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@Nick Thomadis
Concerning mission balance, specifically "US Super Battleship", read this:

You asked for recommendations? Here:

1. Give the player 4 artillery-focused DDs, kinda like Fletchers or Sumners/Gearings - to escort the super battleship and screen it against 8 enemy torpedo-focused DDs. Otherwise, I don't know how we're supposed to win an extremely tough artillery battle, while dealing with insane amounts of incoming enemy torpedoes. Maybe you devs think players should get lucky? Well, I disagree - there are many of us who don't get to enjoy favors from RNGesus quite like some folks do. So, give us a 4-ship DD squadron to defend against enemy DDs.

2. Make sure that 3 enemy normal battleships are indeed of older technology. More vulnerable and with smaller guns (shorter range). "Older" battleships that we're forced to fight right now just don't fit the description: they're fast, very well-protected, with great guns and amazing range. Even with increased amount of 18" shells, best fire control, and 5 triple turrets you just can't sink them all - for one reason or another. There's no consistency, other than losing the mission every time. 

3. Move incoming enemy super battleship farther away to delay it. Right now it shows way too quickly.

 

Edited by Shaftoe
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9 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

The bulkhead status is SO significant I generally don't waste my time firing at Many/Max bulkhead ships if there's another target because it's largely a waste of time, especially if you can't hit it at multiple points along its length.

I flash fired a battleship twice, followed by a magazine detonation...still floated.still shot back with the remaining guns, still moved fairly quickly too, in general, i think ships are too durable...going back to inflated accuracy.

Edited by Hangar18
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i'll join my voice here since it's as good a time as any:

i've been following this game's pre-alpha progress since nearly week 1, and played every patch, and frankly, i'm starting to get worried with the direction this game is going.
it's what i call the "War Thunder Syndrome": every patch, the devs add more shiny toys (hulls) and a few fancy new effects/extra mechanics (like flash fire lately), but none of it really matters because deep down the more crucial key mechanics of the game are broken and nothing is ever done about it, even when improvement whould be easy...
here is my personnal list of TOP PRIORITY things that need to be improved, Everything else, new hulls, fancy new additional mechanics, even singleplayer testing, should be second priority to these:

No1:  ships become impenetrable when facing bow/stern to incoming fire.

this is due to a combination of 2 things: first, due to transeverse (AKA: front and back) belt armor of the ships not being properly modelled, every hit from the bow or stern is counted as a sidehit to the belt at an extreme angle and always bounce. secondly, due to how the compartimentalized damage model work, when facing bow or stern, your bow and stern compartiments will all turn red from damage, but after that has happened, they will act as an invulnerable shield for all the compartiments behind them, catching and detonating every single incoming shell, preventing any further damage to the ship. this is because shells overpenetrating troug a red (destroyed) compartiment to arm and explod further inside the ship is not properly modelled either.

No2: accuracy calculations are Bogus.

i've lost rack of how many times i've seen pre dreads BB's broadsiding each other from within 2km literally like Galleons from the age of sail and still have less than 10% chance to hit at that range...

literally today on the present patch, i've had secondary guns with only about 15% chance to hit a DD sailing in straight line from less than 1km away, using stereo 5 and fire control radar 2 rangefinder and high mark guns...

i've also seen so often older BB's using worse rangefinders than me, older mark guns and no radar get 2X or more accuracy on me than i have shooting at them, even though i have better rangefinder, guns and radar, and we are both sailing in straight line at the same speed... excuse me, HOW?!
things like these should NEVER happen!

also, as other have correctly pointed out, speed debuff to accuracy should be removed altogether, end of story. raw speed alone makes Zero difference to difficulty to hit if you're sailing in straight line. only variations of speed and course should degrade accuracy of incoming fire, for a time.

to be clear, i'm not nessesarily asking for, nor do i want, an across-the-board increase in accuracy. what i'm asking is for things to make sence and be consistent and be logical. 9/10 chances to miss the broadside of warship (even a DD is big!) at 1km away is not logical, i mean at that range it's basically point-and-shoot direct fire, there isn't even any need for balistics calculations from so close!  having worse fire control systems than the enemy in every way yet having more chances to hit him than he has to hit you when both sailing in straight line is not logical. ect ect...

 

No3: Bulkheads are OP.

already been well explained by Steeltrap so i won't go into too much details myself. basically agree with everything he said.
currently ALWAYS going for Max bulkhead+Max bulkead armor on every ship you make, no matter what, always, is a no brainer choice. you need them much more than armor, or torpedo protection.

also, main magazine detonations should be 100% instakill everytime. yet almost everytime in game i see the ship survive it and still continue to fight well. i can't think of any warship in all history within the game's time period, that did not sink after having one of its main magazines detonated.

also also, Flash Fire feels a bit like a Bogus mechanic to me that is kind of redundant with magazine detonation... imo the 2 could be lumped together for simplicity's sake maybe? (whereas Flash fire is just a detonation of turet or barbette that did not propagate to main magazine)? if it isn't really obvious to me, a relatively knowledgeable naval enthusiast, what this flash fire thing is supposed to represent that is fundamentally different from ammo detonation, i can guarentee you most players are gonna be confused by it at release.

also also also, there have been rumors for a while now that if you put a main battery turret outside of the ships central 3 compartiments (where the game counts the main belt to be), then the magazines for that turret (which are in the compartiments under it) do NOT count as being protected by the main belt... can you confirm if this is true or not? because if this is true, this is a Colossal oversight in the damage model and this needs to be fixed ASAP. this is a little connected to my comment in No1: where i say transverse belt armor (which is the one normally protecting these forwards and afterwards magazines) needs to be modelled properly in the game.

