>>>"Alpha-4 v67+" General Feedback<<<

[FinnishJager]

All well and good. The more I see new ship designs released, the more unhappy I get that the game didn't go the route of the original design trailer. The lack of true ship customization is sad. Missed potential that the AI designs from larger parts (as current) vs the player designing ships like you can design rockets (and more) in Kerbal Space Program. The campaign better be good, otherwise it's a big miss in terms of game potential.

[RAMJB]

5 minutes ago, Ignominius said:

Just as a curio, how many 13" shells from inside 2km do you reckon would be enough to kill one of the 1940s Battleships, given a full broadside? Historically or otherwise speaking.

If we're to judge from what happened to the actual Bismarck....dozens, probably hundreds. Ships sink because of flooding, not because you turn their avobe-waterline structures into the naval equivalent of a scrapyard. And at those ranges achieving underwater hits was particularily difficult - at the shallow angles involved, shells that would hit the water would "bounce" back up in the very same way you can make pebbles skip on water, and go straight up against the hull avobe water..

At any rate, I can't make a correlation with what I saw in game. I moved down to 2km because the brits ran out of ammo for the 13'' guns. Fast rate of fire and 12 guns chew through ammo REALLY quickly. And that ship might have had reduced ammo storage given how early they ran into ammo trouble.

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

10 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Stereoscopic V and Radar II. 20.5 pitch, 10.9 roll, -29 smoke interference.

I think your problem is indeed that the enemy was moving at 45 knots. Which I have to agree with others who have stated it too - it's a completely ridiculous top speed that no ship that size should come even close to touch. Heck, not even destroyers should.

Well, unless you're a French DD or a Russian one that doesn't have it's guns or ammo on board, heh. 

yeah same equipment. If that is the case then my issue becomes two things; one, yeah that sort of speed is insane (did a cursory look at the Hood hull and the default middle of the road speed is 36 knots. Thirty six.) And two, the accuracy issues shooting at ships doing more than 35 knots have clearly not been resolved. 

[Ignominius]

Just now, RAMJB said:

dozens, probably hundreds

Boy are you in for a treat.

 

[RAMJB]

14 minutes ago, Ignominius said:

Boy are you in for a treat.

In which specific sense?. That video pretty much backs all the points I make in my post:

 

1- component damage is lacking, it's too difficult to actually get components out of action.

2- engine damage doesn't happen as frequently as it should if the main citadel is penetrated

3- flooding damage is far too rare

4- penetrating hits into the citadel should do quite a lot more damage that penetrating hits that end up outside of it.

and:

5- "soft killing" a battleship is quite harder than what it should be as a result of 1&2&3&4.


All that video is proving is that now getting structural kills on BBs is exceedingly hard now. Which is exactly what it should be like - and which is exactly what I said I was pumped out about (and which I explained in lenght in my subsequent post). 

So thanks a lot, you gave me exactly the kind of video footage to prove all the points I brought up in the post where I talked about my first try of the new damage model, without the need for me to go on and do a video like that (now I can actually think of making actual content for the channel again ;)).

And yes, believe it or not, this is a step in the right direction. Yes, that now ships are as hard to destroy due to structural damage alone is showing weaknesses and shortcomings in other areas of the game, that in turn, also mean it's too hard to kill those ships (period), way more than what it should be.

Those things that are now found lacking will need to be adressed accordingly. New mechanics introduced (such as flood-induced listing and capsizing). Component damage revised, especially in what regards to underwater hits and flooding. The armor model we all know needs a revision too. All those things right now conspire to make BBs very hard to sink, more than what they should. So all those things should be adressed. But the part that they got right should stay put as it is.


In short, and as I stated in the post you used as a quote to "answer me" to, this is, indeed a general step in the correct direction.

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

6 minutes ago, Ignominius said:

Boy are you in for a treat.

 

This isn't wholly inaccurate, especially for what appears to be an older vessel (though modern looking guns) shooting at you. As Ramjb himself said, turning your superstructure to slag will not sink you, though I would have expected your towers and secondaries to be destroyed at the end and they were not, that clearly needs work. 13 inchers are also woefully inadequate in the 40's for anything much more than convoy raiding and defence, or against cruisers, 14 inch or 356mm guns were considered the minimum for battleline usage at this point for a reason. 

Nice vid though, this is the sort of stuff we need to talk about so the devs can change things in a positive direction. 

[Ignominius]

2 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

All that video is proving is that now getting structural kills on BBs is exceedingly hard now. Which is exactly what it should be like - and which is exactly what I said I was pumped out about (and which I explained in lenght in my subsequent post). 

