>>>Alpha-7 Feedback<<<

[Skeksis]

5 hours ago, madham82 said:

They chose to ignore their safety systems and practices to increase ROF by stacking cordite in a convenient chain from gun to magazine

FYI.

Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Jellicoe’s predecessor, ordered extra main battery charges, from 90 to 120, fleet wide, most ships stored shells ok but propellant had to be stored throughout the turrets and even in adjacent corridors.   

Jellicoe and Beatty apparently unaware.

Not so much the crews fault or unsafe crew practices but a result of orders.     

Edited June 15, 2020 by Skeksis

[DougToss]

I guess the point is more as @Steeltrap said, this issue is more complicated. Without dwelling on all of the variations on fires in turrets, hoists and magazines, which others know better than I, any large explosion like that will sink the ship outright, which is not presently the case in game. 

Edited June 15, 2020 by DougToss

[madham82]

2 hours ago, DougToss said:

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? 

Look at it like this, I think it would be easier to fix the armor/damage modeling with higher than normal hit rates than other way around with a small dev team. Quality and UI are really things that are more important for the Beta stage (like offering an option to select between historical and boosted accuracy). Alpha stage we need to be fixing the core components. 

[madham82]

24 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

FYI.

Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Jellicoe’s predecessor, ordered extra main batteries charges, from 90 to 120, fleet wide, most ships stored shells ok but propellant had to be stored throughout the turrets and even in adjacent corridors.   

Jellicoe and Beatty apparently unaware.

Not so much the crew fault or unsafe crew practices but a result of orders.     

They = British, not singling anyone out in particular in my post. Bottom line it was a human factor, not that the ships were inherently flawed (contrary to to Beatty's famous line). So in game terms, flash fire loss of a ship should be a very rare event. Unlike what I have seen people share when it was first introduced. 

[o Barão]

About alpha 7 feedback @Nick Thomadis i must say that i understand you want to give dds a more important role in the battlefield  however the way it was implemented is not good. Now we need to sail so close to them to have a minimal decent hit rate to kill them. This situation is so crazy atm that in this patch the CL , the cruisers designed to kill dds are complete useless to deal with DDs.

Doing some tests in custom battles the first thing i notice in CL vs DD, is unless you set the gunners to agressive they simple will not try to attack the DD. the hit rate is so low ( around 0.2% sometimes ) that the game simple think is not worth it. Doing the reverse , me playing as DD and AI with cruiser , same thing happens . The cruiser only open fire if i get to close and still i am around 15% to 20% hit rate and AI only with 0.8% 0.9%. This is madness. DDs should fear CLs but instead i prefer much more to be in a DD atm.

With more advanced tech like radar , the cruisers will open fire from the beginning but still in a pure gun fight duel i think i prefer much more to be in the DD. This is not supposed to be like this.😵

In academy missions like "hurry up" or "torpedo banzai" is now to easy IMO to build fast DDs to rush the enemy and deploy the fishes in the water at close ranges and murder capital ships. On the other side , the "battle of destroyers" mission is now a complete nightmare trying to build a gunboat DD that can actually sink anything. And as a side note is almost boring  trying to evade the torpedoes knowing the time i am going to wait before the turrets can align again with the target.  Consider a buff to small caliber turret  turn rate.

The idea behind to make the DDs more important is nice , but please consider to buff the accuracy a lot the moment the DDs sail to close.

 

[Shaftoe]

16 minutes ago, o Barão said:

About alpha 7 feedback @Nick Thomadis i must say that i understand you want to give dds a more important role in the battlefield  however the way it was implemented is not good. Now we need to sail so close to them to have a minimal decent hit rate to kill them. This situation is so crazy atm that in this patch the CL , the cruisers designed to kill dds are complete useless to deal with DDs.

 

Exactly. Something has to be done about DDs.

CLs and secondary turrets of BB/BC/CA should be much better at keeping DDs away. Even 6" guns don't do well against DDs.

Yes, current state of things may be kinda more realistic, but it enables and encourages suicide attacks - a behavior that wasn't common IRL. Hence why DDs have higher combat effectiveness that they're supposed to. 