 

No4: Maneuvering AI just can't hold formations, just sail in circles, or sometimes even come to a complete stop while being shot at.

the game really need better pathfinding and formation keeping. come on! BattleStations: Midway/Pacific's AI was great at keeping formations for the most part and those games are from the early 2000's... surely it can't be that hard!
on that note, we really need more formation options than just line ahead/abreast too. there is an easy way to do it as well: i'll just leave here an old comment i made on this in another thread long ago:

---

i remember Battlestations: Midway and Battlestations: Pacific, there was a mix of very good and very bad things about those games but one of the things they did superbly well well was ship formations:

basically in those games, when you had ships grouped together in a formation, you just had to hit a buton to enter the fromation menu, and in there, you had an overhead view of the formation centered on the commanding ship, then you could select and drag every ship in the group to whatever position you want it to have relative to the commanding ship, and when you're done setting every ship in the formation to where you want, you hit ok. from now on the AI will always try to keep the ship in that position relative to the commanding ship, adjusting speed and turning as nessesary, you just give move orders to the commanding ship to move the entire formation.

it was intuitive, quick and simple and it worked perfectly well. EVERY single game that does ship combat should use the same system for formation imo.

whould very much like to see this emulated in this game.

was kind of hard to find good pictures of it but i got one, it looked like this:

the commanding ship is in white, the yellow ship is the one currently selected, of which you are setting his position in the formation (the transparent outline shows where the ship is right now, the arrow where he is gonna go when you hit OK)

300px-BSM_Formations.PNG.4acc747ad19f204139e5eb09aa31d1a3.PNG

-----

 

that's about all i can think off for now. i really hope something is done to adress those issues before release (or at the very least, someday).

with that said, i know it's a small team and i'm still grateful for the hardwork up untill now, i hope the game continue to improve in the future (while i sound harsh, it still did noticabely improve in many aspects since this alpha begun).

Edited by Accipiter
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On 6/13/2020 at 7:14 AM, Skeksis said:

While Custom Battles remains unfinished, etc. unable design all ships and save the scenarios, I thought it was due to the fulltime work on the campaign and therefore Custom Battles is way down the pecking order, understandable, but here and now I see two larger updates on academy missions, hmm...

Ok maybe there's some balancing in the campaign and/or design changes and this has to be echo in academy missions, understandable too.

For me, academy missions are a one off mission types, once completed there little motivation to rinse and repeat, so I've have been waiting for the campaign, new content.

However, Custom Battles are way different than academy missions, every scenario can be different, there's hundreds of hours of potential gameplay within customs battles and to which of thee can be all accredited to new content. But not in its current state, limited to one ship design and to one session.

To me it seems that if alittle bit more work on Custom Battles was issued then this would have huge returns for us players, like if you can spare time on academy missions why not alittle bit more on Custom Battles. 

Signed
Mr BumpUpCustomBattles.

I agree with you 100%. A lot of players are not currently playing/testing the game because of the current "Custom Battle" situation, just have a look on reddit.

I agree that the Devs "HAVE" to spend time and work on the custom battle and saving features for the next Updates. It's really important. Or the dog will keep biting his tail over and over. After so many months people deserve SIMPLE things as been able to save a design for your Ship in custom battle. 

Edited by Donluca95
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I will add something that's probably not necessary but can't hurt.

While some of our criticisms in this thread to date might be seen as somewhat pointed, I think it's entirely due to the fact we very much love the concept of the game and how it's been developing.

I suspect it's true of all of us that frustration at what we see as really significant mechanics NOT improving while lesser things get added or changed is a reflection of our desire to see the game succeed. Flash fires (that often aren't) are an example of adding a historically accurate phenomenon (i.e. they did happen, rather famously) albeit in a way that ISN'T accurate while NOT addressing far, far more significant aspects of the core mechanics as several of us have mentioned.

A little communication about these core mechanics, such as a damage model that doesn't allow your main gun magazine to explode yet the ship remain afloat, let alone continue to use guns that logically would be fed by that magazine, would be very welcome.

We've been discussing them for months. We've had several updates. Yet we don't see much/any signs of these crucial things being developed at all.

