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[Steeltrap]

Psst, hey Barney!

It's "sloped". Soviets certainly could be sloppy with their manufacturing standards, but not to the point where they just slopped armour all over the place.

As for Germans? Their metallurgy did suffer as the war went on, especially with shortages of tungsten, but the Wehraboos will be after you something fierce when they hear you saying the Panther had slopped armour.

🙃

(just having fun, hope you're surviving ok whatever plague restrictions may apply where you are)

[Cpt.Hissy]

Hey, actually soviets slopped their armour all over the place sometimes, and that armour was sloppy x)

Regarding angling, my two cents. While it's true that nobody in the age of dreadnoughts tried to "angle" their ships for the reason of increased protection, it is also true that doing so WILL increase their protection, because just simple physics.  Doesn't matter where the armour it and what's going on in someone's heads, if you angle that armour, it will be harder to break.

Doing so likely wasn't viable in real conditions though, as keeping your ship at good relative angle to the enemy doesn't work well with keeping it at good position and distance, as ships tend to move forward bow first, turn with huge radius and require long time to significantly change their speed. You will point your bow wherever needed to keep your position, and enemy generally will be at whatever angle they happen to be and not wherever you want them.
Thus best thing to do to ensure your protection was equally armour every angle. (or at least make it so hit from every angle will be equally mitigated, by armour or by happening in non critical parts, or whatever)
Simple physics again. Nor tactics, nor anime nonsense have nothing to do with it.

[TotalRampage]

10 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

TL;DR? Please provide any credible source that says "angling" for the purposes of "improving effectiveness of armour". Better still, ask the devs for theirs, because, as you'll see below, I've included material that shows it's a VERY DELIBERATE design choice. That doesn't make it any less nonsense, however.

======================================================================================================

Straw man utterances reflect far more on the person making them than the intended target.

OF COURSE ships steamed towards each other. If they didn't, how did they ever make it into combat range? Not colliding with islands would appear to be another reason for altering course, too, I guess. Wish I'd thought of that.

The point I have made over and over and over is that the REASONS for which they presented sharp aspects to the enemy were almost EXCLUSIVELY around wanting to close or open the range. As to WHY they might do so, of course there are many.

Seeing as you're apparently wanting not only to misrepresent my clear position on this issue (I've mentioned it several times), but also to do so in a snide way that suggests I'm something of an ignorant twat (I've only owned and read books on this subject since about 1978, so I suppose you could be correct), here's a challenge for you:

Find me ONE REFERENCE in ANY NAVY from 1890-1940 where doctrine says "it's imperative to present a sharp bow/stern aspect so as to minimise both the chances of being hit AND the likelihood of that hit achieving anything".

In fact, what WAS doctrine for large gun capital ships with respect to optimal fighting range with respect to optimal gunnery performance and theoretical immunity zones?

Jutland is a good example that makes my argument far more thoroughly than yours. I'm sure you're aware of Jellicoe's thoughts about engagement ranges, appropriate rates of fire for such ranges based on expected effectiveness of fire, plus the time he believed he had until he would need to turn away due to the expected arrival of German torpedoes, right? On top of that, what was he trying to achieve in shifting from steaming in columns to a long line ahead battle formation? Was it "angling to maximise the effectiveness of armour and reduce chances of being hit", or perhaps it was unmasking the full might of his available guns as the enemy steamed into them? In fact if doing the former was such a great idea, why did Jellicoe arrange things to hand that advantage to Scheer? What's more, why did Scheer throw it all away by doing a fleet 180 turn away, a manoeuvre they SPECIFICALLY drilled on so as to be familiar with the different handling characteristics of their various capital ships? Scheer was clearly such a noob, lol.

To suggest Captain Langsdorff was in any way considering "angling" for the reasons you suggested is not at all how I recall the engagement. His goals were perfectly clear, including trying to manage the range of engagement against the two light cruisers charging him (as an aside, their "bow on aspect" didn't exactly do them many favours as I seem to recall at least one suffering a pretty bad hit smack in the front turrets) plus also trying to be in a position to manoeuvre to avoid torpedoes, several of which were fired at him. Equally, the Brits were using the light cruisers in much the way one would expect a DD squadron to behave, closing the range to increase the volume of hits plus bringing torpedoes into the mix. Then again, I'm going off memory, so perhaps you're right all along. Just odd that I don't ever recall reading about any such consideration on his part, or indeed the part of the Brits. If I WERE aware of such things, I'd consider it evidence that commanders of capital ships DID consider such things.

