Prove your Might - poor design of the scenario or?

[Dirlinger]

I want to give my 2 cents on this scenario. I just added a screenshot to prove that I have completed that mission and to give people an idea on which scenario I am talking about.

Your are tasked to defend a convoy with a battlecruiser (hull 5) with 70 000 K budget + 2 allied destroyer  - against you (varies, but in my case) is a battleship with modern battleship hull at 58 500 t displacement (at 17 inch max armor + 28.5 knots speed)  + heavy cruiser with equipment  value of at  close to 200 000 K (just an estimate because i built battleship but and came over 120 000 K). Max bulkheads were used by both ships and BB was sporting 16 inch cannons in 4 triple turrets. In all attempts BB had twice the accuracy that I had despite both of us using the "same tech" in theory.

I have tried various combinations in this scenario but failed miserably in each and every way. I tried to find some videos on youtube to get inspiration but no one showed a win in this scenario.

What finally worked was luck. Both ships spawned close enough to detect transports but not close enough to destroy them outright. Both enemy ships split their attention (BB targeting my BC and CA targeting transport). I got after a intense minutes few good hits on CA and it started to retreat - my tactic here was to force CA to retreat and then engage enemy BB with cannon fire and torpedoes - i had managed to bring down enemy BC down to 39% on  previous attempt with this strategy.

By this time my BC was reduced to 48 % HP.  After couple of minutes my ship was flooding and I got the message that I was sinking. But by luck my last shot must have hit something important and that enemy BB has sunk and I got victory screen instead.

No skill, no clever use of resources,no clever design - just luck. This type of criticism I can point to several scenarios in the naval academy btw.

 

Am I the strange one or is this type of masochism "fun" to people??

 

Prove

[Shaftoe]

I this this scenario is poorly designed. Too much depends on luck. 

[Cptbarney]

i won by having 62% structure and the enemy bb having 48%.

i dont know if they changed the requirements but i never actually killed the psuedo bismarck at all whatsoever.

[Dirlinger]

13 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

i won by having 62% structure and the enemy bb having 48%.

i dont know if they changed the requirements but i never actually killed the psuedo bismarck at all whatsoever.

 

The mission description as it is now is clear on that point atm - you have to kill 1 BB, keep you BC alive and 70 % of transports within 240 minutes.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Dirlinger

[HusariuS]

Currently most missions depends on pure luck, because AI is always creating new designes.

Maybe in future AI will have only those designs created by Devs.

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Dirlinger said:

 

The mission description as it is now is clear on that point atm - you have to kill 1 BB, keep you BC alive and 70 % of transports within 240 minutes.

idk i would try it anyways and see if thats the case, if she still runs away from your transports after taking a large amount of damage, just make sure your version of pudding doesn't take more damage than the enemy and see if you win, or i could do it myself soon anyways.

 

[arkhangelsk]

First, again, the mission is in a list called Naval Academy, not Fun Missions. I just tried it again and did not win (I actually won with this ship once). I think the "orthodox" method of beating this mission is something like this - first, build a ship with big guns (so you can actually penetrate the BBs armor and counter his survivability advantage) and 40 knot speed (so you can exploit the speed modifier to counter his armor advantage). Overall you should be giving him 5-10 hits to every one you take. On the tactics front try to keep at least one of your two destroyers alive and the basic lesson you are to learn is to distribute fire between the BB (which will be very hard to sink but is the thing damaging your ship) and the CA (which can still hurt your BC and is a destroyer killer especially if the AI arms it with the hero 9" gun which it does maybe 75% of the time). You have to compromise between using your DDs to draw CA fire (they can be a meat shield for a little bit) and conserving them. Once you've forced the BB to retreat, kill the CA and chase the BB. The destroyer is useful in convincing the enemy battleship to give your BC something other than its arse.