Personally, I love to have strong DDs. They're my favorite class of ship. But this... as seen in "US Super Battleship" mission... is just too much. 

[Hangar18]

44 minutes ago, madham82 said:

Look at it like this, I think it would be easier to fix the armor/damage modeling with higher than normal hit rates than other way around with a small dev team. Quality and UI are really things that are more important for the Beta stage (like offering an option to select between historical and boosted accuracy). Alpha stage we need to be fixing the core components. 

I think i disagree here. Armor model is a core part of the gameplay, and affects a huge part of the game. UI can change without impacting actual gameplay beyond comfort. i think the quality is generally there. Some of the models have oddities that should be fixed (in some cases overhauled), but there has absolutely been a lot of love into some of the finer details. The tool tips for instance, they are filled with historical, information as well as performance information. Most games seem to just leave it up to the players to figure out, or in WGs case, say nothing, and force the players to datamine 

[Hiiiiii74]

5 hours ago, DougToss said:

- -trimmed- -

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

History-Compatible UX Wishlist!

1.) Automatic Torpedo Evasion (Toggle - "Enable Automatic Torpedo Evasion')

2.) Time Compression that disables upon a High or Mid category hit being struck based on user defined parameters (Capital Ships, Cruisers, etc. like RTW). This will allow for historical levels of (in)accuracy without mucking up the user experience.

3.) Torpedo Highlights - Tracking half a dozen separate torpedo launches is a real bother in combat, especially if using time compression. Perhaps add colored highlights to known fish in the water when holding the space bar down for expanded UI, as is already implemented.

4.) Improved Formations - I'm sure this is already in the plan somewhere and has been discussed earlier in this thread

 

Now as to the purpose of the thread, specific feedback regarding Alpha 7, I have poked around in the new version and the rebalancing is good in some areas and a bit silly in others. A good way to test the new small ship maneuver penalty was with Modern vs. Old Destroyers, and there was some sillyness even at close range where for the longest time, my shots would miss quite wildly even at 1 to 2 km (with shells from different guns in the same turret mount flying in hilariously opposite directions just to satisfy the hit probability algorithm), and then something in the gunnery modifiers would snap into place and I would vaporize whatever I was aiming at, very rapidly. The efficacy of the rifling on my 5" guns seemed to depend on what position the enemy Helmsman had positioned his rudder, by some quantum link. The -90% enemy maneuver penalty would briefly tick down as they switched from a hard left to a hard right turn, and in that moment, my guns would suddenly lay waste to the ship.

The new AI ship designer seems to be doing a rather fine job, I still see some silly 14+gun broadsides out of some dreadnoughts, but none of the positively hysterical paper ships with 18x 457mms anymore like I could see in Alpha 4. I will say that sometimes it seems they are de-prioritizing speed too much. Also, Destroyers seem to be able to get away with a lot more kts than they should. The ship designer tends to set my default to 40 when I open a DD designer. 40 kts is remarkably fast, it has no business being the default  

 

General Thoughts Regarding the Current State of the Game - Considering other posts in this thread in particular.

This game is a work in progress, we are privy to the Alpha stages as we decided it was interesting enough to buy into early, because we're naval warfare gaming fans, or we've followed the Ultimate General series, etc. This makes design faults and balance wonkyness expected and forgivable, but we should still speak directly about what is in front of us, even if it's expected.

The accuracy issue is one that I find quite hard to address with either "Too much accuracy" or "Too little accuracy". Naval gunnery was hysterically inaccurate for the time period we're dealing with. However, the game is making guns inaccurate for most of the wrong reasons, most notably the speed modifier. This can make things frustrating because, for example, the secondary battery of a battleship feels quite impotent against incoming TBs, DDs, and CLs, due to their speed modifier while the main battery can simultaneously feel like a laser gun nailing multiple hits per salvo at the hostile BB 25 clicks away. Often times if your BB is confronted by light ships, your best defense is actually your main battery, because one main battery hit is the end for a light ship, whereas they can absorb over a dozen equally inaccurate 6" shots. Also, the speed modifier should be mitigated by the relative speeds of the two ships, not the raw speed of the target ship. Two DDs steaming parallel to each other at 40 kts will take huge penalties from target speed even though the relative speed is 0 kts.