Equally, HMS Hood was well aware of the potential armour issues and very deliberately charging to close the range to where she felt a plunging hit on the deck armour was deemed unlikely. So important was that consideration that she and HMS Prince of Wales sacrificed 50% and 40% respectively of their total firepower. Bismarck, on the other hand, did not do anything of the sort, firing her fore and aft main batteries deliberately as two groupings so as to continue her adjustments to the firing solution on the closing enemies (she also blazed away with her secondary armament, but I don't know there's any evidence any hits were scored with them, something people around here seem to struggle to accept). With Hood sunk, Prince of Wales didn't choose to turn to a sharp angle, instead using her full complement of guns (well, those that were working, but that's a different matter).

Meanwhile, have you read the "help" pages in the game? Under "Shell Penetration Angle" it SPECIFICALLY SAYS:

"An effective practice to lessen the chance of a shell penetration is to advance towards enemy facing with the bow of the ship. This way incoming shells have reduced penetration power due to the smaller angle of hit or they may ricochet and become completely ineffective".

Thus we have the devs saying this concept of "presenting a sharp angle" is an important tactic based on the mechanics they have chosen to implement.

Quite how that's a great idea with an all or nothing armour scheme is something they've not mentioned, but I'm sure they'll get around to it. I'm about to post in the "long list of issues" just how hilariously badly that can go, but clearly I'm missing the point and in-game examples ought not be used to suggest things aren't all they're cracked up to be.

As an aside, quite some time ago I suggested an amendment to the "penetration tooltip" because there's a rather unfortunate surprise hidden within it and I thought it would be best to cover it so as not to have a lot of new players scratching their heads. But, hey, again, what would I know?

It's not clear to me exactly what your argument is other than "ships sailed towards and away from each other in all sorts of battles for a whole host of reasons". Thanks for that, captain obvious. Not that it in any rebuts the points I was making.

Now if people CAN demonstrate that this "angling" was done with the EXPRESS PURPOSE of maximising the armour of a capital gunship, I'll be all ears.

Until they do, however, I'll say what I've been saying for a long time. This whole angling thing for the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of armour is complete bollocks. That the devs have built it this way suggests two things to me:

1. the dramatically inflated hit rates of guns has forced them to implement artificial means of mitigating those hits, and

2. they're very deliberately catering to the WoWS crowd.

The simple FACT is that hit rates were the limiting factor in these ships, and the gunnery capital ships more or less did EVERYTHING they could to maximise their chance of scoring hits. If you can push your hit rate from 5% to 6%, that's a 20% increase in accuracy. Hell, we all know (or ought to) that the whole BC debacle at Jutland was in no small part due to measures taken to increase RoF to compensate for poor gunnery. If you've read Jellicoe as I mentioned, you'd also know that was very much CONTRARY to his instructions re gunnery doctrine and how he expected his ships to engage. Then again, the BCs were rather a debacle generally, so hardly surprising, lol.

Bloat the hit rates and everything ELSE has to change. Simple, really, but it explains why one might expect to see the AI doing what it does despite the fact that doing so for the purposes of improving armour is nothing I've ever read anywhere in some 40+ years. Then again, I'm only an armchair admiral, so perhaps you can point me to appropriately authoritative source material and I will happily eat humble pie because I'll be less ignorant than prior to reading it.

Those points are also things we've discussed many times around here, but I think I've certainly said enough.

Well you clearly missed the point I was making again because you skimmed through it again. I have never once said that angling was more effective for armour not once (even though as you stated it does increase ricochets in this game as it would in real life, which is why we had sloped armour belts on ships to you know bounce shit) . Im saying angling is a tactic for reducing accurate incoming fire while keeping guns on target. But I guess you can just keeping having a fictional conversation with me while not actually reading any of the material I have talked about. My entire conversation has been about positioning in battles VS number of guns on target it HAS NEVER been about armour schemes and penetration values just angling to reduce incoming fire.