My basic mistake this time was waiting too long for an even better angle for my BC to shoot at before opening up. Instead, between my delay, the slowness of my turrets (I had to use Hydraulic turrets because it was the sacrifice in the struggle to fit everything else in), the fact the AI thinks HOLD FIRE means not to aim them at the set target, and RNG, the computer killed my destroyer and managed to show me its arse again before I could get some good hits in. I was reduced to "stabbing" the enemy battleship at point blank range. I really hate doing this because I keep worrying the computer can turn things around with some good RNG, which I've actually been kind of lucky on so far but this time, the computer won the mutual stabbing contest and managed to get a speed advantage for the first time in the fight, which reduces my chances of killing it to virtually nil. I quit.

Ah well... at least it felt like I lost because of RNG rather than I won only because of it. Basically it is this "reaching out to win" part that makes you learn the system. I remember in the old patches at least two people complained that the naval academy missions are won in the ship designer and they want tactics to play a greater role. You know what? The only way to do that is to up the difficulty sufficiently that just making a good ship is not good enough, and that's the theme of the new missions. We have gone from "any ship" to "best ship" to "best ship plus doing the right things".

I've also been told that designs with a lot of torpedo tubes can work - maybe you can try those.

TL:DR is that you are doing exactly what this mission is trying to get you to do, trying different things to get closer to victory. It makes the victoy when finally won all the more satisfying. Then recover your mental balance by going to the Custom Mission and building a 1940 super battleship to crush a 1906 dreadnought.

[Skeksis]

4 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

Academy, not Fun Missions

That’s BS, PC games are absolutely played for fun.

You’ve missed op point, missions should not be completed by luck, missions should be won by design. If this a prelude (tutorial) to the campaign, win by RNG, then the campaign will be a 'calamity', the campaign should only be completed by player 'choices' of strategies, tactics and ship designs, not 'fictitious' rolls of the dice.

Designer Tool is too win by realism, real selections, not random selections, yes tactics within the battle too but for the most part building ships is the framework for 'win by design'. 

4 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

It makes the victoy when finally won all the more satisfying

After too much frustration it’s takes away all the fun, if missions are too frustrating then even once the mission flag turns green there can be no joy, only relief, there has to be reasonable balance too win or reasonably won by design.

Dev's can't dismiss "it's too hard" feedback either.   

Edited February 27, 2020 by Skeksis

[Dirlinger]

57 minutes ago, arkhangelsk said:

TL:DR is that you are doing exactly what this mission is trying to get you to do, trying different things to get closer to victory. It makes the victoy when finally won all the more satisfying. Then recover your mental balance by going to the Custom Mission and building a 1940 super battleship to crush a 1906 dreadnought.

 

I think you missed the point of my post but since poster above me summed up very much about my current perception I feel no need to further add to the debate. But I feel the need to say that ROLFstomping entire  fleets with Mark 5 18 inch cannons while they cant see me is not what got me interested in the game either 😉

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

That’s BS, PC games are absolutely played for fun.

You’ve miss op point, missions should not be completed by luck, missions should be won by design. If this a prelude (tutorial) to the campaign, win by RNG, then the campaign will be a 'calamity', the campaign should only be completed by player 'choices' of strategies, tactics and ship designs, not 'fictitious' rolls of the dice.

Designer Tool is too win by realism, real selections, not random selections, yes tactics within the battle too but for the most part building ships is the framework for win by design. 

After too much frustration it’s takes away the all fun, if missions are too frustrating then even once the mission flag turns green there can be no joy, only relief, there has to be reasonable balance too win.

Dev's can't dismiss "it's too hard" feedback either.   

if the mission is unwinnable it should be stated (maybe on mission thats called 'you can't win them all' or something).

but yeah rng, is highly annoying i'd rather win through skill most of the time than dice rolls or luck most of the time (i dont mind it know and again or a few times in a row makes it more interesting but almost consistently and it becomes highly irrating.)

i think AI should be restricted however in terms of tech levels so it doesn't get too mental. plus we defo need less restrcitive desing choices.

[arkhangelsk]

9 hours ago, Skeksis said:

That’s BS, PC games are absolutely played for fun.

Sure, but at least some of them are supposed to be challenging. It seems way too much like Dirlinger's idea of "fun" = "easy".

