Serious Balance Issues

[GUTB]

Okay guys, let's talk about the balance of this game. It's seriously out of whack. A few examples:

• Secondaries are useless below 8 inches.
• Game puts way too much power emphasis on larger guns. For example, a 18 inch hit may one-shot something whereas it could take dozens of 16 inch hits or hundreds of 6 inch hits to cause significant damage.
• Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.
• Torpedoes are greatly overpowered / anti-torpedo design features are under-powered. No matter how much anti-torp and how thick your belt is a hit is still going to damage your engine making you a sitting duck for further torp hits.
• Lower tech designs can't hit the broadside of a barn and need to be at virtual point bank range before accuracy becomes respectable, but higher tech designs have great accuracy at over 20km away.

[HusariuS]

38 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Okay guys, let's talk about the balance of this game. It's seriously out of whack. A few examples:

• Secondaries are useless below 8 inches.
• Game puts way too much power emphasis on larger guns. For example, a 18 inch hit may one-shot something whereas it could take dozens of 16 inch hits or hundreds of 6 inch hits to cause significant damage.
• Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.
• Torpedoes are greatly overpowered / anti-torpedo design features are under-powered. No matter how much anti-torp and how thick your belt is a hit is still going to damage your engine making you a sitting duck for further torp hits.
• Lower tech designs can't hit the broadside of a barn and need to be at virtual point bank range before accuracy becomes respectable, but higher tech designs have great accuracy at over 20km away.

1. Depends on what are they shooting at and what armor that thing have, besides even if they are not able to penetrate enemy ship armor, they can still cause fires, damage superstructure and funnels.

2. Depends on shell weights, propellant, gun technology level, place where the shells hits enemy, armor in various places on the ship and also others means of protection like number of bulkheads, water pumping, etc.

3. This is not World of Warships or any other arcade style game, in short: That's how naval combat works.

4. Because torpedoes were very powerfull weapon? Except for those US Mark 14... they didn't work... at least early in the war.

Besides, it's not only about putting good anti-torpedo protection with thick enough belt armor, so my advice for you is to read what every upgrade does, and to be honest: Best protection are your own eyes.

5. That's how technology works.

Edited March 17, 2020 by HusariuS

[Cptbarney]

39 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Okay guys, let's talk about the balance of this game. It's seriously out of whack. A few examples:

• Secondaries are useless below 8 inches.

Depends on the target. Secondaries can even kill CA's (dunno about supercruisers or battlecruisers), and shread CL's and DD's if suffcient caliber and filler.

Quote

• Game puts way too much power emphasis on larger guns. For example, a 18 inch hit may one-shot something whereas it could take dozens of 16 inch hits or hundreds of 6 inch hits to cause significant damage.

Makes sense, but you're talking in absolutes ive never seen an 18inch one shot a BB, but maybe a CA, CL or DD. Either way if an 18inch shell hits something thats isn't very armoured you can forget it surviving

Quote

• Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.

Well that makes sense like in real life a CA going up against a BB was suicide unless it was able to damage the SS enough or use torpedoes to do serious damage to it enough for the bb to retreat and disengage. I don't think i ever recall a case where a light cruiser or a heavy cruiser can go up against a Light, regular, heavy or super Battleship of anykind and win, especially on 1v1 situations.

Quote

• Torpedoes are greatly overpowered / anti-torpedo design features are under-powered. No matter how much anti-torp and how thick your belt is a hit is still going to damage your engine making you a sitting duck for further torp hits.

Actually they are fine, previously torpedoes were pathetically under-powered to the point where super bb's could take 40+ 24inch torps easily. Torpedoes were commonly know to cause huge amounts of damage to ships even an even sink most by just on torp alone.

Quote

• Lower tech designs can't hit the broadside of a barn and need to be at virtual point bank range before accuracy becomes respectable, but higher tech designs have great accuracy at over 20km away.

Again thats how it was in real life, accuracy was pretty bad back in the day, while modern designs got better due to trial and error plus the tonnes of experience accumilated during many naval engagements. Its basic technological progress.

[HusariuS]

1 minute ago, Cptbarney said:

Actually they are fine, previously torpedoes were pathetically under-powered to the point where super bb's could take 40+ 24inch torps easily. Torpedoes were commonly know to cause huge amounts of damage to ships even an even sink most by just on torp alone.