We will test what we're given. This community, however, can deliver a LOT more beyond acting as "monkey grinders producing data". A little explanation about intended final designs, or WHY whatever latest thing has been implemented etc, would be extremely useful IMO plus allow you devs to get some potentially valuable feedback. When lots of the community is happy to go and do fact based research so as to make informed commentary on how any given mechanic is intended to work v the stated goal of "realism", it's a little puzzling as to why that's not utilised more via specific, expansive discussion.

As an example, suppose we'd been told you wanted to implement "flash fires" as a possibility, as per the Jutland BC losses and HMS Hood, and been asked "what factors ought to be relevant to the likelihood of it occurring?". I suggest you'd have had the relevant criteria about type of gun mount and type of ammunition BEFORE implementing anything, so we'd not see flash fires rampaging throughout ships that don't have separate propellant stores. We'd also likely have said there ought probably be a difference between a propellant magazine ignition caused through an uncontrolled fire (which I'd suggest ISN'T a "flash fire") and one caused through the penetration of a turret (which clearly is per Jutland). In fact I know you'd have been told this, as I and others provided precisely that feedback as soon as we had access to the new mechanics. I can't see why that would not be valuable for the team in terms of "getting it right first time" AND for the community feel they're being directly useful in helping develop the game efficiently and true to the stated goal of "realism". If there's a disagreement as to the accuracy of what the community provides, or some design decision you make that "bends reality", then all that can be discussed/explained.

This community can be great advocates for the game and the dev team. The greater the quality of the interactions we have, the more we understand and inevitably have greater confidence and depth of knowledge of the skill and thinking of the team, the more we can be convincing in our support. It's one thing to say "it's great, the team's great, everything's great" and another to say "it's great BECAUSE..." Being able to back up enthusiastic support for the game with specific examples as to WHY we all think it's great is far more persuasive. I've already made complimentary statements about the game and dev team to others and would love to have even more reasons to do so.

Resources and time will always be constraints. All the more reason to consider if you can GAIN efficiency through using the community as I've suggested, I'd have thought. Anything I've put here is always with that understanding, and is simply intended to provide ideas as to how WE might help YOU produce the "best" game of this type you can as efficiently as possible.

Of course it's entirely up to the dev team and always will be.

Cheers

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Everything Accipiter said seems to be spot on. We really need to have more armor options modeled on the ship. We need upper belt thickness determined, we need bow and aft armor modeled  correctly and configurable. Some type of armor viewer like wows does to at least show HOW your citadel is protected given the armor scheme you picked would be nice. Because right now it leaves way too much a mystery. The game is allowing too much cheese to happen to exploit the mechanics (max compartments, and bow tanking).

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Some random thoughts

1. I'm not convinced that ships should be able to reduce flotation damage during a battle. I think they should be able to stop flooding but maybe only larger ships might have the capacity to pump out water.  In my most recent battle a 1904 torpedo boat went from red flotation back up to 60% or so.

2. Guns seem a bit too difficult to knock out especially on smaller ships where they are only shielded.  I don't know if its modeled or not but I would hope to see shielded guns knocked out by crew casualties (whether by having crew or abstracted).  It may just be a textual thing but I've never seen Turret armour mentioned on the log.

3 I may be mistaken but torpedoes always seemed to be aimed correctly. So if the target doesn't change course or speed it gets hit  From my reading in real life torpedoes did miss even in ideal conditions because of human error.

 

 

 

 

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Ships have to loose their durability. I get that they are big beasts and weight thousands of tons but if a ship is crippled its not gonn fire back effectively. There needs to be more destructible parts. Fire controll. Pumps. Funnels that loose efficiency when damaged. Also the crew model. We need it the most. Ships will burn down/explode/sink when crew is either too shell-shocked or dead to fix the damage. Also ammo exploding should accualy remove shells from magazines. 

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Seems like they may have to delay the steam release even further back for some of this stuff to be implemented and polished unless they are fine with, what they have so far and they want more testers on a whole so to speak.

But yeah, armour rework, bulkhead and gunnery rework (adjustments) and armour viewer are a must at this point. I seriously doubt two ships from -3km away from around the 1920's+ would fling their shells all over the place. Plus crew, plus components losing efficency and accuracy as they get more damaged.

Flash fires should only/mostly occur from a combo of poor/low/avg ammorack protection, internal fires and penetration from shells.

Also noticed that when loads of torps are fired the AI for your ship just takes over and well...r.i.p ship since she won't stop your own ship from disengaging making it an auto loss, which is a shame (happened during the H-class mission a few times).

Otherwise if these things aren't fixed quad 18inch bb's sitting bow on reversing will be the meta (like dat funny boute game weegee has).

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@Steeltrap and @Accipiter covered most of the bases. I have also posted pretty extensively on this and can link to past posts if required. 

The problems with gunnery are many, but taking a second to speak about range rate. 1 mil represents 1 meter at 1 km, what this means basically, is that a fast moving target moving at a distance actually passes through your line of sight very slowly. Think of watching a flyby at an airshow where the planes woosh through your field of vision compared to watching airliners in the distance. The airliners are moving faster than the prop stunt planes, but because they are further away, seem to move slowly. 

