Alpha-4 News

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello Admirals,

Thank you very much for your ongoing feedback and your fantastic participation in the forum, where you share so many interesting ideas and historical knowledge with us. We would like to inform you about the planned improvements of the next patch.

SPECIAL NEW FEATURES

• Two new 3D Base Models ships: the legendary battleship "Bismarck" and the mighty battlecruiser "HMS Hood": Bismarck and Hood hulls are available in new Naval Academy missions and Custom Battles (after year 1927).
• Improved Damage Decals: The damage is more detailed, according to where it actually happened and the ship now becomes more realistically darkened. Soon, all Towers, Funnels, weapons will have a detailed special appearance when destroyed.
• New secondary gun barbettes: You can now create special looking and realistic ships by using a combination of barbettes for your secondary guns, on the centerline or at the sides. These barbette mounts appear when mounting main gun or special towers. If the hull is not wide or enough, you might not be able to use them all efficiently.

NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS

• German Pride: Design a powerful German battleship and attack the English fleet, in a similar way as it happened in the historical battle of the Denmark straits. 
• Prove your Might: Your British battlecruiser must defend a valuable convoy against a German Battleship and a heavy cruiser. Can your ship do better than HMS Hood?
• Modern Battleship vs Destroyers: Your battleship must survive the attack of multiple Destroyers.
• The US Super Battleship: A group of large dreadnoughts that have been modernized by the Japanese Navy is sailing back for refueling. You have the opportunity to attack and sink them with your much more powerful super-battleship, before strong reinforcements arrive.
• Design your own H-class: Create the continuation of the legendary Bismarck-class and defeat a US Fleet.
• Hurry Up:  A German raiding squadron is approaching your lightly protected military convoy while you are far away. Build the naval force that will be capable to travel fast and repel the enemy.

OLD MISSION IMPROVEMENTS

• Mission: "Heavy Duty" has now objective to only kill the super battleship. Previously it could be also won if all cruisers were sank, ending the battle prematurely.
• Mission: "Search & Destroy" has been improved. You need to destroy the two BB before strong enemy reinforcements arrive and make your task harder.
• Mission:  "Torpedo Basics" has more available money, so that more torpedo boats can be built (The mission could become very hard against a much more powerful battleship, due to the new settings).
• New hulls have been added to missions “Rise of the Heavy Cruiser”, “The Modern Battleship”, Sink "The Cruiser Killer", “Heavy Duty”.

VISUAL & SHIPS

• Several new gun models added. Please note that the rescales and improvement of guns as well as the general improvements of ship designer could make your saved designs non functional.
• Various hull fixes for better looking ship designs at all technology eras.
• Three more super-battleships based on Bismarck and Iowa hulls. You can find those ships in new Naval Academy missions and in Custom Battles (after year 1929)
• More hull variants of late tech, mostly based on the new 3D models: 6xBB (Britain, Russia, Japan, Austro-Hungary, China), 2 x BC (Germany, Russia), 3x CA (Germany, Austro-Hungary, USA). These ships are also distributed to the other nations so that custom battles after year 1927 include more late technology ships for all countries.

CONTROLS

• You can now set specific targets for main guns, secondary guns and torpedoes as follows:
  All weapons: Right Click
  Torpedoes: Shift + Right Click
  Secondaries: Alt + Right Click
  Main Guns: Shift + Alt + Right Click
   
• Weapon Fire Mode (ammo control) is now working per division, not per ship. 

BATTLE INTERFACE

• Improved damage float up info, showing more clearly the damage inflicted on ships, and fixing issues that caused game performance drop.

BALANCES/INCONSISTENCY FIXES

• Damage/Penetration of guns is balanced according to feedback of players. Capital ships should be more durable. Secondary guns will still be useful but not overpowered.
• Improvement in accuracy mechanics. Big Guns will not have so much accuracy difference with smaller guns. Aiming will be more dynamic, so that maneuvers or steady course will affect aiming accordingly.
• AI Design of Battlecruisers will prefer to use armor more, and not make weakly protected ships.
• AI Design of Destroyers will be more effective and will focus more on speed and maneuverability. Additionally, the minimum speed of Destroyers is 26 knots.
• Fixed issue of not updating torpedo stats according to techs/components used. Now torpedoes should be more properly effective depending on their technology level.
• Fixed issue of accuracy that could make AI not to fire vs very small torpedo boats or Destroyers at a range that they should.
• Minor rebalance of reload penalty/bonus according to shell type. Light shells should be quite more effective for short range. Heavier shells reload slightly slower.
• Minor rebalance of Lyddite shells, so that they continue to be effective after the new damage changes. 
• Tube Powder shells gain a further slight bonus in penetration and reload.