So thanks a lot, you gave me exactly the kind of video footage to prove all the points I brought up in the post where I talked about my first try of the new damage model, without the need for me to go on and do a video like that (now I can actually think of making actual content for the channel again ;)).

And yes, believe it or not, this is a step in the right direction. Yes, that now ships are as hard to destroy due to structural damage alone is showing weaknesses and shortcomings in other areas of the game, that in turn, also mean it's too hard to kill those ships (period), way more than what it should be.

Those things that are now found lacking will need to be adressed accordingly. New mechanics introduced (such as flood-induced listing and capsizing). Component damage reviesed. The armor model we all know needs a revision too. All those things right now conspire to make BBs very hard to sink, more than what they should. So all those things should be adressed. But the part that they got right should stay put as it is.


In short, and as I stated in the post you used as a quote to "answer me" to, this is, indeed a general step in the correct direction.

I do think that, as you suggest, the primary method of sinking a ship should not be by reducing the structural integrity below 0%, but should revolve around destroying critical components, causing flooding, or by setting fires, however I do not believe that the chance for ships to be sunk by other means is currently feasible in Alpha-4.

 

 

[FinnishJager]

I think it's understandable that shell hits to the superstructure shouldn't sink a ship, but those kinds of hits should quickly render a vessel combat incapable. The video correctly shows that ships are tanking too much damage EVERYWHERE. The danger of magazine explosions that sink a ship outright also never feels real. The game looks like World of Warship's combat.

[RAMJB]

5 minutes ago, Ignominius said:

I do not believe that the chance for ships to be sunk by other means is currently feasible in Alpha-4.

It's feasible, but, without question, is a lot harder than what it should be (At least using conventional gunnery alone, torpedoes should help a lot with that). Especially in what regards to soft-kill effects, which are undoubtedly quite harder to get going right now (as they're currently directly linked to structural damage, or to individual component destruction which now happens too rarely)

The thing is that we're in an evolving process here. As I commented in a previous post, now they've got something changed (and in my particular opinion, on a very good credible ballpark) other things are showing their shortcomings and inadequacies. It's to be expected in a game as complex as this. Time to address those, and hopefully a good number of them will be sorted out for the next iteration of the development cycle, bringing the game closer to what it should be :).

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

To prove my earlier point about the Bismarck hull being prohibitively expensive. 

 

This battlecruiser hull actually has better overall armor than the Bismarck hull I built earlier, has better secondaries, has torpedoes, is 3 knots faster, still has the same internal components, only skimping by one level of torpedo belt, and is fully a quarter of the cost and maintenance cost, and take a bit over a year less time to build. The catch? I lose a single turret, that's it. While this isn't a problem right now, I do hope that the devs are looking at economy tweaks for the campaign, because paying quadruple the price for a single double turret on a new (slightly more stable) hull seems kind of daft.

[AML]

Got a few more rounds in, was mostly focused on trying out the split fire mechanics so I will stick to that and leave the durability discussion to others for now.

As I posted early wing turrets are apparently treated as part of the secondary battery regardless of their calibre, a pretty big issue for early dreadnoughts which will need to be addressed. Otherwise I'm satisfied with how it seems to have turned out, not noticing any other bugs or questionable behaviour at this time.

I do wonder about possibly adding another layer of target selectors or fiddling with what is considered to be a secondary gun for pre-dreadnought battleships and large armoured cruisers. Intermediate batteries might have some issues at the moment, I'd want my 8-10" secondaries engaging the same target as my main guns, not firing at destroyers with the smaller pieces. 

Edited February 6, 2020 by AML

[Steeltrap]

10 minutes ago, Ignominius said:

I do think that, as you suggest, the primary method of sinking a ship should not be by reducing the structural integrity below 0%, but should revolve around destroying critical components, causing flooding, or by setting fires, however I do not believe that the chance for ships to be sunk by other means is currently feasible in Alpha-4.

I sank a pre-dreadnought BB through fire alone in the 'Armed Convoy' mission, one of the ones I play many times to test things when updates are released, which was about the only thing I COULD do as I suddenly found my weapons were decidedly impotent in most respects.

[RAMJB]

41 minutes ago, Reaper Jack said:

To prove my earlier point about the Bismarck hull being prohibitively expensive. 

