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[akd]

1 hour ago, Hangar18 said:

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

The problem is there is no way to know which of the many torpedoes they took sealed their fate.  Was it number 5 or number 10?

1 hour ago, Hangar18 said:

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

Nonsense.  It is not like armor.  Once used in a area it can no longer protect the ship because it works by absorbing blast through deformation of the elements.  Like the crumple zone on a car, if you get front-ended again, you’re in trouble.  Working TDS almost always leads to some loss of buoyancy also (part of the TDS may include air spaces), although it not supposed to be fatal.

[RAMJB]

4 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

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.

Neither were good, and in particular the Japanese one was flawed.

Bismarck had, in essence, a deeper version of the Scharnhorst's TDS. Bismarck's beam was larger allowing for more space between the outter hull and the internal antitorpedo bulkhead, which made for a more resilient TDS, but still its, in pretty much everything, a WW-1 vintage TDS. And given that Scharnrhorsts' TDS performed abysmally when hit by torpedoes, it's to be expected that Bismarcks, while being somewhat better, would still be qualifiable as rather poor.


Meanwhile Yamato's TDS was directly flawed and a major weakness of the design. The quote below explains why:

ARTICLE BY TIM THORTON
© 1987 WARSHIP MAGAZINE

Just before dawn on Christmas day 1943 the Gato class submarine USS Skate was patrolling about 180 nautical miles northwest of Truk. The main operational base of the Japanese Combined Fleet, when her surface search radar picked up three contacts at 23,0(X) yards steaming southeast at 19 knots. As the contacts closed, they showed themselves as one large vessel and two smaller ones, the latter apparently being escorting destroyers. In the growing light of the tropical dawn, Skates Captain, McKinney, dived his boat although he lay to the west in the darkest part of the horizon and fired a salvo of four torpedoes at the largest target. With his submerged speed limited to 10 knots he had no real alternative Course of action and although he was unable to identify it he was rewarded by the gratifying sound of one detonation. However, the ship did not stop and Skate continued her patrol unmolested and unaware that she was the first American vessel privileged to catch sight of the giant battleship Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Such was the parlous state of the Japanese merchant marine, even at this stage of the war, that Yamato had been dispatched as a distinctly unusual fast transport from Truk to Japan on 12 December 1943. She had arrived at Yokosuka with out incident five days later and for the next three days was loaded with supplies and soldiers. With two escorting destroyers she then sailed for Truk and her meeting with Skate. Morison, in his official work on US naval operations in World War II, implied that she was on passage from Truk to Kavieng. In New Ireland when the attack was made but this is incorrect in both the light of Japanese records and the calculations of the distance and time involved.

After the attack, Yamato's speed was unimpaired and she continued on to Truk anchoring later the same day. Eventually, after a vacillating delay of five days, her cargo of troops and stores was off loaded. Any extension of her mission was cancelled. This may well have been a prudent decision because had she completed her sortie she would probably have been attacked by aircraft from two US carriers which were deployed to intercept just such traffic. As her subsequent experiences during the Battle of Leyte Gulf and in the South China Sea demonstrated, she had immense resilience under attack, but such an encounter in a less critical operation would have been, to say the least, ill-judged.

Fortunately, nobody was killed in the attack and as her cargo was being off loaded divers were sent down to inspect the damage and make temporary repairs. Truk had always been more of an anchorage than a fleet base and had few repair facilities, despite allied assumptions to the contrary, and so a return to Japan was inevitable after the torpedo attack. With one escorting destroyer, Fujinami, she sailed from Truk for the last time on 10 January 1944 and docked at Kure six days later. It was to be four months before the damage was repaired and a minor refit completed, though, happily for Japan, she missed no significant action.

Such a catalogue of events is not remarkable. Any ship at sea in wartime is likely to he open to submarine attack and the hit on Yamato was simply one more example to add to many others. What was far more significant for the leaders of the Imperial Japanese Navy was the extent of the damage. The explosion had occurred on the starboard side beneath the after l8in main triple gun turret. Quoting from her Captains report to the Navy Ministry the damage was as follows:

"A hole about 16ft (5m) deep extending downwards from the top of the bulge connection and 82ft (25m) in length between frames 151 and 173. Water flooded into No 3 turret upper magazine from a small hole in the longitudinal bulkhead caused by caving in of the waterline armor"

Put simply, her underwater defenses had been breached by a single torpedo and she had shipped over 3000 tons of water, something which her designers had worked assiduously to avoid. The resultant concern deepened when it was learnt that the torpedo had been running shallow and had struck only four feet below the surface, where the explosive effect, which increases with the depth of water, had not been particularly great. What is interesting is how and why the design failed on a ship which the Japanese had always intended to he the pinnacle of battleship excellence and one certainly capable of stopping a single torpedo. From the time the, Japanese Naval General Staff ordered the Bureau of Naval Construction to study

such a proposal in the autumn of 1934 it was clear the vessel would he enormous since the only sure way of building in superiority in the three key elements of speed, firepower and protection, was to increase the size of the vessel. The first calculations of her principal designers, Yuzura Hiraga and Keiji Fukuda, proved too ambitious even for the Admirals of the Naval General Staff It was speed that was sacrificed since the length and depth of the hull proposed, which were vital prerequisites for high speed, would simply not fit Japanese parts without unacceptable additional expense. On the other hand, a shorter and beamier hull which was still thought likely to confer a speed comparable with future US ships was not without compensations which they did their best to exploit.

