Game no longer fun

[Daniel Silver]

I would like to start by saying that I don't usually post and I tend to support game developers that make games that are historically based. This is not meant as a complaint but more as a constructive criticism from a casual gamer. 

 

I have no idea what you guys did when you tweaked the game in the last patch, but it is less enjoyable. 

The AI is waaaay too accurate compared to the ships I build

The AI is waaaay too hard to sink

The missions are waaay too hard and frustrating, even the ones I completed pre-patch are less enjoyable or just plain frustrating to play

The game, overall, is not as fun as it was and sometimes just plain frustrating, having to micromanage different ships because of the poor friendly AI captain

My guns switch from one target to another randomly and lose their accuracy

My accuracy drops off at closer ranges, which is just plain weird, with small calibers more accurate than higher calibers (I honestly don't understand how, at 1000m my 18inches have 20% accuracy to the opposing BB's 75% accuracy rating)

There aren't enough descriptions for what certain items do. Like for example what is the difference between long range accuracy and general accuracy rangefinders.

etc...

 

I'm sure it's much more historically accurate now, with armor and velocities and whatnot, but frankly I don't play games to be historically perfect (The battle of Jutland lasted what? a full day irl? I don't want to play a whole day to complete one battle) With battles taking as long as they do now I am certainly not looking forward to a whole campaign of those, God help us if we ever have to do 15 vs 15 BBs it will take a year to finish the battle. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is easy to get lost in the minutiae, and I understand that the loudest voices are ones who are most passionate about historical accuracy, and that everyone has their own opinion, but please don't lose sight of the fact that games, before they are anything else, should be fun. 

With that in mind, I think I will be putting Ultimate Admiral away until after the next patch, play a couple of battles and see if it still is an exercise in frustration. 

 

Again, please don't take this the wrong way, I love the game and wish it success, but maybe you could do 2 modes of play, one for the hardcore historically oriented masochists, and another for thsoe who play games to relax and watch the pretty ships and have fun.

 

My 2 cents

Edited February 22, 2020 by Daniel Silver
typo fix

[RedParadize]

I do not have issues with AI being too strong or accurate. 

Maybe we could help you with your build. Can you show us your design? 

[Brandon L]

1 hour ago, Daniel Silver said:

I have no idea what you guys did when you tweaked the game in the last patch, but it is less enjoyable. 

Could not agree more. I have given up on the game entirely and regret spending $50 on it, complete buyers remorse

[Daniel Silver]

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

I do not have issues with AI being too strong or accurate. 

Maybe we could help you with your build. Can you show us your design? 

Would love to, just no idea how to do that. Also, that's kinda besides the point. It shouldn't require a PhD in the game mechanics to understand what you're doing wrong, like I said, I'm a casual gamer, I'm happy to support the team, but the game, in its current state is just not enjoyable. I'm a mathematician by profession, and I TOTALLY understand the "getting lost in the weeds" syndrome. I'm just concerned that the designers are getting too hung up on making the game accurate and losing sight of the big picture, which is for the customer to have a good time. 

Now, having said that, how do I upload schematics?

Edited February 22, 2020 by Daniel Silver

[Reaper Jack]

1 hour ago, Brandon L said:

Could not agree more. I have given up on the game entirely and regret spending $50 on it, complete buyers remorse

Damage model needs serious work combined with AI not having hard limits on anything so it almost always outperforms the player. And the biggest issue in the current iteration being the target ship speed modifier to accuracy which renders your guns useless. Best example? German Pride. You cannot build a ship that goes more than 31 knots and still have enough weight/cost to do anything useful while the AI can field 381mm guns in 4 triple turrets, go 35+ knots and have a 500mm armor belt all on less weight than you. And they get a cruiser squadron and destroyer squadron in addition to your historical German pair of ships. 

Hard caps on designs are long overdue. Especially on engines. Capital ships do not exceed 33.5 knots. Period. This was simply never possible irl in the game's timeframe. Hard cap it. While we're at it, hard cap armor values at 450mm (for belts) as well, thicker than that isn't possible.  Cruisers also never exceeded 200mm of belt armour but can have far more in game. Capping these things isn't the best solution I know, but it is the best temporary solution until the weight/power interactions and armor model/compartment model are complete.  

[Saktiyudaht]

7 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

AI not having hard limits on anything so it almost always outperforms the player.

