Impossible to win with certain choices?

[WelshZeCorgi]

Are there certain choices (i.e. money, more torpedoes, bigger guns, mixed tech) inherently wrong? It feels like some choices are impossible to win a battle with.

It seems more money always seem the hardest, as the absence of a tech boost seems to make your designs rather flawed. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by WelshZeCorgi

[arkhangelsk]

1 hour ago, WelshZeCorgi said:

Are there certain choices (i.e. money, more torpedoes, bigger guns, mixed tech) inherently wrong? It feels like some choices are impossible to win a battle with.

It seems more money always seem the hardest, as the absence of a tech boost seems to make your designs rather flawed. 

And there is nothing wrong with that, because one of the jobs of Naval Academy is to give a feel of the game to the player. It's probably true that for most of them, more money is the least useful. This persuades the player, who may be tempted to spend everything on the here and now ships, to remember to invest!

Personally I'm the type that always tries boosting the guns first, and for most of the scenarios that seems "good enough", but I passed Destroyers vs TB back in Alpha 2 by using Maneuverability, so I know that I have to invest there and not just focus on the guns at all costs.

[WelshZeCorgi]

I see your point and I think I agree. I'm just wondering if this is a giit gud scenario. 

[Teckelmaster]

Yeah, i agree, in most scenarios the gun boost appears the best. It is not always the number and size of guns alone (especially in 66) but much rather accuracy and rate of fire. I almost never go with more money, in most cases i even try to max out a single ship, because mostly that appears to be superior to several less capable ships. And in the current situation i, for the first time since i play this game, find speed and lower visible range of own ships to be necessary. Both especially in the numbers dont matter mission, i got 4 super slow but incredibly armed ships gunned away under my butt, while 3 fast battleships finally destroyed an eneny ship that was even well designed, though „only“ carrying 17 inch guns.

My preferences therefor always are guns and accuracy and general tech second. More money is in almost all cases last choice. Though i did all academy missions with all choices by now and some are really not funny in „alternative“ approaches.

[RAMJB]

I kinda disagree with the idea that gun boost is the best. It is in some scenarios. In others it's not. Maneouverability is a huge boost, particularily so with very early-era scenarios - it gives you access to much advanced (and lighter) machinery that saves you a tremendous ammount of tonnage that you can use for better armor for the same speed, or higher speeds on smaller hulls. The difference between using turbines or being stuck the FAR heavier triple expansion machineries is truly key when you're building fast ships, for instance (it's not as vital for designs under 20 knots though). When the option of mixed tech pops up it's also very valuable, you get weight saving from the machinery, on top of better weapons. A little bit of the best of both worlds, without being as specialized as either.

Money is the way to go in scenarios where numbers matter more than individual quality. For instance the scenarios where you have to build destroyers/Torpedo boats - those extra funds treated with proper care can give you one more ship, which can be critical to finish off the big ships you're intended to attack.

It's not a definitive answer for all of the scenarios, is what I'm saying here. Have played them plenty with different options and yes, in some cases you're truly gimping yourself by going for anything other than tech. But the best tech is not always guns, and funds sometimes is better than tech. It really changes from scenario to scenario.

Edited January 11, 2020 by RAMJB

[Cptbarney]

Yeah, thats good though otherwise gameplay would quickly become braindead, so its all about seeing what works and doesnt (essentially real life really).

Campaign will be very interesting indeed lol.

[Teckelmaster]

You are definitely right. Engine boost is a great choice, especially since order aaaaah patch 666. Oops typo.... doubletypo...

But i think that if one above all, then guns. It is easier to bring a heavy slugger, than a well balanced design, most of the times. Chances, from my experience alone, are slightly better, that with a lucky drop and a semistupid ai build your enemy comes up with, you can steamroll in easy mode. While as an experienced player, you can make really well balanced and pretty good builds with any combination of scenario and boost. In a first shot at a mission, i really think, that gun technology is more often than not a good, if not the best (in terms of easiest) pick.
I admit on the other hand, that there are missions i do not win several times a day. Or even go into every day. But mostly i can find multiple builds for each mission. Still i do also prefer to bring the biggest, best armed (not heaviest calibre, but the best accuracy/dmg combination) ship, as i really am a big fan of big, powerfull and heavy Battleships.

That is the point where i wait fir the campaign, so we can finally see, what the ai makes us bring in that kind of challenge, how well balanced our fleets actually need to be. I really start biting my nails a bit...