Despite this she still had a draft of 10.8m when fully loaded and some dredging was required at the approaches to naval bases and dry docks. Nonetheless, the final trial displacement of 69,100 tons was still close to twice the size of any operational battleship at the time, though the battleships of other navies were naturally following the same inexorable trend, This final design remained, despite the compromise, well balanced. Just over 58 percent of displacement was consumed by the three key considerations:

33.2 percent or 22,895 tons being allocated to armor, 16.9 percent or 11,661 tons to weaponry and 7.7 percent or 5300 tons to machinery. The only slight deviation from what might be thought the norm was that the figure for machinery was a little low, the accompanying reduction in speed required for the weight saved to he used for protection. It is the underwater element of this defense which must now be considered.The ideal of all-round protection had long since been abandoned as shell and torpedo attack had proved too destructive. Along with other navies the Japanese adopted the 'all or nothing' principle; protection was limited to those areas vital for survival and for fighting; in short, the main machinery and gun turrets. The result was an armored central raft which left the bow and stern sections virtually unprotected. The smaller an area this raft represented the stronger could he the armor, and this was not of inconsiderable importance given that a single 12in cube of steel plate weighed a quarter of a ton. In the case of Yamato her great beam, which at the maximum was 127.7ft (38.9m), proved a great boon because her four main turbines and their associated boiler rooms could all be placed side by side across her hull. As a consequence, the area to be shielded shrank to a surprisingly short section of the hull, amounting to just 53.3 percent of the waterline length of 839ft (256m). This was a great achievement and her broad hull also conferred sufficient buoyancy for her to float even if all the unprotected spaces were left open to the sea after enemy action. 

Damage from the initial kinetic energy of incoming shellfire could best be minimized by thick armor plate with a hardened exterior, hut such a system could never hope to defeat a torpedo's explosive charge of several hundred pounds detonating in direct contact with it and amplified by the surrounding water. Matters could actually he made worse since the heavy armor tended to fracture and the broken shards could rip deep into the hull. Volume was the best protection against torpedoes since it allowed for the expansion of the explosive gases while the remaining force rapidly dissipated with distance. There was never enough internal volume in a hull to provide much space for this and designers generally had to be satisfied with providing the minimum. In the case of Yamato the constraints were severe despite her great beam because of her chosen machinery layout. This was exacerbated by the choice of a reliable but bulky set of boilers, which ran at relatively low pressure. They were used because replacement beneath the 200mm armored deck would have proved extremely difficult hut the corollary was a narrower torpedo defense. 

The width of this around her machinery spaces was on average 5.1m, and was narrower than that of almost all her contemporaries in other navies despite her displacing considerably more. Two examples will suffice to illustrate this. The American North Carolina, on a displacement calculated in a comparable manner at 45,298 tons, had a system 5.6m deep, while the German Scharnhorst on only 35,398 tons still managed a depth of 5.4m. For Yamato, it was therefore essential that within the comparatively narrow space remaining the best possible arrangement was used.

In order to counter a torpedo explosion, a space outside the true hull was required which would be strong enough to detonate the weapon well away from a stronger yet flexible main bulkhead beneath. The Japanese developed empirical formulae to determine the thickness of protective bulkheads and bulges based on tests with models and full scale systems. Once established they were then used with much confidence and for Yamato the main bulkhead was to be 75mm ducol steel. When a full scale plate of this was duly tested in 1939 against a blast of 400kg of TNT, the results were encouraging since it did not split open although its watertight integrity was lost.

Unfortunately, the designers also had to counter what was considered to be the great danger of long range plunging shell fire which might dive under the main armor belt and into the ship's vitals. The physical requirements for resisting the kinetic energy of shellfire and the explosive force of torpedoes could not be easily reconciled in a single system, but in Yamato there was not the room to separate one from the other. The enormous 410mm main belt was inclined on average at a 20 degree angle which increased the thickness of armor which any steeply falling shell would have to penetrate, and this angle conveniently provided space outboard for the anti-torpedo bulge without altering the form of the hull. The belt would have run into the 75mm anti-torpedo bulkhead below, but such was the fear of shell fire following tests on the underwater trajectories of projectiles that this was radically increased in thickness till, over the main machinery, it tapered from no less than 200mm down to the original 75mm at the ship's bottom.