BUG FIXES

• Several issues of buggy gun rotations have been addressed.
• Fixed issue of interrupting smoke screen emission for ships becoming detached.
• Fixed various reported problems that caused gun overlapping with towers.
• Other minor bug fixes reported by players.

OTHER

• Various performance optimizations.
• AI in custom battles will never retreat. It is a temporary fix and later we will add this as an option.

The above mentioned changes are not absolutely final, as we continue to add improvements. The update is soon going to receive internal testing, and if all is working right, we estimate to release it next week.

Thank you for reading!

The Game-Labs Team

[Joryl]

The secondary target selection is awesome! great work you guys. I am so excited  

my secondaries will focus on the smaller ships wile my main pound away at the BBS and HC's

Edited January 29, 2020 by Joryl
add

[TotalRampage]

I love reporting a bug then it gets fixed.

Can't wait for the next update thanks guys

[the_really_good_man]

Can we just appreciate how even though not all requests are being added in this patch nor am I expecting it, the thrill of seeing this game being built up piece by piece is a thrill no other game or developer have given me. At this rate, even if the game gets delayed, at least we have a benchmark of progress. Im glad I made the decision to back this game early.😁

[flaviohc16]

SECONDARY TARGHET Is great, but can we also switch ammo?

[Skeksis]

This whole update so is 'exciting'.

especially these...

1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:

• New secondary gun barbettes: You can now create special looking and realistic ships by using a combination of barbettes for your secondary guns, on the centerline or at the sides. These barbette mounts appear when mounting main gun or special towers. If the hull is not wide or enough, you might not be able to use them all efficiently.
• More hull variants of late tech, mostly based on the new 3D models: 6xBB (Britain, Russia, Japan, Austro-Hungary, China), 2 x BC (Germany, Russia), 3x CA (Germany, Austro-Hungary, USA). These ships are also distributed to the other nations so that custom battles after year 1927 include more late technology ships for all countries.
• You can now set specific targets for main guns, secondary guns and torpedoes as follows:
  All weapons: Right Click
  Torpedoes: Shift + Right Click
  Secondaries: Alt + Right Click
  Main Guns: Shift + Alt + Right Click
• Tube Powder shells gain a further slight bonus in penetration and reload.

Awesome.

[roachbeef]

I'm surprised the main battery placement issue does not seem to have been addressed, given that it was one of the most requested features. Based on the text, it seems to only be for guns of 5" or lower, or for BB/BC secondaries. I'm assuming there's some sort of mechanical difficulty in implementing?

Edited January 29, 2020 by roachbeef

[RAMJB]

1 hour ago, roachbeef said:

I'm surprised the main battery placement issue does not seem to have been addressed, given that it was one of the most requested features. Based on the text, it seems to only be for guns of 5" or lower, or for BB/BC secondaries. I'm assuming there's some sort of mechanical difficulty in implementing?

not sure what issue are you referring to. If you're referring to limited position for barbettes and main structures, I'm guessing that yes, it's a hard feature to implement.

Remember that whatever changes are done to the designer might seem simple but the AI needs to be "taught" how to build proper ships that don't look completely ridiculous. Without those anchor points , or with far too many of them,  the AI won't know where to place what, and the result would be truly horrendous ships. Maybe "weighing" the importance of the anchor points for the AI to use the most common placements for structures and guns could work, at any rate is a more involved process than what it seems at first glance ;).


Loving the list of changes, btw. The ability of individual targetting for separate batteries has been one of my pet-peeves since I first fired the game up, for instance, so it's really great to see things like those gradually showing up in the game itself :).

Edited January 29, 2020 by RAMJB

[akd]

Not being able to select ammo type separately might somewhat defeat giving different targets to secondary guns, unless auto selection works separately and intelligently.

[arkhangelsk]

Darn, my wish for hydrophones on BBs, BCs and CAs did not make it through. First, historically they are there. Second, if the idea for this restriction is to make us have use DDs and CLs in campaign, right now we have entire Naval Academy missions where we have to use only one ship (or we have zero control over the attached ships so we don't know if they have sonar or not until it is too late). It is OK to restrict them to lower grades (Hydrophone instead of Sonar), but sonar seems pretty lifesaving here.