This means that at combat ranges, it is easy to traverse most naval mounts quickly enough to remain on target. I have hand traversed 155mm artillery pieces during anti-tank drills and remained on targets moving 50kmph. There is no reason to believe that it would be much harder to keep a 6" naval gun on a target moving at 26kn, in fact they were better designed and suited for that role. 

Okay, now that we've established that the mount itself can keep up, what about hitting the target? Well the math to hit a target at 2.5 knots and one at 25 knots is the same. Moving faster does not change any of the calculations, and naval shells are faster than ships. Only changing speed, would matter. Range rate is the change in range caused by variation in speed and direction. That does actually make hitting a target much more difficult. Speed represents to potential to rapidly alter the range rate, but unless manoeuvring, does not do so.

 To stick with the airshow metaphor, if the fastest, most manoeuvrable plane is flying straight and level, you can still predict where it is going to be, as easily as a FedEx cargo plane. It has the potential to move rapidly in new directions or speed, but unless doing so it is not any different. 

Finally, @Steeltrap touched on the many issues with propellent fires. There is a lot to do here, but I've done a lot of the reading and am willing to explain in as much detail as is required. Beyond what Steeltrap mentioned, there were many times where a given calibre did exist in both quick firing and screw-breach, that is to say bagged propellent, guns. Clad in Iron takes this into account. The shell handling procedure, ammunition storage and rate of fire for these guns could be different, but mostly the bagged charges themselves represent the biggest risk. Cooking off ammo is a complicated process, but propellent can be scary. Even in the field artillery, handling propellent is serious business compared to shells which can be tossed off trucks, and the temperature of which is not constantly monitored like a colicky baby.

If I could make one addition, without an armour viewer, it is impossible to know what the protection of a protected cruiser actually is. Because of how the protection was from a deck, not a belt, it's important to see that in the game to know where my armour values are going to. 

Protected_cruiser_schematic.png

The interior armour arrangements of ships are pretty complicated, but this is a dedicated community and I'm sure directed to do something like "find cross sections of various armour schemes" could and would do so. 

This is an armored cruiser by contrast. 

Armoured_cruiser_schematic.png

Obviously 3D representations of the same are more complicated, but we could probably get to work researching layouts, no problem. 

As you can see, the gun shields were considered part of what made a protected cruiser protected, compared to other vessels of the era. That leads me into a note about guns and gunshields. Right now, naval guns are depicted by calibre, or if they are casemated. Guns up to 5" are shielded mounts even at 0" armour thickness, and guns over 6" are depicted in armoured turrets.

I would prefer a 3D version of what RTW does. 

0 inches of armour, irrespective of calibre are unprotected mounts. 

CYWoZuZ.png

Any amount greater than 0, up to 2 inches is a splinter-proof shield. (How proof would depend on thickness) 

0q9uunI.png

Over 2 inches is a turret. 

Forward_gun_turrets_of_USS_David_W._Tayl

This would help understand protection, especially when using smaller guns as primary armament, as in torpedo boats, destroyers and protected cruisers. It also helps in early periods, where it would be possible to see large guns with only shields. I'm thinking of protected cruisers, which can mount guns of 7", but can't armour them. In game, they are depicted as armoured, fully-enclosed turrets. Having them as bare guns or shielded mounts I think would be beneficial. 

Additionally, opening up calibres a little. A 1895 protected cruiser can mount 2" and 3" guns in casemates, but not single mounts on the deck. I'd like if either primary armament was expanded to encapsulate all calibres from smallest to largest, or if secondaries were available in the same calibre as casemated guns. In either case, there is no reason why 3" guns could be mounted on casemates but not on deck.

I realize that this is because a distinction has been made between primary, secondary and casemated armament, I'm simply arguing that either a uniform armament where main guns were carried in casemates and deck mounted was possible, or that 2" anti-torpedo boat guns were carried on smaller vessels and it would be nice to have them on light mounts, rather than exclusively in casemates. 

QF3pounderVickersMkI1918.jpg

e: related to what @Cptbarney and @Steeltrap were saying, ships fight to the death, well beyond the point of being combat ineffective or even lost. Ships on fire bow to stern should not be firing their guns until each mount sinks under the waves. This is especially true for merchants. It should not be hard to get a merchantman to abandon ship, and that's totally besides how resilient to damage they are due to the bulkheads. If I were a merchant sailor, I'm heading for the lifeboat once my ship is under sustained, effective fire. Reading historical accounts of commerce raids, that was pretty universally the case.

In the case of warships, not many crews fight to the last man. If they do, as with the case of Hood and others that exploded or rapidly sank or capsized, it was not by choice. 

ee: 

On 6/12/2020 at 4:56 PM, madham82 said:

Who wants to play a battle with the accuracy say of the Manila Bay engagement between US and Spain. Of course this leads to the problem of balancing for an unrealistic hit rate. 

