Torpedo Balance Issues as of Alpha 7

[madham82]

To illustrate some of the exploits possible with the current version of the game (in regards to torpedoes and other issues impacting them), I decided to build a ship that would demonstrate and test my observations using the Destroyer. 

Let’s start with the design (1930 tech, custom battle). Two principles govern it, speed and vast numbers of torpedoes. 

At $28M, this one is not cheap. I am really looking at this one as overkill and the design could certainly be optimized. But comparing it to a Yamato class I built in a previous build of the game at almost $150M, still a bargain as you will see when it comes to effectiveness and firepower. Probably the biggest cost savings would come from lowering the ridiculous speed to 38-40kts (and a realistic speed at that).

She carries 6x4 torpedo mounts with fast 21” torpedoes.That’s a hell of a lot of fish to dump in the water at once, but the real kicker is the storage. 130 (need to check the exact) torpedoes total. Around 5 reloads per tube. For reference, HMS Maidstone, a submarine tender in WW2 carried around 100 torpedoes and was quite a bit bigger than my large 3500 DD. 

Now let’s get to combat. I chose a fight with 4 of these DDs vs a BB and BC. I chose this match to prove how utterly useless a BB or BC is to a fast DD with plenty of torpedoes. I could have easily used just two DDs instead. It just would have taken longer as I waited on reloads. The AI builds were the notorious designs everyone has encountered. A monstrous fortress of a super BB, and a speedboat BC. Let’s take a look at my first salvo (from 1 DD) on the BB.

Couple of points here, I was able to approach with ease to about 5KM from the BB/BC without a single hit on my DD. This is due to the accuracy speed penalty to firing ships because of my speed (46kts). I did not even use smoke until after I had fired and turned away. Two, at this range my 63kts torpedoes are unavoidable to even agile ships because of the speed and size of the spread. With better controls on how our ships launch torpedoes, the effectiveness would be even greater. Currently it's more like a shotgun loaded with buckshot. In this case, torpedoes that will sink most ships outright if they don’t have real protection. But not this 100K ton monster.

Here you can see the results after that salvo. 12 torpedo hits on it. You can see I have the equipment readout showing. Anti-torp V, Reinforced Bulkheads, Aux 3, a literal fortress at sea. It doesn’t show, but he did only have Standard bulkheads for a shocker. The end result is scratched paint (827 HP lost) and speed loss. Clearly I need to take this guy seriously and show him what torpedo spam really is.

So here I have added another 28 torpedoes to the hit counter, and I assume with his Float number dropping fast to single digits he’s doomed. You guys know what happens next.  It actually drops all the way to 0.2 or 0.4, then magic...4% and still going. Ok fine, one more salvo of 24 torpedoes, I mean really. Continued to next post:

Edited June 19, 2020 by madham82
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[madham82]

Death finally comes for him after a total of 60 hits...60! I mean I get it is a 100K monster with the best anti-torp protection, but no this is pure fantasy. What if it had Maximum bulkheads? But just when you think torpedoes are underpowered, I turn my sights on the BC.

He is of course doing what all 39kt, 35K ton, heavily armed AI BCs do, sailing in circles like those jerks on jet-skis do, laughing because no gun can hit him. Well my first DD salvo only just catches him with 2 or 3 hits, but that is enough to slow the jet-ski to fishing boat speeds. Continuing with his circles, he is easy to line up for the next salvo. Death was assured, but 2 of the 3 hits from this salvo started a flash fire and incinerated him before any more hits found the mark. He lacked any protection at all, and it was obvious even the impervious speedboat BC can’t survive a match with 1 of these DDs, much less a squadron.  

 

Obviously, we have issues. 

1. Ability to mount ridiculous numbers of torpedoes (in terms of tubes and reloads) on even small ships like DD/TBs. 
2. A ludicrously balanced speed penalty that makes anything going 35kts or more effectively invulnerable to gun fire, no matter the size and actual maneuverability. 
3. Beyond reality torpedo protection at high levels. 
4. Magical flood recovery that can’t be explained by number of bulkheads setting. 

Honestly, number 2 has to be fixed. It creates a huge exploit that has no basis in reality and so enables designs like mine to be hugely effective. 

Number 1 could be balanced by fixing number 2, if ships carrying vast amounts of torpedoes were more like a ship carrying nitroglycerin into combat. 

Number 3 is definitely a balance issue that can be fixed easily.

Number 4 is a bug, no way around it. 

 

I’ll leave it you guys, thoughts, questions, comments?

Edited June 19, 2020 by madham82
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[Cptbarney]

They are going to release a hotfix increasing reload times and reducing the number of overall reloads. Most patches just before during and after steam summer sale will most likely be bugfixes, balance updates and maybe 1-4 new ship hulls. Buts that speculation atm.

But being able to tank 100,000 long lance torpdeos is a bit mental. Think some hulls in some nations should get less or longer bulkheads or lesser quality to help with realism and also to give nation flavour as well. Should help with zombie ships as well.