Edit: there are a few missions, where recon and engine boost are superior choices, i want to add and not doubt. It is more like a general idea and rule of thumb. And as i said, just my experience from how i happen to play games. And, fortunately for my country, im no admiral.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Teckelmaster

[Cptbarney]

Damm i hope we get to build georgia, that will be bloody glorious, she needs her sped boostingz.

[Evil4Zerggin]

Enhance Firepower is the best choice more often than not. Here's an example from Destroy a Full Fleet:

On the left is Enhance Firepower, on the right is More Funds. Everything is at default values.

We can see that by picking Enhance Firepower, we got:

• 2-3 times the accuracy at most ranges.
• About 1.75x the rate of fire.
• About 20% more penetration.
• A bit more damage.

Overall, that's about a tripling or quadrupling of overall effectiveness, which is far larger than the multipliers for any other choice usually is. But that's not even the biggest factor that makes Enhance Firepower so good. The biggest factor is that Enhance Firepower accomplishes all this with hardly any increase in $$$. With the other choices, you either primarily unlock components whose advantages are greatly hampered by their exorbitant cost (unlike higher Marks of guns which come for nearly free), or you pick More Funds which is usually a comparatively piddling +20% or so (though it depends on the scenario, some do give a greater proportion of the base funds).

IMO, if the various choices are to be balanced, higher Marks of guns should cost more, and some of the advanced components could come down in price. For the campaign, perhaps components could have variable costs, where advanced technologies are more expensive when first developed but become more cost-effective as they mature.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Evil4Zerggin

[RAMJB]

Gunpower is an attractive choice. If gunpower is what you're looking for.

Other of the options in that scenario is maneouverability and survivability. Which give you access to:

-innate better damage absorption/HP (7.5% bonus in Resistance)
-Better hull form (10% hull bonus, meaning more speed for less hp, meaning more free weight for a given speed)
-Better stability (10% hull bonus, translating into in-built accuracy bonuses due to stability for all your guns)
-A wide selection of weight saving in hull, machinery, fuel, armor weights, etc (again, meaning you can pack a lot more stuff in your ship)
-better acceleration

meanwhile gun choice gives you almost unanimous boost for your main guns.


So what's the best pick?. Honestly - both are terrific, and I'm superbly biased towards the M&M one. Even with the tremendous performance you showed out of the 16'' gun, the 14'' triple Mk3 (which you have with the M&M option) is effective ENOUGH.

Not to mention that probably thanks to all the weight savings M&M gives you you can pack a ludicrous number of them (I know I did in one of my runs in that scenario), while ALSO, being able to keep the ship well armored and within reasonable speed. The 16in triple MK3 look mighty fine, but not as impressive as fifteen of the 14in mk3 guns in five triples. With the M&M Bonuses you get the weight to spare to cram them all in - while giving them superheavy status, AND going for an increased load AND enjoying a 10% stability-related accuracy bonus AND reasonable speed AND brutal armor, while with gun tech trying to cram just 12 of the 16in guns already tolls your design's armor and speed wise quite a lot.

Is one inherently better than the other?. Well, I'd say so, but not by much. Again, gunpower option is terrific and you get the benefits out of it by just slapping guns on your design, the M&M is far more nuanced and you really need to think about what you're doing with the design to exploit all it's multiple advantages and get the best out of them all. But once you do - I'm firmly on the opinion that you do get far more bang for your buck out of the M&M option than out of the gunpower one. 

For the record, I'll add that in that particular scenario, the money option is just crap.

Edited January 11, 2020 by RAMJB

[Evil4Zerggin]

I decided to look further into how much weight savings Maneuver actually gives on engines/boilers, and I found some strange math.

Here's the BC III hull (with Compound Armor so as not to take a Hull Form penalty) on Firepower:

And here's the same design on Maneuver:

• Hull Form claims to reduce "the engine power needed to achieve top speed"... but the horsepower is exactly the same in both cases. Huh?
• But at least Hull Form does indeed claim in colored numbers to give a decrease to engine weight. According to the tooltip, it's 11 more percentage points better in the case of Maneuver.
• Maneuver is also supposed to give a direct -8% to boiler weight. So naively, we would expect the sum of engine and boiler weight to decrease by between 8% and 11% by picking Maneuver.
• The actual decrease in engine/boiler weight was... 3.9%???

In fact, it looks like the claimed decrease in engine weight from Hull Form is not being applied at all. If I switch back to Iron Plate armor, reducing Hull Form, the engine/boiler weight remains completely unchanged!

