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Torpedo Balance Issues as of Alpha 7


madham82

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2 minutes ago, HusariuS said:

Oh no

Oh yes 'w' its also a mod in world of warships, where it gets louder as the torps get nearer to a certain level.

there will probs be azur lane voice mods and shipfu avatars once the game gets past a certain point.

probs on nexus mods or steam workshop.

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1 hour ago, arekP64 said:

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.

The problem with only carrying a single torpedo reload at the moment is simple. 

In real life, you could launch one tube at a time, you did not have to launch a full 'salvo' every time you wanted to fire a torpedo at something. Right now in game the ship just dumps all torpedoes onto a single target when launching no matter how few or many are in the tubes. If we had manual torpedo firing (click a button to launch one torpedo at a time) a lot of the problems with having historical reloads go away.

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On 6/27/2020 at 11:56 AM, Reaper Jack said:

The problem with only carrying a single torpedo reload at the moment is simple. 

In real life, you could launch one tube at a time, you did not have to launch a full 'salvo' every time you wanted to fire a torpedo at something. Right now in game the ship just dumps all torpedoes onto a single target when launching no matter how few or many are in the tubes. If we had manual torpedo firing (click a button to launch one torpedo at a time) a lot of the problems with having historical reloads go away.

I don't recall reading any accounts of ships launching torpedoes piecemeal (not that they couldn't), due to the fact that no one had that accurate of a fire solution save an undetected submarine only a few thousand yards off its target. You needed a spread to have any reasonable chance of hitting something (even more so when you consider duds). 

The real issue you hit on, having control beyond firing all your launchers on a single target. An option for a bearing only launch, with each click launching one set of tubes (or even single tubes) would go a long way to improving effectiveness with realistic reloads. 

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I think a relatively useful and simple modification would be for semi-manual firing.

That is, the ship would lock onto its target and tell the player when it is ready to fire its tubes (or if any can't fire yet). It might also tell the player if it thinks hits are likely or not. Then the player just clicks on a launch button, and the torpedoes go instantaneously.

This would make the laborious process of changing firing preferences much easier, and increase player control, without contrivances.

For some extra complexity, the player could manually aim torpedoes, adjust the computer's aim, or launch one bank at a time. I am unsure if that is necessary.

I think, in general, it would be good to show which specific weapons are currently locked on target, and which are reloading or rotating.

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7 hours ago, madham82 said:

I don't recall reading any accounts of ships launching torpedoes piecemeal (not that they couldn't), due to the fact that no one had that accurate of a fire solution save an undetected submarine only a few thousand yards off its target. You needed a spread to have any reasonable chance of hitting something (even more so when you consider duds). 

The real issue you hit on, having control beyond firing all your launchers on a single target. An option for a bearing only launch, with each click launching one set of tubes (or even single tubes) would go a long way to improving effectiveness with realistic reloads. 

Yeah this is what I was getting at. I'm aware that single launches were rare historically, though they did happen. 

Having that control is needed right now when your DD has 3 or 4 launchers. 

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On 6/28/2020 at 3:56 AM, Reaper Jack said:

The problem with only carrying a single torpedo reload at the moment is simple. 

In real life, you could launch one tube at a time, you did not have to launch a full 'salvo' every time you wanted to fire a torpedo at something. Right now in game the ship just dumps all torpedoes onto a single target when launching no matter how few or many are in the tubes. If we had manual torpedo firing (click a button to launch one torpedo at a time) a lot of the problems with having historical reloads go away.

That’s an interesting thought.

Do you have examples of when warships with multiple tube batteries fired single torpedoes or only part of their salvo?

I can think of a handful but I’d class them as edge cases rather than standard doctrine, which I’d characterize as, launch everything that can bare to maximise the chance of hitting with something and this may be our only chance.

The exceptions include.

a) submarines often launch one or two tubes of a possible salvo, depending on the attractiveness of the target. But not yet part of the design mech.

b) examples of German warships hunting merchantmen might launch one of their scarce fish to dispatch a ship that had been captured. Admiral Hipper did this during the Norwegian campaign.

c) scuttling a crippled friendly warship to prevent it’s capture. SMS Lutzow at Jutland is an example.

But that’s about it. You know of others or perhaps a doctrine paper that some navy recommended part torpedo salvos for their surface ships?