Because those were US Mark 14 Torpedoes.

[Cptbarney]

7 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

Because those were US Mark 14 Torpedoes.

Hmm? Wait. What does that mean? I assumed inch and torp type determined how much damage it would do.

Can't remember if they displayed Country of origin plus type and version/varient.

[HusariuS]

1 minute ago, Cptbarney said:

Hmm? Wait. What does that mean? I assumed inch and torp type determined how much damage it would do.

Can't remember if they displayed Country of origin plus type and version/varient.

Because that was historical joke

[Cptbarney]

4 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

Because that was historical joke

Oh lol, bad husarius 'w' 😄

[lordcmdr]

OP- are you commenting post patch from this morning or just how the game has been in general?

[HusariuS]

Just now, lordcmdr said:

OP- are you commenting post patch from this morning or just how the game has been in general?

Em, both i guess?

[Bluishdoor76]

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.

This is called Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts, implying the focus of the game is on the heaviest ship class of the covered time period.

[Ruan]

9 hours ago, GUTB said:

Okay guys, let's talk about the balance of this game. It's seriously out of whack. A few examples:

• Secondaries are useless below 8 inches.
• Game puts way too much power emphasis on larger guns. For example, a 18 inch hit may one-shot something whereas it could take dozens of 16 inch hits or hundreds of 6 inch hits to cause significant damage.
• Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.
• Torpedoes are greatly overpowered / anti-torpedo design features are under-powered. No matter how much anti-torp and how thick your belt is a hit is still going to damage your engine making you a sitting duck for further torp hits.
• Lower tech designs can't hit the broadside of a barn and need to be at virtual point bank range before accuracy becomes respectable, but higher tech designs have great accuracy at over 20km away.

Secondaries are very useful. I use a mix of 6 or 7in and 3-4in guns to great effect against DD and CLs. They're no substitute for a screen but they do a wonderful job keeping away small ships.

Yes large guns deal more damage that's the way of things both in RL and game. This is why even a drop of 1 inch was a huge deal historically. However, there is a balance factor here of both RoF, cost and tonnage. Cost and tonnage are not that big of a factor now but when the campaign drops they will make a big impact.

It's not the size of the hull or the tonnage that makes that difference. The size of guns is what makes that difference. That said each ship was built to counter a different ship. DDs are effective with torps against BBs while CLs counter DDs. So on and so fourth. There is some overlap and special exceptions but in general that's how it worked.

Use screens to spot torps. A DD or CL with acoustic upgrades can spot them KMs away. While a BC or BB alone is unlikely to spot anything till its to late. A screen will also chase away or sink ships attempting to close for a torp run. If you do end up taking a few, try to eat it on the bow first then stern if possible. Midships hits will cripple your ship. Otherwise I think damage is fine. Although I do believe that a torpedo bulge should absorb a single torp for free on each side to simulate the "free" space that a bulge provides with some float loss, assuming you added a bulge. Which should be separate from normal torpedo defenses (torpedo belts). I also think that torpedo reloads should be removed. A single salvo from each rack unless you add a reload as an option for increase tonnage and cost.

That accuracy is normal. Look at how close they had to get historically. Average close range for naval artillery around 1900's is about 2.7Km or medium rage of 4.5km.

7 hours ago, Bluishdoor76 said:

This is called Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts, implying the focus of the game is on the heaviest ship class of the covered time period.

I like to think the focus is on naval artillery ships. Everything from Destroyers to Battleships. Just saying the game focuses on Dreadnoughts or "The heaviest ship class" and we risk losing a lot of depth that could of been.

[GUTB]

Well after the latest update it looks like the high speed stealth field was fixed -- there's a major hit decrease but it seems like enemy fire can still hit me if I build a 40+ kt ship. Before the update having a high speed design was essentially a stealth field. With this update there's no point to go with high speed because when the enemy hits you, which is now possible, you lose your speed and the heavy sacrifices made to achieve that speed becomes a liability. 21-24 kts appears to be the sweet spot. There appears to be no reason at all not to always pick forced aspiration and turbines.