Strawman he says HAHA. Well how about a Red Herring, since you know you completely misrepresented the point I was trying to make for the sake of an argument. 

But thanks for trying

Edited September 3, 2020 by TotalRampage

[Steeltrap]

On 9/2/2020 at 12:24 AM, TotalRampage said:

 They didn't fight them like age of sail battles that apparently you want in a pre-and post dreadnought era game and just have ships go broadside at 5km just duking it out like a bunch of monkeys. No actually who would have guessed that they actually didn't sail parallel to each other the whole battle. Thats just MIND BLOWING. 

My point was and always has been about "angling for the purposes of armour improvement".

I've also pointed out THE DEVS THEMSELVES have suggested EXACTLY THAT in their "help" pages in game.

If you think your statement above (I changed the text to bold so) doesn't qualify as grossly misrepresenting my position, and doing so in a way intended to be inflammatory, then I think you're full of it. It's such a clearly nonsensical assertion as to my desires for the game that it cannot be taken as being offered in good faith. Nobody who has seen my posting history over the last year would think otherwise.

I rather suspect most readers will draw a similar conclusion, no matter how you try to dress it up after the fact.

Whatever.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Steeltrap

[TotalRampage]

On 8/30/2020 at 11:30 PM, Steeltrap said:

The game claims that it is intended to be REALISTIC. All this "angling" and "bow tanking" is bullshit most people "learn" from WoWS.

It has ZERO place in a game attempting to provide any sort of 'realistic' recreations of the realities of large gun naval warfare. There are reasons you DON'T read about ships sitting still or going slowly ahead then astern when in naval combat.

It also follows that if there are advantages to either of those behaviours then THE GAME'S MECHANICS ARE FLAWED compared with the realities of the period.

If this (or any other game) REWARDS that sort of garbage, then it has NO grounds on which to make any claims to "realism".

Again if you refer to my first post which was about AI behavior while targeting enemy ships you would have realized that wasn't the point but thanks for trying.

Don't talk about "Good Faith" if you post this and quote me in it. 

Thanks.

[madham82]

Related subject, the AI does know something about avoiding fire.

I'm sure we all have seen a case where one AI ship takes damage and then turns to run. Since there is no particular place to "run to", the AI will keep maneuvering to keep it's stern pointed to you. This is broken logic. Turning to run away is one thing (but the AI/players need somewhere to withdraw to on the map), but constantly turning to stay stern on to a superior enemy is a "cheat" because of the damage modeling. 

I have brought this up before in other threads, but to me it does show the AI has some logic about avoiding fire in unfavorable conditions. My suggestions would be to build upon this in a way so the AI will try to "disengage" if under sustained, effective fire. But we also need withdraw zones on the maps and victory conditions that take these into account. 

[Steeltrap]

13 hours ago, madham82 said:

constantly turning to stay stern on to a superior enemy is a "cheat" because of the damage modeling. 

I'd say it's exactly what a ship seeking to disengage ought to be doing.

That it might appear to be a 'cheat' is a consequence of the poor quality of the damage system as it stands.

Fix THAT and the tactic would still make perfect sense.

Indeed, I suspect the AI does it precisely for the reason I stated, and NOT with the intention of exploiting the damage model.

I've found by playing the same scenario over and over that I've some grasp of the AI as it stands (at least for those battle conditions), and there's a lot that will need to be done to make it satisfactory/good IMO. Watching fleets sail bow on at me, close to a certain range, then turn away gets pretty old, ESPECIALLY when they do so as Divisions but without any apparent consideration of what the REST of their fleet is doing. It's also interesting and quite informative to turn your own ship/s over to the AI and see how it performs in a scenario vs how well you did. Again, it's far from ideal.

Which is fine. It's Alpha and AI is notoriously difficult to get correct, yet Nick has a great track record in that area so I'm sure it will improve.

Cheers

[SonicB]

14 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I'd say it's exactly what a ship seeking to disengage ought to be doing.

That it might appear to be a 'cheat' is a consequence of the poor quality of the damage system as it stands.

Fix THAT and the tactic would still make perfect sense.