I do. Without a doubt and without equivocation. First, that's what time acceleration is for. The second problem, you touched on: every single other part of the game has to be entirely redesigned, and based on fantasy numbers if that changes. Ships were designed based on what they needed to be protected against. If ships were more accurate, every single element of design changes, full stop. Even torpedo boats would need to be heavily armored in a universe where they were more likely to be hit getting into torpedo range. 

The hit rate has to be historically low, because mobility, firepower and protection are all interconnected. All historical research and references go out the window if that wanders, all principles of ship design change, everything changes. 

What is the purpose of a protected cruiser if ships hit harder and more frequently than in reality? None.

What is the purpose of a destroyer if the secondary armament of capital ships is sufficient to screen themselves? None.

What is the purpose of a light cruiser if destroyers have to be heavily armoured and therefore have larger displacements and firepower? None. 

What is the purpose of an armoured cruiser if even light cruisers must be heavily armoured and similarly mount larger guns? None.

It cascades until there is no role for any warship other than massive capital ships armed and protected against the largest guns possible. 

Edited by DougToss
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I see a lot of dedication in giving feedback here — which is great!
 

However I am not quite sure if I agree with all of them.

  • flash fires: I think it feels quite right now with the danger these flash fires pose at the moment. If we look at the Battle of Jutland a lot of ships lost sunk due to flash fires or magazine explosions. I my opinion it’s ok that these are a big risk considering these ships are loaded with explosive stuff
     
  • Gunnery: for long range gunnery it feels quite ok already in my opinion. I think the main issue is in fact that accuracy feels wonky at short distance / point blank. Maybe accuracy could scale up more when coming closer 
     
  • this bow / stern almost immunity - agree with that. I was never a big fan of this artificial Armor angling thing in World of Warships as it feels artificial and not very realistic. Especially from front or stern a shell would probably just travel through the entire ship instead of being invulnerable. I would appreciate if that would change and won’t go the same direction as WoWarships

 

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8 minutes ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Gunnery: for long range gunnery it feels quite ok already in my opinion. I think the main issue is in fact that accuracy feels wonky at short distance / point blank. Maybe accuracy could scale up more when coming closer 

This is fine and I don't think anyone has an issue with this, the issue is that we're consistently seeing enemy ships with worse tech/guns that have higher accuracy than we do under the same conditions. 

The fact that if I range fight I have an average hit ratio of 1-2% is perfectly fine. It's not fine when the enemy with older guns and fire control on a less stable platform firing at my faster, maneuvering ship has 5%. 

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2 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

flash fires: I think it feels quite right now with the danger these flash fires pose at the moment. If we look at the Battle of Jutland a lot of ships lost sunk due to flash fires or magazine explosions. I my opinion it’s ok that these are a big risk considering these ships are loaded with explosive stuff

I think what @Steeltrap is saying is that flashfires are not really what we have here. While the effect, visually, is well done, mechanically it does not really encapsulate magazine or propellent detonations.

Turrets and casemates did burn out, for the loss of the gun. Occasionally these caused adjacent areas to be destroyed. There are a few examples of casemates causing fires or explosions in other casemates when destroyed. 

However, a magazine detonating, in pretty much every case I can see, lead to the loss of the ship. At minimum, as @Steeltrap said, it lead to the loss of the gun it fed. These are big, big deals, and the historical examples we have like Hood and the BCs at Jutland, the ship was destroyed immediately. A BC at Jutland had a propellent fire burn out a turret and almost sink the ship, but it was a very close call indeed and ended the fight for the ship there and then. 

The other thing, is that ammunition is not equally risky. Smaller guns do not feed from centralized magazines or have propellent separated in silk bags. They're fed from lockers, by men, not carried up hoists. There is no flash fire of guys daisy-chaining shells from a locker, especially not when shells that can be handled that way weight 30-100lbs for 3-6" and have brass enclosing the propellant.

This is more than a function of calibre, because as I mentioned in my previous post, a 5" gun may be separate loading in 1900, but would certainly be QF in 1920. Rather than distinction without difference, QF guns are also faster firing, so there are multiple game mechanics that would benefit from researching QF guns and having interrupted screw and sliding breach guns for the same calibre. A sliding breach block may be a Mk II or III for some calibres, for instance. 

The tweaks mentioned would make this system work much better, and the community here has done a fair bit of research and could be instructed to do more to break down the different types of ammunition handling and their attendant risks into game mechanics.

 821757409_Annotation2020-06-14172713.png.27e2032af6a521d6f189c468a5d0e291.png

Here's a quick breakdown of how this is treated in Clad in Iron, notice the overlap for 5" guns and how differently they perform. Add to that different handling procedures, and that is a fairly interesting distinction in straight gameplay terms. 

2 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

This is fine and I don't think anyone has an issue with this, the issue is that we're consistently seeing enemy ships with worse tech/guns that have higher accuracy than we do under the same conditions. 

The fact that if I range fight I have an average hit ratio of 1-2% is perfectly fine. It's not fine when the enemy with older guns and fire control on a less stable platform firing at my faster, maneuvering ship has 5%. 