I also have a question mark on the Ban Retreat bit, but OK. At least the AI works pretty well in that area (you can tell something is working when human players ask for a nerf) already so perhaps it is time to test other areas.

Also, the campaign is ... first draft still in progress, eh? I remember back when people say they can actually see a tiny bit of the campaign before the devs locked it out. Ever since ... well, just a bit worrying considering the schedule.

Otherwise, these sound like great improvements. I look forward to next week.

[AML]

Looking forward to this update, splitting secondary and primary targets will be a nice leap for the combat I think.

Also I appreciate the temporary removal of AI retreat. Its nice to know the AI won't be suicidal come campaign release but it made testing combat a bit frustrating.

[Fishyfish]

Needs more predreadnoughts. 

[DougToss]

Very glad to hear this. 

Two points to address though:

8 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

BALANCES/INCONSISTENCY FIXES

• Damage/Penetration of guns is balanced according to feedback of players. Capital ships should be more durable. Secondary guns will still be useful but not overpowered.
• Improvement in accuracy mechanics. Big Guns will not have so much accuracy difference with smaller guns. Aiming will be more dynamic, so that maneuvers or steady course will affect aiming accordingly.

The references to secondary guns and smaller calibers are left kinda open to interpretation. In the context of secondary armament, what does "useful but not overpowered" mean?

In all fairness, this was a topic of debate pre-war as well. The core question being: is the purpose of secondary armament on capital ships to sink torpedo boats outright through gunfire, or is their purpose to neutralize the threat of torpedo attacks by forcing those ships to stay out of the engagement range? 

This was a factor in pre-war tests:

Quote

Anti-torpedo boat armament
The problem of destroying or at least disabling a torpedo-boat or destroyer before it could launch its torpedo was always difficult and became more difficult as the range of torpedoes increased with the heater and their accuracy improved with gyro course-keeping. The band between maximum effective gun range and that for torpedo firing was small and with destroyer sea speeds approaching 30kts – a mile every two minutes – a gun was needed which could disable with a single hit, but heavier-calibre guns were likely to obtain fewer hits in the time available because of their lower rate of fire.

In 1899 trials were carried out on shore at Shoeburyness against a replica torpedo-boat, complete with a boiler and bunkers. One-pounder shells were ineffective and the 3pdr only on the broadside with a lucky hit in the boiler. Similar tests in 1894 showed that the 3pdr and 6pdr were unlikely to stop a torpedo-boat but that a 12pdr would do so with a single hit. Trials against the old destroyer Skate in 1906 confirmed these lessons, but the 4in (25pdr) was found to be very effective, particularly with Lyddite shells.

Trials against the destroyer Ferret in 1909–10 showed that a Lyddite filled, 4in shell would make a hole about 29ft x 20ft and common shell 8ft x 5ft in side plating (5lb or 8lb) but the common shell did better when hitting a full coal bunker (but the target was an old and small destroyer). The blast, splinter and, probably, morale effect would all be greater with Lyddite. These trials were carried out with the 4in BL Mk VII and VIII with the much heavier 31lb round, a change apparently unnoticed in Germany which continued with the 22pdr in destroyers. Japan’s first destroyer design after the war with Russia, Umikaze, designed in 1907 and launched 1910, introduced a 4.7in/40 gun. Pakenham’s reports had emphasised the need for heavier destroyer guns and the Japanese obviously agreed.

There were a number of other early trials of gunfire against torpedo craft. Two specially-made rounds of case shot, each containing 100 balls, were tried against Skate in 1902, fired from an old 12.5in RML. Though the target was damaged, it was concluded that the maximum range would only be 1200yds and that unacceptable damage would be caused to the rifling of the firing gun. Shrapnel shells were tried both against Skate and later against Ferret, without much success, and ricochet shot from both 6in and 4.7in at 1200yds were tried against Skate, equally unsuccessfully.

Brown, D. K. (2010). The grand fleet: warship design and development, 1906-1922. Barnsley: Seaforth Pub.