Given a larger bulge outboard this main defense would have been far more formidable but by linking it to the main belt the bulge was only 3m wide at most at mid-draft. By comparison with foreign practice this placed it uncomfortably far forward thus failing to take full advantage of the limited depth available and compounding the weakness by reducing its ability to deform under pressure, just when such a feature was more essential. In the USN, the South Dakotas had a similar arrangement but they were designed within stringent Treaty constraints, a worry Yamato's designers did not have. In the US Montana class, a planned vessel of similar dimension to Yamato, the holding bulkhead was placed much deeper and not tied to the belt at all.

This late adoption of a thicker, lower bulkhead caused a new problem: how to join it to the main belt above without jeopardizing the great inherent strength of either half. The solution, as can be seen, was far too flimsy and relied for its transverse strength, which would be tested most in a torpedo strike, on the shearing resistance of tap and three-ply rivets. This was to prove the Achilles heel of the system.

The percentage of explosive force which would break on this flawed main defense did not rely only on the volume of the intervening outboard space. The composition of this space could be significant, and in all Yamato's foreign contemporaries part or all of the outboard void was tilled with liquid, generally fuel oil. This was not a fire risk and since it was incompressible it could spread and reduce the shock of any explosion, and in addition diminish the danger from splinters. The Imperial Navy were well aware of this system and thought liquid layers next to the main bulkhead were the best type, but like the Royal Navy, their primary teachers, they also experimented with using closed steel tubes which were packed into the outboard spaces to fulfill a similar function.

In practice they rusted and proved inefficient energy absorbers although in a Japanese report of 1936 their use was calculated to reduce 'the thickness of the protective plate to 70 percent generally'. For Yamato, even this expedient was dispensed with partly because of the chronic steel shortage exacerbated in large measure by her and her sister's construction, Although fuel oil was stored in the double bottom this was the only use of liquid and its defensive properties were not taken into any calculation. Yamato's outboard explosion chambers were left watertight and empty of anything more tangible than air. 

Since the advantages of liquid loading were understood, this result is difficult to comprehend, despite assertions at the time that the heavy armor would be sufficient by itself. Pumping arrangements for such spaces could increase flooding since the valves between tanks were liable to fracture after an explosion. but since Yamato ~ range of 7200 nautical miles at 16 knots was low, taking into account the vast size of the Pacific. the extra storage would have proved beneficial in more senses than one. It has also been suggested that they needed to he left empty for possible use in counter flooding, and they were certainly equipped for this, and yet if they were partially filled, flooding with seawater on one side would have had less effect. It is possible that the need to keep her draft shallow influenced the decision. This is supported by the fact that a proposal to reduce the individual volume of compartments outside the citadel was rejected because the extra weight would have had an adverse effect on her draft.

Two longitudinal bulkheads were included between the main armor and the outboard main machinery spaces in order to contain any flooding and, in addition, the anti-torpedo bulkhead was thickened, The two bulkheads were designed to be capable of deforming without rupturing and, to add elasticity, the flooring was offset on opposite sides of the bulkhead, hut it was still too stiff and it could suffer little deflection without rupture, at least of butts and floor connections'. There was also a fear that because the fire rooms were closed, the air pressure inside the boiler rooms would he too great, and so the two inner defenses were braced still more by heavy beams placed transversely at the upper operating level. Any movement of the bulkheads, however, would simply cause them to be punctured by the beams permitting water to enter the fire rooms. Opposite the magazines forward and aft of the machinery such expedients were not required but there was only one holding bulkhead behind the main armor, reflecting the narrowing of the hull which confined internal volume still more. If this last over-rigid barrier was breached, internal flooding was inevitable. 

This, in essence, is what happened when Skate's torpedo struck. Running shallow it hit the bulge where it was less than 2m wide and the main belt took most of the blast. 

This did not fracture, hut the weak joint below did shear, indenting both sides into the ship by about I m. This in turn led to the last defense being holed as mentioned in her Captain's report. Had the torpedo been running deeper and hit closer to the suspect joint, damage would have been far greater. The resultant flooding caused a list of two to three degrees hut since the outboard voids were fitted with sea [edited] of 10in diameter, which could be operated remotely, counter flooding on the port side quickly put her hack on an even keel.

When these weaknesses were realized by the technical teams investigating the damage, they suggested that a new plate be installed across the lower corner of the upper void between the two inboard bulkheads and inclined at 40 degrees. This was proposed for the full length of the machinery spaces but it was hopelessly inadequate and in the event was only fitted in the region that had been damaged.

Of greater interest are the factors surrounding the decision taken in 1939 to increase the armor thickness of the side defenses, and accept what was always suspected to be a weak joint between it and the main belt. The importance of Yamato in prewar Japanese naval plans cannot he overestimated. The state economy could not hope to compete with that (if the USA in quantity, so quality and superior technology were, not for the first or last time, seen as the solution, and Yamato was the embodiment of this ambition. The navy had already constructed an elaborate and detailed plan to defeat the US Pacific Fleet, and it was intended that the big guns of the Combined Fleet would deliver the loop de grace. This planned scenario does much to explain why Yamato's designers changed emphasis towards favoring an anti-shell protective defense.