This is my feeling as well. I want low hit rates, insofar as I want them to closely match historical firing tables. However, there is a lot of murkiness with how these systems are handled right now.

The Royal Navy was able to greatly increase small and medium calibre hits over short range with modest changes to gun handling techniques. However, for a variety of reasons, much posted and much discussed, that didn't translate to long range hits, with any calibre. You can have a free traversing mount and teach gunners to compensate for pitch and roll on a 3" gun at 1000m, but that just won't work for a 12" gun at 20km. 

I have no idea why the AI is able to hit more often, and I would like to know all guns and all ships are effected by the laws of ballistics and probability equally. 

As for transverse bulkheads, that is something I do not know much about, and will have to read up on. I do know that because of the gunnery problems mentioned earlier, every navy was trained, equipped and indoctrinated (as in used the navy doctrine, a concept best explained in Shattered Sword and Kaigun) to fight in line abreast formation, broadside to broadside. That wasn't because they were stupid or unimaginative, that was the best way to fight warships with the equipment and fire control systems available at the time.

So, ships shouldn't fight better end-on-end, though the exact reasons I can quite explain yet, other than they didn't have armour there.  

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The end-on problem is traced to a few issues.

  1. Guns tended to have worse accuracy when fired fore and aft. They are more affected by cross-roll and (indirectly) by range-rates. These problems lessened with the advent of fire-control computers aboard Dreadnoughts.
  2. It is simply harder to arrange guns to fire fore-and-aft, because ships are longer than they are wide. You must either accept wing turrets, concentrate the guns into fewer turrets (eg quads),  or have super-firing guns. All of these impose certain disadvantages. Additionally, guns on the bow must be relatively high to avoid spray.
  3. It is harder to arrange good armor for a chase scenario. The stern and bow tend to have worse flotation, as they are thinner than the mid section, so they cannot accommodate heavy weights. A ship with a very heavy bow may have great hull stresses and bad seakeeping. The alternative to a heavy bow belt was a heavy transverse bulkhead set further back, which leaves the fore parts thinly armored.
  4. At long range, range errors predominate, and deck hits become much more common. A ship that fights end-on has a higher chance of sustaining deck hits than one that is fighting on the broadside.
  5. It is hard to control a fleet that fights line-abreast. Line-ahead is easier, which is very nice when the battle inevitably descends into complete chaos. Line ahead makes broadside tactics natural, which in turn leads to ideas like "crossing the T."
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7 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

This is fine and I don't think anyone has an issue with this, the issue is that we're consistently seeing enemy ships with worse tech/guns that have higher accuracy than we do under the same conditions. 

The fact that if I range fight I have an average hit ratio of 1-2% is perfectly fine. It's not fine when the enemy with older guns and fire control on a less stable platform firing at my faster, maneuvering ship has 5%. 

I'm surprised to hear that's what people are seeing.

Given it's now possible to look at EXACTLY the tech the enemy has plus all the real time gunnery factors, how about I start a thread about gunnery and include SPECIFICALLY some details in the header about the sorts of images we want?

I'd think we'd be able to get a pretty good view of where the gunnery system may be a bit questionable. I know I posted some shots quite some time ago showing the excessive penalty a ship travelling at 1 knot could apply via "target manoeuvre" (or whatever it's called) as it would seem that is tied to the rudder being applied, not the effect applying that much rudder produces. As @DougToss explained very well, and I expect you already well understood, it's "range rate" that matters.

4 hours ago, DougToss said:

This is my feeling as well. I want low hit rates, insofar as I want them to closely match historical firing tables. However, there is a lot of murkiness with how these systems are handled right now.

See what I said above.

I don't know if it's necessarily murky at all as we now have access pretty much to everything we need. To be more accurate, we'll probably end up finding what specific elements are arbitrarily applied and over which we/AI have no influence, "ship stability" being an obvious example, although I'd also include the whole issue of "aiming" v "locked" etc, too. I've noticed, for example, even small calibre guns on CLs with basic (tech 1) rangefinder tech can get greater "locked" bonuses than my BC with level 2 or 3 which is "interesting" to say the least.

I'll go put something up and link to it here.

EDIT: OK, here's a trial balloon of something I've thought of doing for a while. If you like the concept, please post (ideally in the requested format). If you've other topics you'd like me to start, by all means add as a footnote to your post or PM me.

 

Edited by Steeltrap
added link to trial "Gunnery" discussion/review thread
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On 6/13/2020 at 5:37 PM, Accipiter said:

i've also seen so often older BB's using worse rangefinders than me, older mark guns and no radar get 2X or more accuracy on me than i have shooting at them, even though i have better rangefinder, guns and radar, and we are both sailing in straight line at the same speed... excuse me, HOW?!
things like these should NEVER happen!

The rest of your post is fantastic and i agree 100%.

