think about what is happening inside your ship (though I don't think it cares about weight balance, much less stability). You can even choose between Split Plant and Normal configurations. Maybe we can install engines and even shafts ourselves. If we can maintain weight balance and route the internals (such as funnel ducts. magazines ... etc) properly, we should be allowed to place guns wherever we please.

[Cptbarney]

Yes pls. Quick pls.

make it grews in teh game.

thonks.

'w'

[Ruan]

On ‎1‎/‎6‎/‎2020 at 11:44 AM, monbvol said:

There is some historical realism in having some limitations.

Mostly in having to deal with how the associated magazine boxes would be laid out in the hull beneath the barbettes or turret ring diameter and needing to keep the hull form and hull weight to certain specifications.

Don't get me wrong I think we do need more freedom in how we place them and it needs to be clearer why we can't setup superfiring turrets on certain designs but certain considerations/limitations about where we can place them should remain.

This is why I argue that building the hull of the ship is majority of ship building and why I feel the Devs should pursue the hull building shown in the steam trailer (at the very least for player built ships). That said if the hull building shown on steam isn't to be, then we should have as much freedom to place the "accessories" on the ship wherever we want as much as possible. Even if it doesn't make sense in RL ship building.

[Marder]

16 hours ago, Ruan said:

This is why I argue that building the hull of the ship is majority of ship building and why I feel the Devs should pursue the hull building shown in the steam trailer (at the very least for player built ships). That said if the hull building shown on steam isn't to be, then we should have as much freedom to place the "accessories" on the ship wherever we want as much as possible. Even if it doesn't make sense in RL ship building.

I agree. This is actually the first time I've seen that trailer, I'm quite confused how this wasn't what we got - perhaps somewhere down the line I hope. 

As far as freedom is concerned, there are only two things I want to see in the most general sense: More granularity (as seen in the video), and part diversity.

Granularity right now is the main weakness of the ship-builder. Key structures such as hulls and primary and secondary towers all come in one piece, hulls have specific placement points with compatibility rules. We're pretty much playing with ship-kits and prebuilt part sets instead of a whole Lego set, bricks and all, and that's very limiting.

The weakness in part diversity is pretty much related to granularity as well. Since we depend on large prefab pieces and strict placement rules, we become doubly dependent on part diversity instead of the latter becoming value-adds down the line. Player designs would begin to normalize as time goes on, and the potential for new innovative designs would be directly dependent on what the devs cook up, and since those are prefabs, the modelling work would be complex on their end too, and that either takes a long time or not at all due to resource limitations.

That steam trailer is a dream-and-a-half. I seriously hope we get something like that, but it seems like at this point we might not. The longer I play, the more I see that the current way things are done are foundational design decisions and that would be very difficult to change. I keep hearing somehow that this game is the KSP of naval warfare, but as far as process design is concerned I think it's rather far from it. Unknown if it will indeed change, but if it does, I hope it prioritizes granularity over complex rules for players.

 

[DougToss]

I agree. 

While it might be fun to say "ah ha! That's the Nassau!" the first time you see this design, that's just a starting place. With more freedom, you could say move the A turret forward and have a super-firing gun behind it, but have to make up for the weight by reducing two or the wing turrets to single mounts, or omit a pair of wing turrets entirely and decide between  F+G, G+K, non-cross firing turrets en echelon. Maybe you delete the middle section of the super structure and a pair of turrets have have cross-firing. Maybe you move one wing turret to C and one to W while centring the remaining wing turrets amidships. 

There are so many variations and design decisions just based on this one hull, but the designer has to be opened up to allow it, otherwise adding the Nassau hull will only let players build the Nassau with variations in armour and gun calibre and not much else. 

 

 

[Marder]

On 1/10/2020 at 1:04 PM, DougToss said:

There are so many variations and design decisions just based on this one hull, but the designer has to be opened up to allow it, otherwise adding the Nassau hull will only let players build the Nassau with variations in armour and gun calibre and not much else. 

