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

[Marshall99]

57 minutes ago, Hussarball_PL said:

I have found a bug. When you select an aggressive gun behavior they will fire even if target is beyond range.

That is why it is called agressive 😄

[RAMJB]

1 hour ago, TAKTCOM said:

I have mixed feelings about this situation. Is it just me, or is there really something wrong here? What do you think?

Noticed it myself. Seems to be a bug, because that 50-ish % is not representative at all of the actual pens you achieve.

[WiselessOwl]

Found a bug (?) It seems that battleships under certain circumstances can now deploy smokescreens😕

In custom battle had one modern BB and one CL. Merged them in one squadron, as they shared simular top speed. Then, during battle ordered CL to cover itself with smoke in order to not get rekt in a seconds...
Turned out that BB captain, who was in the same squadron, thought something like "why am I worse than him? I want to live too!"... aaaand started deploying smokescreen. Which he definetely could not do before...Yeah.

Filled the bugreport form, screens here

https://imgur.com/45q8gkL

https://imgur.com/1tAjm32

 

[RAMJB]

Second try ....

"H class ship" Scenario. Fourth volley. Score hit abreast turret A. 32km

The second enemy BB met the same fate roughly 3minutes after taking this screenshot. He was at 29.5km

...glad to see ammo detonations doing what they should to big ships. The ship in this screenshot is literally broken in half XDDDDD. Easiest scenario run in my life.

[Veronica88]

Could Custom battle get the option to unlock all tech when you choose unlock all hull, or have the proper tech applied when the year and nation that the player has set?

I'm bringing this because currently with this new patch I'm having mark 3 203mm turrets for japan when they used mark 5 for japan 1940 and again mark 3 457mm turrets when yamato again ran mk4's.

I just wanted to bring this to the dev's attention but I had no idea where to place and yes the issue continues the other nations as well hence me asking could the option be given to unlock all tech to lv5 or have the tech properly scale to nations and tech year in custom battles.

Thank you for the taking the time to read this.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Veronica88

[Brandon L]

While the new hulls are cool and all all I really wanted was to be able to place barbettes amidships. Why it was not included in the upgrade is beyond me...

[SmoCro]

4 hours ago, Hussarball_PL said:

I have found a bug. When you select an aggressive gun behavior they will fire even if target is beyond range.

Yes, had that too.

4 hours ago, roachbeef said:

Should the Bismarck-esque BB be able to tank more than 30 20" torpedoes? Guns seem to only do catastrophic damage with plunging fire so I closed in for torpedoes. Unsurprisingly Murphy hates me so he blew up both my 40 kn, 4.8-km-range-torp DDs after 1 spread and he proceeded to tank >30 torpedoes (out of >60 fired)spread across 6 compartments. He finally sank after the 7th one flooded, but I'm surprised at the overall tankiness this patch. Shells I understand. Torps I'm unsure. We're given too few torpedo-capable ships to reliably sink the enemy while the enemy has tons, and we aren't even allowed to design them ourselves. We need to be able to design our allied ships to have a chance.

I am quite alright with the shell debuff I must say.

Looking at Jütland for example apart from the BCs that went boom rather spectacularly the Germans lost one (!) ship but had lots and lots of ships with hundreds of holes in them.

So the shell damage strikes me as more realistic than before.

As for the torpodoes...

They were already too weak against battleships in my esitmate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_22_September_1914

Three armored cruisers sunk by a u-boat carrying eighteen inch torpedoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Majestic_(1895)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Triumph_(1903)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Pathfinder_(1904)

Two pre-dreadnoughts sunk and a Scout cruiser, all by the same u-boat, all falling to 20 inch torpedoes.

And yet even destroyers frequently survive multiple hits from 24" as long as their bulkheads are sufficient; A 24" torpedo is about 3/4 of a ton of explosives applied directly to the hull combined with the structural integrity being strained by the ship "falling" sideways in the hole in the water caused by the displacement of the torpedo explosions.

Even smaller torpedoes like the 21" and 18" ones still brought a couple hundred kilos to the party.

Torpedo damage needs to be buffed.

At the moment, within the world of UA:D there is no reason to develop the destroyer, for torpedo boats are harmless.

 

[Reaper Jack]

5 minutes ago, SmoCro said:

At the moment, within the world of UA:D there is no reason to develop the destroyer, for torpedo boats are harmless.