9 hours ago, Skeksis said:

You’ve missed op point, missions should not be completed by luck, missions should be won by design. If this a prelude (tutorial) to the campaign, win by RNG, then the campaign will be a 'calamity', the campaign should only be completed by player 'choices' of strategies, tactics and ship designs, not 'fictitious' rolls of the dice.

I'll actually think he won on design. If he hadn't been thinking about how to build the right ship and optimize his fire distribution decisions, he would never have gotten to the point where luck had a chance to push things in his favor. He just doesn't notice how his efforts pushed the odds in his favor. He went from no chance at all to some chance, then the RNG helped him over the edge.

As for what LESSON he should pick up for the campaign, the first lesson is try to not allow himself to get into that position. Concentrate on research, don't be a penny-pincher on the hull. The second lesson is for if he falls into that situation (maybe he is playing a weak nation or got into too many wars that drained his chances to set himself up for success), it might be worth sacrificing the transports rather than the battlecruiser. The third lesson is that at least he knows how to best fight such a battle to maximize what chance he does have. I'll call that quite educational.

9 hours ago, Skeksis said:

After too much frustration it’s takes away all the fun, if missions are too frustrating then even once the mission flag turns green there can be no joy, only relief, there has to be reasonable balance too win or reasonably won by design.

Dev's can't dismiss "it's too hard" feedback either.   

Here's the problem: This is Naval Academy. Basically, the harder the mission is, the fewer combinations work, and the mission is more educational. Reducing the difficulty of the mission thus makes the battle less educational and defeats the point of putting it into Naval Academy.

[Dirlinger]

14 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

Sure, but at least some of them are supposed to be challenging. It seems way too much like Dirlinger's idea of "fun" = "easy".

(....)

Here's the problem: This is Naval Academy. Basically, the harder the mission is, the fewer combinations work, and the mission is more educational. Reducing the difficulty of the mission thus makes the battle less educational and defeats the point of putting it into Naval Academy.

I will try to be much more explicit here - you are 100 % wrong in applying to me an opinion "fun" = "easy". I will ask you to reread my second post in this thread once again and try to understand what I am trying to communicate here.

I did not write my OP because I wanted to disparage the developers I am doing this because I wanted end result to be better. Which will benefit all - I hope.

First of all, not all missions in Naval Academy are tutorial type. Maybe third of them are plain scenario type missions, this mission is definitely one of them.  There is nothing to learn here except that it sucks to be underdog. But that is how real life works too, so...

Too me, this was just a frustrating mission where several random factors needed to go your way before you win the scenario - enemy not spawning directly in traveling direction of convoy because then they would butcher TR no matter what tactics you employed, enemy CA not being focused on you entirely but also on other stuff, damage you deal must come in early because the longer fight goes on the more BB advantage in accuracy will come in play, your damage must no accumulate too much early on because then your accuracy will suffer too much to damage the enemy, etc, etc...

If the player cannot win 1 of 5 attempts with certain setup and tactics than one must conclude that victory the one time player won is result of RNG and not players efforts. I appreciate that you think that my tactics carried the day but I am smart enough to know when I got lucky.

Or to put it entirely from other perspective - If AI randomly generates battleship with no bulkheads, this mission and all others becomes significantly stupidly easy. That is bad design too...

 

 

[arkhangelsk]

Just because there is more of a realistic scenario in a lesson doesn't mean it is not educational, just as a math question using real life doesn't stop being a math question.

In your case, it seems you are still not doing everything possible to set yourself up for success. It is one thing to not win, but if the enemy is showing a higher hit percentage than you, your ship design in this scenario is wrong. Not having seen your design, I guess it may be because you have put too much faith on armor, but as a battlecruiser hull you are fundamentally crunchier than your opponent so you can't win by toughing it out. Make your hull over 38 knots (something like 40) so you hit him with the maximum speed malus, and you'll start hitting more than he does.

Oh, BTW, it won't hurt to NOT have any secondaries, too. They decrease your main gun accuracy and even if they hit only peck at your opponent. On my design I have exactly ONE 2" gun, and that's so I can set it to track the ship I am not hitting.