This nails it on the head honestly. The current process pretty much leads to homogenization as far as the hulls are concerned. So not only are placement issues there, the compatibility of parts and the resulting exclusivity depending on hull types compounds on this challenge. There are far too many rules as far as building is concerned, and yes that may as well be for the AI. But players should have just a bit more freedom. 

I'm personally a little worried about whether or not the game will open up, because as time goes on it's starting to look like this was the intended design direction to begin with. I suspect changes may well be just "hacks" to try and get these limitations out since from the beginning, the way the shipyard was constructed and the design concept of the editor seems to be foundational or worse, hard coded. 

I think folks should start talking more about how the shipbuilder was designed and how to improve upon it so as to try and get some kind of feedback in. It should definitely help, and as far as games are concerned there's just nothing like Dreadnought out there at the moment. It would be so wonderful to have the true KSP of naval warfare.

[arkhangelsk]

I agree it has become the "intended" design direction. Part of it I suppose is due to the difficulty of making procedural parts work, but I also think there's more to it, and I'll discuss the "semi-dreadnought" hull.

First, in game, unless you use the Unlock function the semi-dreadnought hull is provided in the years 1899-1905 to exactly three nations - UK, Japan and Spain. Interestingly, China's "best" hull of the same era is smaller but in the extended configurations can accommodate 3 big turrets, all centerline. And that's it ... those are the only three nations that can have more than a 4-main gun broadside before 1906 and the Dreadnought shows up.

I'm not sure if in the campaign you'll be allowed to speed up your research of hull forms as well as other technologies, but even if you can, it still indicates that if you are roughly on par in tech progression with other nations, you will have one advantage playing as one of these three nations over the "Have-Nots".

The advantage of a semi-dreadnought over a pre-dreadnought is so big, depending on the predreadnought the AI might choose to just run away without fighting at all (SMART!)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bgXoN9zj4h7j19Sd9

If hypothetically we remove the limitations of the semi-dreadnought hull, the advantage will become even greater. It'll effectively be a slightly smaller Dreadnought hull.

I can see two reasons why these four countries are allowed semi-dreadnought hulls. and the first reason isn't the primary one. The UK and Japan built some of this general configuration. but the latter built them in the dreadnought era (so Germany should have qualified too, but she did not).
I think it is a campaign playbalancing consideration to mitigate the poor resource position that Japan, China and Spain would likely have against the richer powers. Playbalancing is fine but it would not do to go overboard with this beneficial measure by giving them the flexibility of the next generation Dreadnought hull.

Second is the realism factor - you have just made a leap from predreadnought with its 2x2 main gun armament to the semi-dreadnought. Do you think in reality you will immediately be allowed to try untested ideas like superfiring turrets or risky cross-fire schemes with more powerful guns than ever before? The idea probably hadn't even come into your mind yet. Warship design by humans is a conservative affair, because real warships cost money and one can ill afford to suffer a devastating failure.

As an aside, I noticed noticed that some of the other parts that feel like nuisances also serve a useful realist purpose. You may remember the towers where they have a platform for a gun ... but it isn't big enough for the gun you want, so you are forced to just stuff a secondary there or leave it blank. Here's the thing ... the platform also helped make sure your oversized gun is far away from the tower so it is less affected by its massive blast. If you want to put your gun next to the tower, it must either be a weaker gun or you accept a loss from blast effect (this is reflected by the fact the tower without the gun platform has lower specs).

[Teckelmaster]

Haha, true, which ship had again it‘s windows blown out by the blast of it‘s main guns? And wasnt there an early 18 inch gun ship that even capsized due to imbalance and gun blast problems? I would google, but i guess a 1912 ship designer would love to google that either

[DougToss]

@arkhangelsk RTW sets restrictions based on technology and type of hull. I think that is a smart approach - while B (pre and semi-dreads) can only have 2 centreline turrets, within that pretty much anything goes. BBs have to unlock main gun wing turrets, or 3 centerline turrets and eventually cross firing and more centerline turrets. Similarly to DDs and CLs slowly being able to mount more weapons centreline and eventually twin turrets and super-firing. 

Those are absolutely smart restrictions, and as you say mirror history. The important thing is allowing freedom within the restrictions, and explaining what the restrictions are.