The Ship Designer is super cool and I love it to death. I love the options, it's remarkably accessible, and things generally make sense! It's going to be the backbone of this game so I'm glad it's as solid as it is. Balancing around weights and costs and whatnot will happen, but the designer itself is real nice.

 

My biggest single concern with the current state of the game with regards to gameplay and balance: Survivability, Belt/Deck Extended, and Bulkheads. To be frank, it's quite silly sometimes. I'm not a naval historian, an engineer, or a ballistics expert. I'm just a naval fan who has treated this stuff as a hobby for a time. However, the difference between Standard and Maximum bulkheads on a Battleship is about 5% of the overall displacement from what I've seen. Not insignificant, but it' perhaps the single most important item in designing a durable ship. If I design a BB with Maximum bulkheads, it's functionally impossible to sink with Flotation damage. I played the 'Design your own H-Class' mission (awesome mission, by the way,) and I took many large caliber hits from the American BBs, including hits to the waterline that penetrated (Nothing's stopping 18" AP at 7 clicks, sorry fellas). Unfortunately for the Americans, every 2 feet in my ship, there's a bulkhead, so my Flotation just chilled out at 99% even though there was a fresh 18" hole in my side while we cruised along at 28 kts.

At the same time, I have sunk more Dreadnoughts with Belt Extended hits than Main Belt Amidships hits. I don't get that. The fore/aft sections of the ship aren't trivial, but there's a reason that modern navies stopped armoring those areas with the advent of Fast Battleships and All or Nothing armor schemes. These sections are for nonessential ship functions, the area is of relatively low volume as they're basically hydrodynamic caps on the ends of the vague rectangle that is the actual ship. From the front of the A turret back to the rear of the Y turret, that's the good stuff, put holes in that and we've got serious problems. I think in the current edition of the damage modeling system, too much weight is put into the fore/aft sections of ships, particularly Dreadnoughts. It costs about as much weight to increase Belt armor as it does Belt Extended, even though the Belt is (in theory) a much larger and more critical area of the ship. I think Belt Extended should be a strategic investment to keep your ships' repair times low after fights by minimizing non-ship threatening damage to non-critical systems, and Main Belt should be a tactical investment to keep them afloat and protected from real damage.

Also I have an axe to grind with the concept of "Structural" damage just magically making a ship sink, even from just a preponderance of non-penetrations, but that's too much ranting for one post. Bismarck took some mighty structural damage but I'd argue she still went down from Flotation, if that helps make my point more briefly.

[Hangar18]

Somewhat replicated the issue

https://imgur.com/WaJIZA5

https://imgur.com/TdHFX9J

As you can see, even at point blank in 1940 you can basically no chance to hit if the target is moving fast.

[DougToss]

2 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

Exactly. Something has to be done about DDs.

CLs and secondary turrets of BB/BC/CA should be much better at keeping DDs away. Even 6" guns don't do well against DDs.

Yes, current state of things may be kinda more realistic, but it enables and encourages suicide attacks - a behavior that wasn't common IRL. Hence why DDs have higher combat effectiveness that they're supposed to. 

Personally, I love to have strong DDs. They're my favorite class of ship. But this... as seen in "US Super Battleship" mission... is just too much. 

I know I'm usually that guy banging on about secondaries, screens and hit rates, but I actually agree. There needs to be a way to deter ships without sinking them. 

Secondaries were not effective, larger secondaries especially so, and yet DDs were deterred by screens and gunfire, even though not often sunk outright.

  

30 minutes ago, Hiiiiii74 said:

History-Compatible UX Wishlist!

1.) Automatic Torpedo Evasion (Toggle - "Enable Automatic Torpedo Evasion')

2.) Time Compression that disables upon a High or Mid category hit being struck based on user defined parameters (Capital Ships, Cruisers, etc. like RTW). This will allow for historical levels of (in)accuracy without mucking up the user experience.