I could not agree more, since the auto build is just random, I once had an AI use so many real heavy guns which wouldve not fit on the hull type in any possible way. For example i wanted to play the "numbers dont matter" mission and the enemy ship had 4 18" and 10 9" so i couldnt do jack shit against it with the ally destroyers and those 9" guns would even penetrate my battleships ive designed.

Ive purchased this game based on Youtube Videos that I've watched and when i tried to replicated some of the desgins they used (I tried like 10 different missions) I would always end up with being 20k tons overweight or 30 million over budget. So its not the AI that has been made OP in the last update it was actually the player getting severly limited

[Cptbarney]

10 hours ago, Daniel Silver said:

Would love to, just no idea how to do that. Also, that's kinda besides the point. It shouldn't require a PhD in the game mechanics to understand what you're doing wrong, like I said, I'm a casual gamer, I'm happy to support the team, but the game, in its current state is just not enjoyable. I'm a mathematician by profession, and I TOTALLY understand the "getting lost in the weeds" syndrome. I'm just concerned that the designers are getting too hung up on making the game accurate and losing sight of the big picture, which is for the customer to have a good time. 

Now, having said that, how do I upload schematics?

Screenshot fam.

Use a image uploading site and post it here. Id rather the game not only be fun but also done to a good quality and also has some challenge in it. (sick of the triple aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy studios and their scummy practices) Im pretty sure the devs will implement difficulty modes or scable difficulty depending on what happens in the match or game etc.

Also it is the 4th alpha, and a very small dev team so things are not going to be instant and if they royally mess this up then well good luck to them having a stable financial future i guess.

[Tomtom]

my two cents : I did struggle at the beginning but I have spent some time watching the youtube videos from Stealth17gaming or The History Guy , it did helped me a lot about learning the game dynamics , about what does work and what doesn't . Here you will find useful information about how to get the upper hand during combats .

Getting the most from your ship and a good knowledge to spot what are your strenghts and your weakspots compared to the enemy is essential . It does take a while.  Sometime a 16¨ gun is WAY more efficient than a 18¨, sometimes it's necessary to have only 2 guns per turret to gain some accuracy, and to save some weight to trade for armor ect ect ... There is a LOT of choices available to build an efficient ship . Sometime the choices I made were VERY bad sometimes they paid off.

My ships had the nasty tendancy to detonate then I realized that my tactics were wrong and my design could be improved . Afterwards, it's getting better and better .

Try the custom battle : 1Super BB against a single ship, then against multiple ships and so on

Keep on going !

[Daniel Silver]

4 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Screenshot fam.

Use a image uploading site and post it here. Id rather the game not only be fun but also done to a good quality and also has some challenge in it. (sick of the triple aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy studios and their scummy practices) Im pretty sure the devs will implement difficulty modes or scable difficulty depending on what happens in the match or game etc.

Also it is the 4th alpha, and a very small dev team so things are not going to be instant and if they royally mess this up then well good luck to them having a stable financial future i guess.

I'll take screenshots of my build for "German Pride" tomorrow (family time today) I would love some pointers. 

And I'm not in a hurry on the changes. The work this dev team does is amazing actually, I bought all their titles. I'm not hating on this game but NO means. I just want it to succeed and would like to remind the community that games are supposed to be fun. This last update.... I don't know what they tweaked tbh, the list was long, but the end result was, it became less fun. The AI opponents are too difficult and players like to a challenging win, not a frustrating defeat and multiple do overs. 

Historical accuracy is important and it is a draw for lots of future customers, so are graphics and a beautiful polished look. But at a high level, it is balance that will make the difference between a 5 star rating and 3 star "meh" and I hope they find that balance before releasing the game

[Cptbarney]

14 minutes ago, Daniel Silver said:

I'll take screenshots of my build for "German Pride" tomorrow (family time today) I would love some pointers. 

And I'm not in a hurry on the changes. The work this dev team does is amazing actually, I bought all their titles. I'm not hating on this game but NO means. I just want it to succeed and would like to remind the community that games are supposed to be fun. This last update.... I don't know what they tweaked tbh, the list was long, but the end result was, it became less fun. The AI opponents are too difficult and players like to a challenging win, not a frustrating defeat and multiple do overs. 

Historical accuracy is important and it is a draw for lots of future customers, so are graphics and a beautiful polished look. But at a high level, it is balance that will make the difference between a 5 star rating and 3 star "meh" and I hope they find that balance before releasing the game

Yeah i know what you mean, just played world of warships and even though i average over a 58% winrate after 2,4k games i cba with the community especially when you play cv and they expect you too be god for some reason (covering them with fighters, spotting targets, hitting targets they and the rest of the team are too bad too hit etc).