However this part is likely incorrect. When you add guns/barbettes/largertowers/secondary battery/ect you increase the profile of the ship, which in turn impacts the chance to hit. Every hull has a base value built in, and then what you put on a ship after that increases that base value. 

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Hey team, 

I hate to be the guy that says the game is currently broken but I'm going to be that guy on one specific issue. I've been following the game for awhile and finally bit the bullet yesterday and bought it; been having a lot of fun plowing through half of the Naval Academy missions the past 24 hours. 

The issue which has already been raised a few times... The targeting modifier applied to the ships speed. If you want to see this obviously pronounced load up the modern battleship mission and see how you get along with max fire control, radar, mark 5 heavy calibre guns against antiquated battleships. You're not landing hits at all, even when the engagement ranges close up. A far better solution would be to apply this modifier to a change of the ships direction/speed which also encourages tactical manoeuvring.   

I'm probably beating a dead horse at this point as it's pretty obviously not working and I'm presuming the devs are going to fix this in the near future as continuing on with it would be absurd. 

Apart from that I get the feeling a lot of the issues raised in here (ie bulkheads) will be rectified a lot more with the addition of the campaign & costing/build time associated with wanting to over-engineer your ships. Also I would add a +1 for main magazine detonations being far more painful if not outright keel breaking. 

Thanks for reading. 

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9 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

Gunnery: for long range gunnery it feels quite ok already in my opinion. I think the main issue is in fact that accuracy feels wonky at short distance / point blank. Maybe accuracy could scale up more when coming closer 

Just had a situation (1940) where i was missing shots by 8km, which wouldnt be bad if it was long range, but the actual range was only 1km. 15x3 and only had a 30% chance to land a single hit in a salvo (this is with accuracy min maxed as much as possible).

The culprit i think is the speed modifier, -95% chance to hit? doubt, i could be taking small arms shots at that distance.

This is especially annoying when you have a ship barely moving at all (dead engine) and you get a massive maneuver penalty to accuracy, even if the ship is basically dead in the water. Which of course happens all the time with ships sailing in circles.

 

Gunnery absolutely needs a touch up. I have to agree the speed penalty should go. I would suggest combining it with the maneuver penalty because that is inherently broken without considering speed.

Armor layout is obviously the most important thing though.

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6 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

5x3 and only had a 30% chance to land a single hit in a salvo (this is with accuracy min maxed as much as possible).

The chance is measured for each gun. So a 30% hit chance guarantees at least one hit in each salvo, it is actually a very good chance of hit, probably a little higher than in realistic battle conditions. 

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7 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

Just had a situation (1940) where i was missing shots by 8km, which wouldnt be bad if it was long range, but the actual range was only 1km.

Like this? I saved these two images with the following titles:

Odd shell trajectories....

1773204065_Oddshelltrajectories.png.8648ca04eff9210b6dc5120a20c49ad7.png

....And where they land

1295498048_andwheretheylandLOL.png.6412ae4c556c8a27304141d7677cc5b0.png

Those two landed at 8.6km when fired at a target at 2.7km for which I had a 38% hit chance per shell.

To be fair, I rather like the fact that things seem to have changed somewhat when it comes to incoming fire. That one salvo is significantly ahead, or astern, or long or short.

It always felt to me they were all TOO close all the time, so in fact I think it's a step in the right direction.

Clearly it might need some tweaking, however, to cut out the extreme outliers. That the two shells in my example also included a 3rd one (it was a triple mount) that you can see significantly below them that went a bit long is especially odd on the eyes, lol, which is why it caught my attention and I captured it (an advantage of never using TC during gunfire and having a finger hovering over the P key).

Cheers

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20 hours ago, DougToss said:

I do. Without a doubt and without equivocation. First, that's what time acceleration is for. The second problem, you touched on: every single other part of the game has to be entirely redesigned, and based on fantasy numbers if that changes. Ships were designed based on what they needed to be protected against. If ships were more accurate, every single element of design changes, full stop. Even torpedo boats would need to be heavily armored in a universe where they were more likely to be hit getting into torpedo range. 

The hit rate has to be historically low, because mobility, firepower and protection are all interconnected. All historical research and references go out the window if that wanders, all principles of ship design change, everything changes. 

What is the purpose of a protected cruiser if ships hit harder and more frequently than in reality? None.

What is the purpose of a destroyer if the secondary armament of capital ships is sufficient to screen themselves? None.

What is the purpose of a light cruiser if destroyers have to be heavily armoured and therefore have larger displacements and firepower? None. 

What is the purpose of an armoured cruiser if even light cruisers must be heavily armoured and similarly mount larger guns? None.

It cascades until there is no role for any warship other than massive capital ships armed and protected against the largest guns possible. 

I think if we actually had 1:1 hit rates, many people would lose interest in the game...particularly in the early periods like 1890-1910. Look how the NA missions are already designed. Clearly realistic outcomes like forcing an enemy to withdraw were not considered. Also remember, this is a game. It is supposed to be fun an enjoyable in an average play session (usually considered an hour). Right now it is hard to achieve this because of the time compression we do have, level of micromanaging needed to avoid never ending swarms of torpedoes, and most importantly lack of any kind of save feature (in battle or custom battle designs). 