The unwillingness to wait for a suitable joint to he developed can also be understood in relation to the Imperial Navy's overall plans for the future. To establish her necessary technological lead, secrecy was vital to forestall any American response, but despite inordinate Japanese zeal some rumor of what was happening inevitably crossed the Pacific'. The US had, therefore, recommenced naval building and any delay in the construction of Yamatowould have sacrificed the Imperial Navy's slender lead.

Rivalry between the army and navy also played its part, not only over funding such items as expensive battleships, hut also in determining national policy. In such a climate delays in construction could have given the army the upper hand and so had to he avoided.

Two major ironies overhang this discussion. The obvious one is that all this time, effort and money spent on battleship construction was to prove virtually irrelevant. The future of naval warfare lay with carrier air power not the big gun. Both Yamato and her sister Musashi were to succumb to aerial attack, their main 18in guns virtually unused in anger. The second is that the torpedo fired by Skate was armed with a warhead of 635lb of a new explosive,'Torpex'. This had twice the explosive power of TNT and with its introduction in 1943 it upset, at a stroke. all the careful calculations on which Yamato's designers had labored for so long. It will be recalled that constraints were such that defenses could only ever he just sufficient: With the introduction of Torpex the most robust anti-torpedo system was likely to be breached. It was a pity that Yamato's design sacrificed underwater defense in depth when the threat in this sphere had increased so markedly. Nonetheless, even with the flaws discussed here her defenses were still powerful and her resilience under assault later amazed her American foes. However, her torpedo protection was without doubt the weakest element in an impressive design and it is not surprising that torpedoes were eventually to dispatch both vessels.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by RAMJB

[roachbeef]

Has anybody else encountered the post-battle lag and memory leak? Also, @RAMJB while the quote is very informative, people who already read it have to scroll a lot if they're reading a mobile. If you have long text you can add

[*Spoiler*]

then [*/Spoiler] where the three * are removed. Put the text in between and people can collapse or expand the quote.

Edited February 7, 2020 by roachbeef

[fsp]

- Like the tougher BBs, agree on soft kills being too difficult atm

- Ships are too fast

- AI really needs to be improved, as I don't want to have to micro manage every single ship once the campaign is there and we have battles with 10/20 ships on every side, and at that point you WILL start caring about losing four or five DDs/CLs

- A while ago I read that torpedoes were fine, as they did less damage than historically, but we were granted more of them and would thus hit with them more often
I reaaaaaaaaally don't like that idea. Torpedoes should do close to historical damage and hitting with one should possibly be a decisive event in a battle. This will change the whole dynamic of battles closer to something that is realistic

- Balancing the game's economy will be a task in itself, so I am  hoping for them to release the campaign soon. I don't mind if it's rudimentary/faulty, but it makes sense to try out different approaches: a fleet without BBs, only CA/DDs, maybe even only CL/DDs, old BBs, just BC/No BBs, the possibilities are endless.

 

[RAMJB]

23 minutes ago, roachbeef said:

Has anybody else encountered the post-battle lag and memory leak? Also, @RAMJB while the quote is very informative, people who already read it have to scroll a lot if they're reading a mobile. If you have long text you can add

[*Spoiler*]

then [*/Spoiler] where the three * are removed. Put the text in between and people can collapse or expand the quote.

Thanks for the tip. Done :).

[Joryl]

21 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. 

Yamato.

[Mindstrip]

1 hour ago, roachbeef said:

Has anybody else encountered the post-battle lag and memory leak? .

Aye, specifically when the game puts you back into the naval academy mission list (havent played any custom battles yet) 

i7 4790k 4ghz, 16Gb Ram, 2x SLI GTX 970

[Mhtsos]

Thanks for the update. 

Had a few of random battles.

Nice additions to loading animations, hulls, barbettes and turret design.

The ships also seem less agile (very positive in my book, no more wows stuff happening).

Excellent that now you can assign secondary turrets to other targets.

|

Biggest negative/setback is that HE is again the ultimate winner when the enemy has armour (or you don't get an ammo explosion).

The AP, even if achieves full penetration, does abysmal damage per calibre.

The floods from common, became very rare even if the hit is on waterline (or below) and the fires are over before they began. 

Unfortunately, it is still possible to have capital ships with unrealistic speeds.

My last battle the enemy BC was maxing to 45knots with 1930 tech hull, 8x15" guns and 9+in of belt armour...

|

Summarizing, some good stuff, some setbacks, but generally good update in my book.

[Shaftoe]

12 minutes ago, Mhtsos said:

Thanks for the update. 

Had a few of random battles.

Nice additions to loading animations, hulls, barbettes and turret design.

The ships also seem less agile (very positive in my book, no more wows stuff happening).

Excellent that now you can assign secondary turrets to other targets.

|

Biggest negative/setback is that HE is again the ultimate winner when the enemy has armour (or you don't get an ammo explosion).

The AP, even if achieves full penetration, does abysmal damage per calibre.

The floods from common, became very rare even if the hit is on waterline (or below) and the fires are over before they began. 