 

Not my experience, properly applied 21 and 24 inch (standard and long lance sizes) are devastating even to ships of sufficient countermeasures. I took out a pair of heavy cruisers in custom battles earlier with anti torp II, anti flooding III, triple bottomed hulls and auxiliary power for water pumping. One took a single 21 inch torpedo for 40% floatability and 30% structure damage, flooding two compartments, the other took two for 65% floatability and 55% structure damage with four compartments flooded and one partial flood. Both ships lost between 50-80% of engine power despite my having installed redundancy systems. This was from three relatively standard issue torpedoes. Had that been irl I would have expected similar results, give or take a little in either direction. Both ships if not reinforced quickly would have been operational losses due to losing mobility. (See Bismarck.) That's something that is easy to forget, right now it is about sinking everything, in the actual campaign it will be about disabling and forcing your opponent to spend longer in port than you. Victory = / = All enemies sunk. 

[roachbeef]

In my case most if the torps only damaged the two rearmost compartments because I was shooting from the rear. It was the final broadside hitting the forward compartments that sank the ship. Seems like repeat hits do nothing and flooding does not spread.

[Steeltrap]

1 hour ago, SmoCro said:

I am quite alright with the shell debuff I must say.

Looking at Jütland for example apart from the BCs that went boom rather spectacularly the Germans lost one (!) ship but had lots and lots of ships with hundreds of holes in them.

So the shell damage strikes me as more realistic than before.

The thing to remember about Jutland, however, was that it was in some ways rather peculiar. One of those ways was the performance of shells.

The Brits knew their AP rounds were of questionable performance. Years earlier, Jellicoe himself as head of Ordnance had been looking into it more closely but he was promoted and the work wasn't continued. They were still shocked, however, to find JUST how poor the performance had been, with shells shattering, bouncing, partially penetrating or even penetrating yet not exploding. Lyddite was a significant part of the problem (the burster was inclined to explode on impact despite fusing), but the shell design and manufacturing also contributed.

Following Jutland and Jellicoe's promotion, he placed his flag captain (none other than Frederick Charles Dreyer developer of the Dreyer Table) to head Ordnance and address it. In a relatively remarkably short time he did so, as he was appointed March 1917 and the resulting "Greenboy" shells were largely in service in large calibre guns throughout the fleet in about May 1918.

So when it comes to saying the decreased shell performance is 'realistic' really depends on what era shells we're talking about. Bear in mind, too, the devs have included a penalty to penetration for Lyddite explosives, for example, so these things were already considered.

As I've said in my lengthy post earlier, my main concern with changes we're seeing is they appear to be very abrupt reversals of the previous version. That concerns me as it suggests to me the devs haven't got a proper grip on their designed mechanics. I'd have expected them to be able to make changes much more likely to produce desired effects that don't seem to throw up all sorts of other problems, such as damaging engines through main belt penetration yet not causing flooding (while technically possible, seems unlikely).

The whole interplay of penetration, damage mitigation and compartment/component damage seems to have gone drastically in the other direction. While that was necessary to a degree, the damage model apparently lacks the sophistication to differentiate between an armoured cruiser and a transport when it comes to flooding, for example. In my long post I mentioned hitting transports with 30-40 6" projectiles, even transports WITHOUT significant bulkhead numbers. I only ever sank them with "excessive fires", not flooding, yet that was with a barrage of shells apparently doing 100-200 damage (HE on ship with no armour).

So, while I agree the previous ease of sinking was a problem, this "solution" creates different sorts of anomalies (bordering on, frankly, absurdities), and that bothers me.

Perhaps they simply need to concentrate on their damage model, and ONLY that. If it is sufficiently nuanced then they can tailor what they want to happen by tinkering with damage values of shells, knowing what doing so will produce.

Seems to me, however, they did this by greatly increasing damage mitigation factors (the shipyard does show shell damage reduction, and it seems, frankly, too high).

I'd have expected the single greatest factor to be penetration. I'd then expect ships of different sizes, years and design types to have different values for compartments and components. Thus the different effect of a 14" shell would be due to the armour it had to defeat and the damage a compartment could take as opposed to some magical disappearance of the explosive energy of the shell's bursting charge. Sure, capital ships with multiple armoured systems to localise blast and splinters etc are relevant in curtailing the SPREAD of damage across multiple compartments, but WITHIN a compartment or component that shell ought to be just as bad whether you're in the engine space of a CL or a BC.