BTW, you are supposed to control what the CA is hitting using your destroyers. The basic idea is to keep your battlecruiser at around the edge of its firing range and split its attention between your three ships. Try to keep those destroyers alive as long as possible, but they are there to draw fire.

Remember that if this is a campaign, you don't have to sink the battleship, so you can consider it half a win as long as you beat them into retreat. Think of the last ditch stabbing as the scenario artifact that encourages you to keep everything in as good shape as possible in the Main Combat phase.

[Dirlinger]

With all due respect, I completed all the 35 scenarios last Thursday and I picked upon such obvious things you outline in your last post maybe after couple of retries on other missions. I suspect most people do...

For others who may be interested in what I used : https://imgur.com/a/1lgNQSJ

There is a general agreement on what design features are most likely to work in this scenario but not what tactics to employ. For me destroyers were key component in the end and both survived, while others used passively. But that is of less interest imho.

My point is that it does not matter at how you design your ship, in order to win the scenario (and winning conditions are what they are, I understand that they were easier before?) even cheesing out 100 % on your design and making everything out of every quirk in the game you are still rolling the dice. Sure repeat the roll 10 times and you'll win the scenario eventually. That tells nothing great about you or your design but showcases that scenario imho is not that well designed.

I respect if people think differently.

I enjoy the game immensely otherwise, it certainly gave me value for the money spent. 

[arkhangelsk]

Your ship isn't exactly convincing me you are. For the record, here is my ship.

First, don't make your ship half-arsed fast. Make it fast. The last few knots towards 37.5 knots really count towards increasing the effective malus. Further, it helps you keep out of the fangs of that horrible CA.

Second, having chosen to go half arse fast and having wasted some more weight on torpedo tubes, now you don't have enough armor. Objectively the other guy is better armored and has a more stable firing platform as a battleship plus he has a cruiser so why do you expect to win? I'm guessing that you are hoping torpedoes will come in handy during that pursuit phase where the angle makes the other ship nearly invulnerable, but since right now you are getting your ship ripped apart you might want to deal with that first. If you can at least get to the point of beating the battleship off then at least you've won in campaign terms. Get there first and then think about killing the BB later.

Also, if you want more accuracy, you might want to consider, fewer bigger guns which hit harder and don't get a penalty for being triples. Prove your Might is a new scenario so there is no "It was easier before".

 

[Dirlinger]

Again you are missing a forest because of few trees or you are arguing just to argue.

The ship I designed won the scenario (if you pay attention I did not bother to min-max it just wanted to test the theory regarding the accuracy buff german BB got). Torpedo tubes finished off the battleship btw and that is why they were there. My previous failed attempts were in every other iterations quite different than the one that carried the day. The other ship (balanced tech bonus) was 2 knot faster but I won as described in initial post.

But whatever if you think this is perfect mission design - good for you. I said my piece

 

 

Edited February 29, 2020 by Dirlinger

[HusariuS]

 

Me:

[Cptbarney]

1 minute ago, HusariuS said:

 

Me:

i might have to try this mission again with miss audacious and see if anything has changed because i still managed to win with her and thats whats making this pretty odd.

also poor puddings they be screaming at the loss streak (had something similar on wows with monarch and fiji driving me around the bloody bend it is).

hopefully alpha 5 brings the much needed customization options, new hulls (older between 1880-1920) and new hulls for cls and dd's (1920-1950) plus hopefully better weather effects more sounds and generic building pieces plus terrain for maps.

[HusariuS]

20 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

i might have to try this mission again with miss audacious and see if anything has changed because i still managed to win with her and thats whats making this pretty odd.

also poor puddings they be screaming at the loss streak (had something similar on wows with monarch and fiji driving me around the bloody bend it is).

hopefully alpha 5 brings the much needed customization options, new hulls (older between 1880-1920) and new hulls for cls and dd's (1920-1950) plus hopefully better weather effects more sounds and generic building pieces plus terrain for maps.