The way whole salvoes were fired did have some variations from the way the game handles it though.

The width of a spread from a multiple mount could be varied by setting the gyro on individual torpedoes, using a key in a dial on the torpedo, to adjust the course it took after launch.

The torpedo mount could also be ripple fired to launch each torpedo sequentially so they went in the water one fish at a time thereby spreading out the salvo a bit.

But these are likely super details beyond what the game would like an overloaded player to handle. Though could add to the torpedo drop down menu (with a delay to activate once the setting is made - all those crew running around setting the gyros or firing sequences on the mounts).

 

 

 

 

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Standard and fast needn’t be a torpedo type selection. It was something all (most?) torpedoes could be set to do prior to launch.

Run The motor faster, for higher speed, burning fuel more quickly with consequential shorter range, or running the motor slower, so the torpedo conserved fuel and ran longer but slower.

This setting would be ordered by the Flotilla commander or the ship captain.

Other settings included depth. The deeper a torpedo hits, the more destructive its damage effect is and the more likely it is to miss less important destroyers but hit deeper draft capital ships.

Having all those super aware destroyers scattering from destroyers that are set to run under them would be a nice touch!

Hydrophones, can’t determine the depth a torpedo is running at.

While on that line of thinking, hydrophones an Sonar should be heavily degraded when its ship is running at high speed due the ships own hull noise and cavitation masking other noises.

The other helpful outcome of downgrading hydrophone/sonar effectiveness at speed is that it means players have a choice to make whether their ships use high speed downgrade the effectiveness of gunnery solutions or travel more slowly to audibly detect torpedoes. They can still use lookouts to spot torpedoes being launched or leaving a wake, but lose the bonus of hearing them as well.

 

 

 

 

Edited by HMNZS Achilles
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IMHO nbr of reload torps is not the issue but the time it takes to reload them. For me it is somehow strange not just cause of the rigging and movement that the standar reload procedure should involve on an exposed deck of a surface vessel (mainly a DD or a CL) but if it is sailing at some 27 up to 36 knts under fire and manoubring sharply, i can't see this happening on the short time the game shows nowadays...add to it some sea state...

Tradicional DD torp attack doctrine of the dates the game depicts is using salvos (all out) in order to force an aproaching attacking fleet to withdraw (or suffer the consecuences) and the countermessure against such an attack is to send your CLs an DDs against the enemy DDs

To cut down the nbr of reloads even more will bring your fleet protecting DDs unefective on their role after just an engagemet on a campaing scenario, I should  said that while it is correct some WW2 japanesse DD get few reloads, those are "long lances" on vessel that could launch 12 or even 20 at the same time at an efective distance of 20 Km (allies torps were 10 Km and with smaler warheads), if you just have a 5 tubes launcher of an smaler torp it would mean you might have more reloads on the same vessel displacement...so IMHO its a matter of vessels weight and speed that could make your/ai desing to select a reduced load....for me the actual nbrs of reloads as the standar load is a good compromise

Depth of a torpedo on the dates the game simulate and in a combatant surface vessel against combatant surface vessel should be something around 5 mtrs, no more.. it is true that Germany in ww2 had the magnetic piston that made a torpedo under the keel catastrofic but they shoot it from U-boats,with a totally different attack doctrine, at closer distances than in a surface action from a much slower platform against a slow target and also they had two torpedo crysis so they were firing their torpedos switched to impact mode and shallow depth up to 1941 IIRC

Spreed angle management  sounds as a micromanagenent, but i could be happy having it even holding a position of admiral ( that i guess the game is giving me) but a compromise could be that it is fixed with some variations depending on the nbr of tubes the launcher had...so you put the same amount of torps per longitudinal distance at the expected impact zone ( i.e.- one torpedo each 50 mtrs of the target bearing line at the expected impact position or something like that)

it is just my opinion

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12 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

IMHO nbr of reload torps is not the issue but the time it takes to reload them. For me it is somehow strange not just cause of the rigging and movement that the standar reload procedure should involve on an exposed deck of a surface vessel (mainly a DD or a CL) but if it is sailing at some 27 up to 36 knts under fire and manoubring sharply, i can't see this happening on the short time the game shows nowadays...add to it some sea state...

