Upcoming Alpha-5

[arkhangelsk]

9 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

2. Yes, the inflated hit rates are clearly for that purpose. Most people won't know just how low common hit rates were, all the way up to WW2, unless you closed to much lower ranges or there was something else unusual (as an aside, I don't think the penalty for being stopped is great enough; it made a very significant difference if one target is moving slowly while the other isn't; just look at the last 'battle' with Bismarck where her main guns were KO'd within about 20 minutes and she took an astounding amount of hits). We've all discussed this, too, and have no problem with the idea of increased hit rates for the sake of less "die-hard realism" players and thus success of the game. The consequences, as I said, is it forces the damage model to move away from more 'realism' as a consequence.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Most of the "pain" right now is not so much the battle, but the pursuit - that last bit where you just close to about 1km with your battleship so you can stab the enemy to death. If they can fix that, I don't think players will be that miffed by slower progress in the middle. I think they are leaving room for crew and morale maluses. Also, I suspect the last Mark V guns are intended to be a bit better than WWII technology.

[Dirlinger]

5 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

It should be here soon lads just hang on for a few moar days (so monday-wednesday)!

But....

[HusariuS]

[Marshall99]

Everybody waiting for Alpha 5

Nick:

[theradman]

I am looking forward to these fixes. Especially the new light cruiser models. 

I did encounter a designer limitation/error: (Is the the best place to post?)

Trying to build the HMS Lion 1909 ... I could not get a large enough hull size until i set the year to 1912! 

[KiltedKey]

4 hours ago, Dirlinger said:

But....

You dare tell Arch-Magos Nick that his time tables are unacceptable!? It is ready when he says the Machine Spirits have been properly placated and no sooner!

Question his delays and rituals again and you will be lucky to be a skittari by the time your superiors are done with you!

[Bluishdoor76]

8 minutes ago, KiltedKey said:

You dare tell Arch-Magos Nick that his time tables are unacceptable!? It is ready when he says the Machine Spirits have been properly placated and no sooner!

Question his delays and rituals again and you will be lucky to be a skittari by the time your superiors are done with you!

[VarangianGarde]

10 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

 

dear Steeltrap...fully dissagree with your view of scuttling a vessel...afaik, the scuttling by the crew of a navy vessel had only happened if there was a danger of she being captured or to speed up the inevitable if you are being pursued by enemy forces. If not, she "must" come back home ...apart from that matter of honor and prestige of a navy (you know, those crazy navy guys have a tendency to sunk with their ships) there is also the ecomomics that you mentioned...here i do also dissagree with your point of view, if feasible (a thing that you only know when she is in the drydock), repairing a vessel is much shorter in time than building a new one, and even more in the period this game is focused ...even if the cost of repair vs build is the same it will bring you a vessel back in line in a shorter period... the dock space and time, belive me is not that much...you give her flotability and lay her on a pier for repairs...

the scuttling thing from my point of view is as if it is already implemented on the enemy side...you only have to think that when she sunks is cause their crew scuttled her and that's all...on the friend side, if I´m the admiral and somebody scuttle one of my ship in the middle of a battle, there will be no martial court...just a bullet in the front of the b*?t*rd's head....if you want to scuttle her afterwards...well...i guess the game has to have something that helps you in that matter, like a scrapping option or similar, if not we will end  up with some 1890s BB in the 40s, and thats beyond any modernization capabillity... unless you use them as monitors.

IMHO, the  problem we face in the game is not to scuttle or not to scuttle but enemy ships that we have almost sunk  and are shooting at us as if there is no damage on them at all...is not that they shall not fire at all...they should fire ala chester in jutland...but.. they are firing with all guns and reloading as brend new!!! (of course the same happens on the friend side)

so basis on the above, is how damage is modeled what matters here and maybe the game should introduce things that downgrade the quantity of guns a massively damaged vessel could operate.

so maybe will be good if the game introduce things like:

a) flooding colateral effect: guns should not be able to shoot (at least sideways) when the listing of the vessel pass certain angle...so no more firing stbd with a 45º port listing...not only cause of the depression of the gun, if it was not enough, but the cranes and elements to feed the gun shouldn't work quite well...if they recover great...so, then it comes counterflooding, that thing that if you do in some cases will sunk your ship...or impair your capability of suffering additional damage...

b) fire collateral effect: a fire that affects the supossed area of the magazines could only bring two things...a big BOOOM, or the flooding of the magazine by the crew if they care for their lives, both cases (supposing it survives the explosion) should render the affected gun/s inoperative

c) crew casualties: at some high % the vessel should turn somehow ineffective, focus should be given to sailing away and firefight/repair teams. Cookers could help on firing guns but then it should affect their efectiveness...and so and so

just some ideas..