 

This battlecruiser hull actually has better overall armor than the Bismarck hull I built earlier, has better secondaries, has torpedoes, is 3 knots faster, still has the same internal components, only skimping by one level of torpedo belt, and is fully a quarter of the cost and maintenance cost, and take a bit over a year less time to build. The catch? I lose a single turret, that's it. While this isn't a problem right now, I do hope that the devs are looking at economy tweaks for the campaign, because paying quadruple the price for a single double turret on a new (slightly more stable) hull seems kind of daft.

You're missing a lot of things here, I'm afraid.

Battlecruiser hull stats:
110 hull form, 78 stability, 74 floatability, 77 resistance, 50 turning slowdown

Battleship hull stats:
97 hull form, 90 stability, 78 floatability, 95 resistance, 40 turning slowdown.


In bolded, the parts affecting the effects of actual materials used on the hull (rather than on it's shape).

Strictly said, the battleship hull is MUCH sturdier (and larger) and that is shown both in the displacement, AND, the cost. The ship in your picture displaces 34k at full load. That's 16500 tons less than Bismarck did.

And trust me - those 16500 tons weren't used only in an extra turret. But in the extra materials to make the hull larger, better subdivided, and much sturdier (and in the subsequent extra armor needed to compensate for the extra size). And those materials weren't free (nor was the labor needed to turn them into a ship).

Just as a little extra, I'll throw here the actual costs of the real Scharnhorsts (similar full displacement to the ship you've posted) vs the real Bismarcks: According to Erich Gröner, the two Scharnhorst battleships costed around 150 million Reichsmarks apiece, and the two Bismarck-class ships costed nearly 250 million Reichsmarks each. Meaning, almost twice. So if anything, the game's being very generous towards Bismarck.

I'll have to insist: the Bismarcks were notoriously VERY cost- and tonnage-innefective ships. It's hardly a surprise they are so here aswell.

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[arkhangelsk]

47 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

I think your problem is indeed that the enemy was moving at 45 knots. Which I have to agree with others who have stated it too - it's a completely ridiculous top speed that no ship that size should come even close to touch. Heck, not even destroyers should.

Maybe this can be Alpha-4's hotfix (they usually have one for each Alpha):

Destroyers are not permitted to exceed 80,000HP (we'll say Tashkent, maxing out at ~4200 tons is a light cruiser).

Cruisers may not exceed 160,000HP.

Battleships, Battlecruisers and Dreadnaughts may not exceed 280,000HP (I'm giving them 70000HP over 4 shafts - they can't need much more than this!)

The Modern Battleship and Super Battleship (clearly oversized ships) are limited to 35 knots.

That should plug up the worst of this problem.

[Reaper Jack]

2 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

I'll have to insist: the Bismarcks were notoriously VERY cost- and tonnage-innefective ships. It's hardly a surprise they are so here aswell.

I still feel that quadruple the cost is rather silly. Double perhaps, but in this current case I would absolutely take four of these over one Bismarck. 

[RAMJB]

Quadruple the cost? the picture you linked last page of your bismarck showed a 104M cost for that ship

The picture you linked here of the BC shows almost 60M, or a bit over 40% less the cost.

That's not "four times cheaper"....not by any stretch of the imagination. 

Which is actually a better ratio for Bismarck than what the historical costs for those ships compared with the Scharnhorsts were (again, when going with Erich Gröner figures)

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

1 minute ago, RAMJB said:

Quadruple the cost? the picture you linked last page of your bismarck showed a 104M cost for that ship

The picture you linked here of the BC shows almost 60M, or 40% less the cost. That's not "four times cheaper"....not by any stretch of the imagination. 

Which is actually a better ratio for Bismarck than what the historical costs for those ships compared with the Scharnhorsts were (again, when going with Erich Gröner figures)

Maintenance cost, forgot to specify. Hmm, in that case I wonder how they scale facing one another.

[RAMJB]

6 minutes ago, Reaper Jack said:

Maintenance cost

Another particular issue with the Bismarcks, as the raid on St Nazaire went to prove. Bigger ships not only need proportionally bigger costs in term of actual ship crews, or port maintenaince crews and schedules to properly maintain a much larger ship.

It also demanded larger (and costlier) infrastructures, drydocks, piers, port equipment, port dredging and maintainance efforts (to account for the bigger drafts in the quite shallow german ports - not to mention the kiel canal) etc, all which could perfectly be encompassed into the "operational maintainance" costs of those warships - which accounts for far more than what the actual "Real" hands-on mainteinance work at the port would be.

I don't have any figure for the actual maintainance costs for those ships, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were, indeed, that high. But again, lacking hard data and proper sources, I'm not saying that's either right or wrong :).