As well as pre-war design:

Quote

Secondary armament

In Jellicoe’s paper justifying the all-big-gun ship he made it clear that there was no value in guns smaller than 12in other than the anti-torpedo boat armament. He also said ‘It may be assumed that in future battleships 6-inch guns will not be again mounted singly on the main deck, but if introduced again would like others of larger calibre be mounted in pairs [twin] turrets and on the upper deck’ – though in the same paper it is made clear that there is no space on the upper deck, clear of blast, which could be used for guns. One may note that all German Dreadnoughts mounted a secondary battery of 5.9in guns. There is a paper in the Tiger ship’s cover which suggests that the German 5.9in battery was intended to destroy the British anti-torpedo boat batteries facilitating their own torpedo attack. By 1909 the increased range of the heater torpedo and the greater size of destroyers appeared to justify a larger secondary gun as, for example, Admiral Mark Kerr’s letter of 27 June to Watts. However, he supported the 6in battery on the old, discredited, ‘hail of fire’ role against enemy battleships as well as a longer-range anti-torpedo boat armament. Kerr claimed he had considerable support from serving officers for these views and he is probably correct in this assertion. The First Lord (McKenna) was impressed and DNC was asked to investigate.

The result was the Iron Duke, some 2000 tons bigger than King George V which had a 4in anti-torpedo boat armament. The cost of the earlier class averaged £1.93 million, that of the Iron Dukes £2.0 million. The difference was mainly, but not entirely, due to the 6in battery as the later ships had increased torpedo armament and greater fuel stowage. The Iron Dukes had to be increased in length by about 25ft to accommodate the bigger battery, even in casemates, and it was so far forward that the casemates were frequently flooded. It will be suggested later that this battery was not only ineffective but also a hazard to the ship.

Brown, D. K. (2010). The grand fleet: warship design and development, 1906-1922. Barnsley: Seaforth Pub.

Having hit rates around this number in game would be in my opinion useful but not overpowered. Worth noting is that the 'hail of fire' of small caliber secondary against capital ships was decredited and also that capital ships were not lost to torpedo attack at Jutland. The problem right now is two-fold, first that the guns are far more accurate than they ought to be, and secondly that they are too damaging. Giving AI ships a sense of self-preservation ideally will show how the deterrent value of these guns was not based on being particularly damaging or accurate. 

Expanding on the above results:

Quote

The number of hits on ships which sank can only be estimated (by Campbell) but are of the right order. This leads to a hitting rate of 0.5 per cent for the British batteries and 1.0 per cent for the German. Hits were unlikely as one might expect from hand-worked guns, close to the waterline and hence with poor visibility. Inertia forces on the heavy and fairly long barrel of the 6in 45cal would make it difficult to train and elevate rapidly, particularly when the ship was pitching and rolling or turning. Fire was normally opened at 7500 – 8000yds. German accounts say that firing on their destroyers by British battleships was not very effective. One can only wonder if director control, fitted later, would have made a big difference.

The damage caused to capital ships was slight with the exception of one direct hit on the left 15in gun of Y turret in Warspite which put it out of action. The cruiser Calliope was hit by five 5.9in from Markgraf which put two of her 4in guns out of action. The armoured cruiser Defence was fired on by the 5.9in of several German ships but the number of hits and the damage caused must be uncertain, as with Warrior. Amongst the destroyers, the Acasta was hit by two 5.9in from a battlecruiser at about 1820hrs which put her (single) engine-room out of action and she had to be towed back to port, while the Broke was badly damaged by nine hits, including one or two 5.9in from Westfalen but was able to make her own way home. Moorsom and Onslaught suffered single hits without serious damage whilst Onslow was towed home after three 5.9in hits from Lutzow. Petard had four hits from Westfalen which slightly reduced her speed and Porpoise was hit by two shells from Posen or Oldenburg. The disabled Nestor and Nomad were sunk by the 5.9in guns of battleships. 

On the German side, the destroyer V48 was disabled by Shark but was then hit by a 6in from the battleship Valiant. G41 had a 6in hit from a battleship on the forecastle and lost speed as a result, while S51 lost a boiler to a battleship 6in at 1930hrs and V28 was hit forward, losing speed, at about the same time. All in all, the few hits which were scored caused little damage, but the battleship Rheinland suffered two hits from 6in fired by Black Prince, one of which caused extensive superficial damage.
There is always an exception; the battleship Westfalen’s secondary battery and even her 3.45in guns were extremely well controlled, partly due to skilful use of searchlights. Note that thirty-five rounds of 3.5in were fired in an unsuccessful attempt to sink the disabled destroyer V4.