I think these percentages need to be tweaked before enabling this modifier, though, otherwise we may have literally weightless engines at late game. (Which would certainly succeed at making Maneuver the superior choice!)

Edited January 13, 2020 by Evil4Zerggin

[arkhangelsk]

1 hour ago, Evil4Zerggin said:

• Hull Form claims to reduce "the engine power needed to achieve top speed"... but the horsepower is exactly the same in both cases. Huh?

Good catch, but if you react to increased hull form by decreasing engine power, should you still get better acceleration?

[RAMJB]

I think you're confusing things a bit because you think the bonus weigh % is flat added from one option to the other (meaning - one option will give you 11% less engine weight, for instance).

It's not the case.

Look at the tooltip on the firepower option - it's listing a -38% engine weight bonus due to that option's hull form.

Look at the tooltip on the maneouver option - it's listing a -49% engine weight bonus due to that hull form PLUS the bonus of maneouverability (11%)

The end result is that you don't save a flat 11% of weight from one option to the next one, it's a bonus to whatever bonuses you already have. Given that the first option already gives a good bonus, the end result is that you save less weight than what you might think at first.

Still those are 400 tons saved in weight. Translated that into armor, it's a crapload of extra protection on it's own. Also, while you're on it, take a look at the hull weight in both options ;).

Edited January 13, 2020 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

As for what does that option truly enable you to do... well, Meet Akagi...

Max bulkheads and survability options (save for double bottom instead of triple), 15x14'' mk3 guns with superheavy shells on expanded magazines, 20 inches of armor, almost 9 of deck and turret tops, moving at 28.5 knot top speed.

Not even in my best try I could get anything of the likes with the firepower option unless I went with 9 main guns only. And even then either speed or armor had to give compared with this one. And those are 15 rifles firing superheavy shells. Sure, not the same long range accuracy or individual hitting power as 16in guns Mk3 with firepower option. But still, 15 of them, firing 1210kg shells apiece. That's a broadside throw weight of more than 18 tons. Firepower gives you 21 tons with 12x16in guns but good luck achieving the kind of speed and protection this thing has with four triple 16in turrets. 9x16in just does not compare (not even close).

Firepower gives you better hitting chances per gun (thanks to radar and class 5 rangefinders vs class 4 rangefinders). But 15 rifles means more rolls per volley, 14'' guns allow you to use the best superstructures (their barbettes won't take 16'' triples) so I save both the weight of a separate barbette, AND get the extra accuracy bonuses of the top superstructures. I also have the speed to control the range of the engagement so I can come faster to whatever range I choose.

Tradeoffs and compromises are part of any design process, but I'd say that the firepower option compromises far more in armor and speed than the maneouverability option compromises on firepower.

Both options work and are excellent for the "fight a fleet" scenario.

Edited January 13, 2020 by RAMJB

[Evil4Zerggin]

On 1/12/2020 at 10:08 PM, arkhangelsk said:

Good catch, but if you react to increased hull form by decreasing engine power, should you still get better acceleration?

Probably not? At low speeds I would expect acceleration to be roughly proportional to power, and I would expect gearbox/shaft/propeller efficiency to fall under other components rather than Hull Form.

In fact, you could even make a good case that it would decrease acceleration for a given top speed, since as you pointed out, you decreased your engine power. This may be un-intuitive to the layperson though.

But even that isn't currently represented---right now you can move the speed slider from one end to the other and not change your acceleration at all despite a 10-fold difference in engine power! 

Edit: Just realized I foolishly forgot put a funnel when testing this, will look again.

Edit again: Tried it again, still no effect (as long as you maintain the same Engine Efficiency).

Edited January 16, 2020 by Evil4Zerggin

[Evil4Zerggin]

On 1/12/2020 at 10:15 PM, RAMJB said:

I think you're confusing things a bit because you think the bonus weigh % is flat added from one option to the other (meaning - one option will give you 11% less engine weight, for instance).

It's not the case.

Look at the tooltip on the firepower option - it's listing a -38% engine weight bonus due to that option's hull form.

Look at the tooltip on the maneouver option - it's listing a -49% engine weight bonus due to that hull form PLUS the bonus of maneouverability (11%)

The end result is that you don't save a flat 11% of weight from one option to the next one, it's a bonus to whatever bonuses you already have. Given that the first option already gives a good bonus, the end result is that you save less weight than what you might think at first.

Still those are 400 tons saved in weight. Translated that into armor, it's a crapload of extra protection on it's own. Also, while you're on it, take a look at the hull weight in both options ;).