Tradicional DD torp attack doctrine of the dates the game depicts is using salvos (all out) in order to force an aproaching attacking fleet to withdraw (or suffer the consecuences) and the countermessure against such an attack is to send your CLs an DDs against the enemy DDs

To cut down the nbr of reloads even more will bring your fleet protecting DDs unefective on their role after just an engagemet on a campaing scenario, I should  said that while it is correct some WW2 japanesse DD get few reloads, those are "long lances" on vessel that could launch 12 or even 20 at the same time at an efective distance of 20 Km (allies torps were 10 Km and with smaler warheads), if you just have a 5 tubes launcher of an smaler torp it would mean you might have more reloads on the same vessel displacement...so IMHO its a matter of vessels weight and speed that could make your/ai desing to select a reduced load....for me the actual nbrs of reloads as the standar load is a good compromise

it is just my opinion

They are both serious balance problems if left as is, but you are correct we really haven't dived into the time it takes.

One reason I have not spoke about it much is the simple fact that full reloads were not common period (i.e. enough torpedoes to reload each launcher).

Two, I spoke about earlier in the thread. There is zero consideration taken into account for the actual space reloads take up. I mean these things were up to 2x30ft in dimensions. Weight is the least of the concern when it comes to storage.

Three, the fact you can actually have close to half a kiloton of explosive warheads on a DD, yet they rarely sink in one shot unless from a BB sized gun. I mean a 3" shell hitting this massive stockpile of torpedoes on a DD (with essentially no protection) should be able to sink them outright. Hell, the blast from one of these DDs (like I built) should be a danger to an entire formation. 

Based on some research I had done before, the Japanese trained (in perfect conditions, probably in port) to reload 4 tubes in around 5 minutes. They also had power assisted equipment especially for this (most other navies used manpower) I never found anything credible saying they did this in combat. The accepted time in combat was around 20 minutes (in which time the DD would retreat from combat to safely reload). Assuming you change reload times to match this, you are still going to be able to fire more torpedoes than they could carry historically in the average 1 hour battle timer, on top of reloading in combat. 

If we are going for realism, then no reloads would be the standard option (most common), a partial reload (more common), and full reload (less common). These options will need to have real impact to the ship designer to account for the space and increased detonation risk to prevent/balance impossible designs like mine. For reloading, we would need something to prevent the tubes from being reloading when under fire, at full speed, in rough seas, and crazy fast like can happen now. Historically reloading would happen after battle, and small ships (like DDs) were not expected to engage in multiple fleet battles before returning to a port/supply ship for resupply (something easily implemented in the campaign). 

If we aren't going for realism, then we need to seriously rebalance things to prevent abuse. DDs are not supposed to be the premier anti-ship platform, they are support ships. 

Edited by madham82
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/19/2020 at 2:10 PM, madham82 said:

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?

Gonna give ya a bump for effort and importance, your observations have mirrored my experience as well. The torpedo damage reduction by TDS 5 is nuts. Im not sure if we should hard limit reloads at 2 for the max load out, or if we should just make it so weight prohibitive that no one can take so many large reloads.

On 6/19/2020 at 2:22 PM, 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.

OP is rocking 21s, long lance are 24s. OPs build works with 24s as well, i've done it with a shima replica.

Also when you ping us, i think we should all be called the barney bros

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watched a number of videos of this game and i have to add that torpedos are normally launched one at a time from a multi tube launcher.  ship listing causes major problems loading and firing most weapons no matter what loading mechanism.  any significant list has to be fixed by deliberately flooding other compartments...or fixing the hole and pumping out the water....a very time consuming task.   repeated damage in the same location should blow adjacent bulkheads.  as far as i can tell the explosions of ammo are pretty close to real life....big damage causes big booms because lets face it there is a lot of sensitive stuff in these ships.  finally, at some of the ranges we're talking about it's really hard to get hits on smaller, faster ships...especially given waves.   seems right to me. 

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8 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

Gonna give ya a bump for effort and importance, your observations have mirrored my experience as well. The torpedo damage reduction by TDS 5 is nuts. Im not sure if we should hard limit reloads at 2 for the max load out, or if we should just make it so weight prohibitive that no one can take so many large reloads.

OP is rocking 21s, long lance are 24s. OPs build works with 24s as well, i've done it with a shima replica.