Moreover, something that is not presently accounted for is the risks of secondary armament:

Quote

Hazards of secondary batteries
Secondary batteries, distributed along the length of the ship and close to the waterline posed dangers both of flooding and fire/explosion. After the Battle of Jutland, on 1 June 1916 the battlecruiser Seydlitz was so low in the water that she was flooding through the gunports but she was on the point of sinking by then. The greatest danger was from the main deck guns mounted aft in Iron Duke and Queen Elizabeth, which were so close to the water that flooding occurred in normal steaming and would have gone right under with any underwater damage aft. They were useless and soon removed to the forecastle deck.

The secondary battery could only be given armour of medium thickness, typically 6in, which could be penetrated by main armament projectiles at almost any range. Behind this weak protection there was a considerable amount of ready-use ammunition and more in transit from magazines and shell rooms. The consequences are vividly illustrated by the fire aboard Malaya which brought her close to destruction. At 1730hrs a heavy-calibre SAP shell hit the lin forecastle deck at an angle of 20–25° and burst 7ft later, destroying No 3 starboard 6in gun. The 2in upper deck was forced down several inches and shell fragments wrecked the galley and bakery. It was normal practise to have twelve charges per gun stowed in cases each containing four rounds (it would not be surprising if there were more than twelve rounds per gun in the battery, given the desire for the highest-possible rate of fire). Some of these charges were ignited by shell fragments and others caught fire and burnt without exploding. The whole starboard battery was put out of action and there were 102 casualties. The flash passed down the ammunition hoist into the shell room and was only just prevented from igniting a further ten charges, ready for hoisting. Had these ignited, it is most probable that the 6in magazine would have exploded and, in so doing, set off the forward 15in magazines. There was another small fire aboard the Colossus involving 4in charges – four cases each containing six charges – but there was no explosion and the fire was soon extinguished.

The battleship Konig, under fire from HMS Iron Duke at about 1830hrs, had a fire involving a number of 5.9in charges. The fire in the 5.9in casemates of the battle-cruiser Lutzow at about 1819hrs seems to have been burning stores and ammunition was not involved.

The loss of the armoured cruisers Defence at Jutland and the Blücher at Dogger Bank in 1915 showed the danger of flash travelling along ammunition passages. One may also note at Jutland that flame passed down the light cruiser Southampton’s hoist to the ammunition passage but was extinguished.

In conclusion, 6in (or 5.9in) secondary batteries aboard capital ships were expensive, unlikely to score hits and their exposed ammunition could endanger the ship. The correct way to protect battleships from destroyer attack was a screen of light cruisers and destroyers. A light 4in battery may well have been desirable to boost morale rather than protect the ship.

My emphasis, Brown, D. K. (2010). The grand fleet: warship design and development, 1906-1922. Barnsley: Seaforth Pub.

Finally, regarding big gun accuracy vs that of small gun:

Quote

Two highly classified papers, with limited circulation, were prepared in 1906, setting out the views of senior staff of the Admiralty in support of the all-big-gun battleship. They were probably in the nature of briefing papers so that readers would have the facts readily available to defend such ships. These papers were largely written by Jellicoe, the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO), with contributions by Phillip Watts, DNC, and by the Controller and the arguments will be summarised below.

The papers begin by saying that the aspects most often criticised in Dreadnought and Invincible were the all-12in armament, the speed and, as a result of these, the size and cost. The authors say that it is taken for granted that a battleship shall have a primary armament of four 12in guns which can be supplemented by more 12in or a secondary armament of 9.2in or 6in guns. A simple comparison is made of the weight of shell fired by two guns hitting a battle practice target in 10 minutes.

The great superiority of the 12in is immediately obvious, to a considerable extent, due to the much higher percentage of hits scored at longer range.

Critics had confused the high rate of fire of the smaller gun with rate of hitting.

The damage inflicted on an enemy ship depends on the number of hits and on the damage caused by individual hits. Rate of hitting depends on rate of fire, the dangerous space at each range and the probability of hitting. Damage will depend on penetration and the destructive power of the shell. The high rates of fire achieved for a short time in the gunlayers’ competition was much reduced over a longer period and at longer range when spotting fall of shot was necessary. The rates achieved in battle practice were thought realistic and were quite similar to that realised in the Russo-Japanese war.