I know I'm rambling, but seems the damage system really needs work. All ships SEEM to have the same number of compartments on their damage model, but I don't know what that might mean behind the scenes.

I wrote a thread somewhere where I put the different parts of tactical combat into discrete processes. I want some highly detailed explanation of the "damage" process as that would help us to understand what's going on, and thus give some informed feedback.

Again, it comes down to the general principle that the more informed your testers are, the more likely it is they can give you meaningful feedback. Right now we can say what we see is happening, but if we knew the design etc we'd be able to say whether it's what we OUGHT to be seeing, plus also comment more broadly on whether the intended result is in fact a sensible one in the first place.

Sorry again for another wall of text, lol.

Cheers

 

[Steeltrap]

2 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

 Both ships if not reinforced quickly would have been operational losses due to losing mobility. (See Bismarck.)

That's something that is easy to forget, right now it is about sinking everything, in the actual campaign it will be about disabling and forcing your opponent to spend longer in port than you. Victory = / = All enemies sunk. 

Yes, that's a really crucial point when it comes to managing expectations.

Given we can only do battles at present, and I say "only" in the sense the campaign layer is missing not that being restricted to battles is a bad thing, we tend to think in terms of "sink everything".

Indeed, the missions promote exactly that thinking due to the 'victory conditions'.

It also means WE don't have to consider the implications of damage RECEIVED, other than the degree to which it affects combat performance IN that battle.

Once we need to think about repair times and costs, not to mention getting to wherever can do those repairs, plus the implications of having ships out of service for however long, battles will be more about tactical combat objectives serving STRATEGIC goals rather than "No cap, kill all" (sorry, couldn't resist, LOL).

[Steeltrap]

5 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Second try ....

"H class ship" Scenario. Fourth volley. Score hit abreast turret A. 32km

The second enemy BB met the same fate roughly 3minutes after taking this screenshot. He was at 29.5km

...glad to see ammo detonations doing what they should to big ships. The ship in this screenshot is literally broken in half XDDDDD. Easiest scenario run in my life.

Agree with the bolded part.

On the other hand, getting TWO of those within 3 minutes might suggest other problems, LOL.

[RAMJB]

1 hour ago, Steeltrap said:

On the other hand, getting TWO of those within 3 minutes might suggest other problems, LOL.

Nah, it suggests I was insanely lucky. Re-ran that mission several times with somewhat different design approaches, etc, and didn't got a single one...

[TAKTCOM]

9 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Noticed it myself. Seems to be a bug, because that 50-ish % is not representative at all of the actual pens you achieve.

In this battle I have 100-150 damage AP at a distance of less than two kilometers but HE damage is somewhere about 700.  It seems all hail HE.  And here we go again. However, I need to check long distances shooting, but so far what I see is really bad. I even build this horror  in German Pride mission ( also explodes on his own torpedoes!)

Since my ship can't hit  English battle cruiser maneuvering at speed of 43 knots  and even if a miracle happens, my 18 inches cannot penetrate the armor, and if they suddenly pierce, then the damage is minimal. This is frustration, I suppose.  

P.S. Just checked, this is the Battle of Lissa (1866)  in every sense, except for the lack of rams. 18 inches, TNT, super-heavy shells and they still can not break into 15 inches of armor. I think we need rams.

Why can't we install rams on ships? I suppose now this is a very relevant type of weapon.

Edited February 7, 2020 by TAKTCOM

[Reaper Jack]

Will second others regarding damage and specifically flooding and module resistance however. I'm finding it impossible to complete the H Class mission due to enemy ships running away at 30 knots after moderate damage and 457mm guns being unable to damage anything important enough to slow them down...meanwhile enemy 457mm guns go through Krupp IV 480mm thick belt armor to ammo rack me, go figure. AP feels really weak, penetration mechanics are fine, but post penetration damage is pitiful. And again, making the armor model more realistic needs to be priority number one. I am mostly seeing ships going down by a thousand cuts as the saying goes simply because they've been on fire for hours and hours, and while this is fine, it should not be the only cause  of sinking I am seeing besides detonations. 

[Mindstrip]

4 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

[...] 

I know I'm rambling, but seems the damage system really needs work. All ships SEEM to have the same number of compartments on their damage model, but I don't know what that might mean behind the scenes. 

I've been a lurker on these forums since start of alpha 2 and i gotta mention i appreciate and more often than not share your sentiments through time. Specially when it comes to the damage model etc. So i for one dont object to your "ramblings". 