Although saves for custom battles look like they wont come until after the campaign, so it will be more tedious to test stuff (or just the same really). dunno if we will see new missions.

[madham82]

39 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

They are going to release a hotfix increasing reload times and reducing the number of overall reloads. Most patches just before during and after steam summer sale will most likely be bugfixes, balance updates and maybe 1-4 new ship hulls. Buts that speculation atm.

But being able to tank 100,000 long lance torpdeos is a bit mental. Think some hulls in some nations should get less or longer bulkheads or lesser quality to help with realism and also to give nation flavour as well. Should help with zombie ships as well.

Although saves for custom battles look like they wont come until after the campaign, so it will be more tedious to test stuff (or just the same really). dunno if we will see new missions.

Yea I saw the hotfix post just after finishing this. It really won't impact my design. Just make it take a bit longer and might need 1 more DD to offset the slight reduction in torpedo quantity. That's why I think number 2 is the most critical to fix first. Then we can see how it affects their survivability. That's really the biggest exploit. I was within 3 and 4KMs a lot of the time making my attack runs on these two AI ships. I took I think 3 or 4 hits from their 6 and 3 inch guns. None serious enough to cause a reduction in speed. So I could dictate the terms of the engagement the whole time. 

I just hope people can see how easily the current torpedo implementation can be abused now (especially in a campaign setting). I was a bit shocked at how that BB was able to tank though. So now I know where some are coming from saying torpedoes are still too weak. They definitely are against that type of BB build. 

Definitely agree on the tedious rebuilding of ships in custom. If you can find a mission to use to test things, it is great. But they frequently don't support enough of the scenarios/issues we need to retest. 

[IronKaputt]

12 hours ago, madham82 said:

Beyond reality torpedo protection at high levels. 

Torpedo protection needs to be destructible (same goes to armor) and have a thickness slider (just like armor).

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, IronKaputt said:

Torpedo protection needs to be destructible (same goes to armor) and have a thickness slider (just like armor).

plus portioned into seperate sections, so its not just one giant slab.

[Latur Husky]

I think it would be best if ammo we get per tube would be:
Low mag - No reload
Std. - 1 reload
Hi - 2 reloads

This way max torpedo that are being taken by ships should be more realistic.

Finally further balancing of engines might be useful, so that players are not able to build super fast large destroyers. Maybe fixing hull form parameter so it reacts to weight of everything that we put on our ship would help? Right now putting heavy guns or other elements doesn't affect hull form so it's incorrectly simulated allowing players to achieve higher speeds than possible...

 

EDIT: 

Update, just did a quick test of things and it appears that Hull form might be the issue why players are able to build destroyers like you did. It is in fact affected only by armor type where more modern armor improves it (reducing penalties to engines) and older heavier armor plates lowers it (giving penalties to engines). Nothing else seems to affect Hull form so our designs don't impact how big engines we'll need to get to and maintain speed while maneuvuering.

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Latur Husky

[madham82]

33 minutes ago, Latur Husky said:

I think it would be best if ammo we get per tube would be:
Low mag - No reload
Std. - 1 reload
Hi - 2 reloads

This way max torpedo that are being taken by ships should be more realistic.

Finally further balancing of engines might be useful, so that players are not able to build super fast large destroyers. Maybe fixing hull form parameter so it reacts to weight of everything that we put on our ship would help? Right now putting heavy guns or other elements doesn't affect hull form so it's incorrectly simulated allowing players to achieve higher speeds than possible...

 

Yea historically, those reload numbers would be correct, but we also need to fix the ridiculous tanking ability of high levels of TDS. That will likely need a rework to armor though since the system does not take in account repeated hits on the same side. So I see why some complain they are still weak. 

Yea the speed was ridiculous as well. I just think the code uses weight as the sole calculation for too many things when size also matters. So where is all this space on a DD to house these engines to do 46kts and carrying 130 torpedoes??

[Latur Husky]

They need to make it so that hull form takes used weight into account and applies penalties accordingly. It should balance things nicely and encourage to either build fast and agile ships with light armament or more sluggish heavily armed vessels that will suffer from acceleration and turning penalties.

 

[GDFKTT]

I understand why from a game perspecitve they allow in-combat torpedo reloads.  From a simulation standpoint I hate it and to see total reloads available drastically nerfed before release.  Some of the NA missions right now are just stupid with amount of torpedo spam you have to bait out of the AI before you can close to effective gun range.

[BobRoss0902]

11 hours ago, Latur Husky said:

They need to make it so that hull form takes used weight into account and applies penalties accordingly. It should balance things nicely and encourage to either build fast and agile ships with light armament or more sluggish heavily armed vessels that will suffer from acceleration and turning penalties.

 

I like it, French and Russian pre dreadnought tumblehome ships had decent to good stability when not overloaded, but after upgrades most of their belt was underwater, and they had a tendency to want to roll over.