Even then, the rates of fire for the 6in were thought to be too high since control of a battery would be increasingly difficult for ranges over 2000yds. There is an interesting aside here: ‘It may be assumed that in future battleships [1906] 6in guns will not again be mounted singly on the main deck, but if introduced again would be mounted in twin turrets on the upper deck. To repeat the mistake of mounting these guns as heretofore after the experience we have gained would be a very retrograde action’. 

The paper then considers the chance of hitting at short, moderately long and long range (3000, 6000 and 9000yds). It is, perhaps, a weakness that in this paper of 1906 9000yds is seen as long range. The next table shows the danger space for various guns at these ranges.

This shows that the chance of a hit from a 6in is much less than that for the bigger guns. The paper then goes on to compare the actual percentage of hits achieved in battle practice from the various guns and then estimate the weight of shell hitting at the different ranges.

The superiority of the big gun is seen to increase rapidly as range is increased was to some extent supported by the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war, particularly the Battle of the Yellow Sea. It was often argued by critics that visibility in the North Sea would not often permit these longer ranges to be used which seems a rather exaggerated viewpoint.

A more sensible objection is that it may be possible to mount several smaller guns within the weight and space budgets of the bigger mount so the paper continues by comparing the weight of shell hitting per ton of turret weight.

At the shorter range the smaller gun has a big advantage but by 9000yds there is little in it and at longer ranges the big gun resumes its advantage. This simple comparison neglects the extra men who would be needed to crew the more numerous small guns. There would also be a problem in arranging all these guns on the upper deck, clear of blast from each other and limiting blast on bridges, boats etc. The paper (surely Phillip Watts) reads ‘while consideration of weight alone might allow more guns those of space forbid any large increase in numbers, if they are to be used with effect, unless the ship is lengthened abnormally, so as to space them well apart’.

Consideration is then given to the effects of a hit, looking first at the penetration of armour. The table below shows the penetration of KC armour in inches by APC shell at normal impact.

As discussed later, these figures greatly exaggerate the capability of British shells. However, it is clear that the 6in is useless against the armoured portion of an enemy ship. It was argued by critics that an enemy could be disabled by hits on unarmoured areas such as control tops, boats, gun ports, exposed personnel etc. The experience of the Russo-Japanese war was that damage to lightly-protected areas was mainly due to large-calibre, high-capacity shells and, even so, was rarely disabling. Experience in the First World War largely confirmed this view; only one of the fairly numerous hits by 5.9in shells on British battleships at Jutland caused any serious damage.

Bigger shells do more damage when they burst; Jellicoe said that ‘the effect of shell from different natures of gun may be taken as proportional to the square of the weight of the bursting charge’. This seems a fairly good rule of thumb though it does not distinguish between blast and splinter effect nor on what is hit – people, systems or structure.
These two papers have been quoted at length since they provide a valid defence against most of the criticisms of the all-big-gun Dreadnought battleship and there was very little opposition within the Admiralty.

Once again, my emphasis, Brown, D. K. (2010). The grand fleet: warship design and development, 1906-1922. Barnsley: Seaforth Pub.

I am hoping to convince both the devs and the community the secondary armaments on capital ships were neither accurate nor powerful and that large guns were much more accurate than small.

Secondary guns were not accurate and not powerful. That isn't to say they didn't have a use. If their value came from capital ship crews  feeling they were fighting back against torpedo attacks, that should be okay to model in the game.  Surely in a scenario, the player will also feel like their capital ships are "doing something" in the face of torpedo attack by banging away ineffectually with secondary armament rather than waiting out the attack helplessly or relying solely on screens. This impact on morale is important, and when a morale system is modelled in game should be adequate to show why secondary guns were installed.

A morale system would also be able to model how while the secondary guns may not be accurate or powerful, a hail of gunfire throwing up splashes will give torpedo boats pause when pressing home the attack. Preventing the enemy from attacking or causing them to miss is functionally the same as sinking the enemy. 

For a variety of reasons, large guns were considerably more accurate than small ones. That doesn't mean there were not reasons to equip smaller guns. Size, weight, cost and the availability of guns are huge factors in ship design. Like secondary guns, smaller guns had their uses. Accurate fire was not one of them. The accuracy of 12 inch guns versus 5 is not a good reason for light cruisers to mount them to ward off destroyers, scout for the battle line or raid enemy commerce, 

Edited January 30, 2020 by DougToss

[Bluishdoor76]

sad that there is no mention of improvement to barbatte and tower positions but all of this are still a step in the right direction. Also happy that my prediction for a Denmark Strait battle scenario was actually being implemented along side the Bismarck hull. Cant wait to test the new features!