Diminishing returns only happen when you are talking about a positive sum of multipliers. With a negative sum it's the reverse: the more modifiers you have, the more effective each one is. If the tooltip was to be believed, the Firepower engine would weigh 62% of base and the Maneuver engine 51% of base. 1 - 51 / 62 = 17.7%, significantly more than the 11% by itself. If we were able to add in the savings from the engine components themselves, this would be even more drastic. Again, the reason it's not actually saving much is that the engine modifier is not being applied at all, which you can see by the lack of change if you swap to Iron Plate armor which worsens Hull Form. The 400 tons is coming only from the boiler savings.

However, this same effect does apply to the -5% Armor Weight from Maneuver, which makes it much more effective than I gave it credit for. With Krupp IV and what appears to be an additional hidden -16% Armor Weight shared by all three bonus options, the actual effect is -11.36%. (The type-specific Armor Weight multipliers seem to stack multiplicatively, so the -11% belt Armor Weight doesn't benefit from these accelerating returns; but 11% is 11%.) All in all, the armor savings are actually greater than the hull and engine savings combined!

[Evil4Zerggin]

On 1/12/2020 at 10:48 PM, RAMJB said:

Max bulkheads and survability options (save for double bottom instead of triple), 15x14'' mk3 guns with superheavy shells on expanded magazines, 20 inches of armor, almost 9 of deck and turret tops, moving at 28.5 knot top speed.

Not even in my best try I could get anything of the likes with the firepower option unless I went with 9 main guns only. And even then either speed or armor had to give compared with this one. And those are 15 rifles firing superheavy shells. Sure, not the same long range accuracy or individual hitting power as 16in guns Mk3 with firepower option. But still, 15 of them, firing 1210kg shells apiece. That's a broadside throw weight of more than 18 tons. Firepower gives you 21 tons with 12x16in guns but good luck achieving the kind of speed and protection this thing has with four triple 16in turrets. 9x16in just does not compare (not even close).

Firepower gives you better hitting chances per gun (thanks to radar and class 5 rangefinders vs class 4 rangefinders). But 15 rifles means more rolls per volley, 14'' guns allow you to use the best superstructures (their barbettes won't take 16'' triples) so I save both the weight of a separate barbette, AND get the extra accuracy bonuses of the top superstructures. I also have the speed to control the range of the engagement so I can come faster to whatever range I choose.

A very fine design, and I learned a lot from examining it and comparing alternatives. Indeed, here's what happens if we try to translate it directly to the Firepower option:

We lost half a knot of speed, over a third of our weapons, and all of our weapons are 1" smaller. Surely an overwhelming loss for this design? But let's take a closer look at the gun statistics.

For the main guns, the extra Mark means that, despite the 1" deficit in size, the penetration is about the same. Raw damage per minute is 6600 for the Maneuver and 6700 for the Firepower, so about the same. However, the Firepower's guns are more accurate, having about 1.6x the hit chance at medium ranges. So these three turrets actually make about the same number of hits as Maneuver's five turrets. On the other hand, the Firepower turrets will run out of ammunition faster, which is indeed a severe drawback in this scenario.

For the secondary guns, the 5" have a two Mark advantage. Penetration is slightly less, but given that they will primarily be shooting destroyers this doesn't matter much. Raw damage per minute is 2200 for the Maneuver and 2000 for the Firepower. However, Firepower has over twice the accuracy, more than making up for this and the fewer number of weapons.

Now, Maneuver does have some extra bonuses (Resistance, Hull Form, Stability, Floatability, and maneuverability) which are not accounted for here. So, if this were the end of it, Maneuver would be the winner, if not as dramatically as it may appear from a glance. However, Firepower does have one additional hidden but utterly overwhelming (and, I should add, also utterly unrealistic and undeserved) advantage, which can even be taken to more extreme lengths than this if one plays to Firepower's strengths. I'll get to that in my next post.

[RAMJB]

29 minutes ago, Evil4Zerggin said:

For the main guns, the extra Mark means that, despite the 1" deficit in size, the penetration is about the same. Raw damage per minute is 6600 for the Maneuver and 6700 for the Firepower, so about the same. However, the Firepower's guns are more accurate, having about 1.6x the hit chance at medium ranges. So these three turrets actually make about the same number of hits as Maneuver's five turrets. On the other hand, the Firepower turrets will run out of ammunition faster, which is indeed a severe drawback in this scenario.