Yeah fun is important i just don't want it to entirely be braindead, having the option to play for challenges is always good (but then casual stuff shouldn't be ignored anyways). I dont find the AI to be difficult at all, it's just that ships take forever to die due to whatever changes they made to the armour scheme and AP penetrations.

Think realism is more important for this game than historical accuracy since the latter is heavily gimped just by how the ship building works (i mean after release im sure you could build historical ships but still).

I don't know how many alphas they plan to have before their betas and then the actual release, but they might have to push the release date back by quite some bit just to get most of this stuff done to a good standard.

[Skeksis]

In UGCW the missions are fixed, you have to fulfill the mission criteria in order to win, success of the win is the fun, filling the criteria is the challenge.

In NA it's all challenge, the result is players target lower tiered ships for fun and equal tiers for the challenge. If NA was geared for fun then fun targets would be of equal tiers and the challenge would be of higher tiers. And the way I think it should have been for as then players would get to enjoy the game at their level, e.g. vs equal rank, vs equal ship models (as it was pre-patch 27).

For UAD, as the AI is buffed beyond the player level or mission level or campaign level, then it's geared for the challenge, not necessary geared for fun.

So far UAD and alpha 4 is indicative of the 'criteria format' where as alpha 3 was geared towards the 'fun format', or a lose criteria where you had options, one example of this is the restrictions on placements, this is characteristic of a game heading towards a fixed criteria format, whereas lose placements are fun. Especially Dev's unwillingness to free up barbettes placements, this is not fun.

The problem with criteria format is once it has been fulfill there is no repeatability, you can only recreate the exact same criteria.

Whereas if the game was geared for fun, then you don't have to repeat the same criteria, you can do something completely different, thus repeatability.

I agree with OP in that game has moved alittle bit away from fun. I'm all for practicality, plausibility and AI impartiality, which means the AI should not be buffed beyond the fun factor or the player level or the player tech level.

My 2 cents! 

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by Skeksis

[Shaftoe]

4 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

So far UAD and alpha 4 is indicative of the 'criteria format' where as alpha 3 was geared for more the 'fun format', or a lose criteria where you had options, one example of this is the restrictions on placements, this is characteristic of a game heading towards a fixed criteria format, whereas lose placements are fun. Especially Dev's unwillingness to free up barbettes placements.

Free the barbettes! Freedom and equality for every barbette! Hoorah!

[DougToss]

18 hours ago, Daniel Silver said:

I would like to start by saying that I don't usually post and I tend to support game developers that make games that are historically based. This is not meant as a complaint but more as a constructive criticism from a casual gamer. 

I have no idea what you guys did when you tweaked the game in the last patch, but it is less enjoyable. 

1. The AI is waaaay too accurate compared to the ships I build
2. The AI is waaaay too hard to sink
3. The missions are waaay too hard and frustrating, even the ones I completed pre-patch are less enjoyable or just plain frustrating to play
4. The game, overall, is not as fun as it was and sometimes just plain frustrating, having to micromanage different ships because of the poor friendly AI captain
5. My guns switch from one target to another randomly and lose their accuracy
6. My accuracy drops off at closer ranges, which is just plain weird, with small calibers more accurate than higher calibers (I honestly don't understand how, at 1000m my 18inches have 20% accuracy to the opposing BB's 75% accuracy rating)
7. There aren't enough descriptions for what certain items do. Like for example what is the difference between long range accuracy and general accuracy rangefinders.

First of all, I'd like to say you made some fairly good points. My strongest point of disagreement with you is that you attribute game design problems and bugs to the game being historically accurate. If you've taken the time to read the forums you'll find the historical "lobby" is in fact most often arguing for gameplay improvements than rigid historical accuracy. It doesn't matter if a game aims for rigid simulation or an arcade experience if it doesn't play well. What constitutes that desired end state is of course subject of vigorous debate here.  

This article might open your eyes to the viewpoints and surprise you with how games can be authentic to history without being overwhelming.

Regarding you first two points, without more information from you it is hard to figure out what "too accurate" and "too hard to sink" means. This is again where bugs or problems with how game systems work are attributed to the historical crowd. While we work hard to find and share references about the real accuracy and survivability of period warships, the current state in game is not a symptom of the game adhering too closely to those standards. We want the ships to be as accurate and as hard to sink as they were in reality, as best as can be simulated while being a fun and enjoyable naval wargame. That means all the game systems have to be working first, and when that's done we should reasonably expect a historical outcome. Right now that's definitely not the case.