 

In general i think that balancing, tweaking numbers back and forth upon a crude, and/or incomplete system feels like an exercise in futility (not fully futile ofc).

Recently did the "create H-class" scenario. Made a quite modest battleship ~90k. Pretty much maxed out every tech, 30kts. Decided to skip any torpedo protection however. Later on in the battle at around 40% struct, i ended up taking around 20-25 torpedoes in one attack run. Only 1 compartment got halfway flooded and then promptly emptied. 😐

[Teckelmaster]

We need a gunnery thread for alpha 4, otherwise any other issues related to a4 will get lost in this thread. 
And i say that because i find sinking ships with gunfire adequately difficult and disabling ships with big guns inadequately difficult. I had hundreds 18 inch high tnt shells sunk into a 1940 55k ton bb, both he and ap. Dozens of hits at perfect 90 degree angels. And the enemy superstructure was dirty but happy to fight back as crazy. No crucial dmg anywhere. Some yellow compartments. That was at 20-30 km of range. As much as i think floating was possible, i think guns and engines should have been offline.

[Reaper Jack]

24 minutes ago, Teckelmaster said:

We need a gunnery thread for alpha 4, otherwise any other issues related to a4 will get lost in this thread. 
And i say that because i find sinking ships with gunfire adequately difficult and disabling ships with big guns inadequately difficult. I had hundreds 18 inch high tnt shells sunk into a 1940 55k ton bb, both he and ap. Dozens of hits at perfect 90 degree angels. And the enemy superstructure was dirty but happy to fight back as crazy. No crucial dmg anywhere. Some yellow compartments. That was at 20-30 km of range. As much as i think floating was possible, i think guns and engines should have been offline.

This is why I am hoping crew becomes a thing sooner rather than later. In all likelihood you would have killed the men manning those guns, towers etc. before ruining the equipment itself, and then there is the question of morale and how much of a pounding a ship will take before a captain starts giving the orders to abandon ship. 

[Tousansons]

Some initial impression:

- I don't know if it's good or bad, I don't care if it's historical or not. Battle last longer while still requiring low to no user input. The fact that time compression is locked to *5 doesn't help either. I'll do more battles to be sure and will eagerly wait for the campaign before making some final assumption (right now I mostly play custom battle, generaly with mirror opposition)

- Ship AI is still retarded. I will continue my quest: this is one of the top priorities right now, ships can't keep with formation, especially when they decide to fall back into the line. They tend to bump into each other and this can lead to blobs of easy targets. This is not the kind of micromanagement an RTS can be proud of, especially in a game with such a long reaction time and distance between units.

- Larger ships are sturdier, flooding are less frequent, damages after penetration are not that high. I'll do more ship design and test in this one but I think it's easier to design heavily protected design with impressive speed and decent armament. Note that the added survavibility doesn't change much for the battle outcome, AI ship design (and decision in battle) are still lacking and the only difference is the added time needed to sink them. Price is probably what will make the difference in the campaign.

Overall i'm not sure about the added lenght to battles and find the patch to be a bit underwhelming (as expected with the initial patch note). The glaring issues of pathfinding and performances are still there, ships designer is still a bit wonky in some area (like the need to rotate the two small 2inch at the bow of the US modern BB)  all for two new hulls and some puzzle missions.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Tousansons

[arkhangelsk]

20 minutes ago, Tousansons said:

- I don't know if it's good or bad, I don't care if it's historical or not. Battle last longer while still requiring low to no user input. The fact that time compression is locked to *5 doesn't help either. I'll do more battles to be sure and will eagerly wait for the campaign before making some final assumption (right now I mostly play custom battle, generaly with mirror opposition)

Have you tried putting more ships on the enemy side? Basically, your ships are going to be better than the enemy's, so if you use equal numbers you should usually be able to win on the strength of your ship. Try challenging yourself and see if you have less idle time

[Ash19256]

First post on this forum, and it's to complain about the latest update. Off to a great start, aren't I...