Nailed it. I've been reading the discussion above with great interest, and my conclusion really has to be that while physics dictate a certain amount of ricochets are realistic, the game damage model just doesn't have the complexity to simulate it effectively.

For instance, if bow, stern and deck armour is so effective at causing ricochets, why did almost every 20th century armoured citadel have heavily reinforced ends - frequently, when combined with the bow and stern belts, thicker in total than the main belt?

[SonicB]

Returning briefly, if I may, to the subject of collision avoidance... I've noticed that even when a ship is under manual rudder control, the evasion logic still seems to apply to its speed. Therefore, when anywhere near a friendly or hostile vessel, a ship will refuse to travel at the speed you have set.

Needless to say, this is extremely annoying in close-quarters combat and needs to be fixed.

[Cptbarney]

On 9/7/2020 at 12:22 AM, SonicB said:

Returning briefly, if I may, to the subject of collision avoidance... I've noticed that even when a ship is under manual rudder control, the evasion logic still seems to apply to its speed. Therefore, when anywhere near a friendly or hostile vessel, a ship will refuse to travel at the speed you have set.

Needless to say, this is extremely annoying in close-quarters combat and needs to be fixed.

Yeah this has been a problem since alpha 1 and i've also mentioned it quite a few times already (and so did some others who no longer frequent these forums). It's annoying as this makes ramming almost impossible (and ramming mechanics are also a problem in on its-self) and seems like the captain of the ship is basically commiting insubordination as well.

We still have a logn way to go before we get a decent game going. It should pick up quite nicely after the campaigns release (i hope so anyways).

[madham82]

On 9/4/2020 at 11:48 PM, Steeltrap said:

I'd say it's exactly what a ship seeking to disengage ought to be doing.

That it might appear to be a 'cheat' is a consequence of the poor quality of the damage system as it stands.

Fix THAT and the tactic would still make perfect sense.

Indeed, I suspect the AI does it precisely for the reason I stated, and NOT with the intention of exploiting the damage model.

Sorry turning in circles on the same spot of the map is not what any commander would do. The tactic of turning away from your enemy, sure. This isn't a cheat by itself, but it is when you add the damage modeling. Frequently the AI ship is doing only a few kts from battle damage, but able to turn inside of my fully functioning ship. Rudder damage is magically repaired, and the maneuvering penalty bug (fixed now I believe) added to the issue. Not to mention the aforementioned damage soak issue. 

That was the point I was trying to make. Even if the damage model is fixed, we still need realistic victory conditions that take into account advance/withdraw zones. Since sea battles frequently resulted in one side fleeing after a beating. Not many ended in sinking every opposing ship. 

[Steeltrap]

19 hours ago, madham82 said:

Sorry turning in circles on the same spot of the map is not what any commander would do.

Sorry, I was generally speaking about the issue of turning away when the ship had meaningful headway.

I think what's happening is the AI is trying to do that, but it's trying to do it even when its speed is next to zero. There is, frankly, a speed at which any ship needs to be moving for the rudder(s) to have much effect, otherwise known as "steerageway" (you probably know that, I'm just putting it here for completeness).

I don't think it's modelled very realistically.

19 hours ago, madham82 said:

Frequently the AI ship is doing only a few kts from battle damage, but able to turn inside of my fully functioning ship. Rudder damage is magically repaired, and the maneuvering penalty bug (fixed now I believe) added to the issue. Not to mention the aforementioned damage soak issue. 

That was the point I was trying to make. Even if the damage model is fixed, we still need realistic victory conditions that take into account advance/withdraw zones. Since sea battles frequently resulted in one side fleeing after a beating. Not many ended in sinking every opposing ship. 

Oops, silly me, you're mentioning the issue of steerageway. I probably ought to edit this reply but I'm being lazy. In fact all ships also face the issue of sail area when in any sort of breeze and that can significantly affect manoeuvring under conditions of flooding and reduced available engine power (the official HMS Hood site for example has an entire page devoted to her handling under all sorts of conditions including wind when attempting to manoeuvre at low speeds to dock/moor, an interesting read). Right now the wind doesn't seem to do anything other than apply a gunnery penalty, and that ought ideally to change in some important respects (smoke screens for starters).