Unfortunately, it is still possible to have capital ships with unrealistic speeds.

My last battle the enemy BC was maxing to 45knots with 1930 tech hull, 8x15" guns and 9+in of belt armour...

|

Summarizing, some good stuff, some setbacks, but generally good update in my book.

I was just going to write a post, pointing out exactly the same issues.

Crackpot battlecruisers, underwhelming APs, issues with flooding and HEs from War Thunder Naval Forces (where spamming HEs is the best way to kill almost anyone, lol). I hope these issues will be fixed soon, before next major patch.

[Steeltrap]

Another Armed Convoy effort.

Went silly and stuck some 14" main guns aboard with a secondary armament of 2 x twin 8" turret each side.

The 8" were TWICE as accurate at 5km as the 14". In fact the 8" were more accurate at EVERY range under 10km, and that scenario is never fought at more than about 8km.

Don't know why the main guns have suddenly become so relatively inaccurate WITHOUT a corresponding drop in secondary armament. That goes against EVERY piece of real world info that's been posted.

AP is a waste of time. I even decided to use Lyddite II shells. Despite the loss in pen, the damage value gets potentially pretty huge while the HE can be particularly obnoxious (a single 14" Lyddite II HE shell can sink a transport, doing 2k-3k damage).

Those same shells, however, did next to nothing to the pre-dreadnought BBs. I tried AP and I tried HE. The drastic changes in accuracy mean you hit quite a bit less often, then when you do your shells achieve next to nothing. HE often did no damage at all, which in most respects in fact I like.

I've also noticed I'm taking MANY more hits in the battle than I ever used to.

In the end I simply ran around the confused AI and then killed off the merchants, splitting secondary and main armaments as seemed best. I barely fired at the warships once it became apparent that doing so was largely a waste of time.

Perhaps the mission timer needs to be increased from 1 hour to 3 hours given the new reality of main guns having dropped significantly in accuracy AND effectiveness of hits. Not that I think it matters, as I doubt I'd bother to play it anyway.

Which, ultimately, is the problem.

I could give more details, but my bottom line is this: the results in this particular scenario I have played so many times to try all sorts of things are so bizarrely different that I think I'm going to stop playing until I see what comes next.

The peculiar nature and rather vague descriptions of change are starting to get on my nerves. I want to know EXACTLY what I ought to see, expressed in SPECIFIC and MEANINGFUL terms. If an update means "ships might take 5x or 6x 14" hits to their funnel to destroy it" then TELL ME. And so on. And if you DON'T know that's going to be a consequence of the changes, then I suggest that's cause for concern.

NOT being able to be specific in your expected results is a pretty unforgiveable sin in the Book of Testing 1.0. I want specifics, now and for all future updates, because it bothers me to see results that are so clearly peculiar (if not outright nonsensical) being introduced to version 4 as though they're an improvement. I have to question either the thinking behind why some of these extreme changes were seen as a good idea OR whether it really was understood what the true consequences of changes were going to be.

Neither is a particularly attractive prospect.

If this seems harsh or unreasonable, I'd counter that by saying I'm at all times being polite and respectful, yet being prepared to offer some tough love.

Cheers

 

[Reaper Jack]

2 hours ago, fsp said:

that torpedoes were fine, as they did less damage than historically, but we were granted more of them and would thus hit with them more often
I reaaaaaaaaally don't like that idea. Torpedoes should do close to historical damage and hitting with one should possibly be a decisive event in a battle. This will change the whole dynamic of battles closer to something that is realistic.

 

Very much agreed, even taking reduced torpedo ammo counts still gives me 2-3 reloads per tube, this is far, far too much, there simply isn't  the space on board most ships to carry even a single torpedo reload with mostly the IJN doing it historically. Reduced should be no reloads, standard should be half a full reload and Increased should be one full reload. This will also stop the AI from staying at 20km+ range with Oxygen torps from DD's that effectively become submarines and launching dozens upon dozens of them that poorly mobile, heavy units will not be able to dodge. (H Class mission the 8 enemy DD's all had 15 tubes with 3 full reloads. I was approached by a wall of torps somewhere in the 60 number that I was simply unable to dodge all of, though I did minimize damage, the issue was when it happened again...and again...and again, completely unrealistic. I also vote for increasing their damage and reducing their number.)  

[arkhangelsk]

10 minutes ago, Steeltrap said:

The 8" were TWICE as accurate at 5km as the 14". In fact the 8" were more accurate at EVERY range under 10km, and that scenario is never fought at more than about 8km.

Are you sure it isn't because your 8" guns are Mark 4 and your 14" guns are Mark 3? At 5000m, as taken off a randomly generated battleship in that mission, the hit chance of the 8" Mark 4 twin is 9.8%, while the 14" Mark 3 triple is 6.2%, increasing to 6.5% for singles and doubles. By the way, 12" Mk 3 are 7.4-7.8%, and 9" Mark 4 are 9.8-10%.