[Bluishdoor76]

5 hours ago, RAMJB said:

not sure what issue are you referring to. If you're referring to limited position for barbettes and main structures, I'm guessing that yes, it's a hard feature to implement.

Remember that whatever changes are done to the designer might seem simple but the AI needs to be "taught" how to build proper ships that don't look completely ridiculous. Without those anchor points , or with far too many of them,  the AI won't know where to place what, and the result would be truly horrendous ships. Maybe "weighing" the importance of the anchor points for the AI to use the most common placements for structures and guns could work, at any rate is a more involved process than what it seems at first glance ;).


Loving the list of changes, btw. The ability of individual targetting for separate batteries has been one of my pet-peeves since I first fired the game up, for instance, so it's really great to see things like those gradually showing up in the game itself :).

Right you are, I am an advocate for decreasing the limitations on the builder, but I can definitely see the AI going absolute apeshit with the designs if they were introduced hafl-assed. I do still hope they will work on it and we wont have to wait too long.

[Cptbarney]

21 minutes ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

Right you are, I am an advocate for decreasing the limitations on the builder, but I can definitely see the AI going absolute apeshit with the designs if they were introduced hafl-assed. I do still hope they will work on it and we wont have to wait too long.

Maybe they could have a seperate skin overlay for the AI to access? that way players get the freedom of choice and the AI can be happeh and smoll that they don't have to go mental with designs as well.

Also nice to see that all armaments will be able to target other ships independantly and also new missions and ship hulls! I would like to see more pre dreadnought and semidreadnought hulls and maybe new cruiser and dd hulls as well to give more flavour.

All in this update seems very good so far, guess i was kinda right the campaign wouldn't be arriving till around alpha 5-6. But i want you guys to take your time with things, far better to make sure things are working properly than all janky like and then you have the stress of having to rush development to satisfy customer needs and wants.

Nice to see new hulls added to those missions and also nice to see that heavy duty and the search and destroy mission are alot harder now, gives a nice challenge (which is always a good thing).

May i suggest a scenario where no matter what you do you can't sink all the enemies and a high chance of losing? i think this would tell the players blunty that you can't always win a fight and sometimes you need to cut your loses where needed.

[Hangar18]

6 hours ago, RAMJB said:

not sure what issue are you referring to. If you're referring to limited position for barbettes and main structures, I'm guessing that yes, it's a hard feature to implement.

Remember that whatever changes are done to the designer might seem simple but the AI needs to be "taught" how to build proper ships that don't look completely ridiculous. Without those anchor points , or with far too many of them,  the AI won't know where to place what, and the result would be truly horrendous ships. Maybe "weighing" the importance of the anchor points for the AI to use the most common placements for structures and guns could work, at any rate is a more involved process than what it seems at first glance ;).


Loving the list of changes, btw. The ability of individual targetting for separate batteries has been one of my pet-peeves since I first fired the game up, for instance, so it's really great to see things like those gradually showing up in the game itself :).

the ships im seeing now already look horrific. Looks like a 5 y/o took IJN Fuso, and HMS Dreadnought, and said "now kiss". Or even a reverse HMS Nelson, where theres 3 turrets behind the tower, and only 1-2 in front

Edited January 30, 2020 by Hangar18

[ColonelHenry]

Can we please allow the players to design AI ships in custom battles?

Edited January 30, 2020 by ColonelHenry

[arkhangelsk]

1 hour ago, Hangar18 said:

Or even a reverse HMS Nelson, where theres 3 turrets behind the tower, and only 1-2 in front

Actually from the viewpoint of the computer, this design makes perfect sense. The average dreadnaught hull in the game right now is heavily slanted towards having guns to the back. Try it - add that big tower and two turrets to the front. Even putting A turret uncomfortably close to B (firing arc restriction) immediately the weight imbalance shoots up to something like 40%. There is a raised platform you want to use at the back, so you put your X turret at the very back of that raised spot, which doesn't do nearly enough. Y turret ends up having to go nearly to the rear end limit and you put every secondary around the rear half of the ship, trying to balance things out. Of course, Y turret being so far back means you eat penalties in Pitch, but you eat it because it's just a little better than allowing that massive longitudinal offset. If you don't care about appearance and about making a stable, balanced ship, it is much easier to simply use one turret at the front  