3.) Torpedo Highlights - Tracking half a dozen separate torpedo launches is a real bother in combat, especially if using time compression. Perhaps add colored highlights to known fish in the water when holding the space bar down for expanded UI, as is already implemented.

4.) Improved Formations - I'm sure this is already in the plan somewhere and has been discussed earlier in this thread

I just wanted to take the time to thank you for this list. Everything you suggested here is great and I can see the thought that went into it. 

30 minutes ago, Hiiiiii74 said:

The accuracy issue is one that I find quite hard to address with either "Too much accuracy" or "Too little accuracy". Naval gunnery was hysterically inaccurate for the time period we're dealing with. However, the game is making guns inaccurate for most of the wrong reasons, most notably the speed modifier.

I also appreciated your longform breakdown of the subsets of issues here.

If I may, this visual aid might help explain what you're describing. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by DougToss

[Hangar18]

not the worst ive seen it, but its another good example. The only major penalty is speed at -95%. His chance to hit per gun was only about 10%.

https://imgur.com/1XCtE9s

In this one, the enemy has a maneuver, smoke & aim penalty, but even without those, his chance to hit is wildly low. (he rolled well enough to grab some hits though). 6 of his secondary guns together only had a .7% to hit. Its not like i built this design just to exploit this either,  its a reasonable design. His overall hit rate was 0.02% (though i of course used smoke to get close). If you remove those penalties, his chance to hit is still only .27% per gun.

You can continue to remove as many penalties as you want, the result is still going to be very low.

https://imgur.com/ArfinQJ

Edited June 16, 2020 by Hangar18

[Hangar18]

12 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

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

Odd shell trajectories....

 

....And where they land

 

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

I was more frustrated at the hundreds of shells missing at point blank than i was about missing by so far. Even a few degrees (large wave) could nudge the gun far enough to miss.

 

I've posted enough in the past few hours, so ill just edit this one...

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Hangar18

[Staire]

2 hours ago, DougToss said:

I know I'm usually that guy banging on about secondaries, screens and hit rates, but I actually agree. There needs to be a way to deter ships without sinking them. 

Definitely morale. While there are historical suicide runs by DD's you'd imagine that you'd need quite the dedicated crew to go through with the action. From my understanding such a system of crew competency is already being developed for the campaign mode so would make sense to have such a feature? 

 

5 hours ago, o Barão said:

About alpha 7 feedback @Nick Thomadis i must say that i understand you want to give dds a more important role in the battlefield  however the way it was implemented is not good. Now we need to sail so close to them to have a minimal decent hit rate to kill them. This situation is so crazy atm that in this patch the CL , the cruisers designed to kill dds are complete useless to deal with DDs.

Doing some tests in custom battles the first thing i notice in CL vs DD, is unless you set the gunners to agressive they simple will not try to attack the DD. the hit rate is so low ( around 0.2% sometimes ) that the game simple think is not worth it. Doing the reverse , me playing as DD and AI with cruiser , same thing happens . The cruiser only open fire if i get to close and still i am around 15% to 20% hit rate and AI only with 0.8% 0.9%. This is madness. DDs should fear CLs but instead i prefer much more to be in a DD atm.

With more advanced tech like radar , the cruisers will open fire from the beginning but still in a pure gun fight duel i think i prefer much more to be in the DD. This is not supposed to be like this.😵

In academy missions like "hurry up" or "torpedo banzai" is now to easy IMO to build fast DDs to rush the enemy and deploy the fishes in the water at close ranges and murder capital ships. On the other side , the "battle of destroyers" mission is now a complete nightmare trying to build a gunboat DD that can actually sink anything. And as a side note is almost boring  trying to evade the torpedoes knowing the time i am going to wait before the turrets can align again with the target.  Consider a buff to small caliber turret  turn rate.

The idea behind to make the DDs more important is nice , but please consider to buff the accuracy a lot the moment the DDs sail to close.