 

[Reaper Jack]

Will finally post a general list of issues that I can see with the current update. 
 

- As others have said, AP post penetration damage is pitiful.

- AP would also massively benefit from a realistic armor model instead of the placeholder we have, including transverse bulkheads being added.

- Ship speeds per horsepower and overall possible speeds remain unrealistic. Right now engines are generating too many knots per horsepower (given the horsepower I see in the stats list compared to historical designs.) Capital ship hulls need to be capped at 34 knots, and that's still being generous to them. Cruiser hulls should be capped at 37 knots. Destroyers capped at 42. Early hulls should be capped even lower due to poor hydrodynamics and the inability to build large engines, not to mention the fact that earlier hulls simply didn't  have the space to fit larger engines, especially early destroyers. Maximum engine size should scale with ship size. In the campaign those same engines should be under the ability to be modernized or replaced later.

- Shell types and turret stats. All turrets still have unrealistic weights for shells as well as muzzle velocities. I would like to see each nation getting their own turret stats as well as shell weight and velocity differences varied between all nations, but not always enough to use the different shell types we have now. To take as one example, the recently added 'Mk 4' German 381mm, the muzzle velocity is too high and the shell weight is too high, only becoming close to historical value if you use light shells which then makes the muzzle velocity far, far higher than historical. Gun range is also far lower than historical as well, a 203mm turret at mark 4 or 5 can achieve somewhere between 14-16.5km range in game, while historically they achieved between 29-33km, the 152mm secondaries on battleships also made 27km historically and barely make 13km in game. Larger gun calibres seem to be better but still slightly short of historical values. Reloads on all late turrets are also marginally too slow with standard shells unless you use the best reload tech (which if I am not mistaken should not be available in the late 30's historically, unless the Des Moines style autoloader is just not in game yet.) 

- Crew is a much needed mechanic. Crew members dying and reducing efficiency or having to be replaced will swing things in a completely different direction than right now. Ships will have to either keep shooting back or put out fires etc. and crew morale is a massive factor that cannot be overlooked. Once a ship hits 20% structural integrity will it's captain retreat, keep fighting, or give the orders to abandon ship, assuming that she's lost? Perhaps crews could have prestige or captains have minor personalities to reflect such choices? 

- Compartment damage is too minimal at the moment, as are floodings and module damage. I don't think I've destroyed a single module on any capital ship post update (I still can on cruisers) to complete red, only yellow. Conversely, engine damage seems much more common now, even when my citadel belt or deck armor has not been penetrated.

- Campaign economy. While RAMJB was kind enough to point out some reasons for the differences in some of my earlier screenshots, there are outliers. Construction cost seems to be mostly fine except for heavy cruisers, which cost almost as much as a battlecruiser of far greater size. But I also noted that most heavy cruisers are actually more expensive or just as expensive to maintain per month as BC's of similar period and tech. I understand this is not a priority right now but it is something that needs to be looked at before the campaign is deployed, elsewise all these beautiful cruiser hulls will become kind of pointless. 

- Certain Naval Academy missions are impossible under the current patch due to either the timers being too short (with damage being nerfed this patch.) or due to the enemy ships  being near impossible to defeat except through luck, mostly because they run away at greater speeds than you can even build for that mission when the mission is to kill them, and you can't slow them down due to poor shell performance under current patch. 

- We need the ability to design our secondary vessels in both custom battles and the naval academy, some fights are decided based on what your AI built vs what their AI built. (Biggest gripe here is the Prinz Eugen you get for the Denmark Strait mission, it's 203's reloaded slower than my 381's nine times out of ten. Just one example.) 

- Torpedoes need to be reduced in number (as I noted in a post just above this) but their damage when they do hit needs to be realistic also. Right now they seem to fare slightly underwhelmingly against cruisers but very underwhelmingly against capital ships. 

- Transport ships take an insane amount of shells to sink, even with HE. In Destroyers vs Transports it took literally 400+ 102mm shells to bring down a single transport, the old  problem of ships not taking damage when their structure drops low is back and very much unwelcome. 

- The AI is too good at dodging torpedoes, or, if the AI wants to constantly move in circles and zig zag and do all these extra things to dodge torps (that no human will ever have the time to do micromanaging your entire fleet, especially as you can't give individual ships rudder orders, only divisions) then it needs to start taking severe accuracy penalties, MASSIVE penalties. 

That's about everything I believe. Apologies for the wall of text. 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[TAKTCOM]

3 hours ago, roachbeef said:

Has anybody else encountered the post-battle lag and memory leak?

1 hour ago, Mindstrip said:

Aye, specifically when the game puts you back into the naval academy mission list (havent played any custom battles yet) 

+1

Edited February 7, 2020 by TAKTCOM

[VarangianGarde]

22 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.

Praise to the devs! That's a beautiful sinking animation.