 

Anyways, my complaints have to do with the US Super Battleship mission and it's balancing. First problem is that we really need at least something resembling a set of screening vessels, or the Japanese destroyers need to be clubbed repeatedly with the nerf bat - I have been entirely unable to complete the mission despite my best efforts, and I frankly don't particularly see how we're supposed to beat that mission, due to the fact that, irregardless of what option we pick, we will functionally always be outgunned in addition to being outnumbered - I noted several instances where not only were the Japanese warships either on par with or technologically superior to my own ship, but also that on several occasions the Japanese super-battleship that is encountered in that mission was larger than my own ship - something which makes an already hard mission unpleasant. This is in addition to being functionally unable to do anything about the destroyers without throwing the mission away - they are able to stay outside of the range of my secondary battery guns while still remaining within torpedo range, forcing me to either attempt to close the range (all but guaranteeing that I eat even more torpedoes and also take a hammering from the enemy battleships) or switch my main battery guns to targeting the destroyers (wasting ammunition that, thanks to the rather ludicrous tankiness of ships in this update, I can't afford to waste, even with increased ammunition stowage).

 

Another complaint, which is ultimately not unique to this update but made vastly more evident by it, is the fact that, despite things like the Mark 5 guns existing, we cannot use them in Custom Battles, for no reason which I am able to discern. This makes testing strategies for, say, the US Super Battleship mission basically impossible, due to being functionally unable to recreate the designs possible in that mission, unless we go with the lower-tech option, which results in our ship being out-performed by the Japanese battleships.

[Hangar18]

• Armor values are still far to effective on the high end of the spectrum. the AI is rolling around with cruisers that have over 600mm of protection (excuse me?).
• I beg of you to please add the option of 305s to the cruiser hulls.
• some hard points for whatever reason dont allow 127s even if they historically did.
• the new loading animation looks very nice.
• more barbette options is appreciated.
• speaking of more barbettes, id like to be able to add them onto the tower hard points too for a higher turret.
• the new hulls look excellent.
• HE is still drastically over powered. an AP round exploding inside a ship should cause more damage than an HE shell exploding on impact on armored targets.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Hangar18

[Hangar18]

15 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

Bismarck took many, many torpedoes when she was sunk/scuttled, but not that many. I forget which of the Yamato class, Musashi or Yamato, took the most, one of them took torpedoes in the double digits before she sank. We shouldn't see even the best anti-torp systems prevent sinking after a dozen or so solid 21 inch torpedo hits (historical standard size for WW2 torpedoes.) Worth noting for future balancing. 

Bismarck has a more effective TDS. Yamato took more torps, but they were lower payload. The ones yamato ate were aerial dropped.

The better TDS available make torps almost a non factor, you just eat it, and move on with little consequence.

3 hours ago, Teckelmaster said:

We need a gunnery thread for alpha 4, otherwise any other issues related to a4 will get lost in this thread. 
And i say that because i find sinking ships with gunfire adequately difficult and disabling ships with big guns inadequately difficult. I had hundreds 18 inch high tnt shells sunk into a 1940 55k ton bb, both he and ap. Dozens of hits at perfect 90 degree angels. And the enemy superstructure was dirty but happy to fight back as crazy. No crucial dmg anywhere. Some yellow compartments. That was at 20-30 km of range. As much as i think floating was possible, i think guns and engines should have been offline.

Agreed, I dont find it fun or realistic for a ship to sponge dozens and dozens of 18" shells. 

 

5 hours ago, TAKTCOM said:

It seems all hail HE.

load lyditte 2, into a few 18" guns. 

[Ruan]

HE appears to be the go to shell type again. Assuming it's a bug as AP is missing the penetrating part.

Fires are a little ridiculous this patch. HE shells can start them even without penetrating and the massive chunk damage to structure means you don't have to worry about the enemy armor or angle. Just let it burn! Base Fire chance should be the same for both AP and HE. In order to start a fire penetration is required. Partial-Pen and over-pen have a massively reduced chance of starting a fire.  Bounced and shattered hits should not start fires.

Damage display may be bugged. I've seen ammo dentations, component damage, flooding, fire, penetrating hits, etc. applied to a ship and the compartment layout is still showing green or sometimes yellow (after a big hit like ammo dentations, You'd think compartments would be red after that).

[Deuzerre]

Off to complain a bit.

Previous iteration saw ships being very lethal, hitting was doing some proper damage and while it may have been a bit too much... Now each side is just flinging potatoes at each other. It's unfun, unstrategic. 18inch guns penetrating and doing basically nothing, the accuracy is just abysmall overall despite puttingthe best upgrades on... I feel there's a lot of the modifiers for accuracy that just aren't counted at all.

And when you eventually hit, you do so little damage that it's a miracle if you sink a ship of equal tonnage to yours before you run out of ammunition.