 

This is all entirely true and mirrors my own thoughts. A lot of the missions are currently broken. I just had to set my BB's engaging BC's @ 13KM with Rangefinder IV to aggressive firing as the hit chances were so low due to the new speed mechanic. This is with capital ships... When it comes to faster smaller ships the effects are far more absurd and pronounced. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Staire

[Steeltrap]

Bulkheads, from Dec 15th last year:

And January 17th

I could probably post 20+ examples of my own or others' posts, but I suspect that's overkill.

Point is it's baffling that anyone could be surprised to see it continue to be mentioned when as far as I can tell the issue remains more or less the same as 6+ months ago.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Steeltrap

[Steeltrap]

7 hours ago, Shaftoe said:

Exactly. Something has to be done about DDs.

CLs and secondary turrets of BB/BC/CA should be much better at keeping DDs away. Even 6" guns don't do well against DDs.

Yes, current state of things may be kinda more realistic, but it enables and encourages suicide attacks - a behavior that wasn't common IRL. Hence why DDs have higher combat effectiveness that they're supposed to. 

Personally, I love to have strong DDs. They're my favorite class of ship. But this... as seen in "US Super Battleship" mission... is just too much. 

I think the game is half correct.

Historically it proved surprisingly difficult to keep DDs outside effective torpedo range, and that's REALLY all that matters because a DD's guns aren't going to do anything serious to a BB.

Mind you, perhaps their guns can become a problem for CLs, so that's a different matter. Certainly I got sick of the "German Raiders" or whichever scenario it is because sometimes the AI would throw up a Transport fleet bristling with 4" guns and their combined fire became absolutely deadly if the weather forced you to get close.

In that respect, while we can argue about the ranges at which we still can't hit, what damage ought to result if we DO hit, and what the hell a DD is doing closing to that range in the first place, LOL, I don't see it as the most critical thing, at least not for capital ships.

I'd argue it's the consequences of them being able to get so close with essentially unlimited numbers and frankly pretty damn accurate torpedoes that's the real issue because we wouldn't care how close they get if they can't achieve anything once there.

What I suspect really needs to happen is the AI be told to fire their torps from further out AND have their reload rates SIGNIFICANTLY NERFED.

DDs lobbing 5-10 torps from 5km every 3 minutes while you can't hit them effectively gets pretty old pretty quickly. Doubly frustrating when you consider one reason the RN didn't embrace 8" armed cruisers was because with the exception of opening stages of combat it was decided the greater RoF and the fact the 6" guns could still be effective v the armour of those 8" "heavy cruisers" made the 6" a better choice. That same reasoning was even more the case against DDs and the like where RoF would likely prove really decisive, yet CLs can be remarkably poor against what arguably they were clearly designed to deal with.

Not that I know because I don't play modern scenarios on the grounds that everybody else gives me the impression they play nothing BUT modern everything, so someone ought to play where we'll spend at least 50% of game play.

😎

 

[Reaper Jack]

37 minutes ago, Steeltrap said:

5-10 torps from 5km every 3 minutes while you can't hit them effectively gets pretty old pretty quickly.

Everybody else gives me the impression they play nothing BUT modern everything, so someone ought to play where we'll spend at least 50% of game play.

😎

 

Agreed. There isn't a single ship in the entire game that should have more than a single reload of torpedoes, with the majority having half a reload or sometimes none. Even the Torpedo obsessed IJN only carried one reload's worth of torpedoes per tube. 

The fact that reduced torpedoes still gives 3-4 reloads, normal gives about 6 and increased gives up to 10 is frankly insane, if a destroyer is carrying 30-50 torpedoes in deck cases I expect it go big boom when it gets hit by even a 2 inch gun. 

As for torpedo range, I honestly have a big issue with it. Again, only the IJN actually solved the issues of using fleet borne torpedoes at extreme range with the Type 93, everybody else had to live with torpedoes that were effective out to only 12-15km at the most and even then that was on slow settings as low as 20 knots to get the range that high. The Type 93's were expensive and volatile by comparison to other torpedoes, not to mention the increased weight and maintenance cost of including an oxygen generator system on the ships (which also increase big boom risk) that carried them. 