Point 3, I agree and you'll find that opinion is shared by the historical lobby. The missions are neither realistic scenarios, which makes designing realistic ships or operating with real tactics impossible, nor fun or well designed in a simple sense. Whatever the gunnery model ends up being, we're a long way from Emden vs Sydney in the scenarios.

Point 4, It is impossible to quantify. I agree with you in some ways, but for that opinion to be useful for discussion with your fellow players and feedback for the devs you will need to elaborate. AI improvements especially for friendly ships under command would be welcome. 

Point 5, that's a huge problem. No argument here.

Point 6, You were complaining about the historical lobby but the ballistics model is one of the things we have been advocating changes for the most! You (inadvertently) gave an example of how the game being more accurate would be more enjoyable. 

Point 7, I agree. UI improvements would go a long way. 

18 hours ago, Daniel Silver said:

I'm sure it's much more historically accurate now, with armor and velocities and whatnot, but frankly I don't play games to be historically perfect (The battle of Jutland lasted what? a full day irl? I don't want to play a whole day to complete one battle) With battles taking as long as they do now I am certainly not looking forward to a whole campaign of those, God help us if we ever have to do 15 vs 15 BBs it will take a year to finish the battle. 

I don't mean to disparage you opinion, but the armour and ballistics systems are clearly not finished, buggy or the design goals need tweaking. We're a long, long way from being historically perfect. I think a working, feature-complete game with a "perfect" protection, ballistics and terminal ballistics model would be very enjoyable, and I'm willing to bet you would too. The frustration right now is coming from it not working, not working as intended in an "overly" historical fashion. 

Regarding battle duration, time acceleration. So far as I know, nobody plays Silent Hunter IV for 90 days in real time. I don't see why this is any different. 

(And again, the realism mods for Silent Hunter III-V not only make the games more "fun" in my opinion, they made the UI more usable, provided more tooltips and fixed major bugs)

18 hours ago, Daniel Silver said:

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is easy to get lost in the minutiae, and I understand that the loudest voices are ones who are most passionate about historical accuracy, and that everyone has their own opinion, but please don't lose sight of the fact that games, before they are anything else, should be fun. 

Again, please don't take this the wrong way, I love the game and wish it success, but maybe you could do 2 modes of play, one for the hardcore historically oriented masochists, and another for thsoe who play games to relax and watch the pretty ships and have fun.

Here again is the crux of my disagreement. Everybody working together pointing out issues with the game, in design and implementation full-stop. That's what Early Access is. Posts about shell X not penetrating armour thickness Y at range Z are important. I don't believe they constitute pedantries because whatever side of the equation you're on, the gunnery system needs work. Most importantly, the gunnery system is not broken because it's too historically accurate! 

Finally, condensation aside,  these are arguments about game design. It's not as simple as a "mode". You are already staking out a position that precludes you having fun or enjoying ships in a game that's accurate. You're ruling our a historical experience being relaxing, while earlier complaining that battles would take too long if they had the lulls in combat that real battles did. 

It's not as simple in changing tables so shells hit harder or more accurately, but the entire philosophy behind every decision in the game. The Devs have stated their position to be to err on the side of realism. That's not to dismiss your opinion outright, only to say that your contribution is important because within the bounds of realism your input can still help make the game more fun, identify bugs and inspire discussion with your fellow players.

You would just have to accept that something can be both realistic and fun, and not attribute anything unfun to realism. 

[Brandon L]

2 hours ago, Skeksis said:

Especially Dev's unwillingness to free up barbettes placements, this is not fun.

One of my biggest complaints. Why can we not place barbettes amidships as it is historical as several classes had super firing turrets amidships so why is it forbidden in the game? Really grinds my gears to no end I can only place them for and aft. Come on devs fix it like RIGHT NOW!!

Edited February 22, 2020 by Brandon L

[roachbeef]

Taking 24 hours to finish a battle can be solved with the devs optimizing the game and making higher time comoression scales more playable. Curently even 5X can get sub-20 FPS and I'm willing to lose eye candy to skip 50 minutes of stern chases.