I personally think armor effectiveness should decrease due to increased weight to simulate the belt being lower in the water.

[johnson smith]

America superior ship building and god like damage repair 11/10 

Edited June 23, 2020 by johnson smith

[TAKTCOM]

12 hours ago, BobRoss0902 said:

... Russian pre dreadnought tumblehome ships had decent to good stability when not overloaded, but after upgrades most of their belt was underwater, and they had a tendency to want to roll over.

Well...no.  Russian pre-dreadnoughts overloaded form three reasons:

- coal,  provisions and water overload by order of the high command (Tsushima);

-  upgrades of ship project, made in the shipbuilding process. Also bad quality; 

- mistakes in the development of ship requirements .

[IronKaputt]

On 6/22/2020 at 4:43 PM, madham82 said:

So where is all this space on a DD to house these engines to do 46kts

Maybe they secretly gas-turbined after all.

Just sayin 😋

[Cptbarney]

Thought the forums were ded. Like everyone just vanished.

[IronKaputt]

6 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Thought the forums were ded. Like everyone just vanished.

 

[Cptbarney]

5 minutes ago, IronKaputt said:

 

Lots of brave souls have gone into teh noight.

[Skeksis]

36 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Thought the forums were ded. Like everyone just vanished.

Reality of the campaign delay hitting home.

Reality of small development team.

Reality of undeveloped potential. 

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Skeksis

[HusariuS]

1 hour ago, Cptbarney said:

Thought the forums were ded. Like everyone just vanished.

I'm just waiting for the next update

[HMNZS Achilles]

Couldn’t agree more the huge number of torpedoes that ships can carry turns this into a torpedo shooting game.

Like the idea of limited reloads being no reloads

And it could be half a set of reloads for standard and one full set of reloads for increased. That seems to be as many as were added for deck mounts and they had an additional stowage box occupying deck space for storing these that the game would do well to model.

underwater torpedo systems stored more reloads. Up to 4-5 per tube.

If the game feels it needs to have these exaggerated torpedo loads to appeal to its intended audience, then at least add additional storage areas on deck to store ally these torpedoes so players do get the trade off of carrying the hundreds of tons of these fish.

 

still great fun buildinga fight ships

[Nick Thomadis]

2 hours ago, HMNZS Achilles said:

Couldn’t agree more the huge number of torpedoes that ships can carry turns this into a torpedo shooting game.

Like the idea of limited reloads being no reloads

And it could be half a set of reloads for standard and one full set of reloads for increased. That seems to be as many as were added for deck mounts and they had an additional stowage box occupying deck space for storing these that the game would do well to model.

underwater torpedo systems stored more reloads. Up to 4-5 per tube.

If the game feels it needs to have these exaggerated torpedo loads to appeal to its intended audience, then at least add additional storage areas on deck to store ally these torpedoes so players do get the trade off of carrying the hundreds of tons of these fish.

 

still great fun buildinga fight ships

Torpedo reloads have been already limited in last update. If people can play with only one torpedo reload, we might lower further.

[arekP64]

Adding an option of carrying only a single salvo of torpedo would as like 4th ammo load option would satisfy one group people without hurting anyone in the process, the issue may start with making it a rational choice gameplay wise or making AI chose to do the same. We all know how good it is to carry more, but we also know TB and DD carry a second salvo or more were less common than single salvo.

[HusariuS]

50 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Torpedo reloads have been only limited in last update. If people can play with only one torpedo reload, we might lower further.

I think torpedo magazine should be divided into four choices:

1. No reload (so you just gonna fire only one salvo of torpedoes that are already loaded into the tubes)

2. One reload (like IJN Destroyers and Cruisers)

3. Two reloads .

4. Three reloads.

Torpedo boats should be limited only to No Reload or eventually One Reload, due to their smaller size and displacement in comparision to the DDs and etc.

Three reloads should be available only to Super Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships.

 

I think it would be more realistic and balanced.

 

EDIT: @Latur Husky

I just realized that he already proposed that idea.... ops

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by HusariuS

[Cptbarney]

13 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

I think torpedo magazine should be divided into four choices:

1. No reload (so you just gonna fire only one salvo of torpedoes that are already loaded into the tubes)

2. One reload (like IJN Destroyers and Cruisers)

3. Two reloads .

4. Three reloads.

Torpedo boats should be limited only to No Reload or eventually One Reload, due to their smaller size and displacement in comparision to the DDs and etc.

Three reloads should be available only to Super Cruisers, Battlecruisers and Battleships.

 

I think it would be more realistic and balanced.

 

 

Dont forget 5 as a menu cheat/option unlimited torpedos or setting the amount of torpedeos you can have. We defo need mods lol.

and a poi mod for torps when they pass nearby lol.

[HusariuS]

Just now, Cptbarney said:

and a poi mod for torps when they pass nearby lol.

Oh no