As an aside, the manoeuvre penalty has NOT been fixed when it comes to rudder settings. Assuming I get around to it, I'll add it in the thread, but I've a shot of a target travelling at 0.1 knots applying a -35% (I think) penalty to me shooting at it under "target manoeuvre".

I very much agree with you, especially about the points regarding "campaign realities" being very different from "kill, don't cap" (sorry, couldn't resist LOL) victory conditions we have now, although I say that fully in the knowledge that for testing purposes the missions and victory conditions serve useful purposes, which I'm sure you'd agree with.

Adding crews with training and morale factors will likely also make a BIG difference, too, although the devs will want to be careful with the question of when does discipline break down to the point the crew starts to abandon even without orders (I'd suggest it ought to be vanishingly rare for warships as they tended only to do so once they clearly were sinking; the odds they were against up until that point seems to have made very little difference in all navies).

Cheers

Edited September 9, 2020 by Steeltrap

[SUBNOR]

Hi guys, first of all thanks for a great game, I found it by pure chance and fell in love right away, played it until I finished all academy missions (a few mins ago).

My two comments - it felt like there was something wrong with big ship propulsion. Sometimes battleships would receive damage to all three engines and still maintain 25 knots constantly. It might be due to the Aux module but in that case it seems overpowered.

In some Academy scenarios I got a victory despite not fulfilling the victory conditions. If I survived and did not meet the defeat conditions (lose to many of your own ships) until the time ran out sometimes I would still get a win.

[Draco]

OK guys, we gotta talk about the german bias.

Why are german battleship HP pools so ridiculously high? This guy ended up taking 300 pens and another 100 overpens, and when I had shot all 1215 (max ammo) superheavy 16" shells at him and done over 4.5k damage he was still well above half HP. Standard bulkheads, armour scheme 3 so not even turtleback, only 99k displacement so far from as big as they come, and as you can see I had a good 98% hit chance and about 45% pen chance for the most of the engagement, which was mostly fought at 25-17km dist.
300 pens... and how many pens did he need to bring me down to the same 60-ish % of structural integrity? 35...
300 pens vs 35... As you can see in the image that translates to  875 HP on my Iowa style battleship, meanwhile the german H-class I was fighting had taken over 4.5k damage at the end of the fight and was still above 60% integrity, which means that If you measure them directly against each other, that would mean the Iowa style battleship starts out with about 1/6th of the total HP of the H-class it is fighting here when all factors are accounted for, in spite of only being a quarter smaller displacement wise. I mean sure, german ships like bismarck were notoriously hard to sink, but as mentioned this guys isn't even rocking proper turtleback...
I just think this is ridiculous.
It shouldn't take three battleships of similar sizes to sink one just because the one is flying the kaizerliche marine flag, and that is consistently the result I get when I fight the germans. You have to have numerical superiority, otherwise you cannot hope sink them. That or spam 18 inchers and hope for a flash fire, which often also isn't enough, as I have seen some german H-class types lose literally all their turrets to flash fires and still not go down.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that german turtleback ships should be harder to sink than american all-or-nothing ships, but maybe more in an order of 1-1,5 than the current 1-3 or as this game turned out 1-6.

Really hope this either gets fixed before campaign release or that germany gets some SERIOUS build penalties to their OP battleships in the campaign to make up for the fact that one of their battleships is currently worth three of any other nation.

[draconins]

On 9/13/2020 at 4:15 AM, Draco said:

OK guys, we gotta talk about the german bias.

Why are german battleship HP pools so ridiculously high? This guy ended up taking 300 pens and another 100 overpens, and when I had shot all 1215 (max ammo) superheavy 16" shells at him and done over 4.5k damage he was still well above half HP. Standard bulkheads, armour scheme 3 so not even turtleback, only 99k displacement so far from as big as they come, and as you can see I had a good 98% hit chance and about 45% pen chance for the most of the engagement, which was mostly fought at 25-17km dist.
300 pens... and how many pens did he need to bring me down to the same 60-ish % of structural integrity? 35...
300 pens vs 35... As you can see in the image that translates to  875 HP on my Iowa style battleship, meanwhile the german H-class I was fighting had taken over 4.5k damage at the end of the fight and was still above 60% integrity, which means that If you measure them directly against each other, that would mean the Iowa style battleship starts out with about 1/6th of the total HP of the H-class it is fighting here when all factors are accounted for, in spite of only being a quarter smaller displacement wise. I mean sure, german ships like bismarck were notoriously hard to sink, but as mentioned this guys isn't even rocking proper turtleback...
I just think this is ridiculous.