Torpedoes should be more powerful but unable to be launched willy nilly, and with more historical speeds and ranges. Only Oxygen torpedoes should be able to make fast speeds at range and oxygen torpedoes need to come with that extra risk factor to balance them out alongside their higher cost. 

As for playing non modern stuff, I thoroughly suggest you try building some Sverige type CA's at some point (1911 design) and have some fun with them Steeltrap, I had three of them going practically toe to toe with AI British BC designs I was throwing at them, was quite interesting to observe and has lead me to think that such ships would be quite useful for cheap but heavy firepower in the early game for Germany, Russia, Italy, France and Austria-Hungary. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[Hangar18]

2 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

Agreed. There isn't a single ship in the entire game that should have more than a single reload of torpedoes, with the majority having half a reload or sometimes none. Even the Torpedo obsessed IJN only carried one reload's worth of torpedoes per tube. 

The fact that reduced torpedoes still gives 3-4 reloads, normal gives about 6 and increased gives up to 10 is frankly insane, if a destroyer is carrying 30-50 torpedoes in deck cases I expect it go big boom when it gets hit by even a 2 inch gun. 

As for torpedo range, I honestly have a big issue with it. Again, only the IJN actually solved the issues of using fleet borne torpedoes at extreme range with the Type 93, everybody else had to live with torpedoes that were effective out to only 12-15km at the most and even then that was on slow settings as low as 20 knots to get the range that high. The Type 93's were expensive and volatile by comparison to other torpedoes, not to mention the increased weight and maintenance cost of including an oxygen generator system on the ships (which also increase big boom risk) that carried them. 

Torpedoes should be more powerful but unable to be launched willy nilly, and with more historical speeds and ranges. Only Oxygen torpedoes should be able to make fast speeds at range and oxygen torpedoes need to come with that extra risk factor to balance them out alongside their higher cost. 

As for playing non modern stuff, I thoroughly suggest you try building some Sverige type CA's at some point (1911 design) and have some fun with them Steeltrap, I had three of them going practically toe to toe with AI British BC designs I was throwing at them, was quite interesting to observe and has lead me to think that such ships would be quite useful for cheap but heavy firepower in the early game for Germany, Russia, Italy, France and Austria-Hungary. 

that's about the range of the standard 24" torps in game (IIRC 15km). torpedoes are powerful, most hits on cruisers are insta death. only BBs with TDS 4 can really hold up to multiple 24" strikes. Even then 3-4 basically mission kill the ship. Though sometimes you do get the zombie effect and they refuse to actually sink.\

It is entirely false that ships did not carry additional torpedoes.

• Asashio class carried 40 (8 on deck) (yes 40 total)
• Shiratsuyu class carried 40 (8 on deck) (yes 40 total, however 1 set (4) was removed due to gun weight)
• Hipper class carried 24 torpedoes (12 on deck).
• Duke of Edinburgh class carried 18 (3 underwater tubes).
• Takao class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Mogami class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Kuma class carried 24 torpedoes (8 on deck)
• Agano class carried 16 torpedoes (8 on deck)
• Tirpitz carried 16 (8 on deck)
• Type 1936a class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Type 1936b class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Z51 class carried 18 (6 on deck)
• Konigsberg class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Leipzig class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Gnevny class carried 12 (6 on deck)
• Storozhevoy class carried 12 (6 on deck)
• Admiral class carried 32 (10 underwater tubes)
• Courageous class carried 10 (2 underwater tubes
• Invincible class carried 14 (5 underwater tubes)

I havn't run out of ships but it is 5am.

so yeah ships absolutely carried reloads. Not all of them, but many of them. Other carried multiple reloads. The values we see in game are therefore valid numbers, even if few ships utilized larger amounts. there is an argument to be made for adding a no reloads as an option. 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Hangar18

[Mhtsos]

After one battle (1894 1B vs 1B + 2 torpedo boats) I saw that pretty much nothing important changed:

A) Bulkheads are still the king of protection/tanking:

The 200t torpedo boats took each 2x8" HE hits and around a dozen of 2 & 3". One went down the other chugged along with half hit points. Full bulkheads.