And better balans, i think they found their middle point between Easy < > Hard, because in Alpha 3 you could easily win anny possible mission, currently i have problems completing some of the oldest missions that i have played and completed back in the Alpha 3/2/1, so we can assume that Alpha 5 will be quite interesting and very good update.

Edited February 29, 2020 by HusariuS

[Cptbarney]

5 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

And better balans, i think they found their middle point between Easy < > Hard, because in Alpha 3 you could easily win anny possible mission, currently i have problems completing some of the oldest missions that i have played and completed back in the Alpha 3/2/1, so we can assume that Alpha 5 will be quite interesting and very good update.

Yeah kinda wish the devs had just said that alphas 3-4 would be testing extremes for gun mechanics and shell mechanics that would of avoided alot of the intial confusion but eh, guess im a bit dumb anyways lol.

I was surprised when i made a hood varient go 40knots lol but only with 15inch guns (wanted it to be similar but had far more armour and secs anyways lol).

[Woodrow]

I'm going to agree that this scenario is driving me nuts.  I managed to make a BC with 8x2 18" with Heavy Shells (going for gun tech boost) with 40kn speed.  What usually happens?  These stupid stern pursuits.  How absurd are these pursuits?  Well, I managed to chase bot the BB and the CA given both extensive damage, they are down to 18kn speed while my speed has been reduced to 35 .  I decide to finish of the CA first ( he has a max of 8.5" armor).  I literally drive my BC up his stern shooting with %10 acc, scoring hits, and most surprisingly, getting a good amount of deflections too, on a heavy 18"!  You can guess what happens, my ship drives through him, pushing him aside, he still has %20 structure (because apparently red sections become damage sponges) and of course as I drive by him, hi hits me with the torpedoes (which was what I was trying to avoid).  I know I could have changed tactics slightly, but the point of that exercise was to ascertain the absurdity of these stern pursuit issues and I think this does as well.  I don't have a problem with the AI running, but fix the damage tables / angles.  If I am hitting a ship from the stern, the reduced armour section, the shell show go right on in, not bounce because the system things its an extreme oblique angle.

[Cptbarney]

Also another glaring issue is that the AI seems to have an easier time hitting you and dealing better damage than you can do yourself, also noticed when you have a bismarck with 450mm's of belt armour you can forget winning lol, and because they can hit you more frequently you lose speed quicker and accuracy and therefore are buggered for the rest of the match.

I don't mind difficult tasks and missions but you need somekind of middle ground between hard and easy to ensure peeps who want a challenge but dont want to have ez mode or rekt mode.

Im guessing alpha 5 should be a big patch not sure when they will be releasing the preview (can't bloody wait lol), but yeah some older missions are pretty difficult  @HusariuS ill try again with that 406mm ship i made or switch to triple 381's and see if volume of fire does anything. I think the problem is the extreme armour which leads to consistent bouncing from the enemy ship and also we can't see the values for extended belt or deck which seems to be quite thick whenever you face the thing.

[arkhangelsk]

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Also another glaring issue is that the AI seems to have an easier time hitting you and dealing better damage than you can do yourself,

Yes, unless you exploit the speed malus, that's likely to happen to you. They have Mark 4 guns. You have Mark 3 guns. That's where the difficulty and challenge lies. You know very well that players usually can make a better ship than the AI if they are equal tech (and thus learn very little from the exercise).

[Hangar18]

On 2/29/2020 at 5:56 AM, arkhangelsk said:

Your ship isn't exactly convincing me you are. For the record, here is my ship.

 

 

Youre sacrificing pitch for weight offset, and are possibly doing more harm to youre accuracy than good by avoiding it. no armor on barbettes???? Probably could skimp on the range finder because radar makes it redundant as far as accuracy. Did you really need 2 funnels with forced boilers?

[arkhangelsk]

Without the other funnel, I only had about 45% efficiency and while it is a close fight, I think it is about 1-2% better overall to prioritize on the weight offset (basically the weight offset is more influential which is why it is on the center screen while Pitch isn't).

As for the barbettes - look, something had to give. Who cares in this scenario that I don't get ammo-racked only to be nibbled to death.