Mission from heck.

[Alamandorious]

I'm on the naval academy mission where two pre-dreads and their CL escorts engage one another, and I am absolutely stuck.

The AI ships:
-Score devastating hits at long range on a regular basis...hell, the first shot coming in usually smokes my BB for heavy damage and flooding...even with 13" armor.
-Are able to continuously set fires...when a fire goes out, a new one is instantly set
-Are near impossible to hit at any range.

My ships:
-Can't hit the broad side of a barn at any range.
-The one time I DID sink an enemy CL, it was from sustained fire from all three of my ships.
-Are virtually unable to set fires.

I've tried every different configuration I can think of...lots of low-caliber casemates with smaller main guns for rapid-firing to overcome the extreme inaccuracy of my ships, along with the best available reloading, turret traverse, and rangefinding tech available...big guns so that when the rare hit does get inflicted, it -hurts-, up to and including maxing out the size of my casemate guns...heavy armor to increase the survivability of my BB for those long range guided-artillery shells the AI seems capable of producing and modest but not too small gun sizes and numbers...a battlecruiser design philosphy of speed and big guns...everything.

I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong.  I've tried each BB hull, I've tried the advanced armored cruiser hull, I've tried each of the three options at the start for building your ship...I've tried mixing all of the above combinations with different shell types and powder types...nothing works.  Nothing.  The AI keeps scoring what should only be hail-mary hits on a regular basis, and it's driving me nuts.

I'd passed every mission up until this point with very little issue...except for one where it took 2 tries, I was able to pick out what I'd done wrong and redesign for success...this mission?  This mission no matter what I try it fails, and it's extremely frustrating...sapping the enjoyment right out of the game.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Alamandorious

[Steeltrap]

Before anyone can offer anything of much use they'll need some screen shots of your design, including ALL the relevant panels of the data on the right side of the ship builder (things such as smoke interference, pitch and roll values and the like).

Cheers