Edited February 6, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

2 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Another particular issue with the Bismarcks, as the raid on St Nazaire went to prove. Bigger ships not only need proportionally bigger costs in term of actual ship crews, or port maintenaince crews and schedules to properly maintain a much larger ship.

It also demanded larger (and costlier) infrastructures, drydocks, piers, port equipment, port dredging and maintainance efforts (to account for the bigger drafts in the quite shallow german ports - not to mention the kiel canal) etc, all which could perfectly be encompassed into the "operational maintainance" costs of those warships - which accounts for far more than what the actual works at the port would be.

I don't have any figure for the actual maintainance costs for those ships, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were, indeed, that high. But again, lacking hard data and proper sources, I'm not saying that's either right or wrong :).

All are fair points, I would give a pretty penny for access to such information, this also raises the question of whether or not we will get to mothball ships in the campaign, and the cost of reactivating them, maintenance cost will also be a rather nice incentive to get rid of old ships (presumably we will get to scrap them for some monetary return, though I would like to see museum ships as a prestige option at the cost of not getting anything out of it...unless it generates income for you?) 

And aye, I'm actually looking forward to the infrastructure side of things, not in the least because I can't wait to see what the AI does with tonnage limits, as right now they always seem to go ballistic towards the high end. 

I just want the campaign already damn it. 

[admin]

2 hours ago, FinnishJager said:

All well and good. The more I see new ship designs released, the more unhappy I get that the game didn't go the route of the original design trailer. The lack of true ship customization is sad. Missed potential that the AI designs from larger parts (as current) vs the player designing ships like you can design rockets (and more) in Kerbal Space Program. The campaign better be good, otherwise it's a big miss in terms of game potential.

The team is 1 programmer, one designer/tester/writer, one artist. Adding more people before all core systems are in will slow the development down. 
Ship designer is not currently a priority, and will not be a priority until the draft campaign is finished and game launches on Steam.
Then the ship designer will start improving rapidly as the whole scope of requirements will be understood. 
We will of course try to improve it during this time of campaign development and deployment. But this is not going to be radical.

 

[Steeltrap]

I had to redesign the two BCs I had taken to using on the Armed Convoy mission because for some reason (and I DON'T like it), the small barbette mounting point at the rear was removed AND apparently the game now considers 6" to be the maximum armament you can mount ON a secondary barbette.

Previously, one used 2 x (2x10" Mk4) and 6 x (2x7" Mk4) for a broadside of 4x10" and 8x7".

The other had 2 x (2x9" Mk4) and 4 x (2x8" Mk4) and 6 x (2x4" Mk4) for a broadside of 4x9" and 6x8" and 6x4".

Can't mount secondary barbette aft, can't mount anything over 6" on the secondary barbette immediately ahead of the bridge.

Anyway, altered the first one to effectively 4x10" and 8x6" broadside. Put the considerable weight savings into slightly increased speed (30 knots) and quite a bit of armour.

Conclusions?

Following the hotfix of Alpha-3, either of those 2 designs were quite capable of wiping out ALL the enemy ships with 30-38 minutes remaining on the clock. The shortest time it took me to kill all the warships (2 pre-dread BBs, a CA and 2 CLs) was 9 minutes.

I even turned control over to the AI to see how it would fare. It completed the mission, but it took longer and also took a LOT more damage than I did.

What did I find after this update playing the same mission with forced changes to my ship?

Love the ability to control the main and secondary guns independently, both for target selection AND fire discipline. That means you can turn your main guns OFF and use secondaries only, something I had asked for and hadn't expected as it wasn't clearly stated in the notes. Thanks SO much for this, it's a realistic and important tactical feature. If we can get separate ammo control, then it's ideal.

FORGET about trying to sink all the warships, however.

As has been said by everyone, the most obvious change is that AP shells do comparatively TINY amounts of damage even on penetrating hits.

I did damage to one of the pre-d BB's engines after a 10" penetrating hit to the main belt. It didn't cause flooding. Really? That's novel.

Another aspect? My 6" mk4 guns are MORE ACCURATE, up to 70% so, from 2,500m to 10,000m. Really. I thought we'd discussed this, LOL.

I'm with @RAMJB and others when it comes to conclusions:

- certain aspects of this update are much more like what I'd expect to see, especially with major armoured capital ships being very damage resistant and particularly secondary/tertiary weapon calibres.

- cutting the penetration of weapons from the peculiar numbers we saw in the hotfix was a good idea.

- the armour model is an unknown, but presumably incomplete and somewhat crude.