Guns are still massively imbalanced. The highest caliber guns still do many times the damage of smaller guns as their weight difference would otherwise suggest. 4, 5 and 6 inch guns are useless, 2 and 3 inch guns appear to be just cosmetic. 8 inch secondaries can cause significant damage to DDs and CLs while 4 and 6 inch guns do plink damage. It looks like you still have to chose the largest possible calibers at all times, there's no benefit in selecting smaller calibers unless you're a big ship going up against DDs and cruisers in which case accuracy is more important because using high damage powder will one-shot these smaller ships. Being a cruiser going up against a battleship of any type is means you can't use guns, 11 inch are just ineffective regardless of range, you have to use torps and hope you don't get plugged.

[arkhangelsk]

27 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Guns are still massively imbalanced. The highest caliber guns still do many times the damage of smaller guns as their weight difference would otherwise suggest. 4, 5 and 6 inch guns are useless, 2 and 3 inch guns appear to be just cosmetic. 8 inch secondaries can cause significant damage to DDs and CLs while 4 and 6 inch guns do plink damage. It looks like you still have to chose the largest possible calibers at all times, there's no benefit in selecting smaller calibers unless you're a big ship going up against DDs and cruisers in which case accuracy is more important because using high damage powder will one-shot these smaller ships. Being a cruiser going up against a battleship of any type is means you can't use guns, 11 inch are just ineffective regardless of range, you have to use torps and hope you don't get plugged.

In case you hadn't noticed, in almost all cases countries historically put the largest feasible guns - overall hoping RoF or something else will compensate does not work. If the game reflects this, it is not a flaw of the game.

And why do you expect a cruiser to go up against a battleship ... with guns? I understand that some people actually made such stuff work back in Alpha 3, though.

[Hangar18]

14 hours ago, GUTB said:

Okay guys, let's talk about the balance of this game. It's seriously out of whack. A few examples:

• Secondaries are useless below 8 inches.
• Game puts way too much power emphasis on larger guns. For example, a 18 inch hit may one-shot something whereas it could take dozens of 16 inch hits or hundreds of 6 inch hits to cause significant damage.
• Balance between hulls vastly favors higher weight classes over lower weight classes. For example, a heavy cruiser can barely scratch a battleship unless torpedoes are used.
• Torpedoes are greatly overpowered / anti-torpedo design features are under-powered. No matter how much anti-torp and how thick your belt is a hit is still going to damage your engine making you a sitting duck for further torp hits.
• Lower tech designs can't hit the broadside of a barn and need to be at virtual point bank range before accuracy becomes respectable, but higher tech designs have great accuracy at over 20km away.

* Against DDs and CLs the 5-6" guns are fine.

* Damage scale is a bit strange ATM...

* Working as intended

* Working as intended, a 24" torpedo will wreck your ship. For the record a few 21" torpedoes sunk Shinano. This is why having a screen is important.

* working as intended.

 

[Hangar18]

4 hours ago, Ruan said:

Yes large guns deal more damage that's the way of things both in RL and game. This is why even a drop of 1 inch was a huge deal historically.

We're seeing ships take dozens of 16" shells and continue to be a threat.

[GUTB]

Okay, try this. Build a US battleship with 4x3 17" guns, super heavy, tube powder, max tech and tower. Do a vs 5 Japanese battleships at 15k range, 1940.

Then try it again except replace the guns with 4x1 18". 

Come back with the results. Spoiler: 4 18" shell salvos do more damage than 16 17" shell salvos. 18" shells weigh just 17% more but do WAY more damage. Damage balance is way out of whack.

[Bluishdoor76]

no shit they do more damage they're 18" shells

[disc]

The question is whether a 17% increase in weight is justification for the damage scaling. I think we need to see damage numbers to know.

[wood]

I think someone somewhere is expecting damage to be on a linear scale proportioned to shell size.

[GUTB]

The 18" shell doesn't do 17% more damage, or 25%, 50%, or even twice the damage. It appears to do around 4 times the damage conservatively speaking.

Another way to demonstrate this, build a ship with a 1x1 18" super heavy tube powder gun and slap something minimal on the other end to fill the 2 gun requirement. Armor it up to make sure it's safe from return fire, and do a 1v1 with the AI. Sail it up to close range with the enemy ship and try not to get torped while doing this. See how effortlessly you're 1x1 18" gun sinks the AI. 