The enemy B took two torps in different places and just slowed down with half health. Medium bulkheads + torp protection.

B )Ships are armoured boxes. 

Angling the ship and bow to enemy still is the cheese the AI factor no.1.

C) The gun laying/accuracy still uses some arcane formula that is just weird. Shells are not moddelled.

Eg. A two-gun volley from a single turret can have the "shells" (or lights) go in trajectories that have more than 30 degrees difference in less than 5km. Like cross-eyed lazers or something.

|

As I mentioned in most of my previous feedback, the core aspects of a naval game (at least one that aspires to be realistic) are the accurate damage, armour and gun modelling.

Unfortunately, 9 months have passed since I got this game and the core issues/pains are still the same.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Mhtsos

[Cptbarney]

I've notice killing bigger ships via the main belt is very rare, which is odd as i assume that when you penetrate such a vital area you would cause major damage if not an outright mobility or catastrophic kill towards the ship itself. Also noticed shells aren't modelled or at least don't have many physical calculations applied to them since when they hit the ship and bounce they seem to hit the water with no splash, which probs means shells arent included properly in gunnery.

Also HE still allows you to basically engagte bow-tanking and kiting since HE seems to ignore bulkheads to some degree and allow for consistent but mostly low structural damage unlike AP which you have to be a certain distance angles (broadside which puts your own ship at risk) and ranges just for it too be effective.

Basically how world of dankships works in some ways. Also transports especially ones with max bulkheads seem to be able to tank shells for days, unless by large calibers. Which makes no sense since transports have no armour so all shells would penetrate regardless and cause major damage.

Shells also seem to deviate too much at close range, especially at higher tech levels this shouldn't be a thing. Shells should deviate as they leave the barrel, but not so wildly as they do now (mainly at closer ranges). Wind and gravity, plus shell weight and velocity should help deviate shells, but not in extremes like we have atm.

Target manuvoures when the ship actually turns should have bigger penalties, while speed should have far less. Although combining them both into velocity would be better since that is speed plus direction. Size, weather, gun caliber, shell type/weight and quality, velocity and turret quality should all factor in how likely or unlikely a ship will be hit in-general. Weather should also change over time, as weather isn't constant throught the day not even the same hour has the exact same qualities.

I think accuracy is ok atm, at the highest and lowest levels, armour and gunnery seem to be the two main issues too solve, i guess accuracy could be changed, but it will be pointless if zombie ships are the norm which then you would need to beef accuracy levels up to actually complete levels consistently (or the campaign).

At certain ranges accuracy and precision (depending on era) should be pretty much 100% especially if both vessels are big i don't see how you can miss from that distance. Also torp spam needs to be addressed or at least introduce dud torpedoes.

Not sure if gun jamming and turret jams should be a thing, so that instead of the turret getting knocked out completely the mechanisims for the turret get jammed and you can repair them (heard some got repaired in less than 30mins or something).

While having a road-map could be counterproductive, i think if we had some communication from the dev's on what they are planning even if its only 25%, that would probs help (although could cause a domino effect in peeps wanting to know more).

We defo need crew however, i think that would solve some of the problems here too be honest.

[Reaper Jack]

5 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

that's about the range of the standard 24" torps in game (IIRC 15km). torpedoes are powerful, most hits on cruisers are insta death. only BBs with TDS 4 can really hold up to multiple 24" strikes. Even then 3-4 basically mission kill the ship. Though sometimes you do get the zombie effect and they refuse to actually sink.\

It is entirely false that ships did not carry additional torpedoes.