Well they sure as hell didn't scuttle the Seydlitz. Reading the Jutland damage report for that ship is eye popping, and damn compelling.

 

* Edit: This might be a little Crusader Kingsy, but what if there was something like the Scapa Floe incident? If your crew is interned after losing a war, maybe there'd be a mechanic to deny the ship to the victorious power.

Edited March 14, 2020 by VarangianGarde

[Bluishdoor76]

u guys think Corona got em?

[RedParadize]

Stop bullying Nick. He has a patch to work on.

[Steeltrap]

17 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

dear Steeltrap...fully dissagree with your view of scuttling a vessel...afaik, the scuttling by the crew of a navy vessel had only happened if there was a danger of she being captured or to speed up the inevitable if you are being pursued by enemy forces.

 

22 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

On 3/14/2020 at 2:17 AM, Shaftoe said:

Then it's very important to leave scuttling option to player. Otherwise, ships will automatically scuttle in combat situations, where they still could have been useful. In other words, you do not abandon a perfectly battleworthy battleship in the middle of combat due to engine failure. You keep fighting while you can. 

Absolutely this.

I'm a bit confused. You say you fully disagree with me re scuttling, yet I said I agreed entirely with what Shaftoe said, namely that IF a ship is to be scuttled it has to be left to the player.

The only disagreement we seem to have is at what point we would decide to scuttle it, assuming we did.

You've made assumptions about what the game's economics and thus cost/benefit ought to be based on perfectly valid real world situations, I've simply chosen to highlight what considerations there might be.

Even so, consider Gniesenau in WW2. Having taken a single torpedo hit in the bow, she had temporary repairs made in Norway before returning to Kiel. Upon arrival, she went into dry dock at the Howaldtswerke dockyard for five months of repair work. Much of her service life was spent in various facilities being repaired for months at a time, including a long stay at Brest in France. The damage that finally finished her operational career was done while in a dry dock, LOL.

That's fine IF you have appropriate dry dock facilities.

Bear in mind, too, I was referring to why ships ought NOT sink "due to structural damage" alone. Thus I was responding to the very particular case of a ship that is largely wrecked yet NOT sinking.

I suspect it's rather academic. Any ship in the sort of state I was discussing, namely where the game currently forces it to sink due to structural damage despite having potentially full floatation, is almost certainly going to be sunk by whatever reduced it to that state, OR it will be a race to get more ships there. In the case of the damaged ship, that will include appropriate salvage vessels that can take the wreck in tow.

In other words, I suspect we agree on the main points. Perhaps I could have made a clearer distinction between the absolute statement "the decision to scuttle MUST be left to the player" and then the subsequent thinking aloud I did in terms of what might lead to deciding to do so.

As for the rest, I agree, and indeed pretty much have said similar things here (and elsewhere) about crew, efficiency, battle damage effects and so on.

Cheers

[Steeltrap]

13 hours ago, arkhangelsk said:

I'm not sure I agree with that. Most of the "pain" right now is not so much the battle, but the pursuit - that last bit where you just close to about 1km with your battleship so you can stab the enemy to death. If they can fix that, I don't think players will be that miffed by slower progress in the middle. I think they are leaving room for crew and morale maluses. Also, I suspect the last Mark V guns are intended to be a bit better than WWII technology.

I think that's a difference of emphasis. If I understand correctly, you're discussing one aspect of the many flaws in the existing damage model, an aspect that people find frustrating.

I was trying to point out that if you hit a ship 5 times more often than you might reasonably have expected to in normal conditions based on historical records then the damage model has to do something else we end up doing damage as though running time compression even when we're at 1x speed.

Cheers

[Steeltrap]

18 hours ago, Quigglebert said:

Look up the battle of Samar, one US DD with bollocld the size of the yamato

Here's a friendly link for you

Thanks.

I first read about this action in a book I own called "Famous Sea Battles" by David Howarth, published 1981. By pure chance it's next to me as I'm writing this. I chose it as the reward for my 'academic prize' in 2nd form/year 8 from memory, which was in 1981, so I got it the same year it was released.

Hard to believe it's going to be 39 years old some time this year. Geez.