[VarangianGarde]

1 hour ago, Reaper Jack said:

- Crew is a much needed mechanic. Crew members dying and reducing efficiency or having to be replaced will swing things in a completely different direction than right now. Ships will have to either keep shooting back or put out fires etc. and crew morale is a massive factor that cannot be overlooked. Once a ship hits 20% structural integrity will it's captain retreat, keep fighting, or give the orders to abandon ship, assuming that she's lost? Perhaps crews could have prestige or captains have minor personalities to reflect such choices?

In line with @RAMJB comment on Ultimate Admiral: Galactic Star Cruisers, I think taking inspiration from BSG: Deadlock's Admiral Bonus Tree would be a cool idea. Obviously that should be adapted to, you know, surface conditions upon Earth's seas, and realistic bonuses to crew morale. Still, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by VarangianGarde

[Cptbarney]

I have to admit AP seems, pointless but then HE also seems pointless at close ranges where AP becomes far more useful.

Seems like the gun mechanics are borked and im not sure if its by design (i would geniunely surprised if this what the devs were aiming for). Just lost the heavy cruiser scenario due to my frenchy getting ammoracked near the end but regardless i wouldnt of won either way anyways since it takes soo bloody long to kill ships atm.

I managed to detonate BB aki in the us superbattleship mission despite her being at 69% structure, but my god are DD's annoying, the amount of torps they spam is enough to mess up the entire run in general due to how they slow down your ship and also mess up your aim, by lop siding your vessel.

Oh and dont get me started on the bloody turning bug where your ships sometimes turns and turns in circles too avoid torps while you try to manually do it yourself, highly annoying.

Hopefully the devs can hotfix some of this stuff as i'd rather not play the patch in its current iteration for too long.

[Shaftoe]

With new changes to guns effectiveness, some (previously passed) missions became unbeatable (or nearly so), because killing enemies takes too long.

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

With new changes to guns effectiveness, some (previously passed) missions became unbeatable (or nearly so), because killing enemies takes too long.

I think the game could do with a internal armour section, that when AP rounds hit can calculate better damage outcomes and internal damage (im guessing they only use the armour skin they have now rather than any 'hidden' models inside like engines, ammoracks, quarters etc.

Accuracy seems a bit more inconsistent as well, compared to alpha 3 and ammoracks seem more random than determined half the time (if they ever happen). I dont mind having highly durable ships, but kinda silly watching a 120k german ship take 20+ 23inch torpedoes from 7km+ lol.

And crews need to be added in so that ships can 'die' without having to spend almost the entire match killing 1-3ships. Secondaries are alright, but do huge amounts of damage to DD's but not to anything that has some amrour which suggests the problem might be amrour once again and possibly AP mechanics going mental too.

Don't get me wrong i love the game and its concepts, but i hope this isn't a final iteration. Maybe alpha 5 and 6 should help funnel out the gun mechanics once and for all? Or at least get us closer regardless.

[Shaftoe]

I mean, more time needs to be allocated to complete missions under new conditions. Like +30 in-game minutes, to prevent possible fails due to unrealistic arbitrary rules.

[SmoCro]

More.

Before you could sink a battleship with less than ten salvos if you produced good hits.

Now even ten hits from 18" do not even start to scratch the HP bar.

[DougToss]

     Were I to speculate, I would guess that the Devs are taking feedback from here - which is great - but are acting reactively which is not. What I mean is, rather than trying to change each system to achieve the desired result when things go wrong take the time required to get each system perfectly right. The balance between firepower-mobility-protection  will only be right when each leg of the tripod is fully developed. It's changing the input to get the right output, without looking at the other things at play.

    An undercooked protection system means that constantly shifting gunnery to achieve what appears to be a balanced result leaves you with deadly 2in shells in the last update, or secondary guns that hit harder and more often than they should. Unsinkable DDs and Torpedo Boats are not the result of firepower being "unbalanced" or "too weak/inaccurate/not useful etc." but are the result of protection, survivability, damage and sinking mechanics being out of whack. Some of that feedback is player perception not being grounded in knowledge of the subject in reality, but a large part of it is legitimate. The problem is trying to achieve realistic outcomes still leaves you using ridiculous inputs -  that we know are ridiculous because we can compare them to the real ones - because it is the only way to get the output that fits anything approximating the real results. 

   Even if there was a perfect ballistics system,  (input) the only way to achieve what would look like realistic results (output) would be to keep working on the other systems. Perfectly simulated, lovingly detailed 6in shells are not going to achieve anywhere near the expect result if ships don't sink, or conversely are too fragile. The temptation to "balance" the ballistics system, to deviate from what we know to be the historical inputs that informed warship design, tactics etc, etc only complicates everything else because now you have to design an armour system to cope with over-performing shells. 

    A good system will, when finished, take the real input and deliver the expected result. All of these parts are interconnected so I wouldn't expect to see the expected result for a while, but don't make things harder for yourself down the line by jigging the numbers now. For example, making guns more accurate and powerful now is only going to hurt you down the line when protection and survivability are more fleshed out. 

To reiterate, the problem right now:

45 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

With new changes to guns effectiveness, some (previously passed) missions became unbeatable (or nearly so), because killing enemies takes too long.