Can I have your battle configuration, or is this naval academy mission? Do you know the armor thickness configuration? Your 98.6 is basically for at least 1 hit for all 9 guns, however more than half of your hit is Ricochet (104hit) based on stat on top right, hover on the icon to see the details. Also your enemy is super armored, it has like 10.3 to 50.1 inch armor (with quality), so it would be quite difficult to brought down even when angled correctly. Depending on their armor configuration, you may need to either fight at closer range (if belt is weaker) or longer range (if deck is weaker), in your case very likely you need to fight longer range.

[Hangar18]

On 8/28/2020 at 3:19 PM, TotalRampage said:

I still find the enemy fleets will not angle properly.

This is not a real thing. This is something entirely made up by WG. There is no autobounce to save you, the angle of the bow, or aft will not matter. There is no aiming at a particular part of the ship, you're lucky to get a hit, at all. You orient the ship to either close/increase the distance, or bring guns to bear. 

[Hangar18]

On 9/13/2020 at 5:15 AM, Draco said:

Why are german battleship HP pools so ridiculously high? This guy ended up taking 300 pens and another 100 overpens, and when I had shot all 1215 (max ammo) superheavy 16" shells at him and done over 4.5k damage he was still well above half HP. Standard bulkheads,

What gets hit is more important than how many times. If you landed 1k shells and they all went into the bow, then of course they arent going to sink.

Standard bulkheads for armor? or the count? This is important.

There is no bias, don't start that meme here. There is no "HP pool"

[Shiki]

2 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

This is not a real thing. This is something entirely made up by WG. There is no autobounce to save you, the angle of the bow, or aft will not matter. There is no aiming at a particular part of the ship, you're lucky to get a hit, at all. You orient the ship to either close/increase the distance, or bring guns to bear. 

This is not entirely true. In the Treaty era, many ships were designed to fight at angles in relation to the target - American cruisers were designed, for example, to fight at 60 degrees (originally 30 degrees, and to 90 degrees - flat broadside - for Baltimore onward) in relation to the target, whether fore or aft. This was done to save weight in light of the broad inclinations at which fast combatants, such as cruisers, tend to fight. The same applies to even battleships such as Scharnhorst, which was designed to fight at 30 degrees inclination with respect to the opponent. This isn't to say you're wrong, however; I'm simply trying to clarify that these angles were used with respect to the armoured portions of the ship. That doesn't include Wargaming's often-noted ridiculous "32 mm is invulnerable to 406 mm if you angle it steeply enough".

[Cptbarney]

7 hours ago, Shiki said:

This is not entirely true. In the Treaty era, many ships were designed to fight at angles in relation to the target - American cruisers were designed, for example, to fight at 60 degrees (originally 30 degrees, and to 90 degrees - flat broadside - for Baltimore onward) in relation to the target, whether fore or aft. This was done to save weight in light of the broad inclinations at which fast combatants, such as cruisers, tend to fight. The same applies to even battleships such as Scharnhorst, which was designed to fight at 30 degrees inclination with respect to the opponent. This isn't to say you're wrong, however; I'm simply trying to clarify that these angles were used with respect to the armoured portions of the ship. That doesn't include Wargaming's often-noted ridiculous "32 mm is invulnerable to 406 mm if you angle it steeply enough".

Although weegee does it for competitive reasons, i think it would be better if each ship and shell (or rather the shell) had its own unique-ish pen rates so that 32mm's doesn't get bodied by 460's cus game is like 'lol its the threshold, boom'. 

[TotalRampage]

15 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

This is not a real thing. This is something entirely made up by WG. There is no autobounce to save you, the angle of the bow, or aft will not matter. There is no aiming at a particular part of the ship, you're lucky to get a hit, at all. You orient the ship to either close/increase the distance, or bring guns to bear. 