• Asashio class carried 40 (8 on deck) (yes 40 total)
• Shiratsuyu class carried 40 (8 on deck) (yes 40 total, however 1 set (4) was removed due to gun weight)
• Hipper class carried 24 torpedoes (12 on deck).
• Duke of Edinburgh class carried 18 (3 underwater tubes).
• Takao class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Mogami class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Kuma class carried 24 torpedoes (8 on deck)
• Agano class carried 16 torpedoes (8 on deck)
• Tirpitz carried 16 (8 on deck)
• Type 1936a class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Type 1936b class carried 24 (8 on deck)
• Z51 class carried 18 (6 on deck)
• Konigsberg class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Leipzig class carried 24 (12 on deck)
• Gnevny class carried 12 (6 on deck)
• Storozhevoy class carried 12 (6 on deck)
• Admiral class carried 32 (10 underwater tubes)
• Courageous class carried 10 (2 underwater tubes
• Invincible class carried 14 (5 underwater tubes)

I havn't run out of ships but it is 5am.

so yeah ships absolutely carried reloads. Not all of them, but many of them. Other carried multiple reloads. The values we see in game are therefore valid numbers, even if few ships utilized larger amounts. there is an argument to be made for adding a no reloads as an option. 

 

 

Wasn't aware some carried more honestly although it is obviously not standard procedure and I am not counting underwater launchers (forgot to mention that) due to their irl use being basically worthless and even here with the singular exception of the Shiratsuyu and Asashio they all fall under the reduced category in game. But perhaps more importantly, my original point can be added to by saying that torpedoes even if the reload is not available should not be able to be reloaded in mere minutes, it takes at least 15 minutes for a crew to load torpedoes under combat conditions (the entire launcher that is) and that's assuming they're not being fired at while they do so. 

And again, that's a rather small list of classes considering and mostly limited to the Japanese and Germans except for underwater tubes which were as discussed historically not very useful. And even here the Germans carried only two reloads at the most. Not the up to 10 we commonly see in game. Even the Asashio/Shiratusyu is only eight reloads and we all know how easily IJN Destroyers went up like Christmas trees. 

[Nick Thomadis]

2 minutes ago, Reaper Jack said:

Not the up to 10 we commonly see in game.

Torpedo reloads span from 3 to 5.

[DougToss]

41 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Torpedo reloads span from 3 to 5.

Shouldn't they span from 0-1 though? Reloads per-tube I mean.

That's what I'm seeing above. I can pour over sources later today. 

Accounting for Japanese torpedo doctrine, additional reloads could be a tech, with the obvious weight penalty.

Edited June 16, 2020 by DougToss

[Nick Thomadis]

Just now, DougToss said:

Shouldn't they span from 0-1 though? 

I see how people overreact to any change that would spoil their comfortable playing, so I think no

[DougToss]

5 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

I see how people overreact to any change that would spoil their comfortable playing, so I think no

Be bold Nick! 

It's an Alpha. The entire point is not to be comfortable.

We're here to help you achieve your vision, and know that anything could change at any time as you iron it out. The idea of being comfortable this early on is baffling. I was comfortable when Kerbal Space Program had maybe 5 parts and a flat Earth, but the project kept growing and evolving.

You have to keep pushing the envelope, and getting comfortable when ships carry several times more torpedoes, reloaded much more quickly than they could plausibly be, taking up no space, at no risk of explosion, well that's not the realistic title you were so exited to make when you got started. 

If we had gotten too used to being comfortable in Alpha 2, we wouldn't even have 22 and 23 inch torpedoes. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by DougToss

[madham82]

15 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

I think i disagree here. Armor model is a core part of the gameplay, and affects a huge part of the game. UI can change without impacting actual gameplay beyond comfort. i think the quality is generally there. Some of the models have oddities that should be fixed (in some cases overhauled), but there has absolutely been a lot of love into some of the finer details. The tool tips for instance, they are filled with historical, information as well as performance information. Most games seem to just leave it up to the players to figure out, or in WGs case, say nothing, and force the players to datamine 

What are you disagreeing with? I mentioned the armor is what we need to be focused on right now (because significantly changing core components in Beta stages is a recipe for a buggy launch). I never said anything was wrong with the UI either. I agree with you, it is simple with some good attention to detail. I'm sure there are some things that could be improved (torpedo visibility for sure), but nothing major IMO.