    Will not be corrected simply by making guns kill enemies faster (by being more damaging, more penetrating more accurate, etc.). That's throwing all of the data you have on ballistics out the window for a quick fix. When ships have flooding, can capsize, have crews and so on, you will blow everything out of the water with 4in guns because you changed gunnery to correct the problem now. 

   I think a large part of the problem is that by having early access you can't take the time to get each component right with the goal of everything working as intended only when that is finished, because it won't be usable in the interim. Moreover, you have to divide your efforts constantly and can't focus on any one direction. 

    Think of it as designing a stool. You know roughly how it should look because you have patterned it after an existing stool. Determining how long to make the legs is hard and if you get the measurements wrong, it will not have the same dimensions as the stool you want to recreate. If you cut improperly, your stool will be wobbly and that's also no good. The important thing is to measure, cut and join to all three legs perfectly. If you are wrong in either the design or the execution not only would it not look like that stool you love, it would not be enjoyable to sit on.

     Luckily, you have some of the measurements used to make that other stool. You know how long each of the legs that made the stool were, but you still have to measure and cut them very carefully. It's also up to you to figure out how to join the legs and the seat together all by yourself.  If the legs aren't joined properly it will feel wobbly even if they are the right length. Since the joinery is so difficult, there's the temptation to simply cut the legs to make it balance. Not only would you be altering the length of each leg, but the dimensions of the whole stool would be askew. It would seem balanced, but with some legs short and others long it wouldn't look like the one you wanted to make.  

    You know that the longer you take to measure, and the more carefully you cut the closer the stool will be to the one you want.  How the legs fit together is tricky, and while you have the exact measurements of how long each leg should be, and know that the result is a beautiful stool, it takes a lot of work to get the legs right. In fact, it may be a while before all three legs are finished. When the stool wobbles you need to test it again, altering the joint but not the legs. When they are though, you know it will be a really good stool and people will enjoy sitting on it. 

 

 

[Teckelmaster]

@devs is there a way we can produce log files. I had a battle lasting an hour, where i had 1100 shells in my 18 inchers left and there was only one (!) BB left, that however was running away, after my inital broadsiding had put it to about 50%, i switched targets, really quickly dispatched of dds, cas, bb no 2 and the bc. Since i had 1100 super heavy 18 inchs TNT left, i was so confident... after several salvos it was at 18%, when i was down to 400 rounds it was at 13% and when i had fired the very last grenade, it was at 13%... hit rate was 30% when the chase started and 35 when it ended, the enemy was at 13%. Sturdy little ship. Every time 100 shells i switched between he and ap. No difference. Fortunately i did not run out of scotch.

However, what i noticed: Top deck was red. Superstructure was partially untouched, green and yellow, all systems, ALL of them working fine i could not catch up... it may be a problem related to hit boxes? 
I guess that 100s of shells would demolish the superstructure, they just did not.

So: can we produce log files, so we can help work this out, as it feels like we switch back and forth between unsatisfying solutions? Some people in this community habe serious skills an knowledge, give us a bit of room to be more helpfull than protesting here.

[RedParadize]

 Overall I like this patch.

Leveling the accuracy across caliber brought some interesting choice. There is some hidden buff for smaller caliber I believe. I noticed that 8" was twice as accurate as the 16" at range. Bonus against fast mover maybe? I do not know.

On the other hand, Destroyer got nerfed to death. AI always target the easiest to hit right? Well at 20km it target the Destroyer... And kill it in one or two salvo.

I like the fact that big ship are more resilient, but its not quite consistent across the board. It lead to some weird design like this:

1920 torpedo BC:


This meta work from the point were you get deck torp to end game. Basically, you snipe DDs with guns, they do not need to be big, and use massive volley of torpedo against anything else. Max speed is a must, some decent armor just to be sure. With a ship like this, you can kill a handful of Super Battleship and their escort.

Not saying that this should not be allowed. I mean, maybe it would have worked. But I would prefer if that was the job of DDs.

[arkhangelsk]

6 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

- Ship speeds per horsepower and overall possible speeds remain unrealistic. Right now engines are generating too many knots per horsepower (given the horsepower I see in the stats list compared to historical designs.) Capital ship hulls need to be capped at 34 knots, and that's still being generous to them. Cruiser hulls should be capped at 37 knots. Destroyers capped at 42. Early hulls should be capped even lower due to poor hydrodynamics and the inability to build large engines, not to mention the fact that earlier hulls simply didn't  have the space to fit larger engines, especially early destroyers. Maximum engine size should scale with ship size. In the campaign those same engines should be under the ability to be modernized or replaced later.

Have to leave for work so very quick. The Hull Form mechanic seems to be broken. Quick tests from this morning. American Modern Battlecruiser, 50000 tons, 33 knots: 206,000 horsepower.

Dreadnaught IV, 62000 tons 33 knots, 181,000HP.

Modern Battleship (better hull form than Dreadnaught IV) 33 knots, also 181,000HP.