- the damage model in particular is a problem. It would appear there's a "hit point" value for compartments and components. This latest update APPEARS to have reduced the damage by penetrating AP shells without changing component/compartment values. Suddenly guns aren't doing much of anything. On the one hand that's a good thing, but, either due to incomplete design or some other factor, it's insufficiently nuanced.

A penetrating 10" shell hitting a CL, for example, ought to be very significantly bad news. Consider the experience of the RN ships taking hits from the 11" of Graf Spee; those hits were VERY destructive, pretty much leaving the CA Exeter combat incapable with a small number of hits.

In fact it ought to be significantly bad news to ANYTHING with respect to the immediate surrounds. A twin 6" secondary gun turret on a BB or a twin 6" as a main gun on a CL were often more or less the same mount, especially in later war examples of 5.25" Royal Navy or 5" USN mounts where they were the same on various ships that used them. A 10" AP hit  is likely to blow the hell out of it unless it does a through-and-through or fails to explode, and even then such a hit is very likely to wreck the internal mechanisms, not to mention (sadly) the crew. What it ought NOT do is simply turn the turret 'yellow' with seemingly no effect on its ability to fire.

Same goes for my example of a main belt penetration damaging the engine and not causing flooding. While I suppose it's technically possible if the hit came in at an angle to punch through and down into an engine room and yet do so from above the waterline, I would not have thought it very likely from about 3km range. Seems to me there are various damage thresholds required to achieve things, and that includes causing flooding EVEN IF it seems highly improbable.

I also found that my 6" secondaries, while more accurate than my 10" main guns, were all but incapable of causing flooding on a transport. I used them to target transports as soon as I realised they were largely pointless against the pre-dread BBs (which is a GOOD thing IMO, and why we needed to be able to target them independently). Every transport the 6" guns sank was because of "excessive fire". Some took 30 or more 6" shells. NOT ONE SANK THROUGH FLOODING. Yes, that's a problem. I considered using AP, but that makes no sense because the 10" AP rounds were doing barely 20 damage with penetrating hits, so what would the 6" do?

We really need info on the damage model if we're to assist in critiquing it. How does a shell with a listed damage value of over 1,000 according to its weapon stats penetrate something and do 20 damage? What exactly does that mean? Was the shell damage changed, or was something rather drastic done in what appears to be the 'damage mitigation' part of the damage calculation process? At first glance it makes little sense.

 

I do not wish to be unfairly critical of our friendly and hard working devs, so I mean the following to be read in a tone and spirit of constructive and well meaning concern:

I don't quite understand how it is we're lurching back and forth with peculiar outcomes. While it is good that things are starting to be harder to sink (the penetration values plus damage done plus significance of bulkheads really did make them too fragile by far), it's NOT good if it's done through what appear to be somewhat arbitrary/peculiar means.

I suppose my general point is this, and it's one I've made over and over. The whole tactical combat system is a collection of processes, from manoeuvring to spotting to shooting at, hitting and damaging a target.

What I find hard to understand is how changes get made to produce results that I would have expected to be ENTIRELY predictable.

It ought to be KNOWN what will happen in EVERY CONNECTED ASPECT if something is done suddenly to reduce damage done by penetrating AP rounds. Which means checking against a list of "we want this" and, AS IMPORTANT, a list of "these things MUST NOT happen".

I look at some of these results and wonder just how clearly those lists have been determined, how well it is understood how changes made for an update are likely to filter through all the interrelated processes to produce results, and how those results are checked against those two lists I mentioned.

Why, for example, are my 6" Mk4 guns 70% MORE ACCURATE than my 10" Mk4 at 10,000m range? Does that in fact make sense to anyone? And if it doesn't, how is it the update allows that to be true? That's the sort of thing I'm getting at.

I've seen and applauded how the devs show great attention to detail, which is why this result puzzles me. Do they believe 6" guns OUGHT to be more accurate than 10' despite the very detailed evidence posted in the forum showing how incorrect that is? Or did they change the accuracy of all marks of all guns that appear in the "main gun" list yet didn't do a full check of the results against all marks of all guns on the secondary gun list? Either way, it does leave me wondering.

Having said that, of course our devs can take as long as they like and go through as many versions as they feel necessary. I just find it slightly odd that we keep finding pretty drastic changes, as opposed to corrections within the various parts that all appear to be heading to a reliable, reasonably accurate and stable end product.

Sorry for wall of text.

All constructive discussion of anything I've written is of course welcomed.