[Shaftoe]

8 hours ago, Brandon L said:

One of my biggest complaints. Why can we not place barbettes amidships as it is historical as several classes had super firing turrets amidships so why is it forbidden in the game? Really grinds my gears to no end I can only place them for and aft. Come on devs fix it like RIGHT NOW!!

Apparently, because devs fear it would break AI ship designs even more. Although dev team cannot claim their game is "historical" if we can't build ships with barbettes amidships. Like Nelson-class or Wyoming-class.

[Brandon L]

2 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

Like Nelson-class or Wyoming-class.

And the Ise class, the one its drives me crazy I cannot recreate as its one of my favorite ships. I just hope its resolved soon somehow. Here's hoping anyway.... 😕

Edited February 23, 2020 by Brandon L

[Shaftoe]

But then again, some ship classes cannot be recreated because of forward/aft mast placement. So technically not only barbettes and turrets, but also superstructure need to have a lot more freedom.

[Cptbarney]

guess the next patch, the devs should consider making the ship builder far less strict and if the AI has a fit just keep it attached to the old system if possible.

[DougToss]

It's a fair point actually. Player design can't be opened up until the default hulls are working as intended and the AI is competently building good ships. Crying out for "balance" and changes to "the meta" only makes that harder. It's much easier to get the AI to design ships along historical lines, and that process would be much easier if the game used historical parameters. 

If both the player and AI have to design ships to contend with realistic threats, travelling with realistic mobility and with realistic protection, you'll find the process goes much more smoothly. 

Edited February 23, 2020 by DougToss

[angriff]

I just wish there was some way to get historically correct ships and have a list to select them from instead of AI building weird ahistorical ships.

[DougToss]

11 hours ago, angriff said:

I just wish there was some way to get historically correct ships and have a list to select them from instead of AI building weird ahistorical ships.

The easiest way to do that would be what RTW does: Have historical templates for the overall layout, and use realistic parameters so the AI can build ships with the firepower/mobility/protection suited for countering their strategic threats, with their available technology, budget and fitting into their doctrine. 

Creating arcade "balance" will never lead to historically correct player or AI ships, and letting players run completely buck wild will break AI designs as any good AI would attempt to build ships to counter threats that never existed in reality. What would a battleship look like if 7in guns were as deadly as 13in? That's the situation we're in now.

Edited February 24, 2020 by DougToss

[Nick Thomadis]

22 minutes ago, DougToss said:

What would a battleship look like if 7in guns were as deadly as 13in? That's the situation we're in now.

Can you elaborate on that? How are 7 inch guns as deadly as 13 inch guns?

[Wowzery]

The one thing which gets me is allowing secondary guns on the superstructures.  At the moment I can't build historical US WW2 ships like the Iowa because it will not take the 5" mounts on the superstructure. 

I do a small YT channel, and one of game video my designed battleship  can't hit a thing while the AI ship pounds me to Davy Jones' locker.  But in another video I win easily.  So I'm not convinced that the AI is better or stronger yet.

I would like some more variations on barbette placement.

[DougToss]

3 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Can you elaborate on that? How are 7 inch guns as deadly as 13 inch guns?

Absolutely. It has to do with the accuracy curve of different calibers over range being flattened in the latest update. 

Basically, by making smaller calibers more accurate, coupled with their rate of fire, the relative advantage of large calibers is greatly reduced. 

I've posted about it a length before, linked below:

Now, because the accuracy system is somewhat opaque to mean I can't determine is this is all the effect of caliber per se, or the modifiers applied to secondary mountings. The effect is the same though, the purposes for and advantages of unitary caliber all-big-gun armaments are reduced. 

I don't believe this problem lies with the rate of fire, and I certainly don't think it (or any factor!) should be "balanced", but rather reproduce historical results. Which is largely does. Of course past a certain shell weight, hand-worked guns are not faster than mechanically handled ammunition of a larger caliber. A 4" shell may only weigh 33lbs to the 6" 100lbs, but on a rolling pitching deck and passing ammunition by hand from ammunition lockers, there will be a point of diminishing returns. 

As British  and German testing shows, greater rate of fire did not lead to greater rate of hits by smaller caliber guns. Without this factor, smaller calibers are presently "deadlier" in UA:D than in reality, by a large margin. In so far as their relative lack of explosive filler or penetration is outweighed by them hitting more often.

In short - why is a 7in gun relatively deadlier than a 13in? Because it  is more accurate than it should be, and therefore hits more due to its higher rate of fire. 

Quote

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by DougToss