Not what I was referring to. Angling as in POS of enemy fleets in regards to engagements. i.e. not bring guns to bear or even having any semblance of a strategy when they go into the battle.  Angling in combat is extremely important. In most instances in WW1 and WW2 battles commanders would angle to target specific ships more effectively while reducing the target presented to the enemy. I'm sure I've posted an analysis about battle of river plate and how Langsdorff used the POS of his ship to properly angle against enemy ships to reduce incoming fire while also keeping all his guns on target.

[TotalRampage]

12 hours ago, Shiki said:

This is not entirely true. In the Treaty era, many ships were designed to fight at angles in relation to the target - American cruisers were designed, for example, to fight at 60 degrees (originally 30 degrees, and to 90 degrees - flat broadside - for Baltimore onward) in relation to the target, whether fore or aft. This was done to save weight in light of the broad inclinations at which fast combatants, such as cruisers, tend to fight. The same applies to even battleships such as Scharnhorst, which was designed to fight at 30 degrees inclination with respect to the opponent. This isn't to say you're wrong, however; I'm simply trying to clarify that these angles were used with respect to the armoured portions of the ship. That doesn't include Wargaming's often-noted ridiculous "32 mm is invulnerable to 406 mm if you angle it steeply enough".

I mean. I don't understand why people refuse to accept that a Captain would angle away from an enemy ship to present less of a target to an enemy. Which is why gun inclinations where important. Why fight at a 40 degree angle giving a bigger target to a superior ships for example if you can limit your target to 30 degrees and keep all guns on target 

[Hangar18]

3 hours ago, TotalRampage said:

I don't understand why people refuse to accept that a Captain would angle away from an enemy ship to present less of a target to an enemy.

Nearly the opposite of actual tactics... Less of a target? this is not 2d, you can hit the deck as well. This is not a rifle, where the targets silhouette changes the difficulty to land a hit. why would you give up tactical advantage, not just in position, but in gun count, just to make yourself a supposedly smaller target?

Edited September 19, 2020 by Hangar18

[Skeksis]

6 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

Nearly the opposite of actual tactics... Less of a target? this is not 2d, you can hit the deck as well. This is not a rifle, where the targets silhouette changes the difficulty to land a hit. why would you give up tactical advantage, not just in position, but in gun count, just to make yourself a supposedly smaller target?

And yet ships were designed with the arc of fire in mind...

Wikipedia: "[HMS] Dreadnought could deliver a broadside of eight guns between 60° before the beam and 50° abaft the beam. Beyond these limits she could fire six guns aft, and four forward."

HMS Dreadnought itself no less, if the situation arises ships of the era can fight angle-on, designed to do so if needed.

Why can't there be some clever AI tactics to reflect this.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Skeksis

[TotalRampage]

1 hour ago, Hangar18 said:

Nearly the opposite of actual tactics... Less of a target? this is not 2d, you can hit the deck as well. This is not a rifle, where the targets silhouette changes the difficulty to land a hit. why would you give up tactical advantage, not just in position, but in gun count, just to make yourself a supposedly smaller target?

Your kidding right?

While yes crossing the T is important you can cross a ships T without being at an 90 degree angle. And I hate to break it to you but distance and movement of ships DEFINETLY increases the difficulty of landing a hit and or how a warships crew calculated distance for targets. A smaller target is always smaller to hit because its SMALLER. At the battle of river plate I mentioned because if you look at the picture below with the time stamps you can see how he activly angled against 2 cruisers while positioning his ship to bring all guns to bear on another. This LIMITED the amount of fire he took while maximizing his damage. 

[TotalRampage]

2 hours ago, Hangar18 said:

Nearly the opposite of actual tactics... Less of a target? this is not 2d, you can hit the deck as well. This is not a rifle, where the targets silhouette changes the difficulty to land a hit. why would you give up tactical advantage, not just in position, but in gun count, just to make yourself a supposedly smaller target?

What's a bigger target the front or the side? Or maybe we could angle the ship to maximize firepower while limiting our size at the same time. Also my argument is you don't need to be broadside to get the most out of your guns. 

Also a rifle works just like a cannon........................

Edited September 20, 2020 by TotalRampage