To get realistic hit rates, we have to have a way to save in battle. I know I for one cannot spend hours on end trying slug it out in a full fleet battle with 1:1 rates with pre-dreadnoughts. But I think the real issue is not so much getting more realistic hit rates, but actually fixing the issues with the damage/armor model and balancing the guns/tech. Can you imagine realistic hit rates with the speed penalty as is? How about the issues with pitch/roll design penalties for building a realistic looking ships?

Also remember we aren't running a holo-suit program on board the Enterprise. You can't approach true realism without taking into account far more variables than are being calculated in the game today. The game just is never going to be that complex with a small dev team and the money we are spending on it. That said, improvements are certainly needed. I am not saying at all that we should leave the rates as is. It's just hard to know how far we are off with other IMO critical problems.

For instance, I can tell you right now if we had a campaign, I would not be designing gun focused ships. I would be building torpedo arsenal ships because a huge advantage is given to them in terms of reloads, reliability and accuracy. To be able to reload all torpedo mounts with huge magazines of reloads, in combat conditions, without the need of specialized reload equipment taking up space/weight presents an completely unrealistic tactic. Add in the speed penalty, and you get a game breaking advantage. 

18 hours ago, 1MajorKoenig said:

I see a lot of dedication in giving feedback here — which is great!
 

However I am not quite sure if I agree with all of them.

  • flash fires: I think it feels quite right now with the danger these flash fires pose at the moment. If we look at the Battle of Jutland a lot of ships lost sunk due to flash fires or magazine explosions. I my opinion it’s ok that these are a big risk considering these ships are loaded with explosive stuff
     
  • Gunnery: for long range gunnery it feels quite ok already in my opinion. I think the main issue is in fact that accuracy feels wonky at short distance / point blank. Maybe accuracy could scale up more when coming closer 
     
  • this bow / stern almost immunity - agree with that. I was never a big fan of this artificial Armor angling thing in World of Warships as it feels artificial and not very realistic. Especially from front or stern a shell would probably just travel through the entire ship instead of being invulnerable. I would appreciate if that would change and won’t go the same direction as WoWarships

 

  • Jutland is not a real example to think of because it was tactical doctrine that resulted in the loss of the British BCs. They chose to ignore their safety systems and practices to increase ROF by stacking cordite in a convenient chain from gun to magazine. So when the inevitable hits came, they insured a flash fire would reach the main magazine and incinerate the ship. Historically more ships were suffered catastrophic explosions from uncontrolled fires reaching their magazines (i.e. deflagration) than the turret hit flash fire mechanic we have in the game. Destruction of turrets from a flash fire was not uncommon I would say, compared to the extremely rare flash fire magazine explosion like Hood (which of course didn't hit a turret).
  • I am with you on the wonkiness observed in some scenarios. Hopefully @Steeltrap thread will help us identify repeatable examples. 
  • Yes this is another big issue with the damage/armor model. It creates unrealistic tactical decisions (both AI and player) and defeats the whole purpose of armor/gun layouts historically.  
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2 hours ago, madham82 said:

I think if we actually had 1:1 hit rates, many people would lose interest in the game...particularly in the early periods like 1890-1910. Look how the NA missions are already designed. Clearly realistic outcomes like forcing an enemy to withdraw were not considered. Also remember, this is a game. It is supposed to be fun an enjoyable in an average play session (usually considered an hour). Right now it is hard to achieve this because of the time compression we do have, level of micromanaging needed to avoid never ending swarms of torpedoes, and most importantly lack of any kind of save feature (in battle or custom battle designs).

You've got to have faith in people. DCS and IL2 are deep to the point of rivet counting, but there are time acceleration and player assists to make even the most casual player able to access the game. Good UI goes a long way, as does an encyclopedia. It's easier to make a realistic game enjoyable than throw out all the principles of naval history, ship design and doctrine. 

Torpedo evasion and saving are both great quality of life changes that would make the rest of the game accessible without compromising anything. I like this train of thought. 

What Quality of Life and UI changes would need to be made for you to enjoyably play with rigid historicity? 

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4 hours ago, madham82 said:

Jutland is not a real example to think of because it was tactical doctrine that resulted in the loss of the British BCs.

I wasn’t only talking about these well known BC examples. Also about some of the cruisers that got lost and which got beaten up for a while until the ammo detonated - such as this British armoured cruiser or even the Pommern (which was a torpedo I believe).

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7 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

The chance is measured for each gun. So a 30% hit chance guarantees at least one hit in each salvo, it is actually a very good chance of hit, probably a little higher than in realistic battle conditions. 

I think there is a misunderstanding. 30% was not the gun accuracy. 30% was the salvo accuracy. the gun accuracy was like.3% or something. 30% per gun would be absolutely acceptable.

I'm attempting to reproduce this issue.

 

 

Edited by Hangar18
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