Firepower turrets will run out of ammo as fast as your design. Because it has more guns, but also accordingly larger magazines to store the shells those extra gun needs. To make it simple, if both your and my designs had standard magazine loadouts, mine would have a total of 1500 shells in the magazines. Yours would have 900s. Both would have exactly the same number of shots per barrel. Both would run out of ammo at roughly the same time if fired at the same rate of fire.

With extended magazines is exactly the same way. Both designs have exactly the same number of rounds of guns, both designs have exactly the same number of salvos. Caveat here is - you guns fire faster...in fact it's your ship the one that will run out of ammo faster ;).

In fact given the limited magazine model in the game right now, the disposition favors the design with more guns more. As shells come from a "shared virtual magazine" instead of being spread, as they should, between one magazine per turret that once depleted, the turret is out of action, I can keep on a pure bow on chase (six guns aimed directly forward) for almost twice the time your design can, as I have almost twice the shells. 

And given the AI love for withdrawing once they hit 50%-ish structural damage, that's not a meaningless advantage (even if it should, and hopefully it is soon when proper magazines are introduced).

Yet another side of this is redundancy. A single well placed hit from an enemy big gun can put 33% of your firepower offline in a single stroke. vs 20%. It's a quite significant difference, and one that if luck ends up dictating you're going to lose a turret, spells the difference between being able to finish the scenario...vs not being able to at all.

Another thing you're undervaluing is the actual per-shell hitting power of the larger caliber. Which actually is quite important because, whatever the damage numbers mean in the popup screens, my in-game experience tells me that bigger guns do drastically more damage (which is exactly what happened with ever-growing calibers historically). If your hit ratio ends up being around the same (less rifles with more hit %, vs more rifles with less hit %), the end bargain is that the ship with the bigger guns will do disproportionatelly more damage.
I don't know how the damage calculation is done by the game, and I know this is only a subjective opinion based on my own perception of what I've seen in game. Both means there's no proof to it, but it still it's my experience and what it leads me to believe.


In general as I stated I do agree that firepower bonuses are hugely attractive on their own and allow for exceedingly powerful designs without too much time spent in the design screen and knowing exactly how to toy around with your design to get the best compromise between speed, armor, and firepower.
I also believe that the extra advantages given by maneouverability make a difference, but not an incredibly large one. The end result is that both options are fine for that scenario.

Said that, I think that in gamemodes that favor minmaxing (and the scenario mode of this game does just that for the most part XD), if you're looking to max out your ship overall quality, then maneouverability is the way to go.

 

Edited January 15, 2020 by RAMJB

[Evil4Zerggin]

Now, here's what I would do, playing a little closer to Firepower's strengths (though of course more can always be done):

Now we only have two main battery turrets. The rate of fire for each is pretty much the same as Amagi's 14" guns, and with the same number of rounds per gun the ammunition will last for about the same amount of time, solving the supply problem. Accuracy is twice as high at 7,500 m and 2.8x at 15,000 m, so the number of hits from these two turrets could be expected to be nearly that of the five of Maneuver. The difference, of course, is that these are 16" hits rather than 14" hits, doing nearly 80% more damage each with greater penetration. If you believe bigger shells are more effective per damage, well, there you go.

Meanwhile, we put the secondaries in turrets. They are mounted in triple turrets which reduces fire rate and accuracy a little. However, because we only have two main battery turrets, we were able to mount all of of the secondaries on the centerline, meaning we can put 50% more secondary barrels on the broadside compared to the previous Firepower design. This also reduces Roll penalties to almost nothing.

Now we did have to budget a bit on the components. I dropped the bulkhead reinforcement (the component, not the slider), and the turret rotation, which I felt were less useful for their weight. We did pick up 2 extra knots of speed, upgrade to Triple Bottom, and give the secondaries a full 20" of armor, but overall this was undertaken to save weight.

Okay, now for the dirty part. We've seen the ability of Firepower to concentrate effective firepower into a much smaller number of turrets, which allowed for centerline secondaries. However, the big win is Target Signature, which as far as I could find was first advocated by @RedParadize as determining your chance to be hit. Amagi has 259.5 Target Signature, while Admiral Scheer has just 130, primarily due to the smaller number of turrets. If chance to be hit is proportional to Target Signature---and this seems plausible in my experience---then Admiral Scheer is twice as hard to hit! (Let me be clear: I think this is silly; in the real world I would be surprised if either ship was even 10% harder to hit than the other based on silhouette alone.)