Also when you ping us, i think we should all be called the barney bros

Oh i was just point it out but yeah, i honestly can't wait for the campaign and other features, but i know this sort of thing takes a considerable amount of time (if my modelling projects are to go by anything).

ill have to right down the names of everyone lol.

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4 hours ago, mgcc lsw said:

watched a number of videos of this game and i have to add that torpedos are normally launched one at a time from a multi tube launcher.  ship listing causes major problems loading and firing most weapons no matter what loading mechanism.  any significant list has to be fixed by deliberately flooding other compartments...or fixing the hole and pumping out the water....a very time consuming task.   repeated damage in the same location should blow adjacent bulkheads.  as far as i can tell the explosions of ammo are pretty close to real life....big damage causes big booms because lets face it there is a lot of sensitive stuff in these ships.  finally, at some of the ranges we're talking about it's really hard to get hits on smaller, faster ships...especially given waves.   seems right to me. 

Not sure where you are going with the ripple fire of the tubes and list.

Obviously repeated hits to the same side of the ship are not being simulated, they are all being treated as single events. Hence the fact that slamming one side with a volley of 10+ torpedoes didn't cause significant damage. 

Fast ships have absolutely nothing to do with hit rate, especially when the speed is constant like I kept mine. Small ships yes are harder to hit, but I was under 10kms almost the entire engagement, with each torpedo run coming in to 5 and 4kms. That is point blank range.  Both the BB and BC had large numbers of 6" and smaller secondaries, yet I may have taken 6 hits to my 4 DDs the entire time. The BB and BC both had radar 2 with it's crazy bump to accuracy. 

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4 hours ago, madham82 said:

Not sure where you are going with the ripple fire of the tubes and list.

Obviously repeated hits to the same side of the ship are not being simulated, they are all being treated as single events. Hence the fact that slamming one side with a volley of 10+ torpedoes didn't cause significant damage. 

Fast ships have absolutely nothing to do with hit rate, especially when the speed is constant like I kept mine. Small ships yes are harder to hit, but I was under 10kms almost the entire engagement, with each torpedo run coming in to 5 and 4kms. That is point blank range.  Both the BB and BC had large numbers of 6" and smaller secondaries, yet I may have taken 6 hits to my 4 DDs the entire time. The BB and BC both had radar 2 with it's crazy bump to accuracy. 

have you tried parking next to the BBs yet? or ramming them to see what happened?

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2 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

have you tried parking next to the BBs yet? or ramming them to see what happened?

What do you mean parking exactly? I assume you mean sitting parallel to them at very close range.

Ramming them in a DD doesn't seem like a winning idea LOL, or you mean with another big ship?

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madham82,

just posting my observations.  the launchers with multiple tubes for torpedos firing all at once isn't historically correct.  they launched one at a time.  compressed air fired the torps and you had to operate the valves.   not sure about setting bearing...i assume they could do that similar to what subs did in later years.

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14 minutes ago, madham82 said:

What do you mean parking exactly? I assume you mean sitting parallel to them at very close range.

Ramming them in a DD doesn't seem like a winning idea LOL, or you mean with another big ship?

ye just blaze up parallel to them at 40 knots and see how close you can get. 

I've yet to see a ram, so i'd be interested to see what happens. but also just to see if its possible with the current speed penalty shenanigans  

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41 minutes ago, mgcc lsw said:

madham82,

just posting my observations.  the launchers with multiple tubes for torpedos firing all at once isn't historically correct.  they launched one at a time.  compressed air fired the torps and you had to operate the valves.   not sure about setting bearing...i assume they could do that similar to what subs did in later years.

I follow you. Yea they could be fired individually in rapid succession, but definitely not like the game does it now. Yea I'm pretty sure they had the same ability to change the bearing on each tube to get a good spread. Also the speed could be set. 

31 minutes ago, Hangar18 said:

ye just blaze up parallel to them at 40 knots and see how close you can get. 

I've yet to see a ram, so i'd be interested to see what happens. but also just to see if its possible with the current speed penalty shenanigans  

Might have to try it. Under 2KM and just about every gun is 100% accurate, so would be interesting to see how the speed penalty impacts it. 

I've not tried ramming at all yet. Maybe I'll build a 40kt BC and try to ram one of these 100K+ monsters. 

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