[Illya von Einzbern]

Crew soon (tm)
Good update ^^
I hope there won't be too many bugs

[Hangar18]

17 minutes ago, arkhangelsk said:

Actually from the viewpoint of the computer, this design makes perfect sense. The average dreadnaught hull in the game right now is heavily slanted towards having guns to the back. Try it - add that big tower and two turrets to the front. Even putting A turret uncomfortably close to B (firing arc restriction) immediately the weight imbalance shoots up to something like 40%. There is a raised platform you want to use at the back, so you put your X turret at the very back of that raised spot, which doesn't do nearly enough. Y turret ends up having to go nearly to the rear end limit and you put every secondary around the rear half of the ship, trying to balance things out. Of course, Y turret being so far back means you eat penalties in Pitch, but you eat it because it's just a little better than allowing that massive longitudinal offset. If you don't care about appearance and about making a stable, balanced ship, it is much easier to simply use one turret at the front  

Oh i hate that! especially the CC hulls outside the modern ones with the step. still ugly though.

[Tousansons]

I'm mildly interested to see how the ability to choose target with main/secondary will work with the (needed) change of penetration/secondary armament power. It's a nice little addition BUT if secondary power is finally toned down, I don't really see the point other than heavy LARPing. All big guns BB's with a strong pest reppellent escort is in my opinion the way to go as long as there is no planes involved. On the other hand it's needed for torpedoes and I welcome it.

I'm much more interested in the durability of capital ships, change to secondaries damage, improvement in AI ship design and hope to live long enough to see the day when large caliber HE shells will not be the one and only choice at long ranges.

Finally, alas the day has come when the ugly Bismarck show her hull.

Looking forward to next week!

Edited January 30, 2020 by Tousansons

[RedParadize]

Hahaha, I actually trough that patch 4 was out... I think I did that mistake on every yet to come patch note.

[Shaftoe]

1. New "Prove your Might" mission needs to include an auto-generated British Battleship (resembling HMS Prince of Wales) to accompany player-designed Battlecruiser (which, in many cases, is going to be a copy of HMS Hood). Otherwise, historicity fades away and some players might feel that this scenario is unfair.

2. Already existing missions "Battleship vs Battlecruiser" and "Attack armed convoy" should feature newly added HMS Hood hull. Hood fanboys would greatly appreciate it.

3. "Main Guns: Shift + Alt + Right Click" - I think using combination of two already used keys is not really convenient, and it could cause errors and misclicks, especially on older keyboards. I suggest to assign main guns targeting to a completely new, unused button, and avoid combinations for such crucial commands in the future.

4. And please, add some new modern destroyer hulls. Other ship types seem to receive a lot of attention, but destroyers are kinda left out. Sure, they aren't as impressive as larger capital ships, but they are important. And at the moment, we literally only have resized versions of the same hull. It's disappointing. At least consider making something simple that would enable us to build things like Farragut, Pr.7 and Type 1936 destroyers. 

Edited January 30, 2020 by Shaftoe

[Fishyfish]

Okay so lets see.

 

Not at all interested in the headliner news, the Bismarck and the Hood? Don't we already have a flush deck dreadnought hull thats akin to the Bismarck? I guess one with a sharper Atlantic bow is something. Do we need more of the same? More super dreadnought hulls for the Iowa and modren hull variations for warships post 1927? More modren tech and variations? Great I can't *yawn* wait... Anyways. Not at all interested in any of the new missions, or any of that stuff at all. Oh well. 

I've got tempered expectations about the new secondary barbette system, I want to be interested but.. well we'll see. The gun placement at current is really taxing. I understand that there might be limitations because of the AI's needs but that doesn't mean I'm thrilled.

Its not all bad, I'm very interested in the new gun models assuming that doesn't just mean "More modren looking guns", as well as the hull model fixes. I'm very interested in the improved decales and targeting controls as well. 

I've no opinions on the balances though, got to wait to give them a try first. I really just want my game to work, last patch made it so I couldn't sink anything anymore. So that's fun. 

 

I don't know. Not a lot here aside from the general house keeping and quality of life updates to keep me interested. Would like to see more effort put into the 1890-1910 era. Everything had much more personality and unique design. Post WW1 everything starts to look the same.. yawn. Man, big yawn.