In reality the US super heavy 16" shells had only a little less armor penetration compared to the Japanese 18.1" shells, and had a little less than half the bursting charge. In this game however, the 16" might as well be a airsoft rifle compared to an elephant gun.

[Ruan]

17 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

We're seeing ships take dozens of 16" shells and continue to be a threat.

I think this is a problem with how damage is applied, armor and penetration values rather than shell damage.

When ships have up to 20" (or more when armor effectiveness is applied) thick armor and that is the norm it's a wonder we can deal much damage with guns at all. It's probably why we bounce shells so often. However the real issue is how damage is applied. Once a compartment is red the ship will no longer take damage if that area is hit. This can cause ships to turn into damage sponges as they take damage. Larger shells seem to have a greater area that damage is passed off into. That might be what makes the 18" more effective than 17 or 16" but I can't be sure.

The devs have noticed the problem and made some fixes in the short term. So hopefully as they continue to flush out mechanics it'll get better.

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

The 18" shell doesn't do 17% more damage, or 25%, 50%, or even twice the damage. It appears to do around 4 times the damage conservatively speaking.

Another way to demonstrate this, build a ship with a 1x1 18" super heavy tube powder gun and slap something minimal on the other end to fill the 2 gun requirement. Armor it up to make sure it's safe from return fire, and do a 1v1 with the AI. Sail it up to close range with the enemy ship and try not to get torped while doing this. See how effortlessly you're 1x1 18" gun sinks the AI. 

In reality the US super heavy 16" shells had only a little less armor penetration compared to the Japanese 18.1" shells, and had a little less than half the bursting charge. In this game however, the 16" might as well be a airsoft rifle compared to an elephant gun.

This test doesn't really prove anything. At point blank even 17 and 16 inch would sink most ships very quickly. But the bigger problem is any test you perform in game would never be consistent. Is the angle the same? What about armor values on the enemy ship? Modules? Where did it hit? Etc. I can personally contest to this as I've bounced 18" shells on Cruisers before and done damage from instant kills to as low as 100 damage. Which I have also done with 17 to 15" shells as well.

At the end of the day we know 18" deals more damage, which is appropriate, but how much exactly? we don't know. As disc stated we need to see the raw value to find out just how much more 18" do.

[GUTB]

Also looks like they did a stealth buff to penetration after this last hotfix. In testing today I noticed that lower caliber shells, even 6 inch shells, doing ping damage pens / partial pens regardless of armor thickness. This is obviously an attempt to improve effectiveness of more guns, but it's still kind of silly seeing 15" shells penning 22" belts from 20k away for a few points of damage.

[Nick Thomadis]

10 hours ago, Ruan said:

At the end of the day we know 18" deals more damage, which is appropriate, but how much exactly? we don't know. As disc stated we need to see the raw value to find out just how much more 18" do.

You can hover on guns, in ship designer, and see the damage for each gun. Values of course differ according to the technologies and ship components used, but you can see the difference there.

[madham82]

There is something up with 18" HE. See my post in the Alpha 5 Feedback thread. I don't see how we can explain HE causing floods to a stern on BB at nearly flat trajectory. My ricochet chance was over 80% which is why I used HE. I expected to do structural damage, but quickly disabled all his engines, rudder, and flooded him down to 50% in just a few salvos. The AI ship definitely had good anti-flood and max bulkheads. Still he didn't sink from flooding but structural. I can guarantee you can't do this to a BB with any other gun but the 18" at the ranges I was it, but will test that tonight if I can replicate.  

 

[Jatzi]

I get what he's saying. 16, 17, and 18 in guns were all kinda similar in performance irl. A lot of that is probably due to quality of guns and shells more than anything else though. Things are half finished and balance honestly shouldn't be considered right now. Ignore balance issues no matter how much ppl complain and just get the mechanics out. Then after everything is finished go back and tweak it to make everything balanced correctly. Cuz there's a lot of stuff missing that would affect combat, most importantly crew mechanics. I mean armor is totally messed up and because of that armor penetration values are also messed up. But citadels aren't finished and all that is still getting worked on so just wait. Balance is the last thing to do and trying to keep things balanced and working before everything is finished is a bad idea imo.