Cheers

========================================================

One last thing. An interesting test for me will be to see how I must redesign my ships in order to get the best performance from them. That's why I tend to play a few missions over and over. It highlights to me what has suddenly become important for effectiveness within an otherwise predictable, familiar battle.

The hotfix caused me to move to a small main gun armament and as many higher end secondaries as I could manage. Also found the best policy was to increase speed to 30 knots or so because armour had been so devalued that the best armour was the what I consider to be FAR too generous "target ship high speed" penalty I could put on the AI trying to shoot me.

I have a suspicion this update will have pushed things far more back towards bigger is better, even though of course that's exactly what a dreadnought was when it came to effectiveness of gunnery (they still had plenty of secondary guns, but they weren't ever expected to be a source of significant damage dealing, let alone killing power).

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Steeltrap
some formatting changes for emphasis

[znôrt]

23 minutes ago, admin said:

Adding more people before all core systems are in will slow the development down. 

spot on! i've been telling this to bosses and bigshots for years, to no avail. they just can't wrap their head around their heads. sometimes less is more. 👍

[Cptbarney]

Problems with pudding hull and also ships with guns turning into hull (AI only issue so far).

Also would be nice if people are going to do feedback they would keep it consise and to the point while also pointing some other things, also be good if people report the same thing if it hasn't been addressed yet. Good thing that fish guy is gone, seems like a child with entitlement issues.

For AP rounds it seems like damage has been reduced in terms of actual numbers, however it seems the total actual structure hitpoints goes down a lot faster probably meaning that hit do more hp damage? Not sure as i was only able to play one game so far with the new hulls, bismarck can take a beating even against 381mm's was kinda expecting some big hits. (even got ammo detonation on audacious but that only came up for around 127 hp, might be due to the many and reinforced bulkheads i had on her.).

p.s cant post the pudding hull secondary problems but that seems to be for all calibers will do so later anyways.

Too be honest, im not sure why people are expecting ultra realism this is being done on the unity engine afterall, almost all physics and realism in any game is basically faked regardless, due to stupid amount of computational power and calculations required just to simulate physics. Although i would like too see a more updated and complex armour model, maybe an internal armour model to help with penetrating hit calculations and events?

 

 

 

[Zak MacKay]

After playing for quite a bit some things I noticed:
- Secondary barrettes don't seem that usable. Theirs just not enough hull points for them with many of them not being able to be placed. I think I have found one hull that could use it and its pretty good. I want to use it more I just cannot.
- Once you load a ship it seems like some things fall off of their points on the main tower. So I need to delete everything and replace all the secondaries.
- Ricochets on higher tier missions seem extreamly high. I have not tried the lower tiers but it may be due to resilience getting too high. If you get caught inside a chase situation prepare for a pretty unfun. It seems like engine damage should happen more often but every round bounces so nothing is damaged. But I have found switching to HE helps with that.

- Heavy cruisers seem to have more armor then battle cruisers. Their almost capital ships in terms of durability so I just ignore them often. Maybe the AI preferences are set too high?
- On the hood and against hood missions I won by exploding the enemy ship. But the more modern ones seem almost immune to explosions. I think its more just the more advanced technologies make . But the issue is defeating them through gun fire is now very slow especially if their angled.
- Geared turbines seem to not save barely any weight. Was it always this way I don't remember it being that bad.

I really like the secondary targeting. On the newest missions I can force away destroyer squadrons using it. On the highest tier at least the 5-6" secondaries don't seem that capable of killing needing a heavy massing to inflict heavy damage. They can defiantly kill but many are left half dead more often then sunk. Just forcing away the destroyers is worth it just a observation on the new damage model against them. The 8" on the H mission are extreamly deadly able to tear apart destroyers.

I found the new missions challenging but not too bad. I still need to beat the US super heavy mission but I don't think I am far off. The H battleship was pretty challenging but once I realized the better option was money it was not that bad. Except the cursed chase sequence. I had to redo the mission multiple times just to improve my chasing ability.

I would like to be able to extend super structures to place more secondaries on some ships. Or just fill in the ship as if you only have 4 turrets some feel a little empty.

[Shaftoe]

4 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Stereoscopic V and Radar II. 20.5 pitch, 10.9 roll, -29 smoke interference.

I think your problem is indeed that the enemy was moving at 45 knots. Which I have to agree with others who have stated it too - it's a completely ridiculous top speed that no ship that size should come even close to touch. Heck, not even destroyers should.

I agree. Completely. Was gonna say this myself. But I suppose I might just quote you.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Shaftoe