😶

As an aside, why is it remembered? I'd suggest it's entirely because it is so extraordinarily different from what would have been expected, which sort of makes my point.

Sure, you could pull this off. Could. But this is the extreme outlier, NOT the norm. Plus it was done in extremis.

Regardless, it was meant as a laugh about the damage model, not a serious discussion of the merits of charging vastly superior forces.

Cheers

Edited March 15, 2020 by Steeltrap

[Shaftoe]

Good Sunday to everyone!

[Cptbarney]

12 pages, now. This has to be the fastest growing thread on the forums since it first started i believe.

Pretty insane lol.

Hang on to yer horses ladz.

[madham82]

Honestly the whole scuttle/abandon ship (and withdrawal)  idea could be handled like this:

• On the battle map, there are two withdrawal zones, one for each side (Victory at Sea used this same mechanic).
• Any ship reaching their respective zone can flee the battle (if all ships from one side withdrawal, victory for the other side obviously).
  • This would also serve to remove the current frustration with AI ships fleeing, caused victory conditions to not be met even though the player forced the AI to flee).
• Scuttling/abandoning ship would be handled with the key factor being which force controls the battle area at the end.
  • If you do not control the area, your ships are scuttled to prevent capture.
  • If you do control the area, you have the option to salvage or scuttle them (in the case they aren't worth it).

Like someone mentioned earlier, there is a real issue with ships still firing effectively despite being a burning wreck from bow to stern. I think when crews are implemented we may finally get this fixed. My thinking would be that once the crew has taken enough casualties, they have to abandon the ship. Then the above mechanics would go into effect as to what happens to the ship after the battle. 

Also agree with structural sinkings being too arcade like. If they can implement something like above for the crews, then structural sinkings can be replaced by crews abandoning ship. 

 

[Brandon L]

7 minutes ago, madham82 said:

when crews are implemented

I hope that is never implemented, it's bad enough when I lose guns from damage, but to also lose my "working guns" effectiveness from tired/dead crew.... Yeah no thanks.

[wood]

So just curious...do you think there should be no crew effects at all?  The ships are basically robots?

[Shaftoe]

5 minutes ago, wood said:

So just curious...do you think there should be no crew effects at all?  The ships are basically robots?

I think there definitely should be crew effects. Or else this game shouldn't call itself "realistic". If somebody wants ships without crews - they should play WoWs.

[Brandon L]

4 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

If somebody wants ships without crews - they should play WoWs

Actually WOWs has a captain you can upgrade so technically it has a crew of one lol , I get you and other's want "realism"  but if its implemented we should be given the option to have our ships be "robots" if we so chose.

P.S  After over 3k battles I wont be playing WOWs ever again. You go play it

[uwu]

13 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

I think there definitely should be crew effects. Or else this game shouldn't call itself "realistic". If somebody wants ships without crews - they should play WoWs.

That's not a good idea at all, i don't mind if they add crew like in War Thunder where they have model and they are animated and stuff but no need for some tiring system or moral system or anything like that, cuz it's just DUMB! 

[Shaftoe]

9 minutes ago, Brandon L said:

After over 3k battles I wont be playing WOWs ever again. 

You poor thing. It's good you decided to stop torturing yourself. 

  

6 minutes ago, uwu said:

That's not a good idea at all, i don't mind if they add crew like in War Thunder where they have model and they are animated and stuff but no need for some tiring system or moral system or anything like that, cuz it's just DUMB! 

That's a very well-argumented answer indeed. 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Shaftoe

[Brandon L]

4 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

You poor thing. It's good you decided to stop torturing yourself. 

 

4 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

That's a very well-argumented answer indeed.

Someone has a chip on their shoulder.

Edited March 15, 2020 by Brandon L

[Hangar18]

the devs the past week:

[Fishyfish]

31 minutes ago, uwu said:

That's not a good idea at all, i don't mind if they add crew like in War Thunder where they have model and they are animated and stuff but no need for some tiring system or moral system or anything like that, cuz it's just DUMB! 

Yeah, no. In a naval simulation why would you expect there not to be any sort of moral or crew condition systems?  I'm seeing a lot of "Less simulation, more arcade" in a lot of posts as of late. And why would you want that? I don't want this to be an arcade game, I know many other people don't want this to be an arcade game. It would be "just DUMB!" to turn this into an arcade mess. Truth be told I'm hopeful for more tiring systems, such as managing fuel and ship conditions, not less. Last I checked this game isn't being advertised as an arcade boat battle, and I for one would be disgusted if it went down that path.